Carl Hendy is the Founder of Audits.com with 20+ years of experience in enterprise SEO and ecommerce. He has advised global brands including BlackRock, British Airways, Aviva, Groupon, and Eventbrite, and supports VC and Private Equity portfolios on scalable organic growth.
On X he’s known for his dry, sarcastic, classic British humour and for always speaking his truth (without filters).
1. Audits.com is trusted by brands, investors, and in-house teams. What gap in the market made you decide to build it?
I have been consulting in SEO on and off for over 20 years and still genuinely enjoy working in the field despite the recent changes and challenges. I built Audits.com as a home for my consulting rather than operating purely as “Carl Hendy”. A strong domain name can add credibility to a brand, although nearly all of my work comes via word of mouth.
2. Working closely with investors and VCs, what do they most often misunderstand about SEO when evaluating a business?
Past website history and performance can strongly influence how quickly improvements are seen. In some cases, implementing recommendations does not lead to immediate gains, but can deliver significant value by first halting a declining trend before positive growth becomes visible.
3. For companies considering your services, what should they expect from working with you?
Over 20 years of experience across agency and client-side roles, including operating and exiting a business to private equity, with a commercially driven search approach focused on compounding long-term returns.
4. You’ve launched, acquired, and sold multiple web assets. How big a role has domain trading played in your journey?
I have enjoyed buying and selling domain names for over 25 years and still get a real buzz from securing or selling a great name. In recent years, I have had a major clear-out of UK domains to focus primarily on .com and .com.au. Domain names played an important role in my early affiliate marketing work, when exact-match .co.uk or .org domains were often an easy win. I have been fortunate to own some excellent domains, as well as plenty of terrible ones.
5. Would you ever consider selling Audits.com?
Everyone has a price, although it’s a great match for the service I offer.
6. Across your side projects have you experimented more with AdSense, affiliate models like Amazon, or other monetisation strategies?
All of the above, alongside lead generation across financial products and SaaS. I used AdSense in the early days and even picked up a couple of bans for over-optimising ads. I still own domains purchased over 20 years ago that generate small amounts of Amazon and other affiliate commission. Over the past five to ten years, I have spent less time on affiliate marketing, focusing instead on consulting and growing my previous agency which led to an exit. Recently with the advance of “vibe coding” I have built a number of products for clients and pushed a couple of my side projects live, brining back some of the early excitement I had with the internet.
7. For someone aiming to make a living from affiliate sites and niche projects today, what advice really still holds up in 2026?
Offering a genuinely unique perspective, tool, or proposition that is not available elsewhere is key. This often means combining multiple data sources or putting in extra effort to deliver real utility. Content alone no longer delivers the returns it once did. Affiliate sites that continue to perform well typically offer genuine first-hand experience and demonstrate strong search signals beyond traditional organic search.
8. You’ve written extensively about SEO awards and their real value. In your view, when do awards genuinely matter, and when are they just noise?
There are now so many awards and events that their value feels heavily diluted. I have shared data showing that most agencies positioning themselves as “award-winning” makes this distinction largely meaningless for brands going through RFPs. Last year, as a Search Awards judge, I found many submissions to be weak and low-effort. Having led multiple SEO teams and co-owned an award-winning agency, I have seen the pros and cons first-hand. If I were to start another agency, I would probably not enter SEO awards unless the process improved and the genuine value of ownership increased.
I see far more value in agencies that retain clients for 5+ years and consistently retain top-tier staff than in search awards.
9. What do you enjoy most about life on the Gold Coast? And have you already spotted any abandoned shopping trolleys in random places?
Three years on, I still struggle to understand why there are shopping trolleys scattered everywhere. It is technically theft and a form of litter (which I hate).
I enjoy the early morning starts, coffee shops opening at 5am, and the mostly warm, sunny weather. The beaches are some of the best in the world, and it is great to keep doors and windows open with fresh air circulating. There is a real positive energy to the place and it’s not all “Surfers Paradise”.
10. As a kid, which superhero did you want to be and has that changed over the years?
It would have been James Bond or a member of the A-Team. I have a background in cyber security and IT and have often wished I had pursued a role in the security services (I can neither confirm nor deny whether one was ever offered). It is still an area I am very interested in and would love to work in one day.