Allie McFadyen - A Biography

After running a successful retail business for 20 years, Allie made the move in to Website Consultancy - something she is extremely passionate about. She is a self-confessed Search Engine Optimisation nerd and is the head of the Professional Services Department here at Zeald.

Allie, originally from Newcastle in the North East of England, ran her own retail clothing business for 20 years with two city centre stores.  The focus was cutting edge street style and youth fashion.  Allie prided herself on sourcing products from the four corners of the world, and on being a trend-setter in her field rather than a follower.  She discovered the net in the mid 1990‘s as it  helped her quest for the ‘next big thing’ and gave her access to products from all over the world,  even though at that point the internet was still in its relative infancy.  The sound of the internet connecting via the telephone still rings clearly in her ears.  The stores were infamous in Newcastle (she doesn’t use the word  infamous lightly, but as fact - as at one point she had over 500 teenagers ‘hanging out’ outside her stores and the police had to come and remove them for obstruction!)  It soon became apparent that in order to take the business to the next level she would need to expand and the internet seemed like the obvious place to do it.   

With the internet came its own challenges, she found out the hard way that content is most definitely King when it comes to Websites and spent a fortune to learn all she could from a Guru in Search Engine Optimisation.   It was a fortune well spent. Everything she was taught made absolute sense. She became fascinated about the art and the science behind Search Engine Optimisation and people’s interactions with the web. So much so that eventually she made a life-changing decision to move to New Zealand with her family – to get away from the harsh North East winters and to concentrate on the internet side of her business.  This is where she met Zeald. Allie asked the business community for recommendations for a great website Development company and Zeald was suggested.

 A month after launching her first New Zealand based website and Allie’s business was number one for all her keywords. She was so impressed that she commissioned a second Zeald site specifically for the UK market and again within a couple of months that site too was ranking highly in the search engines.  And that as they say is history, two websites later and seven years on Allie decided to hang up the towel as far as being a retailer was concerned and make the move into Website Consultancy as this is where her passion most definitely lay.   She loves everything to do with content as it requires a combination of creativity and technical ability and is a self-confessed nerd when it comes to SEO.  She started working with Zeald in February 2011 and now heads up the Professional Services Department.

On a personal note, Allie now lives in Orewa with her mad husband and son.  She is an avid pub –quiz fan and can often be heard singing to the odd karaoke tune.