SEO Specialist — OLIVER APAC / Unilever Thailand

From independent SEO practice to OLIVER APAC

From June 2023 to May 2024, I worked with OLIVER Agency as an SEO Specialist on a contract basis, responsible for Unilever’s Thai market within the APAC, or Asia-Pacific, team.

This brought my experience from independent practice and agency work into a global-brand context. The work required considering Thai search behaviour, information needs, brand objectives, and the website structures supporting them.

Who OLIVER is, and why the context matters

OLIVER specialises in designing, building, and running in-house marketing teams for brands. Agency teams work closely with the client organisation and its operating environment. A significant global partnership is Unilever’s U-Studio, described in OLIVER’s account of its worldwide studio network.

In May 2023, just before my engagement began, OLIVER announced that Unilever’s U-Studio, powered by OLIVER, had won Gold for Global In-House Agency of the Year for the third consecutive year. OLIVER also received Gold for Customer Engagement and Silver for Digital Innovation. See OLIVER’s 2023 awards announcement.

That context explains the organisation I worked with. My own responsibility was SEO for the Thai market within the APAC team, connecting local audience understanding with the brand’s needs and organisational ways of working.

My SEO responsibilities

• On-page SEO: Developing content and page recommendations around search intent and the information users needed.
• Technical SEO: Examining technical and structural factors affecting how search engines access and understand content.
• Search intent and analytics: Using search and traffic data to inform improvement priorities.
• Information hierarchy: Considering how information connects so users can understand a subject and find the relevant next step.

What I carried forward

The role connected specialist knowledge with the requirements of an actual business environment. A recommendation to change a page needed a clear audience, evidence, and an explanation of how the change related to the brand’s objectives.

Independent work, agency practice, and this global-brand engagement form part of the foundation I brought to SEOcean, the company now positioned as SE Ocean. As my scope expanded, I continued to use the habits of careful analysis and problem understanding developed through SEO when working on broader business and organisational questions.