The founder of BaldSEO, Brent D. Payne, has over 12 years of experience in online marketing and search engine optimization. He started gaining experience in search engine optimization with Amazon.com. As an underdog vendor for memory cards, Brent managed to dominate the search results by working with Amazon’s editorial department to make on-page SEO changes as well as rework the off-page SEO factors by creating thousands of So You’d Like To… and Listmania pages that linked back to the products Brent represented on Amazon.com. He also used what would now be considered a ‘black hat SEO’ tactic of linking back to the products he represented from newsgroups, forums, authority websites, etc. from over 35 profiles he managed online. By 2005, he had replicated his successes on Amazon.com to other electronics websites methodically choosing which products on which sites would dominate the search engine results.
Brent dropped all of his blackhat SEO tactics by the end of 2005 when he began building direct relationships with employees at the different search engines. He realized that working with the search engines was more productive and long-term than attempting to outsmart thousands of the world’s best engineers. Today Brent–with rare exception, like Google Suggest manipulations–implements a white hat SEO approach to his online marketing.
After working for/with several eCommerce sites to improve their SEO, he decided to leave the eCommerce world for the world of online media sites. He joined Tribune as their SEO Manager in February 2008. During the first year he doubled traffic to the Tribune websites from Google. Taking Tribune from 500,000 visits a day to over 1 million visits per day. He did this through implementation of strong news SEO tactics. Training thousands of Tribune’s journalists about on-page SEO relevancy also helped in Tribune’s enterprise SEO success as it helped make the news articles more relevant. Not only did he create and conduct the trainings himself but also made it possible to utilize the knowledge the journalists gained by making over 150 changes to the content management system (CMS). Thanks to this experience and experiences gained through other clients he worked with over the years, Brent is well known for his expertise in CMS SEO, especially enterprise level CMS SEO. By January 2009 he was promoted to the position of SEO Director for all of Tribune Company–responsible for SEO strategy, tactics, and implementation for over 70 websites owned by Tribune including LATimes.com, ChicagoTribune.com, numerous television sites, magazine sites, and niche product verticals in the areas of health, entertainment, music, etc.
But not only was Brent successful is first year at Tribune, he managed to nearly double traffic AGAIN his second year at Tribune. Taking visits from search engines from 1 million visits a day to 1.7 million visits per day!
As his agreement with Tribune allowed, Brent consulted other clients during his tenure at Tribune. Gaining even greater experience and notoriety in the industry as an SEO expert. By 2010 he had picked up so many clients that he was actually making more money consulting than working full-time for Tribune. This experience along with his proven track record in CMS SEO, news SEO, and enterprise SEO led to Tribune hiring Brent to work within Tribune’s start-up consulting division, 435 Digital, in December of 2010.
During his time at 435 Digital, Brent managed a team of SEO and social media experts. He established a sales proposal to help explain the technical aspects of SEO and social media to 435 Digital’s clients and attended and often times even conducted several sales presentations to potential clients. His experience in SEO and social media helped 435 Digital to gain clients ranging from personal injury attorney’s to travel sites to niche product and services sites. Focused mainly on the markets where Tribune had a presence, the clients ranged geographically from Connecticut to Florida to the Midwest. Brent, however, has also worked with clients overseas (Isle of Man and Hong Kong).
After several months at Tribune’s 435 Digital SEO and social media consulting division, Brent decided to venture out on his own full-time. Leaving the Tribune with the handful of accounts he had managed to maintain during his tenure at Tribune, he left the corporate world to try his hand at SEO, social media, reputation management and PPC consulting full-time on July 8th, 2011.
BaldSEO, LLC represents Brent’s dream of owning his own online marketing consulting firm to help clients discover online success through the tactics he’s found effective over the past decade. Partnering with people and organizations when necessary (i.e. web design and development), having a plethora of experts at our fingertips to scale as bandwidth requires, and undeniable proven success in online marketing; BaldSEO can assist you with all your online marketing needs.
Call us at 312.324.3344 or send Brent an email at Brent@BaldSEO.com
We would love to have you as a client and prove what we can do for your organization.
