Four stories. Each one has a risk, an analysis, a moment where it nearly went wrong, and a curve that went the right way. The full write-ups are arriving one at a time.
Athens SEO · from an idea to a sold-out international conference
100→200in the room, both editions sold out, plus a livestream
7→24international speakers, ~10 countries
7→24sponsors and partners
0→2,850followers in 18 months, 83% organic
The risk: a technical SEO conference in a country that had never hosted one, with no brand, no audience and no budget for ads. What the analysis showed: the audience existed, it was just in London, Thessaloniki and Athens without a room to meet in. What almost went wrong: the first edition was designed, sold and delivered in six months.
Two editions, both sold out; capacity doubled in year two, plus a livestream watched from Europe to Australia. I recruited the speakers, opening 2026 by securing Martin Splitt (Google), Aleyda Solis and Judith Lewis first, and brought in most of the sponsors across both years. The brand's LinkedIn went from zero to ~2,000 followers with two sponsored posts in total and an engagement rate around four times the platform benchmark; the website reached 108,000 search impressions with the US as its top country. Athens Voice covered the first edition, ΣΚΑΪ the second, both through direct outreach.
Two sites, one simultaneous migration, initiated after my own analysis showed the move was worth the risk. Planned, mapped and executed with zero drama, and the visibility curves went the right way. Twice.
A migration gone wrong left a site near-invisible. The diagnosis, the recovery and the rebuild, told as a full case study on the Search With Sean Live 2026 series.
// full write-up: coming · client anonymised
Oliver's Trust · the living laboratory
pro bono · Greek animal welfare · three revivals
A Greek-language animal-welfare site I run pro bono as my live SEO lab: experiments run here first, ideas get stress-tested on a real site with real stakes. Three separate visibility collapses so far, a spam attack, a stalled recovery and a hack that broke the server configuration, each diagnosed from the data and reversed. The third recovery is happening now, and the AI Overview citations came back first.