My professional career started as an SEO Consultant for Bedfordshire based digital marketing agency Receptional. These guys started up in 1999 making them one of the World’s oldest SEO agencies and unlike many others of their age, they are still going strong today. What was interesting about this role was the level of knowledge and expertise that existed within the agency. They were around to see everything. The inception of Google Adwords on 20th October 2000, the first Google penalties, the shift from SEO being all about links to being about content. What’s more is that the agency is owned by Dixon Jones who is also Director of Majestic – the World’s largest link database, familiar, and used by everyone working within the SEO industry. I couldn’t have learnt SEO from a more experienced group of people.
From Receptional I progressed my career into London, working for Mediarun (part of Big Group) as Head of SEO and later on Head of Digital. At Mediarun I expanded my experience of working with larger client budgets (£250k+), larger brands and leading a larger agency team. The time I spent at Mediarun was invaluable to my career allowing me to redefine the agency’s service offering / proposition along with making fundamental changes to team structures, roles, responsibilities and recruitment.
In 2013 I decided to move ‘in house’ to broaden my knowledge of how a large business operates. Since December 2013 I have therefore been employed full time by Debenhams as Head of SEO, leading the SEO strategy for UK, Ireland and International territories via an in-house SEO team. This move has dramatically enhanced not only my knowledge of SEO but my entire approach to developing commercially viable SEO strategies.