Q&A with Sam Underwood, Co-Founder of SERP Lens

I’m Sam Underwood. I’ve been working in the SEO industry for over 11 years. I spent the first four to five years at an SEO agency called Zazzle Media, where I started as a junior and moved up the ranks to become responsible for setting key processes, as well as planning and delivering strategies for large clients. I then had a short spell working in-house, including an interim role at UK fashion brand REISS and a role running a search team at Interflora. Since then, and for the last five or so years, I’ve been a self-employed SEO consultant. This was a great decision for me, and I’ve loved having more control over how I work and what I work on. During that time, I’ve worked with a number of large brands, including Sephora, Virgin, Autodesk, and many more. Over the past few years, I’ve stepped away from SEO consulting to focus more on building SaaS businesses, which has gone very well. While I’ve historically always consulted as an SEO, my experience is much broader than that, with skills across design, CRO, and PPC. I’ve always enjoyed creating things, but the past few years have been far more focused on skills directly related to building products.

Since I’ve purposefully aimed to keep my businesses small in terms of headcount, I’ve found context switching between different tasks challenging. For example, moving between development review, product planning, design, marketing, and customer support. I already had strong project management, prioritisation and planning skills from previous roles, so that’s helped massively there.

I do a very small amount, selectively, when I feel it’s a good fit. I’m not proactively looking for work, but occasionally a fun-sounding opportunity comes up. I’ve always enjoyed working in the e-commerce space historically, but more recently I’ve enjoyed working with SaaS businesses, such as a recent project I completed with Autodesk and Soundtrap. I think I’ve drifted more towards SaaS simply because it’s what I’m doing day to day now.

I enjoy the gym, padel, squash, going for walks, and I’m a big fan of cooking.