I’ve been interested in business and computers all of my life, starting out selling watches and toys at school from a dot-matrix printed catalogue at the age of 10. I then founded a domain registration and web hosting company at the age of 14, after learning to code and manage servers.
Realising that I was getting most of my traffic from Search Engines, I taught myself SEO and quickly started ranking for competitive keywords. Sharing this knowledge under my online handle evilgreenmonkey, I quickly became a major voice and contributor to the UK and international SEO community.
Entering my 20s, I built a small SEO team at a growing digital agency called STEAK (now Dentsu). At the same time, I became deeply involved in the website Search Engine Watch, eventually working under Danny Sullivan (now Google’s Search Liaison) to manage the community and a later spin-off at Search Engine Land.
Whilst speaking at my first US conference in Silicon Valley, I was headhunted by PartyPoker and joined their cutting edge SEO team. We built a groundbreaking SEO strategy that outcompeted much larger rivals and led the company to ranking top of Google for the biggest Poker terms, in dozens of countries and multiple languages. When the US outlawed gambling online and the company became less fun, the SEO team left and founded an SEO agency called Ayima.
I co-founded Ayima in 2007, building and training the global SEO team as Head of SEO and then leading client strategy as the Chief Strategy Officer. At its height, Ayima employed over 150 people with six global offices and clients including Verizon, Macy’s, ScienceDirect, Red Ventures, O2, Marks & Spencer, PokerStars, Bwin, Travelzoo and British Airways. The agency floated on the NASDAQ (First North) with eight-digit revenues at the end of 2018 and I left a few months later, moving into private consulting for brands including B&Q, Screwfix, Checkout.com, Paperchase, Seasalt, Seccl, Surewise, Bidvine and several agencies.
One of my clients convinced me to work in-house, so I joined Kingfisher plc for 2 years (B&Q, Screwfix, Castorama etc) as Group Head of SEO, being promoted to Group Head of Ecommerce Projects a year later.
I’ve since returned to Ayima and moved out of London to the Somerset countryside with my young family.
I still enjoy coding tools and apps in my spare time, between work and family life. I’m currently working on a new enterprise SEO toolkit and community at SEO Huddle.
If you would like to work with me or just say “hello”, my email address is [email protected].
Thank you for stopping by.