About Us
Virginia SEO Consultant
Nick Stone is a Virginia SEO consultant. This is one of two consulting roles Nick fills at Charlottesville SEO Development. Small business clients hire us primarily for SEO consulting, web development and SEO development.
Web Accessibility Consultant
Nick is also a leading web accessibility consultant in Virginia. Our larger clients choose us because of Nick's knowledge of web accessibility, web usability and handicap accessible web programming.
Nick Stone's Bio
Nick Stone graduated from Dickinson College in 1975 with a bachelor of arts in English and moved to Honolulu the following year.
Nick discovered his passion for computer programming in 1980 while completing his master's degree in business administration at the University of Hawaii, where he graduated Beta Gamma Sigma. Nick's first major programming project was to build an inventory control system for the Prides of New Zealand retail chain. Since that time, his fingers have never been far from a keyboard.
Nick served as an officer on the board of directors for the Protection and Advocacy Agency of Hawaii for several years in the early 1980's. The Protection and Advocacy Agency of Hawaii is a federally mandated agency dedicated to protecting and advocating for the state's disabled population. Nick served as "big brother and advocate" to a mentally handicapped Hawaiian man for 2 decades and continues to stay in touch almost 35 years later. Nick was honored at the Hawaii Governor's Mansion by Hawaii's First Lady for his outstanding service to the handicapped community in Honolulu. Nick remains committed to serving the disabled population through his work to improve online access to websites and digital information and to advocate for accessible website design and development.
Nick was Market Research Director for a Honolulu based, international trading company during the 1980s, where he continued to develop his appreciation for personal computers and software applications. After leaving his market research position, Nick devoted five years to freelance computer consulting, followed by a decade as owner and operator of a successful furniture retail business.
Nick became interested in web site development in 2005 when his wife, Ake (pronounced Ah-kay), decided to launch an online business. Nick built and launched the first version of her site as a custom built e-commerce site with a major focus on search engine friendly web programming targeted at achieving top national / international organic search engine results (see "Impressive Organic Search Engine Results" below). For the first few versions of the site, Nick used JavaScript to program the interactive shopping features. The current site is PHP based, making it more accessible to handicapped visitors and anyone using assistive technology.
The following year (2006), Nick and Ake opened this company as a web design and "best-practices" front-end web development firm under the name Charlottesville CSS Web Development. By 2007, the business was moving towards a focus on web accessibility, web development and search engine optimization. During 2008, Nick began accepting small back-end web development projects as he expanded his focus to include the PHP server-side programming language. That year, our clients became increasingly interested in Nick's ability to provide exceptional search engine results on a local, national or even international scale. Nick took notice and began acquiring additional SEO skills and knowledge. In 2009, we renamed the business Charlottesville SEO Web Development to reflect our increasing focus on all aspects of search engine optimization and our integration of SEO with front-end and back-end web development.
About Ake
Ake Stone is the majority owner of the company and our lead web designer. After graduating from college with a degree in fashion design, Ake designed her own line of children's clothing, which she marketed in Japan. Ake moved from Japan to Honolulu in the early 1980s where she met, and later married, Nick. While in Honolulu, Ake operated a successful business called Hawaii Student Services. She and Nick relocated to Charlottesville, Virginia in 2005.
Impressive Organic Search Engine Results
Ake's site was launched in early summer, 2006. By August of that year, the site ranked number one on Google for the search phrase "customizable handbags." One year later FashionPalette.com held page-one rankings on all the major search engines for at least a dozen search phrases. As our web design and development business began to grow, Ake switched her focus from fashion design to web design. Although most of Ake's time is now devoted to Charlottesville SEO Web Development, the list of page one Google results for Fashion Palette has remained strong. The site's impressive search engine rank success was achieved purely with on-site SEO.
Every site Nick has developed or re-programmed has quickly achieved and maintained page-one Google results for targeted, high-value key phrases.
Contact Us In Central Virginia
Surprisingly, the programming and content in most business web sites has not been optimized to achieve high search engine rankings. If you are happy with your web site design but wish to improve your search engine positioning, Nick can optimize your site -- without changing the appearance -- to help your business get the attention it deserves. Contact us today for a free, no-obligation, search engine optimization quote.
434-284-2840 Charlottesville, VA (Central Virginia)
571-249-1452 Alexandria, VA (Northern Virginia)
