Meet the Pride: Brendan Walsh

In this installation of our Meet the Pride Series, meet Brendan W., Lionbridge’s Global Technical Search Expert. Brendan has been at Lionbridge for over a decade. He’s seen its evolution from a localization and translation company to one equally focused on AI-powered language and content solutions. Brendan has enhanced his own work extensively with AI tools. Read about Brendan and how he’s advanced his career using AI at Lionbridge.

Where do you live?

I live in a picturesque village called Wicklow. It’s very close to Dublin. Wicklow is so beautiful that it’s frequently used to film movies.

What should people who visit Wicklow be sure to see or do?

There’s a beautiful former monastic settlement called Glendalough. There are also a lot of gorgeous beaches and nature walks. I try to immerse myself in nature here every day.

What are your other hobbies outside of work?

As I mentioned, I love nature walks. I also enjoy yoga and visiting our local pub.

What’s your role at Lionbridge?

I’m an SEO subject matter expert. I look after Lionbridge’s website, but I mainly consult our customers on their websites. I specialize in looking at challenges international websites face, such as geotargeting. I help them optimize content using a combination of keyword research, translation, transcreation, and content creation. In more general terms, I help customers ensure their target audience lands on the right page.

How did you get into this role?

I was laid off during the financial crisis (around 2008). I was a technical architect then and had trouble finding my next job. I read a book called What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis. As a favor, I reviewed a friend’s website for its SEO performance. I found the work so interesting I decided to become an SEO expert.

What do you enjoy about your role?

I love the analysis of it. I like analyzing websites and helping customers pinpoint what needs to be fixed or optimized. I also enjoy evangelizing SEO and AI within the Lionbridge organization.

What do you find exciting about this industry?

It’s the type of customers. I often get to work with huge, name-brand companies. It’s fun to help these industry giants get their content in front of the right audience (which sometimes includes me).

You’ve been at Lionbridge for over 10 years. How has the company evolved in that time?

In two significant ways. Firstly, we’ve gone from in-office to pretty fully remote. While we do have people in-office, many Lionbridge people work from home. I was working from home for at least three years before the pandemic.   

The second change has been how much we’ve embraced AI. Philosophically, Lionbridge has become an AI-centric organization (though we differentiate ourselves by the exceptional, experienced humans we have in every project and workflow). On my team alone, we now provide a variety of SEO service offerings. We developed QA tools for SEO and our own proprietary tools that automate many elements of the SEO lifecycle. Transcreation and content creation now leverage AI, making prices more affordable for customers. As a company, everyone has an AI goal to develop and work toward each year. 

How do you use AI in your job?

I use AI regularly in a few ways:

1. To generate content for customers per their needs. (There is, of course, a human post-editor depending on how high-value or technical the content is.)

2. To draft emails, materials for customer presentations, and written materials for internal tasks.

3. To evaluate whether a customer website is ready for AI. I have tools that help me see if websites have optimized, structured data, strong social media usage, and adequate citations and backlinks. I also check if media on customer websites are properly optimized and images have alt tags.

Do you see any AI challenges for the industry or your own job?

The biggest challenge is how much AI hallucinates when creating corporate content. This is where the right human in the loop is crucial. When asking AI about SEO best practices, these change so frequently that it’s vital for me to check the AI recommendations for a website and ensure they’re based on the most accurate, updated info. It will frequently use 10-year-old content that may no longer be appropriate.

What are some exciting opportunities on the horizon for your team?

Lionbridge’s Content Remix app lets us offer more advanced services at a much lower price point than we could previously. We can use Content Remix to create or transcreate high volumes of content for regional audiences. The bigger the project and amount of content, the better the savings for the customer.

What’s your top SEO advice for 2025 and beyond?

Focus on answering questions. Research in-market questions and answer them directly on your web pages. This will work for regular search, but will also be effective for AI search.