Blog > Agency Updates > Getting Wild with Orso Director of SEO, Andrew Lennon

Getting Wild with Orso Director of SEO, Andrew Lennon

Team Orso in Agency Updates
5 min read • 2w ago

Effective search engine optimization (SEO) can be such a boon that it almost seems unreal. Increase your website traffic and pipeline by understanding search engines and implementing best practices without paying extra to drive awareness? Could it really be that simple?

It is, but the word simple belies the complexity of search engine algorithms and the new prevalence of AI. Delivering exceptional SEO on today’s internet is anything but simple.

That’s where Orso team member Andrew Lennon comes in. When he’s not scuba diving in the world’s most beautiful places or running near his forested, Northern California home, he’s learning, testing, and educating clients about the latest SEO trends, tricks, and algorithm updates. Read on for his recommendations – for SEO, yes, but also for vacation spots.

What’s your role with Orso and how did you start?

I’m the Director of SEO at Orso. In short, that means I help our clients rank well in search results through a mix of technical SEO, keyword research, and content strategy. 

The team and mission here just drew me in; they’re wonderful. Plus, I like the big agency expertise but small agency touch. It really comes through in the work we do and it’s so fun to build that personal touch. I’ve worked with a lot of agencies in my career; it’s hard to get that balance right.

What do you love about the work you do?

Oh man, I absolutely geek out on SEO. I’m a Type A person so I like diving into massive amounts of data, finding the most important insights, and using them to optimize websites. I find it so fulfilling! Solving complex problems, spending my day in spreadsheets – my brain loves that stuff. It’s not what most of our clients want to focus on or what they care about, so it’s fun for me to do it and take that lift off of them.

I like the education piece too. When I worked in-house, I taught SEO bootcamp sessions to around 100 people at a time. I’d teach them how every little change to a website can help or hinder optimization so that we were all delivering the best possible material to rank.

I don’t do as much direct training anymore, but whenever I deliver recommendations I try to give context. I want clients to understand why I’m suggesting things and how to act on them. I always enjoy that knowledge-sharing.

How did you become such an expert in this niche area?

In 2007, I was put in charge of my company’s website as a junior team member. I realized SEO was a good, inexpensive way to drive traffic. We didn’t have to pay; we just had to create great content, optimize it for search engines, and get those clicks for free. I taught myself SEO through research and by creating my own website and blog where I would test things out. I played and learned as I went and realized that’s where I wanted to go with my career.

Has it gotten harder since then?

Oh, yeah. There’s so much more competition to rank these days and Google favors big, established brands. It takes a lot more effort for smaller businesses to outrank them. Plus, we have yet to see the full impact of AI, but we’re seeing AI overviews in search results and a shift in people searching via ChatGPT, for instance. Optimizing for AI is becoming an important part of the work. 

So what are the top two or three tips you would give to companies wanting to boost their own search results through SEO?

First, give serious thought to the keywords your target customer might search for to find what you do. Not the words you use to describe your business, but what someone else might use to search. 

Second, create high-quality content that genuinely deserves to rank. The goal of SEO isn’t to trick Google. It’s to create content that deserves to outrank all the other pages on the internet.

Third, SEO is incredibly complex; it’s ok to focus on your strengths and hire SEO out to a specialist or agency that excels in it.

So when you aren’t thinking about keywords and ranking, what do you get up to?

My wife and I live up in the Redwoods of Northern California with our dog and two cats. I’m not kidding when I say it’s wild up here. We get bears, mountain lions, bobcats, coyotes, you name it. I have a love/hate relationship with our 25 apple trees: we had to put up an electric fence to keep the bears out!

But travel and scuba diving are two of our big loves. We were certified in 2018 and love going to far-flung places to dive – Fiji, Bora Bora, Thailand, Curaçao. We went to a little island off Mexico last year. 

I’m also a runner. I used to hate running and I didn’t get into it until recently. But now I run six or seven days every week. I race 5Ks, 10Ks, and half-marathons.

What’s your craziest scuba diving story?

A scary one is that we were once diving off the coast of Maui and heard someone spotted a tiger shark, so we went looking for it. We never found it, but later learned that that same shark had attacked someone! So we were lucky we missed it.

A happier memory is just diving the Rainbow Reef in Fiji. It was phenomenal. Just these huge mountains of soft coral, all dancing in the currents. It was so beautiful.

Okay, time for the hot seat.

  • Nutcracker or Swan Lake? Nutcracker! One of my nephews was the Nutcracker this year, and a niece was a Blossom
  • Omelet or pancakes? Omelet, definitely
  • Worst part of camping: Finding 20+ ticks on your spouse
  • Coke or Pepsi? Water!
  • Cats or dogs? Dogs, but don’t tell my cats

If you could use some guidance building your own SEO strategy, let us know. Andrew will help demystify SEO and turn complexity into site visits – and have fun doing it.