My name is Chris Dohman and I operate North Rock Publishing as a sole proprietorship. I create web sites for clients and also a number of my own projects. My approach to creating web sites includes the following priorities:

* goal driven
* clean design
* easy navigation
* search engine friendly
* fresh content
* marketable
* socially interactive

I built my first web site, Pepperville back in 1999. You can see an old 1999 snapshot of it at archive.org. A couple years after that I started doing a handful of sites for people. In the process of building a site for a friend I came to be a partner in an online retail business where we sold laser engraved games and services. While I still maintained our web site, added some features and new items, the day to day operations of lasering and filling orders did not allow for me to do more web development and marketing of the site. Four or so years later we sold the business which is still alive and active today.

After we sold our lasered games business I devoted my time to learning about the things we were lacking in our online business. We were successful to a certain point but we were far from reaching our potential. Since then I have learned we were an isolated site in a little nook of the world wide web, accessible only through a limited number of routes. Most of our eggs were in the Google basket and when Google’s “Florida” update came, we had to make up for a lot of cracked eggs when the basket dropped.

Now with six plus years of experience working with web sites and running an online business I can tell you I have learned a lot since I built my first web page and I keep learning more and more everyday. I used to have a view of the web that was leaving me and my web sites isolated. With this approach I would create a site, sit back and watch some traffic come, but not really making any connections in the process. After realizing this was not doing the trick, I went out and read thousands of articles and posts from talented people and fantastic places like Search Engine Watch, Clickz, Webmaster World, Cre8asite Forums, and sites including Search Engine Land, Online Marketing Blog, SEOmoz, SEO Book, Search Engine Roundtable, SEO by the Sea, Jim Boykin and Seth Godin. I was the classic lurker gobbling up all the knowledge I could. I wanted to learn about search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), social media and internet marketing, additional programming languages like PHP and great developments in blogs and rss feeds. Gaining knowledge in these areas has and continues to give me a more thorough view of web development which I can now share with folks in web communities, friends and clients.

After taking in oodles of information and playing “catch up” with design and marketing approaches on the internet I am now reaching out to meet folks in the industry and developing my own voice to share what I have learned, take part in great discussions, and yes, still learn more. I met Lee Odden through his Online Marketing Blog and he introduced me to the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA) and the MIMA SEO/SEM Geek Group. Through these groups I have met a great bunch of people in the industry through the events and offline meetings. I received the opportunity to perform the moderator duties for the MIMA SEO/SEM Geek group that we have at Yahoo Groups, was able to create and be primary author/editor for our MIMA Search Marketing blog, and now have been invited to become a frequent blogger on the main MIMA blog. This is just an example of what can happen when one sheds the isolationist view of the web. It is about making connections and becoming an active member of communities.

Today I incorporate these experiences in the developing and marketing of web sites I am involved with. Thanks for taking the time to read this page. Feel free to contact me.

Thanks!