The About Thing

Hi, I'm Andrew Holland, the founder of Zoogly.

Today, I am known in the UK as the SEO guy who has delivered his clients over 2 Million website visitors, over 180,000 social media shares and countless page 1 rankings on Google that give my clients leads, sales and position them as industry experts.

But it wasn't always that way.

About Me- TLDR

If you don't have time to read my whole story...here's the quick version.


  • Learned SEO through working in police intelligence.
  • Left a career in the police due to ill-health.
  • Started my own freelance business.
  • Built a boutique agency.
  • Got featured on Backlinko...twice.
  • Agency grew.
  • Got offered a job I couldn't resist.
  • Took my clients and staff with me.
  • Director of SEO at one of the UK's fastest growing Digital PR & SEO agencies.
  • And now, founder of Zoogly. An online newsletter and blog that is here for one reason, to help you grow online.

And now...the long version.

For 17 Long Years, I Fought the UK’s Underworld

For 17 years I was a UK Police Officer.  

All of my life I have felt “called” to protect people.  That may sound self-righteous, but it’s true.

Protecting others is where my heart truly beats and I’ll do it until the day I die.

During my time as a Police Officer, I learned how to use SEO to catch the bad guys. 

My role in police intelligence allowed me to study criminals and then create content for our intelligence systems that would be discovered by operational police teams.

The purpose was find out which criminals needed to be targeted and to give officers the information that allowed them to take action. And when they did, we put the criminals away.

{Note: I apologise that I can’t be more specific about what I actually did. But the strategies using SEO to catch criminals are still being used by UK Police, today.}

After serving my community as a Police Officer for a major part of my life, my wife and I finally decided to start a family.

And when my first child was born, my priorities had to change.

I had to start thinking about what was best for my family.

As I said, I have always had a heart for keeping people safe. There is nothing worse, in my opinion, than trying to live your life on your terms while feeling unsafe, at risk or threatened in any way.

So I decided to set up a self-defence school while still working in the police.

The idea was simple, grow the school, and once it was big enough I could leave the police.

It seemed a good idea...at first.


I know EXACTLY How It Feels When You Do Everything The 'So Called' Marketing Experts Say And You Get No Results

The 2008 recession hit with full force and everyone was struggling, both businesses and families were hit hard. Staff were let go, people had less money and here was me, trying to start a business.

Like most entrepreneurs, I jumped in with both feet first, and didn’t think to check what our local sales opportunities might be.

There just weren't enough new students coming in through the doors.

We had middling success, and every single pound we spent on marketing had to count so I turned to the so called marketing experts for advice and help. 

We did everything they told us to, we paid for expensive leaflets and had them hand delivered in the local area, we paid for an expensive website and it did nothing for the business, we paid for an expensive advert to be designed and then printed in the local newspaper.....and we got NOTHING from our efforts.

The thing is, I didn’t yet know how to use my existing SEO and content skills to create website traffic! 

I know it sounds obvious, but I had only ever used SEO or content marketing for police purposes. Business was totally new to me.

With our sales sputtering, we were about to call it quits. But I had been writing a compelling self-defense blog for our business, and SEOing it over time…

And one day it finally clicked!

After SEO'ing and creating content for our self-defense blog for months, something miraculous happened.

Well, it felt miraculous at the time.

What I learned later, is that when you have powerful SEO this can become totally normal for a business: 

A radio show producer called me and asked me to give an interview. That interview was on prime time on BBC Radio 2, and so my small self-defence school was advertised for free to 8 Million listeners.

I can’t imagine what buying that same promotion slot would have cost me.


Others Came to Me, for Help


Not long after getting so much free publicity, other business owners approached me to start working on their content  marketing and SEO. 

They too needed help getting people into their place of business.

It was clear that even with this website success, the self-defence school was never going to be a huge hit (I learned some big lessons about supply and demand here).

It was then that I realised my SEO skills could actually help other business owners.

Sure, just because my business idea was bad, didn't mean that my marketing skills couldn't work for others.

And that's that I did, I helped a few small business owners for free. 

Along with running SEO experiments, creating websites for fun and generally learning SEO for businesses.

But then something happened that I never saw coming.


"If you run outside, you'll die"

I carried on in the police, playing around with SEO for fun, until, one day I was chasing after a suspect and when I caught him, I felt paralysed.

My once well managed asthma kicked in and as the suspect started to attack me, I struggled to breathe.

Luckily my colleagues came to my rescue.

But it wasn't long before the police Doctor, told me my asthma was so bad that if I was to go for a run outside, I'd die.

And that was the beginning of the end of my police career.

I retired on ill health in 2015.

On the Friday I left the custody investigation team (my last role) and on the Tuesday I started Zoogly Media.

And that was the start of some crazy adventures.

2 Lockdowns, Covid and a New Career

Leaving a career after 20 odd years was scary.

And as I turned 36, looked at my growing family, I knew I needed to attack marketing like my backside was being chased by a large dog. 

Which is what I did.

I spent a small fortune on courses over the years.

Learning from the best, testing my ideas, investing my profits into my own edcuation.

And I succeeded.

It took years, but my business grew alongside the quality of my life.

No more working night shifts.

I did the school runs, and then went to the gym...and then work.

I worked when it suited me, and the clients got the results they wanted.

I grew from me to me plus staff and freelancers.

I had a 6 figures a year business.

I was living the dream

And then it happened...Covid.


I survived the pandemic and 2 lockdowns, but the business took a hit...a real hit.

But once we were all open as a nation, the work didn't just come in...it flooded.

I'm not afraid to say, I was busier than ever.

However it wasn't right.

Everyone was busier than ever.

And I couldn't recruit staff for the work.

But then an offer came on my table.

An offer to become Head of Organic Marketing at one of the UK's fastest growing agencies.

It was an offer that was too good to refuse.

And so, I took my clients and staff with me.

But the story doesn't end there.

43,000 Followers Later


So, a year into my time into a multi 7 figure agency, I wasn't happy, and so I resigned.

With no job, no savings and a family to care for I started Growth Through Content. 

That started in January and has become one of the largest SEO and content newsletters on Linkedin.


As my following grew, I settled into a new role as Director of SEO at JBH. One of the UK's fastest growing digital PR agencies.

My task to grow an SEO department from scratch...and it's growing.


A smash hit talk at Brighton SEO and 43,000 plus Linkedin followers later, I wanted to start writing a new weekly newsletter.

And, so I decided to ressurect my old agency website from the flames and relaunch Zoogly.

This time as a newsletter, blog and destination to help you to grow online.

We'll have case studies, interviews, breakdowns, advice and plain old 'how to' style content.

So, if you're ready.

Subscribe to our Growth Gears newsletter and you'll receive new content every week.

It's free.

It's good.

You'll love it.

THE GROWTH GEARS NEWSLETTER

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Some of My Bragging Rights

ZERO TO 130,000 WEBSITE VISITORS FOR NEIL ADAMS MBE

Click the button to learn how we helped our client Neil Adams MBE with his digital marketing and took him from zero to 130,000 website visitors

INCREASED TRAFFIC FOR LEASE CAR UK

Click the button to learn how we helped Lease Car UK to Increase their organic traffic with our Product Description Copywriting Service

HOW WE HELPED LAUNCH AN ONLINE COURSE FOR A GLOBAL FRANCHISE

Click the button to learn how we helped Defence Lab Launch their Online University using a email marketing and paid Facebook adverting 

1 MILLION PAGE VIEWS

Click the button to read how we were able to generate 1 million page views

10 MILLION VIDEO VIEWS

Click the button to read how we were able to gain over 10 million video views

DOUBLE THE TRAFFIC AND CLICKS FOR THIS 7 FIGURE BUSINESS

Click the button to read how we were able to help CAEM launch a new website and get them to the first page of Google and in the process doubling their traffic. 

373% INCREASE IN CLICKS

Click the button to read how we were able to gain an increase in website clicks of over 373% for this client.

19 MILLION VIDEO VIEWS, 1.2 MILLION ENGAGEMENTS AND 115 MILLION IMPRESSIONS

Click the button to read how we were able to gain jaw dropping results with our Facebook marketing services. 

How We Increased This The Blog Traffic For Michaela Breeze MBE By 478% In 40 Days

Click the button to learn how we helped this client to achieve huge results online.

How Our Content Writing Services Gained 141,989 Site Visits In 4 Months

Click the button to learn how we gained a huge 141,989 visits to our clients website in just 4 months.

How We Promoted Stoke-on-Trent To 150,000 People (In 7 Days)

Click the button to learn how we were able to create the most viral video in the history of Stoke-on-Trent.

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