About
I’m an SEO specialist on a mission to become a proficient web developer. I recently switched up my career to full-time coding and so far, i'm loving it. Here I share my personal updates, info about this website and my career adventures.
🚨 if you are thinking about/are in the process of changing your career to web development and need advice, please reach out anytime, I will share all my learnings to help you get your first gig.
Personal updates
About me
I have almost a decade of experience as a professional SEO specialist. I've worked freelance, in-house and agency-side for startups, SMEs and enterprise business. My work has been featured in; Search Engine Watch, Traffic Think Tank, SEO FOMO and Oncrawl. For as long as I can remember I have been passionate about the web and fascinated by code.
My current personal mission is to master my craft while working with ambitious and important brands online. Meeting and working with the most creative and ambitious people I can find along the way. If you need it, here's a picture of me looking busy.
Tech stack
My web development journey is still in its infancy but, I am dabbling with numerous languages and frameworks to understand what I enjoy. I used Next.js to build this website but, day to day I am working with Wordpress and PHP.
I am experimenting, working and coding full time mostly with the following tech stack:
Development:
Design:
Productivity:
Career
I'm currently working at Pugpig a native publishing platform that powers a big chunk of the worlds biggest names in media such as condé nast, Hearst, Reach, National World, Boston Globe Media and lots more. In the 8+ years prior to Pugpig I've been working in the SEO industry, starting my career at the bottom as an SEO assistant, I quickly realised how much impact I could make as a solo marketeer. Since then, i've been hooked on all things web.
I have added a brief summary below. If you are interested to learn more, visit my Linkedin
2022–Now
Web Developer at Pugpig
↗Pugpig are one of the most well known publishing platforms on the web. Their product and client services power some of the world's leading media brands.
2022–Now
SEO Manager at ZOE
↗Inspired by the brand and their mission I joined ZOE as their first and only SEO manager to support ambitious growth goals.
2021
SEO Consultant at Brainlabs Digital
↗Led SEO strategy, planning and execution for household name brands as their main POC. Working in a team of 10.
2020
Digital Marketing Manager at Tots to Travel
Owned SEO & paid social in house with external agency management of other paid channels.
2019
SEO & Content Specialist at CIPS
↗Main SEO POC globally including APAC teams. Oversaw technical and content strategy.
2018
SEO & Data Lead at Zazzle Media
↗Main SEO POC for varied clients in finance and eCommerce. Executed strategy as dictated by strategy lead.
2016
SEO & Content Executive at Interflora
↗Primarily worked on Interflora's portfolio brands building on an existing SEO strategy but touching all aspects of optimisation.
How this site was made
This site was forked and modified from S J Zhang. A designer I adore.
I'm in the process of learning React & Next.js and totally fell in love with SJ's design so, I set about destructuring his work, understanding it and putting it back together piece by piece while making it my own. I did this for a few reasons:
- To motivate myself to read, interpret and understand code written by others
- To keep myself accountable with my goal of becoming proficient in modern front end development
- To stay actively engaged with the the latest frameworks & libraries used by people smarter than me
- To encourage myself to make and share more frequently. A beautiful site that i'm proud of keeps me driven
Because he's amazing, SJ has kindly licensed this build for anyone over on Github so you can grab it too!
The site is built with Next.js and deployed on Vercel. Most of the content is managed in Notion and statically pre-rendered through the Notion API. I ran into problems rendering images that are hosted on notion because uploaded images regularly regenerate.
To solve for this, I have recently replatformed the blog section using DatoCMS which I cannot recommend enough for its ease of implementation and awesome capabilities via GraphQL. Radix UI is also used for front-end components like modals and tooltips. Next Themes controls light/dark-mode and made implementation a lot easier.
