During my teenage years back in the 90's, I used to have a Saturday job in my parents’ computer shop, and as a computer programmer, my dad first started creating websites, back when the internet was still all shiny and new. So, I have been around computers and web design, for most of my life.
When I left school, I had my sights set on becoming a music photographer and journalist and was definitely going to move to London to work for NME or Melody Maker (yes, I know I'm showing my age here). But then, as is often the case, life got in the way, and before I knew it, I found myself raising a young family and having to get a 'proper' job.
It was around this time, that I first started learning how to build websites. I built them for friends with small businesses and I built them for my own small businesses that I ran when my kids were young, so that I could work from home. While I didn’t realise it at the time, this was my first foray, into the world of SEO.
My first business was a domestic cleaning company that I ran for 3.5 years. I built my own website and within a few months, I was on the first page of Google for, ‘Cleaner Winchester’, ‘Cleaner Eastleigh’ & ‘Cleaner Southampton’.
Alongside running this business, I also worked as a freelance showbiz journalist/researcher, for a number of tabloid newspapers including, The Sun, NOTW & The Daily Star Sunday. This was back in the early days of social media, when it was all still quite new and the media hadn’t yet got their heads around it all. This meant that I was able to put my extensive social media knowledge and Googling skills to good use and find all the information I needed for stories, from my laptop.
After a few years, I had had enough of running a cleaning business and the newspapers had worked out how to use Facebook and Twitter, so it was time for something new. This time I wanted to do something more creative, so I set up a cake making business. Again, I created a website and worked really hard on promoting my business on social media. I then launched a baking blog called, Bake with Sarah, to run along side the cake business. I turned the blog into a brand, and used my marketing skills, to turn an inexperienced amateur baker (me), into a well-known industry ‘expert’ and blogger.
I secured sponsorship from large companies, demonstrated on the main stage at the biggest cake shows in the world, had my own baking column in the Daily Echo and wrote editorial for multiple cake magazines every month. Within a couple of years I had amassed 14k Instagram followers (back when that was a lot), 6k Facebook followers, 3.5k Twitter followers & 6k YouTube subscribers, and worked on large PR stunts including the World’s Largest Cake Sculpture, pop up shops & had my cakes featured on TV, Radio One and in the Ripley’s Believe it or Not book.
After a few years of doing this, it suddenly dawned on me. I didn’t want to make cakes or be a baking celebrity at all! It was actually all the behind the scenes marketing part of it that I really enjoyed and was good at.
By this point, my kids were older, and I didn’t need the same level of flexibility that had initially led me to start my own businesses, so I got my first proper marketing job, where I spent 4 years working as an in-house marketing and events manager for an association in the care sector. As the sole marketer, I covered everything from building websites, social media, email marketing, graphic design and PR, to organising and promoting seminars, exhibitions and award ceremonies.
After 4 years, I felt that it was time to move on, and I went to work at a marketing agency, as a marketing executive. This was where I discovered my true love and talent for SEO. Before long, I was the agency’s SEO specialist and I worked on local, national and ecommerce clients across a diverse range of industries including, a leading natural deodorant brand, pest control, training, yacht charter, recruitment, food wholesalers, alcohol brands, van hire and social care providers.
After years of doing jobs that I didn't enjoy, because I didn't really know what I wanted to do, for the first time in my life, I found something that I genuinely loved doing, and I was actually really good at!
