About Us
Who we are
Found First is a modern SEO and visibility studio built to help businesses get found by the right people.
We work across Google Search, Google Maps and AI-driven search to improve the kind of visibility that actually matters – the kind that leads to better enquiries, warmer leads, stronger authority and more customers.
Our approach combines strategy, technical SEO, content, authority-building and smart AI workflows to help businesses grow in a way that is clearer, more focused and more sustainable.
“Intensity makes a good story. Consistency makes progress.” – James Clear
The story behind Found First
Before Found First, Dave Bell co-built Hurry The Food Up into one of the world’s largest vegetarian food websites, reaching more than 4.2 million annual visitors and building a substantial subscription business.
But the most valuable lessons did not come just from growth. They came from disruption.
In 2019, Hurry The Food Up was hit by a deliberate bot attack that led to our Google ads account being suspended. Overnight, we lost around 90% of our revenue.
For a few days, it was brutal (and sad). Then we got back to work.
Instead of waiting and hoping things would recover, we focused on building something stronger. We created a service that could turn the right kind of visibility into a more stable and valuable business.
Within six months, that new direction was already generating meaningful revenue.
Expect the unexpected
Then came an unexpected call from Mediavine (our ad manager). They told us they had been campaigning to Google on our behalf, including speaking to them directly, and soon afterwards we were reinstated.
Suddenly, we had our ad income back as well as the new revenue streams we had built in the meantime.
That experience shaped a belief that still drives Found First today:
The right traffic is far more valuable than just more traffic.
Traffic on its own is fragile. The real value comes from having the right pages, the right authority, and the right visibility in front of the right people.
Meet Dave
Dave Bell
SEO is part art, part science
The art is your business.
Your brand. Your offer. Your tone. Your difference. The thing that makes you worth choosing in the first place.
The science is how we refine that art so the right people can actually see it – through strategy, structure, search intent, content, authority and visibility.
Not everyone has to like your art. In fact, that is often a strength.
Good SEO is not about attracting everyone. It is about filtering out the wrong people and bringing in the people who are most likely to value what you do, need what you offer, and become customers.
That is the kind of visibility we care about.