SEO & Performance
Search engines, AI assistants and your visitors are all looking for the same thing: a fast, well-structured website that delivers what people came for. My approach to SEO is simple. Build that website.
SEO and performance optimisation from an experienced web developer
The SEO industry loves chasing algorithm updates and exploiting loopholes. I take a different approach. I focus on the things that Google, Bing, AI crawlers and real people all consistently reward: fast load times, clean structure, useful content and a good user experience.
That means I'm not trying to game the system or chase short-term wins that stop working when the next update rolls around. I'm building and optimising websites that perform well because they deserve to, and that tends to be a much more durable strategy.
It also means the work I do benefits everything, not just your Google rankings. A well-structured, fast, accessible site is easier for AI tools to find and cite (see AEO below), easier for visitors to use and easier for your team to maintain. The improvements compound across the board.
As a developer with over 15 years of experience, I can go beyond identifying SEO and performance issues. I can fix them myself, at the code level, without the usual back-and-forth between an SEO consultant and a separate development team. That is especially useful on WordPress sites, where plugin choices, theme code and hosting setup often overlap.
Aligned with what matters
I optimise for the same things search engines, AI and users all value: speed, clarity, structure and genuinely useful content.Diagnosis and fix in one go
I identify the problems and implement the solutions myself. No handing you a report and leaving you to figure out the rest.15+ years hands-on experience
I've built, optimised and maintained hundreds of websites. I understand SEO and web performance at a code level.Flexible engagement
A one-off audit, a focused sprint on a specific issue, or ongoing monthly optimisation. Whatever suits your situation.What I can help with 🔍
Technical SEO, site performance and the structural foundations that help your website perform well in search and deliver a good experience for visitors.
Technical SEO Audits
A thorough review of how search engines see your site: indexing issues, crawl errors, broken links, duplicate content, missing metadata, site architecture problems and anything else affecting your visibility.
Core Web Vitals & Page Speed
Improving LCP, CLS and INP scores through code-level optimisation: image handling, font loading, render-blocking resources, lazy loading, caching and server response times.
On-Page SEO
Title tags, meta descriptions, heading structure, image optimisation, internal linking and content hierarchy. The fundamentals that many sites still don't get right.
Structured Data & Schema
Implementing and fixing JSON-LD structured data so search engines and AI assistants understand your content properly. FAQ schema, product markup, local business data, breadcrumbs and rich results.
Crawlability & Indexing
Making sure search engines can find, crawl and index your important pages. Robots.txt, XML sitemaps, canonical tags, internal linking structure and resolving crawl errors in Search Console.
Database & Server Optimisation
Cleaning up bloated databases, optimising queries, configuring caching layers and making sure your hosting setup supports your site's performance rather than limiting it.
AEO: being found in AI answers, too
Answer engine optimisation (AEO) is about making your site easy for ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews, Perplexity, Copilot and other AI tools to find, understand and cite. It's built on the same foundations as good technical SEO, plus a few things that matter far more once an AI is summarising your pages instead of a person reading them.
Crawler access, set on purpose
Plenty of sites block AI crawlers by accident, through a CDN or security plugin default, a blanket robots.txt rule or a firewall. I check which bots can actually reach your content and set it up the way you want, including the difference between search crawlers and training crawlers.
Content that's in the HTML
Many AI crawlers don't run JavaScript, so anything that only appears once a script has loaded can be invisible to them. I make sure your key content, headings and links are in the page as it's served, not assembled in the browser.
Answers up front
AI tools lift short, self-contained passages. I advise on page structure: clear headings, the questions your customers really ask and direct answers near the top, so the right passage is easy to extract and attribute to you.
Clear identity signals
Who you are, what you do and where you work, stated consistently: Organization and LocalBusiness schema, author details, an accurate About page and profiles like Google Business Profile that AI tools cross-reference.
Google and Bing indexing
Google's AI Overviews draw on Google's index, and Copilot and other assistants draw on Bing's. I check both are indexing the right pages, with Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools set up properly and no canonical or duplicate issues muddying what gets cited.
Measurement and honest expectations
AI search is harder to measure than rankings, and nobody can guarantee a citation. I set up referral tracking for AI assistants, check how your key questions are actually answered and tell you plainly when something like llms.txt is unproven rather than selling it as a fix.
Freelance Web Developer & SEO Specialist
SEO that starts with building a genuinely good website
I'm Adam, a freelance web developer and SEO specialist based in the UK with over 15 years of experience. I've always believed that the best SEO strategy is to build something worth finding: a site that loads quickly, is easy to navigate, well-structured and gives people what they came for.
That philosophy has served my clients well through every major algorithm change, because it's aligned with what search engines have always been trying to reward. It also means your site works well for AI assistants, screen readers and real people, not just crawlers.
How it works
Whether you need a full SEO and performance audit or help with a specific issue, the process is straightforward.
Audit
I run a detailed technical review of your site covering crawlability, indexing, AI crawler access, on-page SEO, structured data, page speed, Core Web Vitals and server configuration. You get a clear picture of where things stand.
Prioritise
Every finding is ranked by impact and effort, so you know which changes will make the biggest difference and which ones can wait. Clear next steps, not an overwhelming spreadsheet.
Implement
I can carry out the optimisation work myself or hand it to your development team with clear, specific instructions. Either way, things get done properly.
Measure
Once changes are live, I track the results: page speed, Core Web Vitals, crawl stats, search visibility and referral traffic from AI assistants. You'll see what improved and by how much.
Performance & technical SEO guides
Speed and crawlability problems usually have specific, findable causes. These guides cover the ones that come up most often, and what to check in what order.
Site Suddenly Slow
A sudden speed drop points at a rogue plugin, a caching failure, a bloated database or a hosting resource limit being hit.
Read the guide →Slow Admin Dashboard
Back-end slowness is often the first symptom of a problem that will reach your visitors next. Worth diagnosing early.
Read the guide →Pages Returning 404s
404s on real pages waste crawl budget and lose you rankings. Nearly always a rewrite rule rather than missing content.
Read the guide →Changes Not Showing Live
If updates aren't visible to visitors, a caching layer is serving stale HTML — and search engines may be seeing it too.
Read the guide →Frequently asked questions
How much does SEO and performance work cost?
A one-off technical audit starts from around £300. Implementation work is quoted separately based on what needs doing. I'll always give you a clear quote upfront so you know the cost before any work begins.
How long does it take to see results from SEO work?
Performance improvements are usually visible straight away. SEO ranking changes typically take a few weeks to a few months, depending on how often search engines recrawl your site and how competitive your keywords are. I'll set realistic expectations based on your specific situation.
What makes your approach to SEO different?
I focus on building websites that genuinely deserve to rank well: fast, well-structured, accessible and useful. That approach is aligned with what search engines, AI assistants and real users all value, and it holds up through algorithm changes because it's not based on exploiting temporary loopholes.
What is AEO, and how is it different from SEO?
AEO stands for answer engine optimisation. It's about making your site easy for AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot and Google's AI Overviews to find, understand and cite when they answer questions. It's less a separate discipline than an extension of good SEO: the same crawlability, structure and content quality, with extra attention to AI crawler access, clear answers and how your business is described across the web.
Can you guarantee my site will be recommended by ChatGPT or Google's AI Overviews?
No. AI tools decide what to cite based on factors nobody outside those companies controls, and the answers can change from one question to the next. What I can do is remove the technical barriers, make your content easy to extract and attribute, and check how your key questions are being answered so you know where you stand.
Should I block AI crawlers?
It depends on what you want. Blocking the crawlers that power AI search can stop your site being cited or linked to in AI answers, while crawlers that gather training data are a separate decision with different trade-offs. I'll explain the options and configure your robots.txt and firewall or CDN to match your choice, rather than leaving it to a plugin default.
Do you do content writing and link building?
My focus is technical SEO and performance. I can advise on content strategy and structure, but if you need ongoing content writing or link building campaigns, I'll point you towards someone who specialises in that.
My site is on WordPress. Can you help?
Yes, WordPress is one of my core specialisms. I know the platform inside out, including the most common performance bottlenecks, plugin conflicts that affect SEO and the best approaches for caching, image optimisation and database cleanup. I also offer dedicated maintenance plans.
Can you help with a site that isn't WordPress?
Yes. The principles of technical SEO and web performance apply across all platforms. I've optimised sites built on Shopify, custom frameworks, static site generators and more. Get in touch and we can discuss your setup.
Will you guarantee first-page rankings?
No, and you should be wary of anyone who does. Search rankings depend on many factors, including your competition, your content and your domain authority. What I can do is make sure the technical foundations of your site are solid, that nothing is holding you back unnecessarily, and that you're giving yourself the best possible chance of ranking well.
I already have an SEO agency. Can you work alongside them?
Absolutely. It's common for SEO agencies to identify technical issues that need a developer to fix. I can work from their audit findings and implement the changes, or I can run my own technical audit to complement their strategy work.
Want to know what's holding your site back?
Send me your URL and I'll take a quick look. No commitment, just an honest assessment of where the biggest opportunities are.