In this video Barry Adams, a Dutch national who has lived and worked in Northern Ireland for seven years as an SEO consultant, reflects on how the UK’s Brexit vote has affected him both personally and professionally. He describes the sudden feeling of being unwelcome as a European citizen, despite years of community acceptance, and the emotional difficulty of reconciling his European identity with the UK’s decision to leave the EU. Professionally, he outlines the challenges his cross‑border SEO business faces: potential complications with Irish clients, the need to possibly establish a Dublin entity, the impact of reduced budgets in manufacturing, farming, and tourism, and the immediate effects of the pound‑euro exchange‑rate shift on invoicing. He shares contingency plans with his British‑citizen wife, including applying for permanent UK residency and pursuing an Irish passport to retain freedom of movement. Adams concludes that while the SEO industry itself remains unchanged (Google’s algorithms are stable), the broader economic uncertainty will affect client spending, and he adopts a cautious, adaptive stance, choosing to stay emotionally measured and wait for the situation to stabilise.
Chapters
Yes, Brexit. The UK has now voted to leave the European Union, and as a Dutchman living and working in Northern Ireland for the past 7 years, that has quite a profound impact on me. First of all, taking it outside the business context and looking at it on a personal level, I have never felt unwelcome in Northern Ireland. In fact, the Northern Irish local community has welcomed me with open arms, and I felt very welcome and very embraced by the people here and felt like I was really contributing to society here and, you know, doing my bit to help the local digital economy grow and mature. And last Friday after the Brexit vote was the very first day since I lived here that I felt unwelcome as a European citizen. In the United Kingdom, and that was a very strange feeling and not a very nice feeling. And I'm still coming to grips with that to an extent. Fortunately, a lot of people around me have said that, you know, they don't want me to go anywhere. They still feel that I'm very much part of the local community here and want me to stick around. But it's been tough for me to come to grips with such a massive vote to leave the European Union because I've always considered myself to be a European citizen first and foremost rather than a Dutchman. But that's a personal thing. On a professional level, as a provider of SEO services to clients all across Europe, this will have a very strong impact to how I do business. I have quite a few clients who are based in the Republic of Ireland, which is just a few short miles from Belfast where I live and work. And my business dealings with them are going to have to change depending on what happens with the exit negotiations. I can imagine it's going to become harder for me as well to win new clients in the Republic of Ireland because of the uncertainty around Brexit at the moment. It's very likely I'm going to have to set up a business in Dublin if I want to keep on winning new clients, which I do want to do because it is a very fertile market. And Northern Ireland is a fairly small place after all, and there's only so much that I can achieve here. Northern Ireland itself is going to have a massive impact on the Brexit vote because it is so dependent on the Republic of Ireland as well as on European Union funding. So that is going to severely impact business here across all industries, especially farming and manufacturing. And since I have quite a lot of clients in the manufacturing industry, as well as in tourism, which is also going to be affected quite heavily, I suspect we'll see smaller budgets And less long-term investment in SEO and digital marketing, at least on the short term, until the uncertainties are ironed out and we see what is happening with the economy. The change in exchange rate between the pound and euro has already affected me, of course, because all my clients pay me in euros, which is a good thing because I get more euros now for the same pound. But on the other hand, I do invoice other clients in pounds. So it makes it cheaper for them to get the service out there, which should help me win more business ironically in the long term. But in the short term, like I said, the uncertainty around Brexit is going to negatively impact business in Northern Ireland and myself as an SEO provider. As for the future, like I said, it's been tough for me. as a European citizen, and just to see the emotional decisions that people have made around Brexit. And I'm responding emotionally to that as well, rather than rationally, and I sort of resent myself for doing that, but it's hard to escape that, you know. It's hard to escape the notion that the country has voted on such a large scale to close itself off from Europe. And as a European citizen, that hurts me, it really does. And I'm not sure how I can come to grips with that. In due time I will. My wife and I are, you know, talking a lot about what's happening and what we're going to do in the future, because she's a British citizen, of course, and I'm a Dutch citizen, and we're going to have to see about what happens with regards to, you know, freedom of movement, freedom to work in European countries. We have been putting contingency plans in place. Basically, I'm applying for permanent British residency. At the same time, my wife, being a Northern Irish resident, is entitled to an Irish passport, which is an option we're pursuing as well, so that we will have— we'll both have 2 passports, so we can basically choose to live and work in the UK or live and work anywhere else in the European Union. So we're keeping our options open at the moment. It's a bit of an uncertain situation right now, and we'll just have to wait and see what happens in the short term, the medium term, and the long term. For SEO, nothing really will change. Google hasn't changed. The algorithms still work. It's more for businesses to work through this period of uncertainty and wait out the economic repercussions of a UK exit of the European Union. And well, as always, SEO will adapt. It's what we're good at. We always go with the flow. We adapt to changes and see whatever happens. A lot of information is out there at the moment that is not necessarily accurate. People just speculating on what's going to happen. A lot of harsh words being spoken to people on all across all different camps and different sides of the equation. I've tried to not engage too much in that, even though I feel personally very angry and frustrated. It's what happened, but it's not a particularly productive use of my energy to, you know, rant and rave too much about that. Usually I'm very keen on ranting and raving about topics, as, you know, a lot of people know out there, but this has affected me on such a personal level that I find myself emotionally unable to do that. So I'm just keeping my distance at the moment. Seeing how it will all pan out. On the whole, though, we just don't know what's going to happen, so it's hard to jump to conclusions at the moment. We'll just wait and see, and hopefully, you know, it's going to be business as usual soon, which I hope we can come back to just delivering good value for our clients as we always have.
