The Early Days of SEO:
Having started developing websites as a teenager in the 1990s, and marketing them not long after, I’m lucky to have worked in a vibrant and developing industry since inception.
Way back in the late nineties to early 2000s, SEO was a very different industry, and I’ve been described as a pioneer of the industry – developing innovative new techniques at the time that have since gone on to be part of the bedrock of our industry.
In 2001 I focused full time on organic marketing, through search and social media, marketing my own websites which at the time centered around online gaming. This culminated in 2003 when I launched my own Poker and Casino site, under the MOGmedia brand.
This experience in the early days of Google proved invaluable, and over the next seven years I diversified into community forum sites, building plugins for new CMS products such as WordPress, Joomla and vBulletin, ultimately using them to assemble a huge network of sites for content distribution and link placement.
Climbing the Corporate Ladder:
In 2007 after relocating to London, I moved from working for myself, to running paid and organic search for Seatwave, a UK based European ticketing company (since acquired by TicketMaster).
This experience was transformational, and over the following 10 years, I gradually progressed through the ranks including such roles as Head of SEO for all UK Omnicom agencies, Inbound Marketing Director at Expedia EAN, Global Head of SEO for the Orbitz Group (at the time the world’s second largest OTA), to Head of SEO for Expedia’s global regional brands.
Working across a diverse series of companies, afforded me the opportunity to grow professionally while experiencing business at previously unimaginable scale – dealing with teams of hundreds of Product Specialists and Engineers, to managing teams of dozens of SEOs around the world.
During this period I also started talking at digital marketing conferences, and to date have spoken at over 60 conferences, and developed a reputation as one of the top thought leaders in the industry, appearing on stage across the globe, and being cited by major news and media organizations worldwide.
MOGmedia Reboot:
In mid 2017, after one too many Expedia acquisitions and reorganizations, I took the plunge into working solo again starting a Silicon Valley based digital marketing consultancy.
Initially dealing with travel companies exclusively, this quickly diversified into working with some of the largest brands in the world where they had specific, hard to solve complex digital marketing problems – relying on my long history and unique experience in Technical SEO.
During the summer of 2020, I took the opportunity to leave the US, simultaneously maintaining my consultancy business from the Caribbean with clients in the US and Europe. During this period I cut down on international travel for obvious pandemic related reasons.
February 2025 MOGmedia Update:
MOG (MacDonald Online Group) Media is no longer accepting new clients, while we re-organize our software and consultancy businesses. Further news will be available in April 2025. We would like to take this opportunity to thank our valued partners and clients over the past eight years.
A New Life in Barbados:
While MOGmedia now has offices and staff in the USA, UK, Spain and India, and works with some of the largest brands in the world on Technical SEO and Content Marketing, I have also started a new life in the Caribbean.
This hasn’t slowed me down though, with the launch of my AI driven technical SEO crawler, SERPERE, and launching a conference series right here in the jewel of the Caribbean, Barbados: BarbadosSEO
Get in touch about Technical SEO, Enterprise SEO, or BarbadosSEO?
You can contact me directly through this website, at my contact Martin MacDonald form.