How it started
The first SEO job I ever took was at a B2B content and link-building agency, helping mid-market sites earn the kind of editorial coverage that builds domain authority over years rather than months. It was the right place to start — link building done well teaches you what authority actually means to a search engine, and how thin most “SEO services” really are. I left understanding the difference between manufacturing rankings and earning them.
In-house, in the weeds
After agency work I went in-house at a B2B SaaS company, running technical SEO on a large site with all the structural problems a fast-growing product catalog produces — schema gaps, indexation chaos, content debt, sitemaps fighting each other. The work was less glamorous than agency strategy decks and exponentially more useful. I came out of that role with strong opinions about what to fix first when a site is in trouble, and a long-running preference for diagnostic discipline over tactic-of-the-month thinking.
Freelance and editorial
I spent about a year and a half freelancing for a portfolio of clients spanning e-commerce, SaaS, and editorial publishers — writing SEO-optimized content, managing editorial workflows, and producing the kind of long-form pieces that earn rankings on competitive informational queries. Working with editors and writers taught me how to brief good content briefs, how to scope topical authority projects realistically, and why most “SEO content” fails (it's written for search engines instead of for the reader the search engine is trying to serve).
Back in-house — at catalog scale
The last salaried role was running SEO and web sales strategy at a Chicago-area commercial equipment e-commerce business — a Shopify site with over 16,000 product SKUs, fully customized theme, and the structural SEO issues that come standard with a catalog that size. Product schema across the catalog was incorrect or missing; product titles and descriptions were inconsistent and rarely written for buyer search behavior; local visibility was thin against a fragmented national competitor set. I rebuilt the technical foundation, optimized the catalog at scale, expanded the local and directory footprint, and built out a content program — 63 keyword-targeted blog posts and 82 city-level location pages — to widen the funnel.
Over the engagement, online store sessions grew 125% year over year and marketing-attributed revenue grew 122%. The slice of the business I was responsible for more than doubled. That work is the foundation of one of the case studies on the Results page.
Independent — and what I do now
I left that role in late 2025 to consult independently and to build Kizaz Media, my own digital media holding company. Kizaz runs a portfolio of editorial properties that depend on organic search to survive. The two things inform each other constantly: client work makes the portfolio sharper, and the portfolio keeps client advice tied to what actually moves traffic in the current ranking environment, not theory from three years ago.
My consulting focuses on technical SEO, on-page optimization at scale, local and directory work, content strategy, and the emerging GEO/AIO discipline — positioning brands to be recognized and cited by AI search and large language models. The last one matters because AI search is where a meaningful share of high-intent commercial discovery is moving, and most consultants either don't speak to it or treat it as warmed-over SEO. It isn't. It's its own discipline with its own structural-data and content-positioning requirements.
I'm based outside Chicago, work with clients nationwide, and take engagements selectively. Most start with an audit.