I first moved to the U.S 20 years ago. During the time of going through the green card and permanent residence process, a family member sent me a guide to learning HTML. I found it fascinating. Pretty soon I was able to code websites from scratch and with a sampling of CSS was able to make them look half-decent too. In preparedness for joining the workforce I built myself up a portfolio of websites, offering my services for free to any company who’d take them.
After creating, building, and launching the websites I realized that there was something more that needed to be done – how were people even going to find the websites that I had built? After doing some searching I came across this thing called Search Engine Optimization, which was still very much in its infancy in the early – mid 2000’s. There wasn’t too much information to be found online so I experimented on my own websites and found out what worked and what didn’t (let’s just say the barrier to entry for SEO then was much lower than what it is now).
My first job was as a digital technician at a local photography firm. I offered my ‘webmaster’ skills to update the company’s website and increase their presence in search engines. I built the website to match WCAG coding standards, added page titles and descriptive meta tags, sprinkled keywords throughout the site and the visits jumped. A lot.
During my early SEO career I networked with people I respected in the SEO industry and I was like a sponge, soaking up whatever information I could find. I received a job offer from a boutique SEO agency and jumped at the chance to join. This was really my first foray into the agency world and SEO on a larger scale.
15 years later and I’ve worked as an SEO in-house at global organizations and on the agency side managing campaigns that reached millions of customers, driving significantly more revenue and leads.
One of the questions I get asked a lot is what keeps me interested in SEO? For me, the opportunity to make a positive impact, whether at a startup or at a globally recognized company, is something that keeps driving me forward. All SEO campaigns are different, it’s not a one size fits all strategy, and that opportunity to keep moving forward and not stand still is something that keeps me going to this day.
The aim of this site is to pass on my knowledge of both WordPress and SEO to help new businesses, bloggers, and those wanting to gain more search engine visits, revenue, and leads.
I live in Nashville with my wife, Great Pyrenees Mix, Arthur, and a very ornery cat who’s name is Moxie.