Ben is  a natural born entrepreneur having started his own coffee shop straight after university, but after working in the cafe trade for 3 years he decided to take a ‘year out” and moved to Spain to work as a language teacher. He then got “bitten” by the SEO bug in Barcelona whilst just minding his own business walking down the street. No not quite like that, he started working for a an online relocation company and was set the task of improving their organic and social media visibility. Ben then moved back to the UK this year where we quickly scooped him up after interviewing him a little while back. Ben will be working across our client portfolio on both SEO & Social projects and is currently a Jedi in training.

We asked him a few well thought out questions to help you get to know Ben, here’s what he said:

What’s your favourite movie?
I have watched “Catch Me If You Can” a thousand times and am still amazed that it’s based on a true story! I’ve read the book and the reality is even stranger than fiction.

Have you seen Star Wars (if not you’re fired) and which was your favourite?
YES! The first Star Wars film scared the hell out of me and I loved it!

Han Solo or Luke?
Yoda!

What is it about SEO that captures you?
It’s a dynamic and creative role which combines people, communication and technology. There’s always something new to learn and always something exciting going on.

City or Countryside?
Monday to Friday City. Weekend Countryside.

What’s the last song you listened to on your iPod?
I’ve never been able to listen to a song the whole way through until I discovered Gotye, check out “Hearts a Mess”.

Twitter or Facebook?
FACEBOOK! I don’t think I could have lived abroad for so long without it. Although I’m slowly but surely being sucked into “Tweetland”!

If you were stranded on a desert Island, hm I mean deserted Island (not a jelly or ice cream one) what would be the 3 gadgets you would need for geek survival?
1. A guitar. I know it’s neither a gadget nor geeky but I never travel without one!
2.  My iPod: 80GB of pure joy. It’s a bit outdated now but the content gets better with age!
3. A Skype equipped laptop: my friends are dotted all over the place!

Welcome Jedi Ben, let the SEO games begin.

You can find Ben on Twitter here!

Welcome to the team Ben Holbrook! is a post from: Verve Search - SEO & Social Media Agency

Here’s a very happy Winning Verve Search Team with the category presenter Christian Olson from Crystone giving us our award (in hindsight I should not have been in the middle between these two guys, I look like a hobbit, ha! But who cares, we won!):

In proper “Hollywood” fashion we would like to ‘give out’ some thanks. First of all we would like to thank the client, Yale Door, for being such a fantastic client. I truly believe that half the battle with SEO is getting the clients to implement and carry out your recommended changes. In my experience it can takes months just to convince a client to carry out extensive changes to a site in order to be optimised properly. But Yale Door came into this working relationship ready to take on board all our recommendations and trusting us from the word go. Secondly, I would like to thank the amazing team here at Verve Search, all of whom has worked on the Yale Door account; Sam, Nick and Ciaran have all helped making this a winning SEO campaign. As a result of this great working relationship and our SEO knowledge we generated a 713% increase in Organic traffic for Yale Door in a 12 month period. And maybe more importantly and true to our ethos of ‘generating traffic that generates business’ the Yale Door campaign achieved a ROI of 899%.

It’s truly an honor to win such recognition for our work, go team!

For a full list of the WINNERS at the Uk Search Awards last week check out the State of Search winners announcement

Verve Search WINS ‘Best SEO Campaign’ at the UK Search Awards is a post from: Verve Search - SEO & Social Media Agency

Having worked with Yale Door since the start of the website 1 1/2 years ago, we are very happy to see our efforts recognised on this shortlist. They have achieved top 5 rankings in Google for their most compeitive terms including “Composite Doors” and a considerable increase in organic and referring traffic.

Looking forward to the awards cermony on the 3rd of November at the Emirates Stadium.

UK Search Awards 2011 – Verve Search Shortlisted in “Best SEO Campaign” Category is a post from: Verve Search - SEO & Social Media Agency

So from everyone at Verve Search; Welcome Freya, let’s kick some traffic butt!

Follow Freya on Twitter!

Welcome to Freya Jones! is a post from: Verve Search - SEO & Social Media Agency