18+years
Of hands-on SEO — from the early link era to AI Overviews, done by me rather than delegated.
Taking on 2 new clients this autumn
Your freelance SEO expert
Helping businesses get found where their customers search.
I'm Paul Gordon — a freelance SEO consultant with 18+ years of hands-on experience helping ecommerce brands, local businesses and established companies grow their rankings, organic traffic and revenue. Technical, ecommerce and local SEO — with AI search now built into everything I do.
No sales team — your enquiry comes straight to me.
- 18+ years of hands-on SEO
- Semrush Certified Agency Partner
- 700+ businesses helped
SEO & AI search
Good SEO = Good AI SEO
700+
Businesses helped — ecommerce brands, local firms and established companies.
Semrush
Certified Agency Partner
1/1
One consultant from first call to delivery. No account managers, no juniors.
Real results
Case studies
Real, up-to-date case studies.
SEO focused on commercial outcomes.
Signals — useful, not the goal
VisibilityImpressions & clicks
- Collected from
- Google Search Console
- What it tells us
- How often your pages appear in Google results, and how often people click through.
- Limits
- Google samples and anonymises some queries, and figures arrive with a delay. It shows demand, not buyers.
PositionPage-one keywords
- Collected from
- Rank tracker — a sampled keyword set
- What it tells us
- Where a chosen set of commercial keywords sits over time, by device and location.
- Limits
- A sample, not every search. Results vary by person and place, so a position is a snapshot, not a promise.
AI searchAI citations & Overviews
- Collected from
- Tracked prompt samples across AI Overviews and assistants
- What it tells us
- Whether your brand or pages get cited when people ask AI systems the questions your customers ask.
- Limits
- Prompt tracking is never exhaustive, answers change run to run, and a mention without a link is not a click.
BehaviourSessions & events
- Collected from
- Google Analytics 4
- What it tells us
- What organic visitors do on the site: pages viewed, forms started, add-to-baskets.
- Limits
- Depends on cookie consent and a correct tag setup, so it undercounts. Treat it as a trend, not a full headcount.
The bottom line
Enquiries, sales and revenue.
EnquiriesQualified leads
- Collected from
- Your CRM or enquiry inbox
- What it tells us
- Form fills and calls your team actually rates as real opportunities, not every submission.
- Limits
- Needs an agreed definition of "qualified" and source fields captured at intake. Spam and duplicates get removed.
Sales & revenueOrders & revenue
- Collected from
- Ecommerce platform or CRM closed deals
- What it tells us
- Orders and revenue from organic search, checked against the system that takes the money.
- Limits
- Adjusted for refunds, cancellations and duplicate orders. Attribution across channels is never perfect, so the method is shown, not hidden.
- Agree which conversions count
- Reconcile analytics against CRM and orders
- Report the method and its gaps
What do you need help with?
Be found wherever your customers search.
Google Search, Google Maps, AI Overviews and AI assistants. One joined-up SEO approach, handled directly by me.
- Google Search
- Google Maps
- AI Overviews
- AI assistants
SEO and AI search belong together — not in separate packages.
Contact meMy search marketing approach
- 01
Start with your customers and your business
Before touching a page, we talk. I get to know your business — what actually drives success commercially, the history of the site and brand, what's been tried, and where things genuinely stand today. From there we set out what's realistically achievable over the short and medium term, and take a proper look at your competitors. That conversation shapes everything that follows.
- 02
Be found on Google Search and Maps
Google search is still important — but chasing position one for a single keyword isn't the primary goal it once was. It's one part of your footprint to success. For many local businesses the map positions carry real weight, and AI-driven maps are now emerging alongside them. Some of this will matter more to your business than others — working out which is part of the job.
- 03
Show up in AI Overviews and assistants
This space is changing drastically, and it isn't about gaming the system with tricks anyone can copy. Performing here means understanding how these systems fan out queries, then making everything — from the website at the bottom to the brand at the top — as strong as it can be. The key is tracking: what the LLMs in your niche actually show and cite across consideration, comparison, purchase and brand. From there, we build a clear path towards it.
- 04
Don't forget the other search engines
Bing and the smaller search engines still generate direct sales, referrals and visibility — and I'm sure I'm not the only SEO who'd say they shouldn't be overlooked any more. Writing this in 2026, I'm seeing a small but growing share of Bing referrals across client accounts, particularly in ecommerce. It's a fraction of the whole, but it's real — and it's increasing.
- 05
Measure visibility over time, not one ranking
One ranking is only a snapshot — and your brand can now be found in so many places: Google organic, Maps, AI Overviews, AI assistants, Bing, paid search, Shopping. All of it assists the same goal: converting. If that sounds less stable than the old "rank number one" world, you're right. The job now is positioning yourself to improve your chances in every moment you might appear — so I measure your share of visibility across an agreed sample of searches, platforms and periods, alongside real enquiries and sales.
See what I see
You get the same reports I work from. Every number shows where it came from, which dates it covers and how it was measured. Good months and bad months sit side by side — I don’t pick the flattering bits, and I won’t promise a fixed position.
Anonymised reporting examples — static snapshots, not live data.
Competitor benchmarks
See how your visibility compares with competitors using the same tracked keyword set. This example covers Google UK on desktop, checked on 24 September 2026 — not every country or device. Client and competitor names have been removed for privacy.
Performance across three named windows
Each source shows its own dates — Search Console, GA4 and rank data don’t refresh on the same day. Every row has its own scale, so compare bars within a row, not across metrics. Drops stay in (clicks and CTR are down on last year), and the gap with no data is labelled, not hidden. AI Overview prevalence counts qualifying tracked-keyword days, not brand citations.
Your agreed KPIs, in one place
An agreed scorecard keeps the focus on what matters to your business. Search visibility, conversion events and AI discovery sit together, with the reporting period and movement shown. Client details and individual search terms are hidden here, while the measures and their context remain visible.
Connect visibility to commercial outcomes
See how different channels contribute to conversions, purchases and revenue — including organic search and AI assistants. Illustrative event label changed. Your report uses your own agreed conversion definitions.
Page-one rankings don’t tell the whole story
A page can rank on page one without bringing you meaningful results. Rankings matter, but they are only one part of the picture. I bring AI answer citations, Search Console impressions, clicks and click-through rate together with analytics sessions, key events and keyword movement — so we can understand what the page is actually doing.
AI answers are probabilistic: visibility can vary between questions and runs. A citation isn’t a visit, and a visit isn’t a conversion. These sources cover different windows and can’t always be joined into a single journey. You get full transparency into the data we can measure, its limits and what it means — not just a ranking report.
Need help with something specific?
Every business comes to me with a different problem — because every business is different. There's no point chasing a vanity keyword just because it has volume: if the intent doesn't convert, you're pushing a performance metric, not the bottom line. It's not about position one — it's about where your brand is being seen across all the different areas of search. These are the areas I help with most.
- Illustrative example — not client results
SEO Consultancy
A second pair of eyes when the next move isn’t obvious
Maybe you have an in-house marketer, an agency or a developer already doing the doing. I'm not there to tell anyone they're doing it wrong — I'm a second pair of eyes and an honest second opinion. Oversights happen to all of us; it's about adapting, and how the data is managed. From there we open a dialogue: what to test, and where to focus next quarter.
SEO Consultancy - Illustrative example — not client results
Ecommerce SEO
More of the right shoppers landing on the right products
With ecommerce, the first job is making sure everything is technically sound. Once it is, your products have more opportunity to be seen everywhere — organic, Merchant Center, paid, the lot. Alongside that I look at the UX and the funnel, so you convert as well as you can — even if that means capturing a lead first, depending on your product range.
Ecommerce SEO - Illustrative example — not client results
Shopify SEO
Get your Shopify foundations right from the off
Shopify does a lot for you — but handled incorrectly, it quietly costs visibility. There's a checklist I work through to make sure everything's sound: collections, URLs, theme, apps, structured data. It's about getting the right foundations in from the off, aligned with what you want the store to achieve — and I know where the platform bends and where it doesn't.
Shopify SEO - Illustrative example — not client results
Technical SEO
Fix what’s stopping search engines reaching your best pages
Crawl waste, indexing gaps, slow templates — with modern tools, finding these is quick, and most people can. The skill is what happens next: putting it all together, directing your development team properly, and implementing it myself where I have to. With the right guidance, technical SEO is one of the fastest areas of modern search to get right.
Technical SEO - Illustrative example — not client results
Local SEO
Show up when nearby customers are ready to call or visit
Local search keeps changing — maps, AI maps, results shifting with where the searcher is standing. The job now is knowing where you show over a period of time, not one given day, and tracking where your conversions actually come from. It doesn't need to be complex — but it does need to be reactive, not monthly box-ticking, because what gets presented changes constantly.
Local SEO - Illustrative example — not client results
SEO Audits
Know what’s holding you back and what to fix first
Anyone can run some sort of audit through an AI tool now — not perfect, but it gives you an idea. Where it gets challenging is complexity: the bigger the site, the more experience matters. The real point of an audit is making better-informed decisions — a migration, a new build, or simply optimising better in search — with evidence behind each one.
SEO Audits - Illustrative example — not client results
Website Migration
Change your website without losing what you’ve earned
Migrations are about mitigating the risk to your visibility. Moving Magento to Shopify, say, brings turbulence — you're forced into collections and new URL structures. What matters is redirect mapping done properly, and staging re-crawled constantly as your development team makes changes. Keep the path clear — redirects, pages and content in line or better — and it's more straightforward than it sounds.
Website Migration - Illustrative example — not client results
AI SEO
Get cited when customers ask AI for answers
AI assistants have been part of search for a while — you might just be thinking about it now. I've been testing this heavily since last year, watching the trend emerge. It takes patience: once you understand what's being cited, who your competitors are and the gap between you, you can build towards real visibility. And credibility counts — a poorly reviewed brand will struggle here.
AI SEO
Why hire a freelance SEO consultant over an agency?
You won't get a dedicated account manager here — because you won't need one. There are no layers between you and the person doing the work: as an independent SEO consultant, I set the direction, analyse the data and deliver it myself. And because I only take on a handful of clients at a time, you get my full attention rather than a slice of a team's.
I've been doing this for more than 18 years, and the job keeps changing — AI-driven results now sit alongside traditional rankings. Being on page one isn't the whole picture any more. I look at where your business needs to be seen across search, then connect the work to what actually matters commercially: enquiries, sign-ups, purchases and revenue.
You'll have a tracking portal that keeps performance transparent — what's winning, where things have dipped and what's changed. Even good SEO moves around as Google's algorithms and results evolve. I watch for that, explain what it means and adjust the work where needed. I don't guarantee rankings, because nobody honestly can. What you get is experienced delivery, clear reporting and a considered response to whatever search does next.
For ongoing work, I ask for two months' notice if you want to pause or stop — it lets me plan the remaining work properly and keep my client list small. Sprints and one-off projects follow their own agreed scope.
The independent advantage
- ✓You work with me, not a teamI only take on a handful of clients at a time, so you get my full attention. The calls, the decisions, the analysis and the delivery all come from the same person.
- ✓Experienced, evolving delivery18+ years of hands-on SEO applied directly to your business, with an approach that keeps pace with AI-driven search, not the Google of five years ago.
- ✓Transparent, proactive monitoringYour tracking portal shows the wins, the dips and what's changed. When Google moves, I'll tell you what it means and what I'm doing about it.
- ✓Commercial outcomes before perfect scoresRankings aren't guaranteed and aren't the goal on their own. What counts is being visible where your customers search, and the enquiries, sales and revenue that follow.
Take a step towards getting found
Get in touchSuccess stories.
Case study
Jewellery brand: 0 to 900+ page-one keywords — from invisible to category leader in 12 months, then a US launch on the same foundations.
Case study
Recruitment agency: top-three rankings up from 13 to 75 — owning the searches that bring in both clients and candidates for a national specialist agency.
Case study
Clothing brand: sustainable ecommerce growth — reducing paid dependency with a scalable SEO and content framework.
The person behind the work
I'm Paul Gordon, a freelance SEO consultant with more than 18 years of hands-on experience and over 700 businesses helped. I do the work myself — no juniors, no outsourcing — and I've kept my expertise current as search has shifted towards AI-driven results. What you get is clear, honest work tied to the commercial outcomes that matter to your business.
More about my careerHow working with me works
01
Discovery call
A no-pressure chat about your business, your market and where visibility is falling short — in Google and in AI search. I'll review your current setup, flag the low-hanging wins, and outline a clear direction. No fluff, no guesswork.
02
Execution
Once the plan's agreed, I get to work: technical fixes, content improvements, structure, tracking. Done by me, not outsourced.
03
Measure, improve, grow
I monitor what's working across Google, AI search and your actual conversions, and fine-tune every month. Long-term growth, not short-term spikes.
Frequently asked questions
Why work with me, Paul Gordon, rather than an SEO agency?
You work directly with me — a freelance SEO expert with 18+ years of hands-on experience, applied to your business with an approach that keeps evolving alongside AI search. I only take on a handful of clients at a time, so you get direct access to the person doing the work, a clear view of what matters commercially, and none of the layers or noise that can come with an agency.
How often will we speak?
We have a proper call every month, where you speak directly with me about the work, what's happening in search and what the data is telling us. Between calls you'll have reporting and access to a tracking portal, so you can always see what's going on.
How do you measure whether the SEO is working?
SEO is not just about being on page one. It is about being seen across the places your customers search and connecting that visibility to commercial outcomes. Depending on your business, those could be form submissions, sign-ups, purchases, revenue or meaningful engagement. Those are the events I want us to understand and measure, rather than treating rankings alone as success.
Will I see what is working and what is not?
Yes. My reporting and tracking portal give you visibility of what is working, what is not working and what has changed — not just the positive results. Even with good SEO, performance can dip as Google’s algorithms and search results change. The important thing is being aware of those changes, explaining them clearly and being proactive about the response.
What if I need to pause or stop ongoing SEO?
For ongoing SEO, we have a straightforward agreement asking for two months’ notice to pause or stop. That lets me reserve capacity and plan the work properly. If we have agreed a particular sprint, such as three months of focused work, or a one-off project, that follows its own agreed scope instead.
How are payments set up?
Ongoing payments are set up through GoCardless Direct Debit. You complete the Direct Debit setup using your bank details, rather than card details. Separately agreed sprints and one-off projects follow their own agreed payment arrangements.
Ready to scale your organic revenue?
Get a straight answer on what isn't working and what it takes to fix it. Every reply comes directly from me.
No sales team - your enquiry goes directly to Paul.