Hi! 👋 We’re so glad to feature you on SEOjobs.com. Please introduce yourself to our site’s readers.
Hey readers! I’m Rob Bonham. I’ve been riding the digital marketing roller coaster for over 20 years and it’s been a career that’s anything but boring. I have worked as an SEO in house and agency side, but the majority of my career has been within agencies. I like to say that I have seen the good, bad and ugly of SEO which has helped me lead with empathy and understanding when clients and colleagues are ready to pull their hair out. Being able to commiserate is practically a super power of mine.
Please share your current role and what you’re focused on right now with The SEO Advisory (and any fractional or advisory work).
I am co-founder of The SEO Advisory. Our aim is to help in-house teams and agencies navigate the evolving SEO landscape via strategy, operational improvement and process building. We are a go to resource for organizations that might be experiencing growing pains, positive and negatively, due to the changing search climate. We are currently working with an agency and a few businesses that are trying to embed themselves more fully within their respective markets.
Can you walk us through how you first entered the SEO and digital marketing industry? What sparked your interest?
As a teenager my interest was piqued after starting a band with my buddies and we needed a website. I set up our shotty website via GeoCities and though it wasn’t much to look at, I was enthralled with how empowering being able to publish to the web felt! This was before Google and Facebook were really established, so it was a simpler time and all we have now was just barely starting. A few years after high school I moved to a small college town in Idaho and was lucky enough to find a job at a little agency where I sold websites and hosting. Though we didn’t sell SEO services, I did give complaining clients some tips and tricks they could use to get their websites found.
How did you start to learn SEO? What are you currently doing to keep up with the ever changing SEO industry (especially with AI developments)?
Learning SEO back in the early 2000s was all about figuring it out as I went along. There weren’t any classes that even touched on SEO back then so I was constantly trying new things I heard from friends or folks online. Rand Fishkin was a HUGE inspiration to me and I would religiously watch his Whiteboard Friday videos as they were released. Matt Cutts was also a prominent Googler that gave free invaluable information that I would use to guide my work as I helped create SEO value for my client’s websites. As time went on, SEO became a mainstream marketing channel and web publications like Search Engine Land and Search Engine Journal became the gold standard in SEO news and emerging strategies. Now I mostly rely on those in the trenches that have an acute understanding of where the ball is moving. People like Lily Ray, Kevin Indig, Steve Toth, Greg Gifford, Darren Shaw and so many others have truly been indispensable in keeping me informed on the SEO/GEO evolution.
You’ve worked across agency, in-house (e.g., roles involving educational content/tech like Cengage), and now as a fractional SEO manager/advisor. What are the biggest differences you’ve experienced across these paths, and how has each shaped your approach?
Working in house really forces you to live with the decisions you make long-term, which teaches you patience, cross-functional collaboration and how to work seamlessly alongside developers and product teams. On the flip side, agency life is all about velocity, managing multiple priorities at once and learning how to translate complex technical problems into clear stories for non-technical leadership. Stepping into co-founding and advisory work with The SEO Advisory gives me the best of both worlds. It allows me to bring senior-level strategy, operational guidance and high-level empathy to growing teams without getting bogged down in corporate red tape or agency churn.
You emphasize being “stewards of the AI” in the agentic age. How have you adapted your strategies as search evolves with LLMs, generative engines (GEO/AEO), and AI overviews—and what advice do you have for staying ahead without getting overwhelmed by hype or volume tactics?
My view is that AI handling low-level tasks like writing basic title tags or meta descriptions isn’t something to fear, it actually unlocks our true value as SEOs by pushing us higher up the stack into strategy, judgment and knowing what not to do. Flooding the web with massive volumes of useless AI content is a fast track to devalued pages and broken user trust because volume alone is simply not a strategy. Instead, I focus on expanding a brand’s broader digital footprint, earning positive mentions across the web and ensuring structured data gives generative search engines clear context. My best advice for staying sane amidst the hype is to use AI for speed and diagnostics, but rely on human empathy and real strategic judgment for execution.
How do you approach collaboration—whether with founders, agency teams, developers, cross-functional stakeholders, or clients—to deliver holistic results that go beyond rankings (e.g., integrated SEO + content + PPC + PR)?
Collaboration always boils down to clear communication, active listening and knowing how to adapt your language to whoever you’re talking to. I always make a point to share positive news with genuine excitement and approach tough challenges with practical, clear solutions ready to go. When working with developers, I jump right into their preferred workflows so technical updates get prioritized smoothly. When speaking with founders and executives, I drop the technical jargon completely and focus on how search connects to real business growth. Search never wins in a silo, so I always advocate for aligning SEO directly with content, paid media, and PR so all teams are pulling in the exact same direction.
Looking ahead, how do you see the role of SEOs evolving, and what skills or mindsets do you believe will separate those who thrive from those who struggle?
I see both critical and creative thinking being more important than ever. Since AI is able to handle the more mundane SEO tasks, we need to bring new ideas and approaches to the table. This means that SEO specialists that have been mostly tactical are going to need to up their game to the strategist level. My hope is that will equate to title changes and pay raises across the industry but only time will tell. On the other hand, those who aren’t interested in moving into bigger picture thinking might find their roles being eliminated due to “redundancy” aka being replaced by AI. We might see those individuals rethinking SEO as a career path, resulting in career shifts and continuing their education to reskill.