About Michael
At A Glance
In a word, I’m a writer.
In a few more words, I’m a writer that loves to write about writing on the internet. This includes everything from blogging and essays to SEO and content site building. My curiosity has led me down an interesting career path. I’ve worked as a freelance writer, built a number of blogs and content sites, worked with startups and consulted on SEO.
My experiences have motivated me to think about these topics in a very different way. The world of written content outside of journalism (but even this field is slowly being eaten away) has been dominated by engineers and data scientists looking to game search engines, maximise conversions and bring generative AI into everything.
I reject this approach and believe that the written word still matters on a human level and will play a huge role in many successful content brands in the future.
MY Projects
Over the years I have been involved with several projects that define who I am today.
Git Gud At Life
My very first personal project. This was a video game blog that I started in University and still exists in its original WordPress.com hosted form (cute I know). The blog was called “Git Gud at Life” and talked about real world concepts from the framing of video games. While it certainly wasn’t SEO optimised, it was a fun passion project that gave me the writing bug, defined my career and inspires my video gamey aesthetic to this day.
Quitter’s Day Podcast
Quitter’s Day marked my first real attempt to build a personal brand. It was a podcast I created alongside my real life best friend and then girlfriend (now fiancé) that attempted to discuss the issues that people our age (early twenties) were facing. In many ways the pod was nothing special and just as cringey as you may expect, but it’s still a part of my personal tapestry that I look back fondly on. Unfortunately, this podcast was held in person and once the pandemic hit, Quitter’s Day had to be… quit.
Niche Site Building
Like many people, the pandemic provided me with more time than I knew what to do with. This was the time that I began working on my own niche sites and tried to make the dream of “writing on the internet for a living” a reality. In that time, I managed to build a site to 50,000 organic sessions per month and qualified for Mediavine. Ultimately, working on these sites taught me more about what I didn’t like about niche sites and once the were hit by a Google Core Update, not only was I unsurprised, but I decided to move on from this model entirely.
Freelance Writing
While I was building my niche sites with the fleeting dream of earning a passive income, I also tried my hand at freelance writing… and I was good. I’ve always been more comfortable with the written word than the spoken one so writing for clients felt pretty natural.
Over the years, I’ve worked with dozens of clients on hundreds of projects and even had my work presented to the United Nations. In fact, if it weren’t for the sudden rise of AI tools like ChatGPT, I’d probably still be writing freelance… sigh.
We Try tires
When I was approached by a friend to run his new site’s SEO, I jumped at the chance. He would be the expert and face of the brands while I was given free rein to implement and SEO strategy. Together, we’ve grown We Try Tires‘ organic traffic to tens of thousands of sessions per month. This site, like many, was hit by the September 2023 Helpful Content Update and has been a major catalyst in changing how I view content brands. It was the very first site I audited with my new framework and the place I intend to implement my own brand of SEO.
