I’ve been interested in business and computers all of my life. I started selling watches and toys at school from my own printed catalogue at the age of 10, then founded a 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.
Moving to London as I entered 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 Search community, eventually working under Danny Sullivan to manage the communities at Search Engine Watch and a later spin-off at Search Engine Land.
Whilst speaking at my first US conference in Silicon Valley, I was headhunted and joined PartyPoker. Our team built a groundbreaking SEO strategy that 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 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.
Since then, I’ve moved out of London to raise my young family in the Somerset countryside. As a private consultant, I’ve provided SEO and Ecommerce support to brands including B&Q, Screwfix, Checkout.com, Paperchase, Seasalt, Seccl, Surewise, Bidvine and several agencies.
I still enjoy building software in my spare time, between work and family life.
If you would like to work with me or just say “hello”, my email address is [email protected].
Thank you for stopping by.