Aidan M.

I am currently a freelance web developer and SEO specialist. 70% of my time is spent developing/updating WordPress websites, and the other 30% is spent on SEO and digital marketing activities.

All of my current clients have come via word-of-mouth. A lot of clients have come via my old colleagues at Mach Media (my last job before going freelance), some of whom had moved on to other companies and requested my services for their new company.

I focus on WordPress web development mainly because it fits well with the market segment I am targeting (small – medium businesses) and I have a lot of experience with it and the various plugins (e.g. Elementor, WP Bakery, WooCommerce). It also helps that I am very familiar with PHP, JavaScript, and the guts of WordPress (functions, hooks etc.).

One of my major strengths is my mix of business knowledge (my business degree), creativity (I am artistic and always involved in art in some way), programming knowledge, and SEO/marketing knowledge.

My clients really appreciate that I can take a holistic approach to things, understanding the overall business objective, including budget, time frames etc. and at the same time, having a passion for the creative side, being able to understand how it can be programmatically achieved, and also what impact every decision will have on SEO.

Prior to going freelance, I was a Digital Project Manager at Mach Media, a small, but growing marketing communications agency based in Ghent, Belgium, and with offices in Washington, USA.

I captained the execution of web development and digital marketing projects. I managed projects and informed strategy. Mach Media's clients are international companies, mainly in the pharmaceutical, business aviation and chemical sectors. The majority of their work is internal communications.

Most of the projects that I managed end-to-end at Mach Media were either website builds (SharePoint sites and pages, WordPress websites, and website updates), or anything related to digital marketing (campaign strategy, landing page design and development, ad design and setup, email design and development, email marketing setup, SEA, SEO, etc.).

Before becoming a project manager at Mach Media, I worked mainly in a strategic role, and before that, I had an almost purely an execution role.

This involved:

• Website design - creating mockups (Moqups) – editing designs (Figma, Photoshop)

• Website development – ​​​​Mostly adding website functionality (PHP, Javascript, WordPress plugins etc.)

• SEO

• SEA

• Copywriting (for both websites and emails)

• Email design – Moqups, Photoshop, Stripo

• Email marketing campaigns – MailChimp, Eloqua, Marketo, HubSpot

• Analytics reports – Manually via Google Analytics and Eloqua, and also using Google Data Studio – reviewing the data and giving strategic recommendations

My first job in Belgium was as a 1-year temporary web developer/webmaster position for EuroCarers (http://eurocarers.org), the European network representing informal carers and their organisations, based in Brussels.

My main task was fixing a very buggy international WordPress website (http://eurocarers.org/informcare) which was built using the Avada theme, was horribly slow (1 min loading time) and practically unusable. I was able to fix the speed issue in my first week on the job.

For the remaining time at EuroCarers, I developed a plan to improve the website, and implemented various aesthetic and technical upgrades. I was also tasked with being a general I.T. support officer and consultant for the website, taking requests via email and participating in conference calls with the international partners.