Harry Sanders
Founder & Director, StudioHawk,
Australia/New Zealand
Harry Sanders is the founder and director of StudioHawk, the largest dedicated SEO agency in Australia, as well as the founder of Hawk Academy, an SEO training platform created to help solve the problem around education in digital.
Sanders was first introduced to the world of SEO at 13 after his father fell victim to a dodgy digital marketing agency who promised him the world but ended up delivering very little. He started undertaking the work himself and quickly fell in love with the mix of logic and creativity that SEO brings. This started to rank his father’s business and several other websites he owned, which landed him his first job in the working world at the age of just 14 years old after being offered a role training their team within a digital marketing agency.
He loved the world of SEO but after working in different agencies for three years he ended up dissatisfied with how these companies operated, trying to be everything to everyone and stretching the services until they became jacks of all trades but masters of none. So, at 17 he decided to go at it alone. StudioHawk was born.
On the basis of no lock-in contracts, a strong focus on education, and strict discipline for saying no to projects they didn’t think would work or disagreed with, StudioHawk has since grown five years late to become the largest dedicated SEO agency in Australia. Since then, the company has gone on to win the Australian Business Award for Marketing innovation, SEMRush’s Agency of the year 2019, as well as the MyBusiness, Marketing, Advertising, and PR award for 2019 as well.
Aside from awards, StudioHawk now helps host the SEO meetup in Melbourne with over 2000 members and growing. Sanders sits on the board of the Australia Web Industry Association and regularly does guest speaking around the world talking about new SEO disciplines such as DIRTy SEO. To this day he’s still the youngest in the team.
It doesn’t stop there, however, StudioHawk has since expanded to London and is in the midst of launching an SEO learning centre partnering with universities and education facilities to give the next generation, as well as business owners and CMO’s alike, the tools and understanding of SEO – because the more people that properly understand SEO, the better results people will achieve.
When not focusing on SEO Sanders is likely playing Runescape, Dota 2, Skateboarding, Hiking, or most likely attempting (poorly) to do all at the same time in the interest of ‘efficiency.’