hi, I’m mike.

I do Google Ads & SEO, and without intending to, became a webmaster along the way

what an SEO does each day

Many clients, past and present, have asked: ‘What goes into SEO? What is involved, and why the large cost?’. Google Ads is pretty straigtforward to most clients, but SEO is a term that means a lot of different things, depending who you ask.

In an effort to answer these questions and paint a picture on what a typical “day in the life of an SEO specialist” looks like, I give you the below. Tonnes of resources, links, names, brands, concepts, jargon, and more. The internet is a veritable “wild west” and us SEO cowboys try to keep the peace.

I have broken it down into a few categories here, and then below you can see the list of each item



web development

Building a website, migrating one, backing it up, ensuring it is SSL enabled, uses a CDN and more. These types of things help your website to be mobile-friendly, easy to parse, and performant in an age where Google insists that they are.



SEO services

Google admits that there are over 200 ranking factors in their algorithm; and it’s an algorithm that changes over 2,000 times a year! I try and focus on the most important factors whilst not ignoring the lesser ones. Content is key, and always has been, but you cannot ignore the rest.



tools

It’s not possible to do much on a computer without the right tools, and we need many of them! I love being 100% transparent, so read on below to see what I have in my digital “toolbox”. It can takes months to just master one tool, so imagine the years behind them all.



Advertising

Although I focus mainlyon Google Search Ads – which perfectly complements SEO – it is vital I have some proficiency in the below. LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, Remarketing, Display Ads, Newsletter Mailers, Google Shopping Ads. And all backed up by solid understanding of tried-and-tested, Classic Marketing.



Platforms

Much like the tools in the toolbox, there are various platforms – like Google Ads, Google Search Console, Google Tag Manager, Looker Studio, and Google Analytics – that I use to get the work done. Maybe it is just my choice of wording but I see these more as the “battlefield”, and the tools as the “weapons”.



Marketing strategy

SEO sits within a bigger function, and that is marketing. To do SEO correctly a “digital architect” would need to know what is happening with sales, marketing, advertising and their respective goals. Often I find small businesses have zero strategy to build on, and I aim to address and/or fix this.

view all the minutiae

See my Work in Action

The Year I ventured into SEO & PPC

all time clients i have helped

Active Clients i'm working on

Percent of my day I spend learning, and upskilling

now for more detail. breathe in.

and get ready for lists upon lists….

web development

Domain purchasing from a registrar like Afrihost, or Namecheap
Domain hosting from a host like Digital Ocean
Website migrations
Website build on Webflow, Squarespace, WordPress, or the lesser known Sanity
Setting up xml sitemaps, and submitting them to the index
E-commerce dominance via high level strategy and tips from years of experience

Site backups on a Digital Ocean Droplet, WPEngine, or other
Setting up a CDN with Cloudflare or Fastly
Caching tricks using Redis, or one of many plugins
Website maintenance so things are up to speed
Minifying CSS, HTML, and Javascript
Crushing image sizes, optimising them, without losing quality
Adding metadata to images, so they are parsed correctly.

Creating free Maps on Google Maps that add driving directions, and more, to help your local search presence.
Working in Google Tag Manager to sort out conversions, and web traffic
Playing around with Fathom, and other new Analytics tools
Making useful and dynamic reports in Looker Studio
And plenty more

SEO outline

Backlink GAP Analysis – What links do your competitors have that you don’t?
Backlink profile – Who is linking to you and using what anchors?
Bing Indexing – Google is one search engine, and the biggest, but ensure you are indexed by Bing, too.
Business Citations – Get your company listed in numerous business directories.
Content Strategy – Don’t just write mindlessly, write knowing what people are searching for. Answer their questions and be rewarded.
Conversion Tracking – What works and what does not? Set this up to know the difference.

Keyword GAP Analysis – What do your competitors rank for that you don’t?
Keyword Strategy – Based on the above, and other work, I can work out what you should try and rank for.
Keyword Tracking – Importantly, we then need to see if we can move the rankings up for the chosen terms.
Press Release – In some cases it helps to use this to syndicate awesome content.
Partnering with similar brands for win-win marketing results
Map Pack Ranking – Generally speaking, a local business will want to rank in Google’s Map results, in what is called “Position Zero”.

Reporting – Every month I compile a report of key data we are tracking and try to keep it simple. In addition, I create a dynamic dashboard within Looker Studio.
Rich Snippets – Ever seen a search result with more than just a link to a website? Perhaps an answer to a question (like “when is the best time to visit London”) can have you appear at the top!
Structured Data/Schema – In light of that, you want your whole website coded up in JSON-LD format (where applicable) so that you can appear in these.
Well over 150 other things, which I will gladly share with you in a giant spreadsheet once the work begins.