SEO · AEO · GEO · Organic growth
15 years running SEO at scale, including a $300M+ organic revenue channel at JCPenney and a 20-person team at PokerStars. Founded a site and sold it to Gambling.com Group. Now running live experiments in how ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews choose what to cite.
Open to Head / Director / Senior Manager roles · Los Angeles or remote
Selected work
Four results I can walk you through in detail. Every number here is one I owned or directly contributed to.
- Problem
- US sports betting was being legalized state by state with no authoritative, fast-moving editorial site covering it.
- What I did
- Founded the site, set the content architecture around state launches and operator reviews, and grew it entirely through organic search.
- Result
- Acquired by a NASDAQ-listed group three years after launch.
Here is a link to the acquisition announcement
- Problem
- A top-tier US retailer with a huge catalogue, where small technical and taxonomy decisions moved eight-figure sums.
- What I did
- Owned SEO and site search end to end. Built the Style by JCPenney blog from design through daily operations to give the brand an editorial surface in search.
- Result
- Protected and grew a $300M+ organic channel while running cross-functional work with merchandising, engineering and content.
Skills: enterprise technical SEO, taxonomy, site search, stakeholder management
- Problem
- 200+ sites across regulated markets with no shared way to measure organic performance or spot a problem early.
- What I did
- Built the BigQuery + Search Console measurement framework from scratch, led a team of 20 across EU markets, and supported the launches of PokerStars Casino and BetStars.
- Result
- One measurement system every market reported into, inside a compliance-heavy environment where every page needed legal sign-off.
Skills: BigQuery, SQL, international SEO, team leadership, regulated markets
- Problem
- A fleet-telematics company competing against larger brands for a small set of high-intent keywords.
- What I did
- Led SEO strategy across 20+ B2B SaaS clients. For Azuga: technical clean-up, a content plan built on buyer questions, and conversion tracking tied to pipeline.
- Result
- +142% organic sessions and +110% goal completions YoY. For Eden Green, the foundation work I set in 2020–22 led to ~6,000% keyword growth with 60% of leads from editorial content.
Skills: B2B SaaS, content strategy, GA4 conversion tracking
Learning by doing: My AI search lab
Right now, I have two sites where run tests to see how to show up in LLMs. Most people talking about AEO and GEO are quoting other people’s studies. I run the experiments on my own properties, and you can check them yourself.
Fully automated vents listing aggregator
qYouRated.com is a local-events discovery platform on the Ticketmaster API. I built and shipped this site using Claude Code, Supabase and Vercel.
- All traffic to date comes from AI chatbots, which makes it a clean lab for what gets cited and why
- Server-side rendered, because every major AI crawler except Google ignores JavaScript
iGaming SEO and community building
BettingLadies us the #1 sports-betting community for women that I co-own and built. It earns organic rankings and high-intent referral traffic from LLMs and Gemini
- In 2026 I created odds and sports data that now drive the majority of traffic from Google
- Prior to major league games we see an increase in traffic for odds and stats related content in a super competitive niche
I can tell you which of your pages AI engines are already citing, which ones they skip and why, and what to change first. I’ve done it on my own sites with my own money, so the advice is practical rather than theoretical.
Experience
Founder & Principal
SEO and AEO consulting for iGaming and forex clients. Built qYouRated and BettingLadies.
SEO Director
Led strategy for 20+ B2B SaaS clients including Azuga, Eden Green and B-Stock.
Founder
Grown organically, acquired by Gambling.com Group in 2021.
SEO & Site Search Director
$300M+ organic revenue channel; built the Style by JCPenney blog.
Product Owner
SEO, product and analytics ownership on established real-estate properties. See my real estate column.
SEO Intelligence Manager
Team of 20 across EU markets; built the BigQuery/GSC measurement framework.
Global Offsite SEO
Built the engineering glossary at uk.farnell.com.
SEO Team
Clients included Next and Laura Ashley.
What people say
“Manuel helped me optimize one of our local business for SEO and we have seen a huge uplift in traffic. I would recommend his services to anyone who needs a traffic boost from SEO”Friedrich A. NeumanFounder, Angel and VC, Deep Tech / AI / Impact
“Manuel was one of my direct reports at Greenlight where he managed the Web Relations programme for our team’s clients. He quickly built a strong reputation inside the organisation as someone focused and dedicated and later went on to manage his own team of Outreach Specialist. Manuel is enthusiastic, proactive and a great team member – I would gladly recommend him.”Diego PuglisiDigital Marketing Entrepreneur at AMAJI & Co
“Manuel is one of the greatest colleagues I have had the pleasure to work with. Humble, honest, knowledgeable and down to earth, he is a great professional that will always try to think out of the box. Always realistic with his approaches and strategies, I have to say that I consider him to be a great asset for any company that is lucky enough to have him.”António MendesCoach and Project Manager at Heartbiit.com
About
I’ve spent 16 years in organic search, split between enterprise teams (JCPenney, PokerStars), agencies in London and the US, and my own companies. I sold one of those companies and still run two sites that I use to test how AI search works in practice.
I’m now looking for one company to go deep with. I want to build and lead an organic growth function at a brand people recognise, with the budget and the engineering partnership to do it properly.
I’ve spoken on international SEO at State of Search and on iGaming SEO at the London Affiliate Conference. I work in English, Swedish and Spanish, and have lived and worked in the UK, Sweden and the US.
Speaking
Hiring for organic growth?
Send me the role. I’ll reply within a day with whether I’m a fit and, if I am, what I’d do in the first 90 days.