I also learned some Russian and Spanish, while I already speak Dutch and English and have a great understanding of German. Applying this groundwork, I can understand Afrikaans quite well, and a little bit of Danish, Swedish, Serbian and several other other Germanic or Slavic toungues.

The Masters degree I started (but didn’t finish) was about how we store words in our minds. I set out to show that it’s most likely they we store pre-built sentence fragments that we can call on whenever possible. More efficient than making our brain apply grammatical rules in real-time.

I was at one point one of the most prolific writers on the topic of search engine optimisation in New Zealand.

Today, I continuously refresh my skills by listening intently to industry trends, testing theories and proving in practice.

A personal website I created in 2012 (now removed) held number 1 rank in New Zealand for hundreds of industry-related searches such as “seo services” and “seo expert” against large agencies specialising in doing this type of work.

Since 2016 my skillset has extended to include high-level expertise in the implementation of Search and Display advertsing using the Google Ads platform.

A core KPI for my role is the return on investment from that ad spend, so this requires highly effective management and leverages the Google Analytics skills to determine complex attribution models.

I also consult on the Google Partners Support page in Facebook where I often assist other agencies with advice on Ads management or other technical implementations.