About Carl Spinks
Carl Spinks built his first website in 1996, to promote a family hotel in Blackpool. It went well enough that he started his own business doing it for other people.
Over the next eleven years, that business - Tangerine Design built and maintained more than 100 client websites, alongside hosting and search engine optimisation. Most were small local firms with no marketing department and no budget for one, trying to be found by people nationwide and nearby who needed what they sold.
Since then he has worked in digital marketing and ecommerce, specialising in SEO, paid search, social media, email and affiliate marketing, and has built and mentored marketing teams from apprentice level upwards. Before all of it he spent over a decade in the UK government, working in technical IT security and network architecture.
Today his own web properties sit under Northbyte Media, an independent UK digital publishing brand working across online directories, affiliate marketing and multi platform streaming. Its directories include NBM Business Directory, The Tabletop Directory and The Aesthetic Directory.
He built NBM Business Directory for the same reason he built that first hotel site. Thirty years on, the basic problem has not changed. Good local businesses are still losing work to competitors who are simply easier to find online.
He writes here about local search, business listings, citation consistency and how AI tools such as ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews decide which local businesses to recommend. Plain English, aimed at the people actually running those businesses, with claims backed by named and dated sources rather than sales talk.
Background
- Earlier career in government IT security and network architecture
- Started building websites for local businesses in 1996
- Ran Tangerine Design from 1997 to 2008, personally delivering over 100 client websites with hosting and SEO
- Specialist in SEO, paid search, email and affiliate marketing
- Has operated his own web properties continuously since 2011
- Currently runs three UK directories under Northbyte Media
- Works day to day with Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and leading SEO tools
Writes about
Local SEO, business directories and citations, NAP consistency, structured data, generative engine optimisation (GEO), and Google AI Overviews.
A note on transparency
Carl owns and runs several online business directories, which sell paid listings. He says so on every article that touches on directories, because you should know the commercial interest behind advice you are reading. Where the evidence does not support a claim, the articles here say so.
