I’ve been doing SEO since before “content is king” was a cliché.

I got into this game in 2008, right out of uni in Lahore. My first job was at an outsourcing firm called Kaya Systems, handling SEO, PPC, social and email for clients in the US and UK. I was the guy writing meta descriptions at 2am because the Sydney client wanted them on their desk by 9.

That was the good kind of grind. It taught me how to work fast, how to talk to clients who don’t care about ranking factors (they care about leads), and how to hold a campaign together when Google decides to push another core update on a Friday afternoon.

A few years later I was running the digital marketing team at Seganta Technologies, reporting into their UK office. Then I ran the show at CCJK Technologies: strategy, team, reporting, ROI. By the time I landed Australia-wide in 2016 I’d already shipped close to a hundred SEO campaigns.

Why Australia

I did my Master’s in IT at Charles Sturt while freelancing on the side. Once that finished I picked up contract work at Barking Bird (a Australia wide SEO agency) and then Movinghub, a proptech platform connecting people to utilities when they move house. Those two roles got me fluent in the Australian market: local SEO, Google Business Profile, state-level competition, the quirks of .com.au indexing, the whole deal.

Then in 2018 I joined Rank First: a boutique agency with offices Australia-wide and the Sunshine Coast. Seven and a half years there. At peak I was the senior lead on 30+ simultaneous campaigns across eCommerce, healthcare, local services, legal, and hospitality. I got to do everything, technical audits, content strategy, link building, CRO, Google Ads, paid social, GA4 migrations, and more AEO and AI-search work than I thought possible in 2024.

I’m proudest of the campaigns nobody ever sees on LinkedIn. The small local plumber whose enquiries tripled. The coffee roaster whose organic revenue passed their wholesale revenue. Quiet wins.

Why I’m going solo

After seven years at an agency I wanted to work directly with business owners again, not through an account manager, not through a sales pipeline, not packaged into a tier I didn’t design. Just: phone rings, I answer, we talk, I get to work.

The other reason is AI. I’ve spent the last eighteen months obsessing over how search is shifting, AI Overviews, ChatGPT citations, Perplexity, Gemini. The businesses that win the next five years will be the ones who show up inside those answers, not the ones paying for rank-tracker dashboards. I want to help build that.

What I’m good at

Technical SEO that actually gets shipped (I work with devs, I don’t bark instructions at them). Keyword research that’s tied to commercial intent, not just search volume. Link building that survives a spam update. CRO and landing page work that closes more of the traffic you already have. Google Ads that respects your margin. And now, AEO and schema work that gets you cited inside AI answers.

I’m also pretty good at explaining all of the above to someone whose job is running a dental clinic or a plumbing business, not decoding a Screaming Frog crawl.

What I’m not

I’m not an agency. There’s no junior team, no sales rep, no onboarding week. If you hire me, you get me, my head, my hours, my GA4 account.

I’m also not the cheapest option Australia-wide. You can find SEO retainers at $400/month. They’ll do 400 dollars’ worth of work. Just being honest about the trade-off.

A few things I believe

• SEO is 70% execution, 20% patience, 10% knowing which thing not to do.
• Most “strategy documents” are a stalling tactic.
• Your top 3 competitors’ content should be the floor, not the ceiling.
• If a report doesn’t change what you’ll do next week, it’s not a report, it’s decoration.
• AI is going to eat a lot of junior SEO work. Good. It should.

Outside work

I live Australia-wide with my family. I like long walks, bad coffee in good cafés, and cricket when Pakistan is winning. If you want to talk shop, the quickest way to my attention is a direct question about your business, not a LinkedIn message asking if I “take on new clients”.

(Yes, I take on new clients.)