From Little Acorns…..

Well, I guess you could quite feasibly leave college these days and go straight into a job in SEO and that would give you all you need to analyse websites the methodical way but Shaun Parker took a different path. He chose life experience first and boy has he had it!

He won’t thank me for saying this but when Shaun was considering his career path, the internet was unheard of – a distant dream from a sci-fi movie. The idea of some sort of media being streamed into every body’s homes, of everybody having the possibility of endless information at the press of a button, would have been ridiculed as a pipe dream.

Yet, here we are, not so many years later and the whole world runs on computers and few homes are without instant access to the net. The internet has far surpassed anybody’s wildest expectations and a true reliance on it and the information we get from it has come about quickly. Instant communication across the globe is now available, keeping families in touch and businesses running around the clock.

So, what does it take for Shaun the boy on an engineering apprenticeship to become Shaun the man at the top of the SEO industry with infinite knowledge and the power to place websites at the top of the search engine tree?

Well, five years in an engineering apprenticeship at Colchester Lathe Company saw Shaun become a qualified tool maker and engineer. Very adept with manual skills, this wasn’t enough to satisfy Shaun as he had ambitions of being his own boss. With that in mind, he then purchased himself a lorry and went into the sand and gravel haulage business for nine years before the recession put paid to that.

Not one to be held back by such a thing, Shaun did what it took to ensure his family were fed and watered by taking jobs from selling watches to seed packing. It was also around this time that Shaun went on a training course to become a mortgage, life and pensions advisor. It was on that financial training course that Shaun met up again with Steve Dart. The pair had grown up in the same town of Brightlingsea but it wasn’t until the high jinks and practical jokes that they shared on the course brought them closer as friends. As it turns out, this chance meeting was to be the start of a beautiful thing!

Still in the recession, Shaun went to work at a bank in Dovercourt as a mortgage, life and pensions advisor. Yet with his sights set firmly on building a business of his own, Shaun worked at the bank long enough to save up for his own low loader and set himself up as a caravan transporter.

This kept the family afloat for a good while but the determination that has got Mr Parker where he is today has been prevalent throughout his life and it was this that drove Shaun to map himself a path into the up and coming latest thing – the internet. Together with Steve Dart and forming what was originally known as Parker Dart, the pair created a property magazine and lack of funding pushed them to get the magazine published online.

They struggled. Estate agents, laughably now, had no trust in the internet. Words such as ‘oooh, it’ll never take off’ have well and truly been swallowed now! But back then, in the ancient days of 1997, estate agents were not willing to spend money and market property through the net. However, not to be beaten, Shaun was getting his teeth into something else that had caught his attention.

He noticed that some websites performed better than others and he wanted to know why. So began his self taught analysing of websites, leading him onto the path of SEO when Google was just a twinkle in the eyes of Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

By 1998, trying to keep a level of income with the caravan transporter as well as running an online business began to take its toll and it became apparent that Shaun and Steve needed to do one or the other. So, with the aid of some investors, Parker Dart became an official, full time business interest and a fast track to success.

Eighteen months later, Parker Dart parted company with the investors and became High Position with the help of two other staff members. They haven’t looked back since. Analysing a website and its performance, or lack of it, is something that Shaun has done every single day since then. This, along with his worldly wise experience, is what has taught him the quirks behind what people search for and what makes a website appear for those particular searches.

Now a leading figure in the search engine optimisation industry, Shaun has come a long way in a relatively short period of time showing that he obviously has the know how when it comes to placing websites in search. The company has grown to the point where they are one of the leading employers in the town of Colchester. Over fifty staff now occupy what seems like an ever decreasing space and the company is looking to expand further to cope with the workload brought by top clients Sony, Inchcape, Hillarys Blinds and Hoseasons.

With over 200 clients throughout the UK and Europe, High Position are now one of the top SEO agencies in Europe and a force to be reckoned with. A bank of knowledgeable staff from dedicated SEO experts to coders to website designers, copy writers and a full linking team, all putting in the dedication and hours that mean we all have a company to be proud of.