In today’s digital marketing, a website that doesn’t include SEO resembles a vehicle without fuel. Think about it: 68% of all online experiences start with a search engine. 1 In other words, SEO — being seen via search — is vital to your marketing strategies.
Not only does SEO boost brand visibility, it also makes your products and services easier to access. As a result, local SEO aids in increasing leads and demand. With so many individuals and firms claiming to be the best, selecting the best SEO expert can be challenging.
To make your search easier, we’ve researched and compiled a list of the best SEO specialists in the UK.
What is an SEO expert?
An SEO expert aids in increasing organic traffic from search engines. They examine, create and update content across websites to make them more search engine-friendly and rank higher. This is crucial: 75% of people searching for a particular product or service don’t scroll past the first page.2
Their job is to ensure that your website appears here — and that people click on it. They create keyword strategies, optimise current content to rank higher and create internal and external linking strategies to build domain authority.
But SEO is just one piece of the puzzle within the broader jigsaw of digital marketing. A successfully executed digital marketing strategy helps boost brand visibility, driving traffic and sales. With the help of a well-equipped digital marketing agency, that provides SEO expertise, any business can have a successful digital marketing campaign.
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What should I look for in an SEO expert?
When determining an SEO expert to work with, keep in mind:
- Services: Not every SEO specialist offers everything. There are a variety of SEO techniques, with some specialising in off-page and on-page optimisation, for example, while others focus on technical optimisation. A competent SEO consultant will be able to show that they can connect the various SEO marketing aspects into a cohesive digital marketing strategy, and provide clear objectives and results.
- Track record: Many SEO professionals talk a good game, but satisfied customers are the real litmus test. If you’re searching for an SEO expert, look for testimonials. These should demonstrate how the clients benefitted from their SEO expertise.
- Long-term planning: In some circumstances, you might simply require temporary SEO marketing assistance. However, a good SEO consultant is strategic and offers realistic long-term plans. SEO marketing is a continuous process that doesn’t produce results overnight. Experts who understand this can provide better results over the long run.
- Flexibility: Your marketing efforts won’t always consist of X number of blogs and social media posts a month. You may have to step up your efforts at times, or you may want to pull them back. A top-notch SEO expert will be adaptable enough to deal with this and meet deadlines while remaining communicative about changes.
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The Best SEO Experts UK
Steve Napier
Steve Napier is among the most experienced freelance SEO consultants in the UK. Since 2004, he has assisted hundreds of companies in raising their organic search ranks to increase revenue and traffic.
Steve has experience working with various businesses, including PLCs and other SEO firms to enhance their internet visibility. He is well-versed in all aspects of SEO marketing. Over the years, he has gained experience working directly with robots.txt, .htaccess, and sitemap.xml files and enhancing SEO copywriting, internal linking, and other SEO-related tasks.
Areas of expertise
- Local and small business SEO
- On-site SEO
- Off-site SEO
- Backlinking strategy
- Homepage optimisation
Daniel Foley
With over 21 years of experience, Daniel uses his knowledge and skills to generate significant organic search results in search rankings and generate traffic. He has a sizable collection of SEO case studies showing how he delivers professional, ROI-driven SEO strategies, with companies he’s worked with attesting to a 95% success rate.
Daniel’s work has been featured on sites including The Drum Awards, Search Engine Land and The Growth Show. Likewise, his portfolio includes works featured on Virgin Holidays, holidaycottages.co.uk, Ladbrokes and WRANGU.
Area of expertise
- Content strategies
- Conversion Rate Optimisation
- SEO training
- SEO and SEM consultancy
- Website SEO audits
- Email marketing
- Digital PR and link building
Gaz Hall
Gaz Hall, with more than 20 years of experience working as an expert in SEO marketing, has helped position various client websites at the top of popular search engines, including Google and Yahoo. Hall develops customised SEO strategies to help his clients increase website traffic and generate income, even in highly competitive industries.
A range of SEO consultancy tasks are available through Gaz’s freelance services. He promises to increase your leads, traffic, sales, clickthroughs and online presence. According to the customer reviews, he delivers on what he promises.
Areas of expertise
- Local SEO
- SEO website migration
- SEO consultancy
- Technical SEO audit
- Link building
- Content marketing
- Competitor analysis
- Google penalty removal
Paul Hoda
A Google SEO expert, Paul offers a full range of SEO services, including technical SEO, off-site and on-site optimisation, and SEO consulting services. He has helped many businesses increase their online sales and Google rankings through his ‘A to Z’ SEO strategy.
Paul specialises in SEO on Google.co.uk over Google.com. So if you’re a UK-only or UK-focused business, you can focus on ranking for UK audiences and increasing UK traffic — while google.com and Bing also pick up optimisations.
Areas of expertise
- WordPress SEO
- Google.co.uk ranking
- Recovery of ranking loss
- Increasing ranking for new websites
- Link building using blogs
- Premium link building using authority websites
Daniel Brooks
Dan Brooks is a technical SEO UK expert that works as a freelancer, with over 10 years of experience in providing results for firms in the UK and abroad. Daniel works as a freelance SEO consultant, helping small business owners grow their organic traffic and increase their rank through true-and-tested SEO strategies. Alongside this, his day job is as an SEO consultant for Aira, which was just named the UK’s top SEO firm.
He’s an expert in technical SEO. That entails taking a closer look at your website’s more intricate features so that popular search engines like Bing and Google can crawl, index, and rank it on their results pages.
Areas of expertise
- Technical SEO support
- SEO audits
- On-page SEO optimisation
- Keyword mapping and research
- Local SEO
- Content audits
- International SEOs
- SEO workshops and training
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Tom Crewe
Tom Crewe, who previously worked as Head of SEO for an agency, is now a freelance SEO consultant. He helps businesses of all types to increase their conversion rates, revenue, and organic traffic. For over 8 years, his Head of SEO agency role equipped him with the experience and expertise in planning and executing successful SEO plans for many clients.
According to the reviews on his website, he provides brilliant work and has no problem with being flexible and proactive about working with an in-house team.
Areas of expertise
- Keyword research
- SEO audits
- Technical SEO
- On-page optimisation
- Content marketing
- Website migrations
- Link building
- Local SEO
- Algorithm recovery
Matthew Woodward
Matthew Woodward is an international SEO consultant based in the UK — but attests to creating some of the top SEO blogs in the world. For 20 years, Matthew has been building websites helping companies with digital marketing and perfecting his SEO skills. As a result, SEO marketing has become his passion and, in his own words, obsession.
Through efficient research and a strategy laser-focused on the company objectives, he has assisted numerous individuals and organisations in taking control of their organic search traffic. He offers SEO consultancy or agency services through his company Search Logistics.
Areas of expertise
- Developing a creative SEO approach
- Identifying SEO issues
- Recovering from search penalities
- Link building
- SEO consultancy and agency services
Joshua George
Joshua George started out as a freelance consultant and went on to build ClickSlice due to his success with delivering top SEO results with the businesses he’s worked with. Although he still works personally with a lot of clients, this lets him reach a much wider user base.
Joshua focuses on rejuvenating on-page optimisation and clearing out toxic backlinks to ensure clients’ websites consistently hit the first page of search results. ClickSlice have years of combined experience technical know-how to put at their clients disposal, as well as offering private SEO training for marketing departments one-on-one with Joshua.
Area of expertise:
- On-page optimisation
- Top quality backlink creation
- National and local SEO
- Ecommerce SEO
- WordPress SEO
- Shopify SEO
- Magento SEO
Itamar Blauer
Writing for industry-leading publications and speaking at international SEO conferences, Itamar Blauer has grown from in-house SEO to agency work to currently being the Senior SEO Director at StudioHawk, an award winning and international SEO agency.
With hours of content posted online from podcasts and webinars to research and entire books, Itamar boasts a track-record of UX-focused, data-driven SEO results that can rival anyone in the field. Transparency in his methods and stress-testing any new strategies for clients lends Itamar credibility that backs up his consistent results.
Area of expertise:
- ROI on Google algorithm SEO
- Increasing global visibility
- Youtube SEO
- Keyword optimisation
- Video and photo optimisation
Luca Tagliaferro
An SEO expert for SEO experts, Luca Tagliaferro helps breakdown what SEO actually is and how it works, providing you with a masterclass in UX for SEO and conversion rate optimisation. Alongside this is daily contact and regular meetings to finetune the process for your specific needs.
Luca’s process is simple and effective. Starting with an audit on your current SEO position, keywords and topic-specific terms are identified and a strategy is proposed. This is then constantly monitored and reported back on to identify methods of optimisation to nail in SEO success. The final stages are doubled up with building authentic and high quality links to boost your domain’s online credibility and place you on the first page of search results.
Area of expertise:
- Increasing domain authority through generating the right backlinks
- Scaling through organic growth
- SEO audits
- National and local SEO
- Blog management
Lukasz Zelezny
With over a decade of experience, Lukasz Zelezny has worked for a few of the biggest UK companies by providing SEO consulting services, SEO audits, and SEO workshops.
Based in London, Lukasz prides himself in collaborating with every client to establish ambitious, attainable SEO goals and create a tailored plan to achieve them. Lukasz offers SEO workshops to help businesses improve their SEO themselves, alongside an SEO audit to help you identify where your SEO strategy needs improvement.
Areas of expertise
- Competitive analysis
- Social media SEO campaigns
- Backlinks and online directory listings
- Site architecture
Tom Crowe
A top freelance SEO consultant based in the UK, Tom Crowe aids businesses in boosting their online visibility by using proven SEO strategies to increase organic traffic from popular search engines.
He promises to deliver customised, flexible, and transparent SEO tactics by drawing on his over-8 years of experience in the digital marketing industry. Tom has worked with brands including Platypus Digital, The Guardian, voucherbox.co.uk and James Villa Holidays.
Areas of expertise
- SEO for B2B businesses
- Data-led insights
- Website strategy
- Content and media SEO
- SEO audit services
Stacey McNaught
Starting with an SEO agency, Stacey McNaught has since branched out as a freelance SEO and content marketing expert. She is well-known for her SEO training workshops in the UK, US, and Europe.
Through her freelance SEO consultancy firm, McNaught Digital, she’s prepared to assist your company in boosting its online presence, increasing customer conversion rate, and growing revenue. She has been copywriting for businesses since 2006 and has conducted SEO marketing for companies in Europe since 2009.
Areas of expertise
- Content marketing consultancy
- SEO training courses
- Link building
- eCommerce SEO
- Outreach and PR services
How much does it cost to hire an SEO specialist?
When choosing an SEO freelance expert, it’s important to establish a budget. As you begin researching what SEO capabilities you need, you’ll find that the cost of hiring an SEO specialist varies greatly.
SEO’s experts’ fees can range from £100 up to £8,000+ a month. The price varies based on the scale of your project, and how you choose to enlist an expert: as a consultant by the hour, per project or with a monthly retainer. What’s clear, though, is that by carefully selecting the right SEO expert for your business, the potential ROI is massive.
Bear in mind, though, that SEO is one part of a digital marketing strategy. SEO can help get you in front of customers and help drive them to your site. But you also need to be able to generate and convert leads in different ways, move them through the sales pipeline and retain them as customers. A wider digital marketing strategy offers this — and this should be kept in mind when you budget.
What’s the difference between freelance SEO or an SEO agency?
An SEO freelancer works on an individual basis with your company. They might enlist the help of other freelancers depending on the size of your project. An SEO agency, meanwhile, employs a group of committed individuals who collaborate together to meet their client’s goals.
Choosing which is best for you depends on a variety of factors, including:
- Is your business B2B or B2C?
- Do you need ad-hoc, piece-by-piece help or an SEO strategy created from scratch?
- What’s your budget?
- What is the scope of your project? And what’s your aim?
- What specific SEO services do you need?
SEO agencies generally provide a more comprehensive solution than freelancers. For example, for B2B businesses with bigger SEO projects, a B2B SEO agency might be your best bet. A small business that needs to increase internal links on a specific number of blogs, however, might benefit from freelance services.
Is it worth hiring someone for SEO?
For long-term SEO marketing success, SEO expertise is crucial. Building successful SEO strategies requires a team of professional consultants who understand the intricacies and different aspects of digital marketing.
But SEO isn’t the whole picture. Digital marketing strategy utilises SEO as one strand of an overall process to establish your business’s online presence through organic search, paid ads, and social media, amongst all online functions.
Gripped is a digital marketing agency focused on delivering leads through organic search-focused content, including B2B SEO services. Drawing on 17 years’ experience working in-house, Gripped has created a unique digital sales and marketing methodology designed to help B2B SaaS, tech and IT businesses. This includes utilising paid advertising, content marketing and website development as part of a bespoke digital marketing strategy.
To find out how Gripped can help your business, contact us about our free growth audit today.
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