While working as a developer for an agency in Vancouver around 2009, Mike started noticing the patterns in the action items sent by third-party SEO consultants. In an effort to save his customers communication time and reduce costs he offered to not only consult on the onsite optimization opportunities but also work with the developers to implement them. After moving into an in-house SEO position with a startup SaaS company in 2013 he was able to round out his skill set to include off page ranking factors and a more in-depth understanding of analytics. Currently he leads up the SEO team at VERB Interactive. When not digging through spreadsheets Mike enjoys skateboarding, grappling and getting records to make weird noises.

What’s been your best experience with WordPress?

That is hard to say, it’s interesting how versatile platform it is. I have been involved in sites that range from 5 to 10,000+ pages and each project has taught my something.

Tell us a bit about your WordCamp Halifax talk.

Empowering WordPress users to make logical decisions to improve their organic visibility.

What’s your favourite thing about WordCamps, or if your first one… what are you looking forward to?

It’s my first one and I’m looking forward to learning about the struggles and triumphs the community has had working with this product.

Let’s get philosophical… what are you most proud of?

While working as an in-house SEO a few jobs ago I had the opportunity to rebuild their existing site in WordPress with a small team of developer minded non-developers. I had to re teach myself PHP having being out the development game for awhile, but the final product out turned out decent and out performed the previous site.

Session Details

A beginners guide to the dark arts. Topics include: determining what keywords have the most volume and best intent, optimizing your content, positioning your content for Quick Answers (position zero), what the heck is this schema & structured data, how to stroke people’s ego for backlinks and much, much more.