Brandon Na: Digital Marketing & Ed Tech

Email me at

brandon {at} seattleorganicseo [dot] com

Here’s a little about me…

My life now (in Digital Marketing)

In my day job, I help guide a good number of dealer principals and their corporate marketing team with their organic search efforts as a Senior SEO Analyst for CDK Global. I have the incredible fortune of being on the largest SEO team dedicated to one vertical (possibly in the whole world) with the most organic search marketing clients as well.  I manage the 4th largest Auto Group in the country.

At night (& some weekends), I keep myself busy with a few other projects.  You can read about them in Projects, once I redo that page.

Update: 5/21/2018

Due to painful experience with my old hosting company, InMotion hosting, they shut down my old site that I didn’t pay enough attention to.  As a result, many of the posts and details were deleted.  I’ll build that content back up here including the rest of my background:

Serving as Principal of Seattle Organic SEO where I have helped companies of all sizes reach the top of Google for the most competitive keywords along with helping them sell for $50 million USD to $500 million USD. I’ve helped a good number of them leverage the “once in lifetime” and possibly “once in several centuries” opportunity with SEO, SEM and the various digital opportunities offered to us today. A little synopsis of how easy it can be done was documented in a blog post I wrote recently: Helping another employer rise to the top – Brandon’s Blog

I am open to discussion if you want to repeat some of my past successes. At the same time, I have very little time as you can see.

I’ve also had a colorful career working for some of the top dotcoms including Amazon dot com, Expedia dot com and DoubleClick (which is currently a division of Google). I’ve also spent 1/3 in other arenas that have provided me with incredible insight and now more than a 1/3 in education where I found an incredible amount of fulfillment.

Speaking of…(Education)

Shortly before, I served as Head of Curriculum and Teacher Development for the Southern region of China & Hong Kong’s Top Test Prep Company: SanLi Education. I helped students with ACT, SAT, SSAT, ISEE, TOEFL and IELTS and coached some of the Top Debate teams in the world.

To prepare for the successful coaching experience, I graduated with Honors from my high school which was ranked the #14th debate team in the nation and was a nationally competitive debater. I graduated from the University of Puget Sound (1 of 40 Universities in the Book: “Colleges That Change Lives”) in 1994 after turning down the University of Washington.

My students in debate and public speaking have consistently excelled in tournaments — one of my crowning coaching achievements involved leading a team of students who placed First in the 2013 World Scholar’s Cup Tournament of Champions. I worked with the same team to repeat their title as #1 at the following Global Round with over 2000 participants.

Recently, both the Jr. and the Sr. teams who took 1st Place in Writing at the Tournament of Champions at Yale in 2015 were coached by me either as a team or individually. The Scholar’s Cup successes are detailed here: http://brandonna.com/blog/the-top-scholars-cup-coach-in-hong-kong-in-the-world/

In terms of Test Preparation, I have helped students achieve a perfect 2400 & a 2390 on the SAT and a plethora of 2300+’s. On the ACT, I’ve helped students reach the 99% Percentile and 99%+ Percentile regularly with perfect 36‘s on the Reading and Essay sections. With regards to the SSAT, my students have regularly achieved 95%+ percentiles with 3 former students obtaining the top score possible – in the 99% Percentile. My middle school students, who I help pro bono consulting for boarding schools received offer letters from: The Hotchkiss School, Milton Academy, The Lawrenceville School and Peddie School.

Additionally, I’ve done a considerable amount of personal statement consulting where my students have obtained successful admissions to Carnegie Mellon University, Cornell, Northwestern, Duke University, UPenn, Dartmouth, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Rice, Johns Hopkins, University of San Diego, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University College London, Imperial College, Parsons and the ArtCenter College of Design.

Some of my past clients and even a few new ones that seem to find me here also occupy the few remaining weekend hours I have.

Lastly, here are some of my other profiles on the Internet which may complement these finer points:

• LinkedIn’s version of me
• An Amaz-ing resume
• Supposedly, I Tweet
• I guess, I Pin too
• Me on Mark’s network
• Starting up on Medium
• My seo blog

Some details I shared in my old blog that opened my eyes to the power of blogging:

Anyway, just for the random visitor & to remind Brandon a little bit of his past life, here are a few things you may not know about this guy:

• In his first year of Real Estate, he produced enough income to shoot him to the #2 highest producing agent in his office which is in the adjacent city of Bill Gate’s hometown Medina
• Is still alive despite catching a deadly strain of e-coli in college after more than a week of bloody excruciating pain
• Was a member of Sahalee Country Club in Redmond, Washington host of the 1998 PGA Championships and and the 2002 World Golf Championship-NEC Invitational for 3 years where he rubbed against the likes of former Seattle Supersonic Ray Allen and PGA Professional Ryan Moore along with playing with Chili Davis, the professional baseball player who’s hit over 2000 hits, one of the top 500 homerun hitters of all time, had more than 400 doulbes, more than 1000 runs and RBIs — in addition to many business leaders in the Puget Sound area
• He’s played in a $10,000 buy-in World Poker Tour event (The MirageShowdown) in Las Vegas after winning $24,500 in blackjack at 4:47a in 10 hands at the Alladin hotel (aka Planet Hollywood Hotel & Resort) on the strip
• Seattle Mariners’ Pitcher J.J. Putz bought his home in 2005; helped 3rd baseman Adrian Beltre buy his home in the year he signed his $50 million+ contract with the Mariners
• He’s lived in Los Angeles (Westwood), Chicago (Evanston), Sante Fe (New Mexico), New York (Fort Lee, NJ & Forrest Hills, Queens), Seoul, Daejeon, Ulsan and Busan for a minimum of 3 months each and upwards of 2 years in addition to living most of the other years in Seattle, WA (from Shelton to Seattle)
• He’s traveled to Cairnes, Brisbane & Sydney in Australia, Hong Kong, Macau (China), Tokyo & Fukuoka (Japan) on top of the many other Korean cities he’s traveled to (Incheon, Jeju, Kwangju, Kyongju, Taebek, Kangwon-do, Daejeon, Chonju, Jeonju, Ulsan, Changwon, Young-duk, and Daegu – probably more that he can’t think of). In Europe, he’s only had the fortune to go to London, Strafford-upon-Avon, Bath, Dover & whereever Stonehenge is located. He’s been up and down the West coast of the U.S. about a dozen times & did the trek across the U.S. (from west to east) in a U-Haul with his father & wife at the time (never do that again!). Vancouver’s been hit by this man at least 2 dozen times, it seems, but he hasn’t ventured past the southern U.S. border for any reason yet despite wanting to. He’s also happened to roll the dice in Vegas at least a dozen times in the past 5 years or so (bachelor parties, random trips, family vacations, conventions, etc.)
• He’s actually driven up and down the West Coast of the United States at least 5 different times (out of the dozen or so trips) from Seattle to San Francisco on 3 different occasions in college and twice from Seattle to Los Angeles.
• When he was 7 years old, he regularly visited his Grandma/Uncle’s neighborhood on the other side of the tracks (literally) where he convinced a group of kids his name was “Peenya” and went by that name for about 2-3 years. He still doesn’t know to this day why he chose that name.
• He beat his best friend Vichett Phal in the 9th grade in the long jump at the Jr. High regionals competition after losing to him all year long during regular track meets. He jumped approximately 17 feet 9 1/2 inches — Vichett says that I scratched on that jump, but the umpires didn’t call it. Ha, ha Vichett!!!!!
• Is normally a terrible cook (lack of practice ;), but with the assistance of his new friend Young-eun has learned and cooks a mean “Tenjang jigae” (a miso like stew reguarly consumed by Koreans) and “Pah-jeon” (Korean pancakes with vegetables
• Cracked his head open in first grade spilling blood all over the sidewalk when another classmate of his stepped on his shoelaces when running out of school to go home
• As a youth, his brother hit him on the head with a hammer while playing; several years later, his mother accidentally drove over his foot with their beige Buick Skylark which eventually ended up being his first car
• Has a father who has been held up twice by a gun and each time, his father either took the gun out of the guy’s hand or otherwise
• Has an amazing mother who has persisted through the hardest times in life to create educational opportunities and a solid life for her two sons and husband
• Has an impressive brother who is a Director with the Seattle Mariners. His brother hit several homeruns in the final innings on the way to the closest birth to the college world series for the University of Washington Huskies.