Distilled Boils Things Down in NY

Image via CrunchBase

by Katie Keane

Search engine optimization (SEO) is continuously changing and developing new ways to improve online visibility.  NY Convergence recently sat down with Tom Critchlow of Distilled, a London-based SEO agency that just opened a NY office.  Critchlow previously served as head of Distilled’s search marketing and is now vice president of operations in the NY office.

Critchlow said the NY move will make communications between their HQ  in London and other U.S. office in Seattle easier.  “It makes a lot of sense for us to have a hub here where we can have communication through all the different offices, partly because we want to grow the company, but we don’t want to necessarily grow it in one specific location.  We’d like to keep the culture; we’d like to keep the fun, startup environment.”

Distilled has already worked with east coast clients through their Seattle office, including Etsy and Shutterstock.  Critchlow hopes that being in NY will allow the company, “to build clients where you can meet them face to face,” something he said is typically done in London, but not so in Seattle.

Building strong relationships with clients is a priority for Distilled.  “We focus on doing consulting that’s tailored.  We really make sure that we structure our project and structure our consulting in such a way that fits a project and business,” Critchlow said.  They assist clients of all types, sizes and industries, and perform a wide array of services, from hiring and training an in-house team to implementing the SEO services themselves.

Critchlow described Distilled as housing “thought leaders in the industry” with a lot of “raw expertise,” much of which comes from their conference series that began in 2009.  In May they hosted their “ProSEO” conference in Boston, a two-day advanced training session, featuring speakers like Dharmesh Shah, chief technology officer of Hubspot (a marketing software platform startup), and Seth Besmertnik, CEO of Conductor (a SEO platform startup).

“We really want to make a conference series that people come away from with things they can do,” Critchlow said, rather than a networking event.  He emphasized that the content discussed in the conferences is “actionable,” and that Distilled experts help coach speakers to avoid rehashing the same content.  Distilled recently made videos from their Boston conference available online, so those who missed out can still gain some valuable insight, and they are preparing for a similar conference in NY at the end of October.

Standing out from the crowd in NY could be tricky, but Critchlow is confident.  “We like to think of ourselves as able to solve the very, very hard problems.  We often get clients coming to us with unusual issues or extraordinary problems that other SEO agencies haven’t been able to solve.”

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