About Us
Ready to Ditch Technical SEO?
Fire&Spark developed the Authority First SEO methodology for organizations that believe that branding is the heart of their marketing strategy.
Seismic shift: Advances in AI search algorithms and rapidly changing purchase behavior demand new SEO and content marketing strategies.
Road kill: Many brands won’t survive Google’s technology shift to AI algorithms and the consumers’ growing preference for direct ecommerce.
SEO industry stuck in the past: Too many SEO specialists rely on outdated technical SEO strategies that are no longer effective with AI search engines.
Google now ignores optimizations: Search engines want to rank the best content. Period. Their AI is tuned to ignore your technical optimizations.
Decades of experience: Our SEO and content marketing experience goes back to 1999, so we’ve seen every iteration of Google’s algorithm.
Deep AI expertise: Our founder applies his graduate school work in artificial intelligence to SEO and content campaigns that complement Google’s algorithmic complexity.
Leading the way: Fire&Spark’s industry-leading Authority First SEO methodology is purpose-built to earn search engine visibility with strategies 10x more powerful than technical SEO.
“Fire&Spark increased our organic sales by 109%.”
Shawn Boyer
Founder, Anatomie
“These guys are the real deal.”
Jonah Lopin
CEO, Crayon.co
“If you want to work with a straightforward, talented agency…go with Fire&Spark.”
Orlando O’Neill
Director of Marketing, Ministry of Supply
“You really have a feeling that you are working with the experts.”
Agata Krzysztofik
CMO, SimScale
“They brought a fresh perspective to our problems and integrated well with our team.”
Ryan Evans
Director of Design, Corey McPherson Nash
“Their expertise and enthusiasm for what they do is clear and they strive to deliver quality.”
Daniella Mekus
Marketing Copywriter
Leadership Team
Dale Bertrand
Managing Director
Our team is lead by Dale Bertrand who has 15 years of experience applying his graduate school work in artificial intelligence to search engine marketing. Dale started his career building high-performance computing systems for the National Security Agency. Now, Dale is a specialist in search engine marketing, online advertising and analytics.

Steve McAveeney
Senior Consultant
Steve has over 15 years experience in digital marketing for both B2B and B2C companies. Steve holds an MBA from the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, and an undergrad degree from Amherst College. He previously led the direct response customer acquisition efforts at TripAdvisor, managing an 8 figure PPC advertising spend.

Hilary Gibbons
Head of Client Services
Hilary leads client operations at Fire&Spark. She is responsible for client project management, resourcing and delivery. Hilary has applied her marketing aptitude and operational expertise to global brands such as GAP, Target, IBM, Marriott, Hertz and LEGO.

Noah Goldfarb
Digital Analyst
Noah specializes in ecommerce SEO and consumer behavior analytics. He helps clients conquer SEO and content marketing challenges with strategies that define industry approaches. Noah has worked with a variety of clients including Citizen Watch, Lazer Designs and Raymond Weil.

Drew Frayre
Digital Strategist
Drew is responsible for search and PPC strategy at Fire&Spark. His work focuses on analytics driven campaigns to accelerate brands. He is the brains behind the F&S proprietary keyword research and audit process which has been applied to our work with Nestle, Makerbot and Bulova.
