Profile:

Paul Silver

Fully booked

Email:paul@paulsilver.co.uk
Landline:01273 906020
Website:https://www.paulsilver.co.uk

Skills

  • ColdFusion
  • CSS / HTML
  • E-commerce
  • Laravel
  • PHP & MySQL
  • SQL Server
  • Symfony
  • Specification writing
  • Pay Per Click (PPC) / Google Ads

Details

I have been freelancing since November 2003, writing code and carrying out search engine promotion work for a range of small and medium sized companies, mainly in Sussex and London. Prior to my freelance career I was a senior web developer for a Brighton based web company for two years, and before that a web developer for an international recruitment company and several smaller clients.

Current Projects

I am currently working on new features and an upcoming brand update for two of my recruitment clients, helping a corporate gifts company with their internal tools, and handling Google Ads for some clients. I will have some availability for new clients in mid-October.

Development

My main languages are PHP and ColdFusion. I’ve been working with PHP since 2003 and have written a range of sites using it to do the back-end work, including several recruitment websites, a photo sharing site, gallery sites for artists, and a range of e-commerce sites. My most recent projects use the Laravel framework on top of PHP and include two recruitment sites, and a major rebuild of a large e-commerce site.

I started with ColdFusion back in version 4.5 and have experience up to v11, and recently have been using the open source alternative Railo/Lucee for some of my personal projects. Using CF I’ve built several recruitment sites, including a portal for law jobs.

 

Google Ads and Microsoft Ads management

I handle Google Ads (Adwords) and Microsoft (Bing) Ads Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising for a handful of clients. This involves: keyword research, writing adverts, split testing and tracking results, advising on landing page design, helping with Google Analytics setup, remarketing, setting up extensions to campaigns, and lots of other detail work and analysis. I’ve handled £500,000 annual spend in the past.

I can help companies with their Google Ads accounts on a review and advice basis, or with ongoing monthly work.

Google Penalty Recovery

If you have been penalised by Google, either you have received a message in Google Webmaster Tools, or you have seen a sudden drop in traffic from Google and you can no longer be found in the search results, I can help you remedy the situation. This generally involves a combination of:

  • Analysis to track down the issue(s) causing the penalty
  • Fixing any problems on your website
  • Contacting people linking to your website in ways Google does not like
  • Using Google’s ‘disavow’ system to remove links where required
  • Writing re-inclusion request reports

I’ve helped four clients back from Google penalties ranging from the mild (only certain results affected) to the major (complete removal from Google’s results.)

Examples of my work

Skillsearch – I’ve made many versions of this website since first working on it in 2001. In late 2017 I built this version of the site with Nick Carter (design), HamblyFreeman (front end build), and Laura Tyler (back end – PHP using Laravel). I handled technical specification writing, some of the back end work, some project management and testing.

G2 Legal – Another site I’ve made many versions of, first working on it in 2002. Most recently, I built this version of the site with Nick Carter (design), Elliot Taylor (front end build with Bootstrap and Sass), and Laura Tyler (back end – PHP using Laravel). I handled technical specification writing, some of the back end work, some of the front end, project management, and testing.

Facelift Access Hire – I worked on this site from 2005, picking up an existing, running site, through to 2022, when it was closed by the new owners of the company (the link goes to an archived copy of the home page at time of acquisition.) During that time, I added and adjusted many sections and features of the site, and shifted them from using MS Access to store their data to MS SQL Server. I also managed their large Google Ads campaign and help them send monthly email newsletters using Mailchimp.

Other activities

I’m the organiser of the Brighton Farm networking evenings, since mid-2003. I’ve also given talks and been part of discussion panels on freelancing for the University of Sussex Enterprise Thursdays, Wired Sussex breakfasts and their Job Fairs (2009, 2010 and 2019), Worthing Digital (2012 – Being a Successful Freelancer), and Crunch.

Contact Paul Silver

* Indicates required fields

If you are visually impaired please type in I can't see you arsehole