Hi, I'm Tom Kazarian

Hardworking Father, Dedicated Husband, Driven Entrepreneur, San Francisco Native

On this page, I’ve captured information about myself, alongside experiences from past projects and work. I hope that by organizing this into a single source of truth I can give those interested in working together a deeper look than a simple resume.

If you feel we could be a good fit, reach out - I’d love to hear from you!

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Founder
Started: 2014
Sold to Memoria Holdings: 2023

Obituare.com was created as an alternative to Facebook obituary announcements or paid announcements in the newspaper.

The website is powered by organic traffic.

The site's purpose is to help users create an obituary that better honors their loved ones and celebrates their lives.

Highlights:

• Creation of Online Obituaries: Enables users to create and publish obituaries online, providing a platform to share the story and legacy of the deceased.
• Fundraising Campaigns: Users can initiate fundraisers to help cover funeral costs, support the deceased's family, or donate to charitable causes in their memory.
• Purchase Flowers and Trees: Visitors can pay to have a physical tree planted or flowers mailed to a physical location in honor of a loved one.
• Ease of Sharing: Obituaries can be easily shared with friends, family, and others through social media, email, and other platforms, ensuring that the memory of the loved one reaches all who knew them.
• Personalized Experience: The site offers a guided and comforting experience for users creating obituaries, tailored to help them through their emotional journey during times of loss. Leveraging a combination of prompting and AI to help the process.
• Template and Guidance: Provides templates and guidance for writing obituaries, helping users articulate their thoughts and feelings during a challenging time.

I was born and raised in the West Portal neighborhood of San Francisco, California and graduated from UC Berkeley. Growing up, my father had two professions—he served as both a firefighter in San Francisco and a lawyer. He also found the time to coach my basketball team.

His ability to balance multiple roles influenced me, and as you'll read later on this page, I've tried to do something similar. I've held full-time jobs while growing side projects, two of which were acquired. I also coach my kids' basketball teams.

Professionally, I’ve been focused on SXO (Search Experience Optimization).

While the more common SEO focuses on optimizing a website to rank higher in search engine results, SXO extends beyond this to enhance the overall user experience from search to site interaction, aiming for satisfaction and engagement.

I'm passionate about what happens behind the scenes and what makes things tick. 

Enjoy your time on my page and reach out if you have any interesting opportunities!

Founder
Started: 2012
Sold to VerticalScope: 2016

The main goal of Lionseek is to make the buying and selling process of private sales more efficient by organizing the fragmented sales activity across multiple forums/websites and presenting the most important information upfront to the user.

The product categories focused on those that had dedicated enthusiast forums like luxury watches, collectible cars, rare sneakers, etc. These products were listed for sale on member-only bulletin boards and communities. 

Lionseek crawled these communities every minute and used Stanford’s NLP toolkit to help in the parsing of content to identify price changes, if items were sold, retail values, product brand, and model, and extract the image.

The website was powered by organic traffic.

Highlights:

Custom Crawlers and Parsers: Custom web crawlers and parsers starting with XPath and then moving towards a combination with BeautifulSoup and Stanford’s NLP.
Fast and Stable: The system architecture was built in a way to allow simultaneous crawling and parsing which was separate from the public frontend (and database). This allowed for a stable/fast/modular/uninterrupted service.
Multiple Source Aggregation: Combined the listing information from all products for sale in the top communities for each of the various product categories.
Alerting and Organization: Users can search, filter, and subscribe to get notified of new listings and price changes.
Revenue through advertising units: The site was free to use and the revenue was powered by dedicated advertising slots. A backend was built to allow manual posting of product listings and included the ability to highlight the posting for a fee.

• Search Experience Optimization (SXO)
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
• A/B and Multivariate Testing
• New Content Creation
• Improving Existing Content
• Data (Visualization / Actionable Insights)
• Forecasting
• Communication

• Building Teams
• Persona and Customer Stage Targeting
• Organic and Paid Synergy
  
• Efficient and Organized
• Processes That Leverage AI
• Social Media
• Marketing Automation
• International Markets and Multiple Languages

Global Head of Search Experience & Content
Pipedrive Inc.
2021-2024

As the Global Head of Search Experience and Content at Pipedrive Inc., I was responsible for the Organic channel's performance and managed the following teams spread across Europe and the US: Technical SEO, Content, Community, Online Video Academy, Web Publishing, and Localization. 

The focus was to create and implement scalable content strategies that elevated both search engine presence and the overall customer experience.

From setting Annual Operating Plan (AOP) forecasts to predicting the impact of various initiatives, I relied heavily on data analytics to inform and guide our strategies. This was not just about interpreting numbers but also about understanding the narratives they revealed, so that decisions could be rationalized with data as best as possible.

Working remotely and creating multi-language content, I honed my skills in cross-cultural communication ensuring our content was not just discoverable but memorable and influential.

We focused on a synergy with Product, Paid Marketing, Engineering, and Custom Service.  Together, we built enduring campaigns, driving not just immediate results but long-term success. 

What truly marked my time at Pipedrive, however, was the growth and development of my team. Mentoring and collaborating with them transformed our brainstorming sessions into dynamic workshops.

Founder
FalconEyes LLC
2021-Present

I’m the sole proprietor of FalconEyes LLC - a digital marketing consultancy that provides audits and actionable roadmaps for enterprises. The most common projects are 6-month roadmaps including estimated incremental business impacts. FalconEyes works closely with Private Equity firms.

VP of Marketing, Search Engine Optimization & Content
eHealth Inc
2012-2020

Oversaw all search engine optimization efforts for the #1 health insurance site in the US - eHealthInsurance.com as well as the Medicare properties Medicare.com, eHealthMedicare.com, and PlanPrescriber.com.

Reached the top organic share of voice/visibility vs. all other non-government Medicare websites - i.e. the most dominant SEO program in the industry for Medicare, Health Insurance, Dental Insurance, and Vision Insurance.

Heavy focus on marketing analytics and using the data to pave the way for more intelligent and strategic decisions.

Some Notable Highlights include:
✔ SEO became the largest channels for traffic and revenue of the Company
✔ SEO share of voice for ehealth: #1 non-government site for Medicare, #1 non-government 'health insurance' site, #1 for 'dental insurance' , #2 for 'vision insurance', #1 for 'small business health insurance'
✔ Year-over-Year: Average Annual Growth Rate for Organic Visitors: +50%
✔ Year-over-Year: Average Annual Growth Rate for Organic 'Submissions' (Revenue): +50%

Responsibilities include:

• Development, rationale, execution, and prioritization of the SEO strategies for multiple domains/industries including: Health Insurance, Dental Insurance, Vision Insurance, Short Term Health Insurance, Small Business Health Insurance, and Medicare.

• Quality and accessible content creation and marketing, information architecture, social media, and linkbuidling campaigns.

• Tracking/analytics for the SEO department impact against business goals and KPIs; tracking and analysis via internal in-house data/SQL/Qlikview, Omniture Discover/SiteCatalyst, Google Analytics, Authority Labs

• SEO forecast modeling (typically simple seasonal) and competitive/gap/opportunity analysis; expertise with Compete, Alexa, SEMRush, Ahrefs, ClearScope AI

• Education/presentations of SEO best practices and recent results with other departments and to the executive staff

Expertise in Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) via on-SERP, layout, component, and copy testing

Chief Technology Officer
Resonate Social Media
2010-2012

Developed and implemented the SEO and SEM campaigns for clients of Resonate Social Media. During this time, I also served as the head of product and technical lead for SocialSee.com – Resonate’s social media analytics platform.

Specific clients and projects include:
• Slime (Slime.com) : Rebuilt and converted website to a new CMS, SEO, social media campaigns
• Clover Stornetta Farms (CloverStornetta.com): SEO, SEM, social media campaigns, and site redesign
• Mollie Stone’s Markets – (MollieStones.com): Site rebuild, Email Marketing, and SEO
• YumNuts – (YumNutsNaturals.com): SEO and multivariate testing of their purchase funnel
• Cartelligent – (Cartelligent.com) : SEM campaign management

*Many more projects available upon request

Expertise in: website development, system administration (LAMP/LEMP Stacks), CPC/CPM campaigns, email campaigns (Sendgrid/Mailgun/Mail Chimp), search engine optimization (SEO), conversion rate optimization (Omniture Test & Target / Optimizely / Google Website Optimizer), and establishing and maintaining metric reports.

Manager of SEO & Display Advertisements
JustAnswer
September 2008-March 2010

Exclusively responsible for all organic traffic projects, SEO (search engine optimization), Google Analytics deployment/configuration, and ad management for a website ranked by Quantcast to be among the Top 150 most trafficked sites in the United States. (The day I started working at JustAnswer it ranked 403rd in the US by Quantcast)

Notable accomplishments from 2008-2010
• Significant increase in traffic (publicly available Quantcast screenshot attached)
• $100,000/month increase attributed to organic traffic
• 39% increase in per-visit-value via multivariate testing with over 40 different landing page layouts.
• 450% increase in total advertisement revenue from via multivariate testing, increasing CTRs, and tuning of Google Ad Manager (Doubleclick)

A fun project to explore OpenAI's offering. At the heart of AskAbuelita.co is a fictional AI character, Abuelita, a digital embodiment of a wise and loving Mexican grandmother. The character of Abuelita is rooted in the deep traditions of Mexican culture, reflecting the values of family, health, and community. Interact with her for advice and stories!

"Tom is one of the best SEO experts that I’ve ever known. And he is more than that – beyond deep understanding in organic search and broader digital marketing, best practices that have driven eHealth to be one of the top ranked search results for “Health Insurance” related key words, his extended focus on end-to-end customer journey and top-notched analytic skillset has been great help for us to develop eHealth into a great eCommerce brand in delightful user experience. I will high recommend him to any organization and I’d love to work with him again!"

-Jules Meng
PM Director @ eHealth

"Tom’s SEO knowledge is incredible. I consistently look to him for information and advice about all sorts of organic marketing opportunities, and I’ve leaned on him to help move mountains to solve urgent problems. We are lucky to have him at eHealth."

- Andrew Shea
SVP Marketing @ eHealth

"Tom is truly a jack of all trades when it comes to website management. His skill at SEO is virtually unmatched and he always had astute ideas for making the site better. I was amazed not only by his thorough understanding of internet technology, but also by his ability to pick up on new trends in the industry and become an expert in these areas relatively quickly."

- Omar Restom
Group PM @ Google

"I had pleasure to work with Tom for several years and think he is absolutely the top class SEO expert for any company. He runs SEO as a systematic program with clear vision and detailed implementation strategy. I am particularly impressed with the results he is able to both forecast and deliver. Such confidence can only come from deep understanding of the subject area. In other fronts, Tom is one of the smartest person I know. He has broader digital marketing knowledge as well as strong technical background. These make him a favorite to work with my engineering teams. I have also witnessed how generous Tom is to help grow his junior team members. He is a great mentor and leader to them."

-Jiang Wu
Head of Engineering Ops, Health Pocket

"Tom is an SEO expert who is always trying something new. His wheels never stop turning! Tom and his team were extremely helpful and a pleasure to work with. "

- Roxanne Salinger
Sr. Director, LifeCycle Marketing

"I worked with Tom on a daily basis for over four months and his depth of knowledge and skill level blew me away every day. He is smart, efficient and well versed in all aspects of Internet technology. I look forward to the day when I can work with him again - and I hope that is very soon.

- Dan Burke
GM, EastSound Water

"Working in an office/tech environment, you might be accustomed to receiving correspondence like: “Affirmative”, “Verified”, “k”, “whatever”, or “ugh leave me alone”.

If you’re used to that kind of depressing banality, Tom Kazarian will be a shock to your system.

I’ve never seen anyone have more fun with their job than Tom. And it’s not that he doesn’t take it seriously (he is absolutely serious about his work) - it’s that he somehow manages to change the entire narrative of what most of us consider a work day.

When you work for Tom, you’re not just clocking in and checking off tasks on a list. Instead, you’re working for someone who shows his appreciation loudly, sincerely, and with such hilarity that you find yourself working even harder just for the guaranteed laugh of however he’ll choose to express it. Every day is a gameshow, and you’re excited for the surprise challenge.

Tom’s engineering background means that he is more than respectful of the development process, and he understands the demands and challenges while still challenging us with innovation.

Tom will fight so selflessly on behalf of his team members. He will sing their praises far and wide. He will welcome creative input and collaboration. And you will feel so lucky to be on his team that it may bring a tear to your eye."

- Diana Smith
Senior Web Developer, Atlassian

"As head of our SEO team, Tom was always pushing us to think outside the box and looking for creative ways to stretch our already impressive results. His knowledge of SEO is remarkable. "

- Jill Halloran
Writer, Health & Medical Industries

"Tom is a great talent and someone I would highly recommend for any number of roles. He transformed the SEO efforts at eHealth under his leadership and built a strong team. He is very smart, analytical and detailed. Tom takes great pride in delivering results against his commitments and is willing to take on big challenges. He works well across various functional teams and gets the most out of the relationships he builds."

- Bill Shaughnessy
COO, eHealth

"I had the opportunity to work closely with Tom on a number of projects, he impressed me with his depth and breadth of knowledge and I found him to be a valuable resource. While at JustAnswer, Tom consistently met (and usually exceeded) his traffic and revenue targets. Tom is an independent worker, works well as part of a team and is easy to get along with. I thoroughly enjoyed working with Tom and hope I have the occasion to do so again. I highly recommend Tom - He is an "A list" player."

-  Ted Scott
Technical CRM Manager, Corsair

"White boarding ninja. Subject matter expert. Mentor.

It's hard to find a better cross-functional partner than Tom. From tactical execution to seeking out new tools that benefit multiple departments, he's been instrumental in several of my marketing projects at eHealth.com.

Perhaps the best part about working with Tom is that he isn't afraid to challenge assumptions or roll up his sleeves. He's known for out-of-the-box thinking that can be applied to any project or team.

From a professional development standpoint, Tom's essential to promoting collaboration and learning within an organization. He's the guy who will drop everything, grab a marker and lead an impromptu white boarding learning session. He's a huge asset to any organization."

- Natalie Dell O'Brien
VP, UnitedHealthcare

"I have had the pleasure of working for Tom for the past 6 years and it has been the highlight of my career.
With Tom's guidance, I have learned and grew so much more as a Digital Marketer. Through his support and encouragement, I ventured out of my comfort zone and took on many roles including Project Management and Technical Development and learning never to give up. As the team leader, Tom never hesitate to help each team member when they need help. I have also seen him, on more than one occasion, fight selflessly for his team and never hesitate to sing praises for his team members. In addition to possessing great leadership skills, Tom's also a motivated and knowledgeable digital marketer that span across all verticals (he is also savvy in PPC and many others!). His knowledge of SEO extends to not just ensuring our websites meet Google's guidelines but he has contributed success via many outside of the box thinking. He is also one of the few SEO leads I have worked with that has vast technical knowledge and has shared that knowledge with our lead developers that have contributed to the success of our channel. If you are in need of someone to drive change and spur growth in your channel/company, Tom's definitely your guy."

-Evy Kartinwanta
Digital Marketing Pro

"I have not worked with someone who made an immediate, positive impact like Tom Kazarian has at eHealthInsurance.com. It’s rare to work with someone who can instantly see the big picture, zero-in on important, measurable tasks and then prioritize and move forward with military-like precision. Tom’s a very impressive guy, a pleasure to work with and a real asset to the organization."

- Nathan Purpura
VP Marketing and Growth, Bicycle Health

"Tom is one of the smartest people that I've had the pleasure of meeting and working with at eHealth. When we first started working together, Tom was the only person working on the SEO channel, but he still reached out to help give product input and feedback. He has since scaled his team and now manages more than 6 people and has grown SEO to the largest channel of the business and brings in significant revenue for eHealth. He has the ability to focus on numbers and smaller details, but never loses sight of the bigger picture and the overall user experience. I would love the chance to work with him again."

- Mitchell Mom
Product Manager, eHealth

My inbox is always open, you can contact me with the contact form here and I'll get right back to you!