In a past life, I worked as a digital marketer in the corporate world. During that time I hired my fair share of SEO agencies and was often disappointed with the lack of results they produced.

But even worse was the lack of transparency.

The monthly reports they sent were obviously automated, and lacking in any useful detail.

I was often left wondering what these agencies actually did to earn the money they charged.

I also got the feeling I was just yet another customer on a conveyor belt. Just another client on the calendar, and to say communication was lacking is an understatement.

After talking to fellow marketing managers and professionals, I realised that was just the tip of the iceberg.

I heard all sorts of expensive horror stories.

The most common tale was that the SEO agencies outsourced the work to overseas vendors in places like India. This then resulted in cheap work, and plummeting rankings and traffic.

All because of outdated, shady search engine optimisation tactics.

After hiring yet another mediocre agency, I thought enough was enough and decided to immerse myself into the world of SEO and start learning it myself.

At the time I worked for an apprenticeship company overseeing their digital marketing presence.

With the help of a web design agency we’d just launched a brand new website, and I was now looking at ways to drive more traffic to the site.

This was a perfect opportunity to put my new-found knowledge and skills to the test. I started testing and experimenting and began steadily increasing their website traffic.

Over a period of 12 months, this resulted in a record number of apprenticeship applications for the company.

I soon realised far more companies could benefit from my skills and began freelancing in my spare time.

Having acquired a number of happy clients, and an ever-increasing workload, I knew it was time to leave the day job and enter the world of self-employment.

However, I knew I didn’t just want to build a good agency, but a great one.

That meant creating an SEO agency that genuinely cares about client success.

I felt the best approach was to build a close-knit specialist team, one that was committed to working closely with only a handle of regular clients each month. This was to make sure we delivered the very best ROI, and become an integral part of their marketing team.

And that’s how Finetune was born.

Since then, we’ve continued to grow our client base and assemble a superstar team of individuals that can help us fulfil the vision of becoming one of the best, boutique SEO agencies in the UK.