James Brockbank is managing director and founder of Digitaloft, the Kendal and Manchester search agency he started in 2014 after leaving a head of digital role. He built the agency around two disciplines, SEO and digital PR, and says it earned its first editorial links through creative content campaigns in 2015.
Walking Away in 2014
Brockbank's story on the agency's about page begins with leaving a head of digital role in 2014, "disillusioned with the direction the SEO industry was heading." It was 18 months after Google's Penguin update, he writes, and SEO was still treated as a manipulative, spam-driven channel with no place at the chief marketing officer's table. That frustration pushed him to rethink how SEO should be done.
SEO and Digital PR Under One Roof
From the first day he combined deep SEO knowledge with creative digital PR. Digitaloft started earning editorial links through creative content campaigns in 2015, and he says it remains one of the few agencies as strong at digital PR as at SEO.
He argues that traffic and links have been celebrated for too long, and that "the only true measure of SEO success is revenue." The agency now sells GEO retainers that build on the same earned coverage.
Fifty Awards and a Team That Stays
He credits the agency's work with more than 50 industry awards over ten years, including the UK Search Awards, Global Search Awards, and The Drum Awards. His profile page lists a 2026 UK Digital Excellence Awards win for Standout B2C SEO Campaign of the Year and a PRCA accreditation in August 2026.
Of the team he writes that many have been with Digitaloft for years, some since the beginning, and that some left and chose to come back.