Denis Graur

Denis Graur

SEO strategist and independent consultant, working remotely with companies in the EU and the US.

Portrait of Denis Graur
Role
SEO Strategist & Consultant
Based in
Bucharest, Romania
In digital
20+ years
Focused on SEO
10+ years
Languages
Romanian, English, Russian
Profile

From building websites to growing them

I've grown organic search from near zero for companies in VPN, cybersecurity, SaaS and publishing.

Over 20 years in digital. I started out designing websites and co-founded four companies along the way. At CactusVPN I took on SEO, content strategy and email marketing, and I've specialized full-time in SEO for more than a decade.

Architecture, UX, technical SEO, content, links and analytics affect each other, so I plan them together. I use AI tools to research and draft faster, and the judgment calls stay mine.

The goal is a site whose structure, content and links keep supporting each other long after a project ends.

2011 – 2026

Experience

  1. SSL Dragon

    SEO Strategist Oct 2022 – Present

    SSL certificate reseller selling in 120+ countries. When I joined: 500+ underoptimized pages, about 1,500 monthly organic visits and no multilingual strategy.

    • Audited 500+ pages, optimized 276 and wrote 188 new articles
    • Rebuilt the URL architecture into clean /ssl-certificates/ and /how-to/ sections
    • Expanded from English to 9 languages; non-English pages brought 78% of clicks at peak
    • Organic traffic ~1,500 → ~50,200/month at peak; top-10 keywords 633 → 8,845; Domain Rating 25 → 64
    Read the SSL Dragon case study

  2. WPZOOM

    SEO Strategist Jul 2023 – Mar 2026

    WordPress theme and plugin company with 250,000+ customers, including Bloomberg and MIT. Traffic was mostly branded and the blog was split across disconnected sections.

    • Rebuilt the blog and published 162 articles in focused content sprints
    • Shipped the WordPress Theme Detector, which became the site's #1 page with 3,400+ monthly clicks
    • Created a statistics page that earned links from 860+ domains, including Shopify, Wix and HubSpot
    • Ran email marketing, PPC and conversion optimization alongside SEO
    • Blog 0 → 16,800+ clicks/month (71% of site traffic); top-10 keywords ~770 → ~6,400
    Read the WPZOOM case study

  3. Basmo

    SEO Strategist Jun 2021 – May 2023

    Book-tracking startup with no blog, little traffic and no SEO foundation.

    • Planned and ran the content strategy behind 200+ articles
    • Moved the domain without losing visibility
    • Localized 300+ articles into 5 languages
    • Organic traffic 1,000 → 100,000 users/month; referring domains 70 → 1,200
    Read the Basmo case study

  4. CactusVPN

    Co-founder & SEO Lead Nov 2011 – Oct 2022

    VPN service I co-founded, up against heavily funded competitors in one of the hardest niches in search.

    • Designed the site architecture and built the site in HTML/CSS and WordPress, including the UI/UX
    • Built a 550+ page library: 230+ tutorials and 3 pillar hubs
    • Localized 436 pages into 6 languages, with #1 rankings and 20–57% CTRs abroad
    • Grew from zero to 6,000+ top-10 rankings, including 147 #1 positions in the US

    Alongside it: SEO, UI/UX and project management for SmartyDNS, 2013 – 2021.

    Read the CactusVPN case study

  5. Before search

    Co-founder & web designer 2001 – 2013

    Design work, much of it remote for companies in Montreal, and the companies I co-founded in Moldova before CactusVPN.

    • Co-founded Kinetik Lab, a web design studio (2001 – 2007)
    • Co-founded Clickits, an advertising agency (2007 – 2013)
    • Co-founded Emailwear, a marketplace of newsletter templates (2010 – 2013)
    • Designed websites and email newsletters for CakeMail, Propeople and Courrielleur
Words

What people say

From the people who ran the programs with me, on their own sites.

I worked with Denis for almost three years at WPZOOM, where he was responsible for SEO and content strategy. Denis helped improve our organic visibility and build a more consistent content strategy over time. He's reliable, detail-oriented, and great to work with. I'd happily recommend him to any team looking for someone to lead their SEO efforts.

Pavel CioriciOwner, WPZOOM

I had the pleasure of working with Denis and always appreciated his focus, structure-oriented approach, and fact-driven decision-making. He is a true professional in SEO and content marketing, with sharp attention to detail and a constant finger on the pulse of the industry. I highly recommend him as an SEO specialist. If I were building a website today, Denis would be the first person I'd trust to lead the SEO and content strategy.

Ina MoroșanuProduct Success Lead
Background

Education

Technical University of Moldova

Engineer in Information Technologies 2002 – 2006

Software development, web technologies, and digital systems.

Toolkit

What I work with

Beyond SEO
  • Email marketing
  • PPC (Google Ads)
  • Conversion optimization
Research & audits
  • Ahrefs
  • Semrush
  • Screaming Frog
  • PageSpeed Insights
Analytics & tracking
  • Google Search Console
  • Bing Webmaster Tools
  • Google Analytics
  • Google Tag Manager
  • Looker Studio
Build
  • HTML/CSS
  • WordPress
  • Astro
  • Cloudflare
  • Structured data
AI
  • Claude
  • Claude Code
  • ChatGPT
  • Gemini
Local
  • Google Business Profile

Tell me about your site.

Where organic search stands today and where you want it to go, and I'll tell you where I'd start.

Get in touch