SEVEN jobs have been lost and four staff members have walked out as administrators are called in at a York SEO agency.

Since the appointment of administrators at Media Skunk Works on November 24, 11 employees have left the firm, including seven redundancies.

The business, which is best known for pioneering SEO work primarily in the gaming industry, was issued a winding up order following a dispute with one of its largest customers.

The joint administrators, Mike Jenkins and Dave Broadbent of Begbies Traynor, are currently exploring numerous options to secure the future of the business and safeguard the jobs of the remaining ten staff plus that of the director.

Mr Jenkins said: “We are currently trying to keep it trading while we look at options in terms of either restructuring its debts or selling the business.

“The best way forward is yet to be decided, but in the mean time we are keeping it operational.”

Media Skunk Works was founded in 2012 by Paul Reilly in his basement at Zero House in York.

Today the SEO agency, which specialises in work for the online gaming and casino industries, is based the IT Centre within York Science Park at the University of York.

The business, which also helps companies quickly and easily form scalable in-house SEO departments, operates a range of departments including a client services team, a content team comprised of specialist, trained journalists, a development, linguists and translation services, social media marketing and presence management personnel.

The firm’s innovation laboratory’s services cover many areas of player acquisition and retention, most notably data driven SEO intelligence, scalable content marketing and outreach services.

Founder Paul Reilly regularly speaks at international industry conferences on the topic of SEO.