Freelance Digital Marketing Consultant
A selection of digital marketing articles by Paul Mackenzie Ross, a local expert who has over 25 years professional experience in design and digital after forming his personal studio back in 2000AD.
I used to write a year-in-review piece for the digital marketing agency I worked at for nearly eight years until January 2025, as their only multi-disciplined digital marketer and writer. This year I’m doing it for myself. 2025 was the year that AI-powered search became even more mainstream, the year Google delivered on its promise … Read more
As we reach the final days of 2025, Google delivered one more significant update to keep us on our toes. The December 2025 core update, the third of the year, is currently rolling out as I write this on 29th December, and it’s already causing substantial ranking shifts across numerous industries. Let’s look back at … Read more
Yesterday morning, whilst doing some SEO work, I realised I didn’t have any milk for a cup of tea, so I nipped down to one of my neighbourhood’s many local shops to replenish. On the drive there and back some language on BBC Radio 4 caught my attention, and within a minute or so, I … Read more
Well I didn’t see that coming! On 19th November 2025, Adobe announced they’re acquiring SEMrush in a $1.9 billion all-cash deal. Now that’s the sort of news that makes you sit up and pay attention – one of the world’s biggest creative software companies buying one of the most widely-used SEO platforms. But what does … Read more
As soon as AI Overviews were launched in August 2024 in the UK, there was a flurry of activity with the usual crowd saying “Jump in or get left behind”. It was a serious case of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and the usual hype with people positioning themselves as the new “gurus” in an … Read more
I was checking the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) just now, looking to see who else was ranking for the term “WordPress SEO consultant, Hampshire”, and saw some interesting AI overviews. This website that you’re looking at right now was cited in the overview, and I was happy to see that it said I was … Read more
Well. the summer holidays are over and, back at work in SEO, August 2025 brought us the first spam update of the year, ongoing ranking volatility that kept many of us on edge, and some really fascinating insights into how AI search is evolving. If you’ve been watching your rankings closely, August was another month … Read more
We’ve been skirting around the subject for a while now, about this very specific SEO question- what do we call the art and science of optimising your website for the AI Overviews in Google Search? I wrote an article for the digital marketing agency I worked for at the time and I didn’t know either. … Read more
You can’t get any more British than “Keep Calm and Carry On”. And with the current state of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) it’s both the best advice and the best practice. First this Keep Calm and Carry On, what is that? In 1939, just before the outbreak of World War II, the British Ministry of … Read more
Google rolled out its June 2025 core update yesterday, the second of the year, and the SEO community is, as usual, running around wondering what’s going to happen this time. What Actually is a Google Core Update? While Google tweaks its algorithm constantly, core updates are the big ones! These are the updates that can … Read more