Name of your website?McKeon Engineering & Associates, LLC - Professional Civil Engineering Land Developer
Your name?
Thomas McKeon
Your Location (city, etc)
Orlando
Please give us a short summary of your website?
We are a full-service Professional Civil Engineering consulting firm located in Orlando, FL serving clients throughout Florida and offers a 'one-stop design/engineering/permitting' experience for the development and construction industry. We provide the best and finest Civil Engineering Land Development services. These services include turn key pre-construction services ranging from due diligence and scheduling through complete project design and permitting.
Run by a Professional Engineer ( Tom McKeon ) with over 17 years experience, our low overhead and efficient methods mean cost savings to you. McKeon Engineering & Associates, LLC can assist you with virtually any type and size development venture.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
As a Professional Engineer, I wanted to provide the finest Civil Engineering Land Development services while protecting our environment and doing all of this efficiently using cutting edge tools to provide the services at a significant cost savings to the client.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
My recent first website is at http://www.engineertrades.com and is a forum dedicated primarily to preparation for the Professional Engineering exam. I created this forum because the other relevant choices included huge amounts of non-relevant issues, porn, vulgarity and more. Funny thing that ppi2pass banned me but continued to allow those that were posting that horrible stuff. I always thought that engineers should be professional and of high standing. Go figure. These are the same people that design roadways, bridges, buildings and more.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
Well, it is common in my profession to use a portion of our real name in the company name and it seemed to have a nice ring to it.
What makes it different from other, similar offerings?
We have the same capabilities as the super large firms but are small enough to offer personalized small company attention. Most of the smaller firms don't have the expertise that we have. The larger firms charge a whole lot more than we need to due to their high overhead. We have kept the overhead at a minimum in order to keep our costs low.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
To grow the company until I reach retirement age and then serve as a consultant to the business on an as-needed basis. Perhaps the company may one day even go public.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
Right now, it is too soon to say. However, the website has only been up for about 60 days and, if you search for 'Orlando Civil Engineer' on Yahoo, we are very near the top of the first page and if you search for 'Orlando Civil Engineer Land Developer' on Google, we are number 1. If that is an indication then we are doing well.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
I would advertise more and hire more people to handle the new business aquisition. I would be able to give more to charity and be able to set a good example to others.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
Yes, I believe so. The business model we are using allows us to attract needful professionals because we would be able to pay higher rates.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
The delay in getting the website up has really hurt advertising. There was a long delay just trying to get the domain name servers to be changed.
What has been your biggest challenge?
Trying to maintain the high level of positive attitude throughout the initial startup of the company all the way to now. There have been many nay-sayers and it is sometimes difficult to keep that positive outlook when you hear so much negativity.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
Well, submitting my URL to the different search engines was a start. Also, since I already owned the forum http://www.engineetrades.com I did already have a known site that I could advertise on. Additionally, reciprocal linking and blogging have been useful tools.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
I expected high levels of results immediately (email is nearly immediate), but Google takes their time as do most other search engines. On Google Maps, as of December 4, 2007, the map was finally posted. However, you had to search directly for McKeon Engineering. Also, the several categories selected by the Google team were not the best categories to identify my website. Hopefully this gets corrected very soon.
How long have you run the site already, and how long will you continue to keep it up if you don't enjoy big gains in traffic, income or popularity?
The site has only been up just over 60 days. I have run another forum for over a year.
The site http://www.mckeonengineering.com is not costing me much to keep it running. It did cost a lot of time at the beginning, but is getting quite a bit easier to handle since it has been somewhat noticed and has been adjusted for proper keywords and wording. With that said, I will probably keep it up for a very long time (decades or more I would think). I might even pass it on to my children.
What specialty areas of engineering do you handle?
Well, we handle 3d modeling, geographical information systems (GIS) creation and manipulation, geographical positioning system (GPS)location surveys, Real Estate site selection research services and more. For the Civil Engineering firms we offer stormwater modeling using ICPR, Hydraflow and PONDS at hourly rates and we also offer other design services to Civil Engineering firms on an hourly rate.
Thank you.
What is your website address?
McKeon Engineering & Associates, LLC - Professional Civil Engineering Land Developer
