Andrew Smith - SEO, E-Commerce & Online Marketing Specialist

Andrew Smith - CV/Resume

Andrew — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 04:27:55 +0000

Employment History

Expedia Inc (Expedia Worldwide)
July 2008 – April 2009
SEO Manager – Expedia.com
April 2009 – Present Day
SEO Manager – Americas

- SEO channel management for Expedia.com, Expedia.ca and Expedia.com.mx, representing 75% of global SEO transactions and over $1.2 billion in gross bookings.

- Developing and delivering a strategy for content, information architecture and external links.

- Pipeline product and project management for vendor and internal dev work.

- Daily heartbeat reporting.

- In depth performance and competitive analysis.

- Forecasting monthly channel performance and $1.6m yearly spend.

- Communicating channel performance to the executive leadership team.

- Managing a team of SEO specialists to deliver ongoing tactical SEO improvements and multi-variant tests.

Highlights

- Delivered additional 1.3m transactions in 2009, a YoY growth of 66%, outpacing Expedia.com growth by 52bps.

- Pioneered the development of a custom designed algorithmic internal linking system, which is now being adopted by Hotels.com

- Delivered an automated reporting system for keyword level tracking

- Delivered “Flights to Mars” for April Fools’ 2009, Expedia’s first viral social media campaign.

My position at Expedia is all about driving growth in traffic and transactions and it’s been a challenge which has taught me more about e-commerce, SEO and online marketing than I ever imagined. Coupled with the soft skills gained in a corporate environment it’s been invaluable to my career.

Expedia Inc (Expedia.co.uk)
May 2007 – June 2008
Search Engine Specialist

- Project managed the implementation of over half a million pages designed to liberate “uncrawlable” products on Expedia.co.uk.

- Monitored indexation, rankings and performed in-depth analysis to diagnose site issues.

- Developed Omniture powered reports to track SEO channel performance across EU.

- Benchmarked market reach from search via custom built reports utilizing Hitwise data.

- Web development and on-page optimization on the “daily page” architecture, to improve head term organic rankings.

- Analyzed the SEO strategies of key competitors to highlight areas of opportunity and competitor techniques.

- Developed and implemented Expedia’s first link building strategy.

This role was an enjoyable challenge which expanded my knowledge of search engine optimization far beyond expectations. My hard work helped to grow the % of traffic from the SEO channel to 20%+ (up from 12.9% in Jan 07)

JWI Ltd
July 2005 – April 2007
Head of E-Commerce / Web Developer

- Designed, built and developed the entire e- commerce site which embraced the “Web Architecture” approach to design by minimizing clicks to sale.

- Created highly profitable paid search campaigns across Google, Yahoo & MSN by utilizing a “beat the control” process with an extensive keyword inventory.

- Developed price comparison feeds.

- Developed unique, regularly updated content and built links via directories, link bait, link acquisition, blogs, splogs, forums etc.

- Optimized the site to capture long tail traffic for product specific search terms whilst building out pages to target head terms.

- Created a database driven CRM system to manage customer orders.

- Grew relationships with suppliers and numerous manufacturers to setup contract support and sales related rebates.

- Managed a small sales team to hit revenue targets.

Vossnet/Training Associates/Strode’s College
June 2003 - June 2005
Online Training Centre Manager

This varied and challenging sales driven role allowed me to utilize a multitude of skills. From day one I was charged with the task of increasing ROI from spiraling marketing costs. Online course sales were down and retention flailing. By developing new and improved marketing campaigns including Google Adwords, print based advertising and traditional mail shots, combined with the creation of MIS analysis and sales techniques, my team and I were able to increase course uptakes, improve retention, hit our KPI’s and drastically increase ROI leading to further funding allocation.

Overall this challenging role allowed me to draw upon the skills I gained during my formal education, developed key marketing skills and gave me the basis to move on to a more commercially driven role which furthered both myself and my knowledge of e-commerce.

Personal Details:

Please use the comment form below to contact me for details.

Education:
Training:
Summer 2009 – Principles of Genuine Leadership
Jan 2008 - Introduction to .net
Summer 2006 - Designing Actinic V8 Sites,
Maintaining E-Commerce Sites with Actinic V8
Summer 2005 - Developing EROL Online Stores

Higher & Further Education:
(HND & ND validated as BA equivalent by NYU)
Farnborough College of Technology
2001 – 2003
HND Graphic Design (Multimedia with Business)
Grade: Merit
1999 – 2001
ND Graphic Design (Multimedia with Business)
Grade: Distinction

Secondary Education:
1993 – 1998
Fernhill School, Farnborough, Hants UK
Art A
Business - A
English - A
English Lit - A
German - B
History - B
Mathematics - A
Science - A* A*

Key Skills:

- Highly advanced knowledge of SEO from “Blackhat” to “Whitehat” techniques.

- Highly advanced knowledge of search engines and their algorithms.

- Thorough knowledge of Google Adwords, YSM, MSA and PPC marketing (SEM) in general.

- Excellent with Omniture.

- Proficient with Hitwise.

- Excellent HTML & CSS coding skills.

- Advanced Adobe Photoshop user.

- Excellent with MS Excel, proficient with Office.

- Some knowledge of MySQL, PHP and CURL.

- Good copywriting skills.

- Outstanding SEO research skills.

Project Dawnstar: Flights to Mars for $99

Andrew — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 11:02:18 +0000

After 3 weeks of solid work on Expedia’s first full scale viral campaign, a short vacation and a bunch of catch up work, I thought I’d take a few minutes to write a brief blog post, laying claim to a viral success and a first for Expedia.

The aim of the project was plain and simple: Build links

The how? That’s a different story… The ask was big and the push it took to get a completely immersive microsite delivered in such a short space of time was tough.
Naturally, a corporation the size of Expedia has processes in place for everything. Hence, each part of the immersive experience required that a process be followed, work be completed in parallel and at warp speed (sorry couldn’t resist the pun!)

After a phenomenal team effort to actualize my initial April Fools’ vision, here’s a run down of what the Flights to Mars microsite launched.

1. A spoof commercial shot as an online-only viral, utilizing existing footage from Expedia’s UK TV campaigns (Life of a Cloud), some slick 3d animation and a fantastic voiceover. The result was a very budget-friendly production cut in just a day, that pulled in over 60k views and secured a late Digg homepage placement despite all the other April Fools noise and even “provoked” an amusing reponse…

Watch the full HD Expedia Space Commercial or hit play below

2. A very cool but cheesy flash animation which trivializes getting to Mars. I love the little geeky connection to FTL :)

Above image is static but if you hit replay below you’ll see the animation (sorry the text was busted when embedded here)

3. Totally awesome Mars activities any trip just wouldn’t be complete without. I had to have Dust Surfing and Super Low-G Martian Arts, but they all rock, particularly Pareidolia

4. Out of this world copy and nuances, all of which were incredibly well researched, very inspiring and most of all amusing. I loved how we created The Colbert Hotel & Casino in light of Colbert’s effort to have Nasa’s space station node named after him. Personally I think an orbiting hotel trumps a treadmill!

Great examples of content below:

Treat yourself to some extra-terrestrial pampering at some of Mars’ finest resorts. Soothe your savage soul in a realistic hot-water spring. Admire the spectacular crimson sunsets as you dine on the simulated meal of your choice. Then get out and experience some of the solar system’s “greatest hits”—including its tallest mountain and largest canyon. Mars and its moons offer a wealth of lodging options—starting at just $99.

The low, low gravity of Mars’s moon, Deimos, makes for family-friendly thrills galore. Take advantage of your lightweight state with gravity-defying athletic feats. Then, sleep securely in a specially-engineered HoverRest pod and enjoy the hassle-free NutriTube meal facilities. (Don’t miss the Cupcake in a Cup!)

Choose Your Spaceship - Our three spaceships are designed to get you to Mars quickly and comfortably:

Retro: Wallet-friendly, this economic option includes all the comforts of home.

Classic: The spaceship of your childhood comes to life with this timeless shuttle.

Nouveau: A futuristic, state-of-the-art cruiser with impulse engines and silent warp-drive.

5. An excellent About Mars page which features fantastic 3d modelling for Expedia’s 3 spacecraft and ofcourse a Google Map using the Mars api

Expedia's retro ship and our original alternative brand

Google Mars Map. We found that sketchup doesn

6. A fully functional search wizard so you could reach the Mars Packages search results

7. And finally an error page to complete the hoax which still acts as our reveal page and even featured a dedicated phone number complete with recorded message and a $25 off coupon for 2 night+ stay until April 5th! Oh and did I mention that we worked to roll this out on UK site to which had it’s own unique recorded message, whilst supporting the entire campaign with our weekly 9 million customer email and also promoting our usual Wednesday 24hr sale…

So how did it perform? Well the social media campaign, exposure gained and the stats deserve their own post. What I can quickly tell you is that this did build around 17,000 inbound links to the main “Flights to Mars” page, many from seriously authoritative domains (FoxNews.com, Techcrunch, Huffington Post) and that’s a lot of links containing the keyword “flights” that can be re-purposed…