About Paul
Follow me @seobrien | on LinkedIn | Or contact here
An industry thought leader and innovator, I have worked with major brands and influential agencies to redefine the online marketing opportunity through search. Here, a creative outlet, SEO’Brien reflects my slight, tongue-in-cheek sense of humor as well as my thoughts and insights, trying to ensure we enjoy our with with the internet. I have made one significant brand error in my career, SEO’Brien is neither written by “Brien” nor about, exclusively, SEO. Alas, thus is my legacy.
I’ll take that moniker with pride though, having once been introduced before speaking at Web 2.0 as the man with, perhaps, the best personal, professional blog title. With over 15 years online working with paid search, SEO, online and affiliate marketing, web design, and e-commerce, the blog is a random walk through my mind with a few posts completely off topic while others float from social media to local search, SEM to banner advertising, industry research to conferences and events. Most importantly, I hope to learn from you through the discourse here and elsewhere I can be found, and the hands on experience this site provides, keeping my hands dirty with SEO, html, css, design, and other development concepts.
SEO’Brien is conversational, filled with divergences as I (a huge Beatles fan) interject random thoughts and ideas, anecdotes and humor. Highly analytical with a proven ability to exceed ROI expectations and consistently grow online marketing channels, I hope to share solutions and strategies to help everyone develop. As a modest web designer with user experience insight, technical know how, and forethought for best practices, I like to think I have unique perspective on the implications, possibilities, and options to you as a marketer, designer, engineer, or business owner.
I’ve held many formal roles, from VP of Marketing for Zvents and Outright, to managing interactive marketing for HP and designing online advertising for Yahoo! I am most proud of having been featured in the Michael Miller book, Online Marketing Heroes, as one of the 25 leading online marketers as well as appearing in Internet Retailer, KGO Radio, Webmaster Radio, and DM News.
The blog is generally about Online Marketing; believing, fundamentally, that we are not ‘search marketers,’ ‘SEOs,’ ‘affiliate managers,’ flashy ‘banner advertisers,’ or ‘e-commerce managers’ (and certainly not ‘social marketers’). The best online marketers are experienced with brand advertising as well as direct response and performance based executions; I believe expertise in all aspects of online advertising is key to succeeding in any channel. With experience and success in portfolio marketing techniques, behavioral/geo/demo targeting exposure, and purchase process (conversion funnel) best practices, I hope to help you round out core internet concepts, enable strategic marketing, efficiently and effectively use technology, and the foster relationships to create profitable, scalable marketers.
Prior Speaking Engagements
- SMX
- Online Market World
- Stanford University – Web 2.0
- Ticket Summit
- Webguild’s Web 2.0
- Shop.org
- eTail
- Search Insider Summit
- Affiliate Summit
- AMA Hot Topic Series
- CEA San Francisco
Speaker Bio
O’Brien brings search and marketing expertise to startups such as Outright and Zvents following his work with Hewlett-Packard where he directed interactive and search marketing programs. A search, online marketing, web design, and e-commerce professional with over 15 years of experience online, Paul is a demonstrated leader in e-commerce, marketing, and search with relationships and skills in both B2B and B2C markets. Prior to HP, O’Brien managed Advertising Solutions at Yahoo! where he directed marketing campaigns for Yahoo!’s tech industry advertisers. He oversaw sales programs operations and the development of portfolio marketing techniques for the technology industry in Small business, Yahoo! Shopping, Search, early instances of Yahoo! Tech, the Homepage, and other properties. Previously, he was a consultant for various web portals designing and developing Web sites, e-commerce, and marketing strategies. Paul was recently published in the book, Online Marketing Heroes, and continues to blog at seobrien.com.
