Hi, I'm Zack.

This is the longer version. For anyone who, like me, prefers to know who they’re working with before they hire them.

How I got here

I grew up in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago, graduated from the University of Dayton, and landed what I thought was my dream job at a big advertising agency. It took about three months to figure out I was in the wrong place.

So I left, and a few months later co-founded Gimme Golf, an online golf game where users played each other for real money (think Golden Tee, but the bar wasn’t taking most of it). It didn’t take off, but the four years I spent on it were my bachelor’s degree in internet marketing. Two lessons in particular stuck. I wanted to be somewhere smaller and more entrepreneurial. And what I really loved was internet marketing, not traditional advertising — because it was measurable. You ran something, you saw what happened, you adjusted. TV, radio, and print were the opposite of that.

I count myself lucky to have figured all of that out early.

A few jobs later, I was running a 15-person marketing team and helping grow a multi-million-dollar email business at an agency. Good work, smart people, real wins. By then I knew I wanted to work for myself again — I just needed to pick the channel.

Why SEO

I’ve worked across just about every digital channel — search, social, paid, email, and content. SEO is the one I’ve always loved most, and the channel I’ve gotten the most consistent results from. Twenty years in, it’s still as exciting to dig into as it was the year I started.

I still remember the first time I ranked a site on the first page of Google all on my own. It was a tiny site I’d built just to test what I was learning. I almost cried out of joy. (True story.) I’ve felt some version of that for clients hundreds of times since.

Why I’m still solo, 12 years in

Web Focused turned twelve this year. The first stretch didn’t go the way I planned.

My original idea was a half-measure: partner with an SEO agency that would do the heavy lifting, and I’d play account manager. Same income, less hands-on work. It lasted a few months. I wanted to be doing the work myself, and I wasn’t happy with what the agency was producing — so I scrapped the partnership and decided I’d rather work with seven or eight clients I serve completely than fifteen or twenty from a distance.

I’d rather work with seven or eight clients I serve completely than fifteen or twenty from a distance.

That’s still the model. I’ve thought about scaling — hiring, building a team, becoming an agency. Every time I sit with the idea, I land in the same place. What I love about this work is the work itself: doing the strategy, digging into a client’s site, building the relationships. Scaling means trading most of that for managing people, chasing new business, and pushing paper. I’m not willing to make that trade.

The honest tradeoff of going solo is that I miss having coworkers in a room. I’ve patched that gap by building a small circle of independent consultants I trade ideas with — over video, at a coffee shop, or over a beer.

How I think about the work

Twenty years in, the tactics evolve constantly but the principles don’t. Three things I genuinely believe:

Above-board work outlasts shortcuts. Everything I recommend is aligned with Google’s guidelines and the kind of practices that hold up when the algorithm changes. I’ve watched too many sites get wrecked by consultants chasing tricks that worked for six months and then didn’t.

AI search is just the next layer of search. Visibility in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and AI Overviews is part of every engagement I run. It’s not a separate product, and it’s not magic. It’s well-executed SEO, applied to a wider definition of where people are searching.

Transparency isn’t a perk. Most SEO engagements leave clients feeling vaguely informed at best. I’d rather a client tell me “I know exactly what’s happening with my SEO” than have them squint at a dashboard wondering what they paid for.

The part I care about most

A few years into working with US Wellness Meats — a family-run, grass-fed meat business — John Wood, who runs it with his family, was in Chicago for a meeting. We agreed to meet at my local coffee shop, and he brought his son, John Jr., with him. The three of us talked for hours.

I walked out with something I hadn’t walked in with. Nothing about the contract or the work had changed. What changed was that I’d spent three hours with a real family building a real business, and I wanted to play whatever small part I could in helping it grow.

That’s the part of this work I care about most. The strategy is the strategy. The reporting is the reporting. What I love is being close enough to a small number of businesses to feel personally invested in whether they win.

What I love is being close enough to a small number of businesses to feel personally invested in whether they win.

Most of my client calls start with personal life updates before we ever get to SEO. That’s not a tactic. It’s just how I work.

Who I work with

Over the last 20 years I’ve worked with hundreds of businesses — early-stage startups, mid-market brands, and Fortune 100 companies. Clients past and present include Billd, Culturelle, Chomps, the American Academy of Dermatology, 8th & Walton, The Grossman Group, Vibes, and Trustwell. They span DTC food, consumer health, B2B software and fintech, professional associations, leadership consulting, and retail and CPG strategy.

What they have in common isn’t industry. It’s that they take search seriously, and they want a partner who works the way I work.

The full shape of how engagements run is on the SEO Consulting page — but the gist is retainers most of the time, defined-scope projects when they’re the right fit.

On a personal note

Outside of work, I’m a longtime health and wellness guy — weightlifting, eating well, and willing to experiment with new diet or supplement trends making the rounds. A long conversation over coffee or whiskey beats almost anything else on my calendar. And I’m a sucker for a good murder mystery or detective series.

Family-wise: I’ve been happily married to my wife Luz for five years, and we have two boys — four years old and nine months — who are beautiful, hilarious, and keep us on our toes in roughly equal measure. And there’s McGregor (“Greg”), our ten-year-old maltipoo who’s been around longer than the rest of them and isn’t about to let anyone forget it.

— Zack

P.S. — Thanks for making it to the bottom of the page. With the entire internet as your playground, I’m honored you spent a few minutes learning about me and my business.