Hi! I’m Romano Groenewoud

An SEO geek who does things differently.

Bio: Romano Groenewoud is, in short, an internet entrepreneur, SEO specialist and travel addict. Born and raised in Brielle, a charming fortified town near Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Romano has built a reputation in the industry for implementing advanced SEO strategies that few others know about, let alone understand. His passion is inventing and testing systems that generate as much traffic as possible in the shortest amount of time.

Romano has been involved in internet marketing since he was 15, starting out by selling football shirts on eBay. As that business took off, he launched his first website: GoedkopeVoetbalshirts.net. Before long he expanded internationally into the French, Spanish, German, English and even Mexican markets. At first the venture wasn’t much of a success: no visitors came, because the site was essentially invisible on the internet. To drive traffic, Romano immersed himself in internet marketing, and within a year he managed to attract thousands of visitors per month through search engine optimization.

Alongside this, he began freelancing for companies. His first client — and with it the founding of SEOGeek.nl — came about purely by chance. For his studies at Erasmus University Rotterdam, Romano had to write a Strategic Business Plan for the company Ampelmann Operations B.V. In the appendix, he included a detailed SEO strategy the company could use to win more clients. After presenting the assignment to the firm’s CEO and CFO, he was hired on the spot — something he hadn’t originally intended. As a result, he had to register with the Dutch Chamber of Commerce for tax purposes.

Romano also studied at IE Business School in Madrid. The university — at the time ranked first in the Financial Times European Business School Rankings — specializes in entrepreneurship and internet marketing. There he completed a Digital Marketing program with an A grade (talk is cheap — click here to see his transcript). Alongside his studies, he also completed an internship in Madrid at the internet start-up Tyba, where he handled SEO, social media marketing and email marketing. Outside the classroom, he has kept up with Google’s algorithm changes for years through Moz.com and SearchEngineLand.com — blogs he highly recommends to anyone wanting to understand how search engines work. Romano is an active contributor on several platforms.

Beyond search engine optimization, Romano is deeply passionate about travel (Southeast Asia in particular). When he isn’t attending major international internet marketing conferences, he’s most often found in local museums, football stadiums (a devoted Atlético de Madrid supporter) and restaurants. So don’t hesitate to ask him about the best Vietnamese coffee, how to find reliable suppliers and manufacturers in China, the finest beaches in the Philippines, the most impressive volcano climbs in Indonesia, or exactly where to buy the cheapest electronics in Hong Kong…