Twenty years where search meets engineering.
I'm Alex Moss, an internationally recognised SEO with over 20 years' experience, helping hundreds of companies worldwide build and grow their presence online. I co-founded FireCask in 2013, and I'm Principal SEO at Yoast.
Built in Manchester, working everywhere
In 2013 I co-founded FireCask, a boutique agency that helps small and medium-sized businesses grow their visibility online. Over the years it's worked with brands including Expedia, Vitabiotics, the Financial Times, Emma Sleep, Kumon, Beauty Bay and Funding Circle.
Since 2023 I've also been Principal SEO at Yoast, the world's leading WordPress SEO plugin with over 13.5 million active installations, where I contribute across the product and marketing teams. I host the monthly SEO Update by Yoast and speak regularly on technical SEO and where agentic AI is taking search.
Outside the digital world, I'm co-founder of Millie & Henry, a pet brand where I've been involved in inventing and producing a new physical product for dog owners. It keeps the other half of my brain busy.
Brands I've worked with
Core skills
I've worked with HTML since 1996, SEO since 1999, PHP since 2003 and WordPress since 2009. Across that time I've built up deep knowledge in a few disciplines.
SEO
I've personally audited hundreds of websites to make sure they're built to SEO best practice. That covers information architecture, structured data (entities, schema, Open Graph, hreflang), code and performance, so search engines crawl, index and rank the site well.
Research and analysis
From conception to execution, I produce complete online marketing strategy documents to support growth and conversion. With deep experience across most of the tools on the market, I can analyse how to improve your brand's visibility, engagement and conversion.
WordPress development
Working with WordPress since 2009, I've built sites of every size and complexity, as well as setting up and maintaining the servers they run on.
Public speaking and training
I've spoken at industry events for over a decade, and I run workshops and training programmes for agencies and in-house teams.
Agentic and AI readiness
Structured data, fast machine-readable pages and content that earns citations, so your brand stays visible and useful as AI assistants and agents reshape how people search and discover.
Types of engagement
I work with a handful of brands at a time. A few of the ways that tends to look.
Advisory and fractional
Ongoing strategic input as an extension of your team, the senior SEO voice in the room without a full-time hire.
Audits and one-off projects
A deep technical audit, a migration plan or a specific problem untangled. Scoped, delivered and handed over cleanly.
Training and workshops
Hands-on sessions that level up your in-house team on technical SEO, structured data and Core Web Vitals.
Speaking and events
Conference talks and keynotes on technical SEO and how agentic AI is reshaping search. Organising an event? Let's talk.
I can without reservation recommend Alex and his company FireCask for any development needs you may have in the SEO and PHP/WordPress world.
A career, briefly
The short version. The full CV goes deeper into projects, results and references.
An organic marketing and WordPress development agency I co-founded in 2013, where I oversee all technical SEO alongside web design and build. An authorised partner with Semrush, Automattic, WP Engine, Mailchimp and Klaviyo. Clients have included Expedia, Vitabiotics, the Financial Times, Emma Sleep, Kumon, Beauty Bay and Funding Circle.
Yoast is the biggest SEO plugin in WordPress, with over 13.5 million active installations. I joined in August 2023 as Principal SEO, working across most teams: roadmaps and strategy, product development, hosting the monthly SEO Update by Yoast, public speaking, partnerships, knowledge sharing, and SEO of course.
The first integrated NFT marketing agency, handling marketing for successful NFT and Web3 initiatives through the 2021 boom. Clients included BossLogic, LIFE Magazine, Bjarne Melgaard, Mogul Productions and My Pet Hooligan.
A pet brand helping dog owners enjoy walks with their best friend even more. Currently in product development, which has grown my knowledge of physical product design, from bag design to plastic moulding.
A WordPress theme framework with a Bootstrap-powered frontend, aimed at developers who understood modular design and OOP. Alongside it I released free plugins including Facebook Comments (1.1m downloads) and EU Cookie Law (1.3m downloads).
SEO roles before founding an agency: Head of SEO at Banc, SEO Manager at Carcraft and consultant for webuyanycar.com, and SEO Executive at PC World Business and Equanet. In a previous life I worked in TV as a runner and researcher (I even have an IMDb profile).
