Most SEO pages say "years of experience" and stop there. Mine names the companies, the dates, and the buyers, and links to the SEC filings and trade press where you can check it. If you are about to hand someone your website, you ought to be able to verify who they are before you do.

The short version

Before 1990

Economics and computer science at UCLA, then an MBA in marketing at the University of Washington. After that I held sales, marketing, and technical jobs at Microsoft, Exxon, SMC, and a string of other technology companies.

That mix turned out to matter. The economics taught me to distrust a number until I know how it was collected. The computer science means I can read what a developer hands me instead of taking their word for it. The marketing degree is why I care whether the phone rings, not whether a chart went up.

Lotus411: 1990 to 2000

I started the company in 1990 and the first thing it ran was Lotus411.com — a help desk and community for the administrators and developers keeping IBM Lotus Notes and Domino alive inside large organizations. Notes was enormous then, and the people running it had almost nowhere to go for a straight answer. We built the technical tips repository, the discussion rooms, and the mentoring that the community did not have.

Underneath the community was the actual business: internet marketing for the third-party vendors selling into the Notes and Domino ecosystem. That is the model I would use for the next fifteen years. Build the place the technical audience already wants to be, then help the vendors reach them honestly. Lotus411 ran for a decade, and in 2000 TechTarget acquired it.

One honest note. Lotus411 finished its publishing life a long time ago and there is no press release sitting online for it the way there is for MSD2D. The domain name has since been picked up by an unrelated jewelry shop. If you are checking my background and you search that name, that is what you will find, and I would rather tell you than have you wonder.

MSD2D: 2000 to 2005

I did not stay retired long the first time either. About a month after the Lotus411 sale closed in 2000, I started MSD2D — Microsoft Developer-to-Developer — out of Lake Forest, California, pointing the same playbook at Microsoft instead of IBM. I ran it for five years, and it grew faster than Lotus411 ever did.

What we built was a set of communities around Microsoft's server products. ExchangeD2D came first. Then SharePointD2D, which Microsoft announced in its own newsroom in February 2002 and quoted me in. Then .NET, SQL, and security. Each site carried free code, Web Parts, administrator tips, mentored discussion rooms, a product directory, and a weekly newsletter. By the time we sold, the SharePoint directory alone listed hundreds of third-party products.

The business underneath all of that was internet marketing for the vendors in those ecosystems. We did it for thousands of them.

The People's Choice Awards

We also ran the MSD2D People's Choice Awards, voted on by the actual administrators and developers using the products, and presented at Microsoft Tech·Ed. Categories covered imaging, security, workflow, charting, IP telephony, and more.

I mention it because it is the cleanest evidence of what MSD2D was. Companies still list those awards on their own sites twenty years later. Equilibrium announced its third consecutive win at Tech·Ed in Orlando in 2005. Nevron lists its 2005 win in .NET charting and graphing. When other companies keep your award on their press page for two decades, the award meant something.

Who we worked with

The order matters. The large companies came to us because of what we produced for the small vendors, not the other way around. Fortune 100 marketing departments could see results they were not getting from their own agencies.

Selling both companies

TechTarget acquired Lotus411.com in 2000. Five years later the second one went the same way.

On August 8, 2005, Penton Media acquired MSD2D and put it into its Windows IT Pro Group. Penton's announcement named me as the founder. The transaction is recorded in Penton's SEC filings, which are linked below and which you can read without asking my permission.

One detail to explain before you go read them. Penton's announcement dates the business to 1990, and MSD2D itself did not launch until 2000. Both are correct. The legal entity behind both sites, DVGM & Associates, was formed in 1990 to run Lotus411, and Penton bought the stock of that company. The 10-Q names it plainly.

Both buyers bought for the same stated reason: they wanted to understand how we had been so effective at internet marketing for small vendors. Neither of them figured it out. They lost the investment and they lost our clients, because a large company cannot stop behaving like a large company. Small vendors needed someone who answered the phone and changed the plan the same week. What they got was a process.

That is the most useful thing I learned in thirty-five years, and I learned it by watching people fail at it with my own former clients.

Temecula SEO: 2007 to 2022

I retired at 50, thanks to God's blessings. It held for about two years.

In 2007 I started Temecula SEO, and I started it for the same reason MSD2D and Lotus411 had worked in the first place: small vendors. A dentist in Temecula and an independent software vendor in Redmond have the identical problem. Both are invisible to the people already looking for them, both have been sold a website that was never built to be found, and neither has anyone honest to ask. The budgets are smaller. The work is the same work.

That ran fifteen years across Southern California — dental practices, contractors, home services, professional offices. Some of those clients are still with me.

Tucson, since June 2022

I moved to Tucson in June 2022 and the practice moved with me. Same person, same phone habits, new area code. Temecula SEO became Tucson SEO — if you found me under the old name, you are in the right place — and I kept the Southern California clients who wanted to stay, because none of this work requires me to be in the room.

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The whole thing in one table

Thirty-five years, four companies, two sales.

Years	What I was running	How it ended
1990–2000	Lotus411.com — the IBM Lotus Notes and Domino community, and internet marketing for the vendors selling into it	Acquired by TechTarget in 2000
2000–2005	MSD2D.com — Exchange, SharePoint, .NET and security communities, plus the People’s Choice Awards at Microsoft Tech·Ed	Acquired by Penton Media, August 8, 2005
2005–2007	Retirement, age 50	Lasted about two years
2007–2022	Temecula SEO — small businesses across Southern California	Moved to Tucson, June 2022
2022–now	Tucson SEO — same work, same phone, new area code	Still going

What I do now

Tucson SEO is what I do with the time. I take a small number of clients, I do the work myself, and I charge roughly a tenth of the going agency rate because I am not covering anyone's payroll or renting anyone's office. There is no account manager between us. The person who writes your title tags is the person who answers when you call.

The internet is still the cheapest marketing that exists, and most small companies still have no idea how to use it. In my experience almost no web designer understands what actually produces a top-ten Google listing — they build something attractive and assume Google will notice. It will not. Today people use Google to satisfy their curiosity, diagnose their symptoms, and find businesses like yours. Getting found when they search is the whole game.

What hiring me looks like next to hiring an agency.

	Tucson SEO	A typical agency
Who does the work	David Cragg, personally	Junior staff or outsourced production
Who answers the phone	The same person	An account manager relaying messages
Cost per month	$1,000	$2,500 to $10,000
Contract	Month to month	Six or twelve month minimum
Clients at a time	A handful, by design	As many as the sales team can close

What I actually do, specifically

• Technical SEO. Crawl and index diagnostics, canonical conflicts, redirect architecture, Core Web Vitals and LCP, and the hosting-layer constraints nobody mentions until they break your site.
• Structured data. Sitewide entity graphs, LocalBusiness and Person modeling, service and FAQ schema, duplicate-schema audits. Most sites I inherit have three schema blocks fighting each other.
• Local SEO. Google Business Profile, NAP consistency, city and service page architecture, review systems, local pack analysis.
• Content. Search intent mapping, cannibalization audits, page-by-page rebuilds, internal linking. Written to sound like a person who does the work, because that is now the only kind worth publishing.
• Platforms. WordPress, Avada, WPCode, Rank Math, Yoast Premium, managed hosting and its quirks.
• Measurement. Search Console, GA4, rank tracking, and telling you plainly which of those moved and which did not.

Results

If you are looking for help with SEO, or anything related, David is your man! I talked to several other companies before talking to David, and I knew right away he was different. He is extremely professional, responsive, affordable, and effective. Most importantly, I trust that he is looking out for my best interest. He takes a very hands-on approach and always takes the time to listen to the changing needs of my professional business. His wealth of knowledge is invaluable. He had my business seeing results almost immediately. Thank you David for all your hard work! Best in the business!

Luke Hendrix Law Offices of J. Luke Hendrix, Temecula, California

We have worked with David for over a year now and he is great to work with. David has built us a great new website that we love and our Google ranking has improved significantly. David is a great guy and works day and night to help you. I highly recommend Temecula seo. Thank you David for your hard work.

Jason Moat Temecula, California

David has been a huge help to my business. He’s knowledgeable, responsive, and consistently delivers great work. Since working with him, we’ve seen strong improvements and he continues to go above and beyond to help our business grow. Highly recommend David and SEO Tucson to anyone looking for someone who truly cares about getting results.

Weston Molitor Wild West Junk Removal, Temecula, California

I have been using Dave's SEO services for over 5 years now. I am thrilled with the results. My business' Google ranking has steadily improved since he's taken over. When I ask for support, he drops everything and deals with my issues immediately. I never have to wait. I appreciate all his efforts and expertise and looking forward to many more years working with him.

Dr. Bao Nguyen, DDS Promenade Dental Care, Murrieta, California

Education, credentials, and what I do not have

• BA, economics with a minor in computer science, UCLA, cum laude
• MBA, marketing, with honors, University of Washington
• Founder and president, Lotus411.com, 1990 to 2000
• Founder and president, MSD2D, 2000 to 2005

What I do not have is a wall of SEO certifications, and I would rather say so than pad this page. The certificate programs did not exist for most of my career, and the ones that exist now are vendor training courses that take an afternoon. There is no licensing body for this work. Anyone can print a badge. Judge me on the Penton filing and the Microsoft press release instead — those took fifteen years to earn and I cannot retake them.

Check my work

None of the following was written by me or is controlled by me.

• SEC EDGAR — Penton Media's announcement of the MSD2D acquisition, August 9, 2005. Names me as founder. It dates the business to 1990. That is the founding date of DVGM & Associates, the company that ran Lotus411 first and MSD2D second — not of MSD2D, which launched in 2000.
• SEC EDGAR — Penton Media Form 10-Q. Records the August 8, 2005 acquisition of DVGM & Associates, doing business as MSD2D.
• Microsoft newsroom — MSD2D.com launches premier resource for SharePoint developers, February 4, 2002. Quotes me as president of MSD2D.com.
• BizWest — Penton Media acquires California IT business.
• Ad Age — Penton Media acquires MSD2D.
• ITPro Today, 2006. Cites MSD2D's SharePoint technical library a year after the sale.
• Equilibrium and Nevron — two vendors still listing their MSD2D People's Choice Awards.
• David Cragg on LinkedIn.

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Who I work with

I only work with companies that are committed to growing. That is not a size filter — my best clients are small. It is a seriousness filter. SEO takes months and it takes some of the owner's attention. If what you want is a monthly report that looks good and changes nothing, there are agencies for that, and they will charge you ten times what I do.