I’m Zack Hayes, an SEO specialist with 12+ years of experience and multiple Google certifications. I excel in detailed SEO audits, technical optimizations, and strategic planning that drive measurable organic growth across diverse industries. As a proactive problem solver, I’ve personally built, ranked, and sold successful websites using SEO. My expertise bridges deep technical knowledge and broader digital marketing tactics, ensuring tailored, high-impact solutions that fuel long-term business success. Let’s connect and take your online presence to the next level.
Below is an overview of various projects I’ve worked on, divided into two main categories:
- Sites I Personally Built, Ranked & Sold
- Past "Professional" SEO Projects
Here’s a list of sites I personally founded, built from scratch, and grew primarily through SEO.
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Overview:
My first successful SEO-driven website, aimed at helping users jailbreak their iOS devices. Provided step-by-step guides and reviewed apps from the Cydia App Store. -
Key Achievements:
- Built on WordPress.
- Ranked for high-volume keywords, peaking at ~300k monthly unique visitors from organic search.
- Sold to a third party in 2014 for a six-figure amount.
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Overview:
A lead generation website specializing in private jet charter quotes worldwide. -
Key Achievements:
- Focused on local SEO and structured data to rank for airport- and city-specific search terms in the U.S.
- Partnered with a charter jet broker for quotes and earned commissions on booked flights.
- Generated ~40k visitors per month at peak and 15–20 leads per week.
- Eventually sold to the partner broker, who redirected the domain to their primary site.
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Overview:
A cryptocurrency-focused website listing “penny cryptocurrencies” (coins under $1 USD). -
Key Achievements:
- Built on WordPress with a custom PHP plugin to feature trending coins and related exchange data.
- Integrated APIs to display coin volume trends, plus guides on purchasing.
- Peaked in 2017–2018 with ~150k monthly unique visitors from organic search.
- Monetized with advertiser fees for featured listings.
- Sold to an investment company in 2019.
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Overview:
Purchased this expired domain (with existing backlinks) in 2017 and turned it into a Progressive Web App (PWA) listing aircraft for sale. -
Key Achievements:
- Developed using the Ionic framework.
- Leveraged existing domain authority and redirected old links to relevant new content.
- Rapidly ranked in organic search.
- Sold to an interested buyer within six months and assisted them with further SEO strategy.
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Overview:
A digital marketplace connecting buyers and sellers of audio, beats, vocals, and various music/video production services. -
Key Achievements:
- Built on WordPress with a premium vendor marketplace plugin.
- Offered free storefronts with optional paid features (e.g., homepage placement).
- Generated ~25k monthly visitors and ~7,500 registered users at the time of sale.
- Revenue from listing upgrades and featured placements.
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Overview:
A companion website to the /r/robinhoodpennystocks subreddit (founded in 2017), focusing on penny stocks tradable on the Robinhood app. -
Key Achievements:
- Listed popular stocks from the subreddit and created guides on using Robinhood.
- Attracted ~65k+ unique organic visitors within the first year.
- The associated subreddit grew to over 600k subscribers in the same period.
- Sold to a large investor for a substantial profit.
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Overview:
A local directory for the Roaring Fork Valley in Colorado, featuring real estate, classifieds, business listings, and local news. -
Key Achievements:
- Populated with multiple API sources.
- Employed a local SEO strategy for regional visibility.
- Sold to a local internet marketing agency in 2018.
Below are highlights of my professional SEO experience, including in-house roles, agency collaborations, and consulting engagements.
- Role: In-house SEO Manager (under the VP of Marketing).
- Scope:
- Oversaw SEO for a 850k+ page site built on Sitecore + React.
- Managed third-party vendors and coordinated technical SEO optimizations.
- Strategy & Results:
- Implemented local SEO for 90+ U.S. office locations.
- Achieved a 450% increase in organic impressions within 8 months.
- Role: SEO Auditor & Strategist (while at Blizzard Internet Marketing).
- Scope:
- Analyzed a site with over 4 million pages.
- Diagnosed technical issues causing low rankings and traffic losses.
- Strategy & Results:
- Recommended a full re-categorization of listings and pruning of ~700k dead pages.
- Developed a .htaccess file for 301 redirects and fixed broken internal/external links.
- Recovered ~600k visitors after ~12 months.
- Role: Lead SEO for a luxury vacation rental company in Aspen, CO.
- Scope & Strategy:
- Newly launched WordPress site with a custom reservation engine.
- Focused on local business citations, structured data markup, YouTube optimization, and local classifieds/newspaper listings.
- Results:
- Secured top 20 positions in SERPs within 6 months.
- Role: SEO Manager for one of the largest privately owned vacation rental groups in Florida.
- Scope & Strategy:
- Executed link building, on-page optimizations, Schema implementations, and Google Tag Manager tracking.
- Optimized site performance (page speed, mobile compliance).
- Results:
- Drove a 1200% increase in organic traffic over 12 months.
- Role: SEO Consultant for the City of Glenwood Springs, CO.
- Scope & Strategy:
- Drupal-based tourism website.
- Optimized URL structure, site architecture, and structured data for event calendars.
- Worked with internal devs on page speed and mobile performance.
- Results:
- Achieved featured snippets and improved organic visibility.
- Role: SEO Consultant during a website redesign.
- Scope & Strategy:
- Planned URL structure, site architecture, and 301 redirects to preserve traffic after the relaunch.
- Implemented aggressive image compression to improve load times and server efficiency.
- Results:
- Seamless transition to new site with minimal traffic loss and improved performance.
- Role: SEO Consultant for the world’s largest crypto casino.
- Scope & Strategy:
- Set up Google Search Console & Google Analytics.
- Conducted a comprehensive audit and recommended fixes for JavaScript rendering issues.
- Results:
- Resolved indexing and crawling problems.
- Stake.com now generates ~20 million monthly organic visitors.
- Role: Web/SEO Consultant for a helicopter tour and charter company.
- Scope & Strategy:
- Migrated the site to a new WordPress theme and integrated Checkfront + Authorize.net for bookings.
- Developed a hyper-local SEO approach targeting Downtown NYC foot traffic.
- Added private charter options to the Hamptons and Cape Cod.
- Results:
- Facilitated $2.25 million in online transactions in the first 16 months post-relaunch.
- Role: SEO Strategist for a luxury vacation rental company in Hilton Head, SC.
- Scope & Strategy:
- Allocated a large budget for monthly citation building.
- Optimized Google Business Listings for local authority.
- Implemented review Schema to show ratings and pricing in SERPs, boosting CTR.
- Results:
- Achieved a +7% overall CTR improvement and substantial visibility gains.
- Role: SEO Consultant
- Scope & Strategy:
- Advised on a React-based web app for a NYC modeling talent platform.
- Provided recommendations for overall site architecture, SEO best practices, and integration with Google tools.
SEO Audits & Technical SEO Conducting thorough SEO audits helps identify issues like broken links, slow page loads, or missing meta tags that may hinder a site's search performance. Technical SEO ensures that a website's architecture is optimized for both search engines and user experience, improving rankings and site visibility.
Keyword & Competitor Research Keyword research helps identify the most relevant search terms for a website, focusing on those with high traffic and low competition. Competitor research evaluates how competitors are ranking for those keywords and guides content creation to outperform them.
-On-Page & Off-Page SEO On-page SEO involves optimizing elements directly on the website, like meta tags, header tags, and internal linking. Off-page SEO focuses on factors outside the site, such as backlinks and social media presence, that influence a site’s authority and ranking.
Local SEO Optimization Local SEO focuses on improving a site’s visibility in local search results, including optimizing Google My Business listings. This ensures businesses appear in local searches for customers in their geographic area, driving relevant, high-conversion traffic.
Google Analytics & Tag Manager Google Analytics is used to track and analyze website traffic and user behavior to improve site performance and user experience. Google Tag Manager simplifies managing tracking codes and marketing tags without needing to modify site code directly.
AI-Driven SEO Strategies AI-driven SEO uses machine learning algorithms to analyze data patterns, predict trends, and optimize content for better search rankings. By leveraging AI, businesses can automate content creation, keyword targeting, and audience segmentation for more efficient SEO strategies.
LLM Search & Generative AI for SEO LLM (Large Language Model) search involves using AI models to generate relevant content that aligns with search intent. This helps create high-quality, engaging content that ranks well in search engines and aligns with evolving search algorithms.
AI Agent SEO & Workflow Automations AI agent SEO involves automating tasks like content optimization and site auditing through AI-powered tools. Workflow automation in SEO improves efficiency by automating repetitive tasks such as reporting, keyword tracking, and content updates.
Search Generative Experience (SGE) SGE optimizes content for Google's AI-driven search results, ensuring it is tailored to generate rich, engaging responses to user queries. This approach boosts a site’s visibility in the evolving search landscape, where AI is becoming an integral part of how information is retrieved.
Custom AI Integrations for Business Integrating AI solutions into business workflows allows for customized content creation, marketing automation, and customer engagement. AI helps businesses scale their SEO efforts with data-driven decision-making and improved targeting, leading to enhanced performance. Development & Strategy Full Stack SEO Full-stack SEO involves optimizing all layers of a website’s structure, from the front-end design to the back-end database. This ensures a seamless experience for users and search engines, enhancing crawlability, indexing, and search ranking across the entire site.
SaaS SEO SaaS SEO focuses on optimizing subscription-based software platforms by targeting high-intent search queries. By improving visibility and search rankings for critical keywords, businesses can attract organic traffic that converts to long-term, paying customers.
B2B SEO B2B SEO involves optimizing content and lead-generation strategies for business-to-business companies. It focuses on targeting niche keywords and optimizing conversion funnels to increase business leads and enhance sales performance.
E-commerce SEO E-commerce SEO optimizes product and category pages to ensure they rank well for relevant search queries. By focusing on user intent and AI-driven keyword research, online stores can drive targeted traffic that converts into sales.
Google AI Overview Optimization This optimization ensures that content aligns with Google's AI-driven search algorithms, which prioritize high-quality, authoritative, and relevant content. Understanding and adapting to these updates is essential to maintaining visibility in a highly competitive search environment.
CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) CRO focuses on improving user experience and site functionality to increase conversion rates. By utilizing A/B testing and behavior analysis, businesses can determine the best-performing content and layout to drive more sales or leads.
SEO Strategy An effective SEO strategy integrates keyword research, on-page optimization, content marketing, and technical SEO to improve rankings. This approach ensures consistent, long-term growth in search visibility and traffic, driving sustainable organic growth.
Programmatic SEO Programmatic SEO involves automating content creation and optimization at scale through structured data and algorithms. By leveraging AI for keyword clustering and dynamic content creation, businesses can optimize thousands of pages quickly and efficiently.
Full Stack Web Development Full-stack web development ensures seamless integration of front-end and back-end components to optimize SEO performance. This includes improving site speed, implementing structured data, and developing APIs to enhance search engine crawlability.
Automation Tools (n8n, Make, Zapier) Automation tools like n8n, Make, and Zapier allow for the streamlining of SEO tasks, such as reporting, content publishing, and data analysis. These platforms help save time and resources by automating repetitive processes and enabling real-time insights.
Full Stack SEO – Expertise in optimizing technical SEO aspects across the entire web stack, ensuring seamless indexing and search performance. Well-versed in site architecture, JavaScript SEO, and automation for large-scale sites.
SaaS SEO – Specialized in SEO for Software as a Service (SaaS) companies, implementing scalable strategies to increase signups, organic traffic, and customer acquisition through search.
B2B SEO – Extensive experience in business-to-business SEO strategies, optimizing lead generation funnels and high-intent content to drive conversions for enterprise-level organizations.
E-commerce SEO – Skilled in optimizing product pages, category structures, and search visibility for online stores using AI-driven keyword research and automation.
Google AI Overview Optimization – Optimizing content to align with Google's evolving AI-driven search landscape, ensuring maximum visibility in AI-powered search results.
CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) – Implementing A/B testing, heatmaps, and AI-driven user behavior analysis to enhance on-page experiences and increase conversion rates.
SEO Strategy – Developing and executing comprehensive SEO strategies that integrate AI automation, competitor analysis, and content-driven approaches for sustainable growth.
Programmatic SEO – Automating large-scale SEO implementations using structured data, AI-driven content generation, and algorithmic optimization techniques.
Full Stack Web Development – Proficient in front-end and back-end development, enabling seamless implementation of technical SEO enhancements, automation scripts, and API integrations.
Automation Tools (n8n, Make, Zapier) – Experienced in leveraging automation platforms for SEO workflows, streamlining reporting, content distribution, and data-driven insights.
If you have questions about these projects or would like to discuss potential collaborations, feel free to get in touch.