Twenty years of doing this properly.
I have spent over twenty years working across search, design and development, and the honest answer to why is that I find all three genuinely interesting. Not as separate things, but as parts of the same problem. A website that ranks well but is a struggle to use has solved half the problem. A beautifully designed site that nobody finds has solved the other half. Getting both right at the same time is where the interesting work happens.
How I got here
I started out in design studios and print production, learning the craft properly before the industry shifted decisively towards digital. When I moved into agency work I saw a gap nobody was filling well: businesses either paid agency rates for agency quality, or went to a web shop and got something functional but generic. I wanted to offer something different. Proper strategic thinking, genuine craft and real accountability, at a price point that worked for businesses who deserved better than the budget option.
Running my own consultancy for fourteen years taught me things no certification can replicate. How to diagnose a problem properly before proposing a solution. How to have honest conversations when something is not working. How to build the kind of trust that means clients come back, and recommend you to others.
More recently I spent a period lecturing in computing at further education level, which was a genuinely worthwhile chapter. Teaching something well forces you to understand it more deeply than simply doing it, and that experience has made me a better practitioner. Having held a City and Guilds Level 3 Award in Education and Training, and worked with learners with a wide range of needs, I came away with a clearer sense of how to explain complex ideas to people encountering them for the first time. That skill is directly useful in client work.
I am now focused fully on freelance practice and actively available for projects and conversations. If you have something worth working on, I would like to hear about it.
Along the way I have also invested time in formal study and professional certifications from organisations including IBM, Google, Meta and the University of California, Davis. The full list is on the home page.
Career highlights
Currently
Freelance Digital Consultant, self-employed
SEO, GEO, AEO, AIO, LLMO, SXO, web design, web development, UX design and business coaching for clients across the UK and internationally.
2023 to 2026
Computing Lecturer
Delivering Level 2 and Level 3 curriculum across web development, game design and programming. Curriculum design, inclusive teaching practice and assessment development.
2008 to 2022
Founder and Principal Digital Strategist, Websites by Mark
Fourteen years operating a digital consultancy delivering SEO strategy, full-stack web development, brand identity and graphic design for national and international clients. Clients included Dorset County Council, Pennies from Heaven, The Recycler and organisations across e-commerce, publishing and the charity sector.
2003 to 2008
Senior Artworker and Digital Designer, Racoon Digital and Windrush Press
Senior artworker at Racoon Digital working on blue chip accounts including Cartoon Network, Unilever and McDonalds. Followed by a digital design and front-end development role at Windrush Press, championing web standards and accessibility.
1990 to 2003
Digital Production and Studio Management, CPL Ltd, Premiere Digital and Racoon Digital
Design studio and production management, high-end imaging, print production and early digital work. Including development of a WAN order processing and CRM system to address Y2K risk, integrating with existing accounts infrastructure.
Four things that have stayed constant
Across twenty years of working in different contexts, for different clients, in different disciplines, these four principles have shaped how the work gets done.
Craft matters
Getting things right is not just about meeting a brief. It is about understanding why the brief exists and what success actually looks like. Whether it is a piece of code, a design system or an SEO strategy, the quality of the thinking behind it determines whether it works in the long run.
Good work should be accessible
Quality strategic thinking and genuine craft should not be the exclusive preserve of organisations with large budgets. Some of the most rewarding work has been for smaller clients who simply needed someone to take their digital presence seriously.
Precision is not optional
In SEO, an incorrect canonical tag can quietly undermine months of work. In development, a single misplaced character can break a deployment. In design, the difference between something that feels right and something that almost feels right is often a matter of pixels and attention. Getting the details right is not perfectionism, it is professionalism.
Curiosity keeps things honest
The disciplines I work in change constantly. GEO did not exist as a discipline three years ago. LLMO is still emerging. Staying genuinely curious, continuing to study and being willing to update your thinking when the evidence changes is the only honest approach in a field that moves this quickly.
Always learning
Twenty years of experience teaches you a great deal. So does making the deliberate choice to keep studying. The certifications below reflect areas I have invested time in formally, either to validate what I already knew or to get properly up to speed with disciplines that are moving fast.
SEO and AI-driven search in particular are changing quickly enough that practitioners who stopped learning three years ago are already behind. This site, its structured data, entity schema, llms.txt file and AIO-optimised content architecture, is itself a live demonstration of what current practice looks like.
I am now focused fully on freelance practice and actively available for projects and conversations. If you have something worth working on, I would like to hear about it.
Certified by
IBM, Google, Meta, University of Michigan, City and Guilds, Epic Games and Edureka.
Full certification details are available on the home page and on request.
Beyond the work
Competitive archery
Away from the screen I have competed in archery at county level for a number of years, representing Dorset and currently holding four county records. There is more overlap between archery and the work I do than you might expect. Both reward patience, consistency and the ability to stay focused under pressure. Both punish rushing. And in both, the difference between a good result and a great one usually comes down to the quality of the preparation rather than anything that happens in the moment.
Side projects and exploration
I spend time on game development and AI image generation as personal projects, partly because they are genuinely enjoyable and partly because understanding tools from the inside makes you a better practitioner. You learn things by making things. The game development work has given me a working knowledge of Unity and Unreal Engine, and the AI image generation work has developed a practical understanding of prompt engineering and generative model behaviour that feeds directly into the LLMO and GEO work I do for clients.