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 listed as a WordPress SEO specialist. True. I have used WordPress for 22 years now and have been doing SEO for over 25 years professionally and over 27 if you include my “hobby” years.
Another consultant was a WordPress SEO professional followed by a digital marketing agency which focuses on results-driven SEO.
What’s really interesting is how AI search really compartmentalises these results. Yes, I’m a WordPress SEO consultant, but I’m also a WordPress SEO professional and, it goes without saying, that I focus on results-driven SEO.
SEO Disciplines Are Not Mutually Exclusive
Of course, some junior SEOs may only have on-page SEO experience, not knowing technical SEO, copywriting, or any elements of web design and development, which I believe are crucial for really effective SEO. When you’re starting out in SEO I bet it’s even more overwhelming than when I started back in 1997/1998 and there is now SO much more to understand and learn.
But at the same time, the resources are so much more abundant these days and the sources of genuine and helpful professional SEO knowledge abound.
But what I’m really talking about here is that you can be a WordPress SEO consultant and a WordPress SEO professional and focus on results-driven SEO. It’s funny how the Google AI overview that I saw seems to treat these as almost different disciplines.
Sure, each of the results will have been of a WordPress SEO using particular language that is then uniquely associated with that service provider. I suppose it’s all down to our own personal vocabularies, right? Or the keywords that we’ve been focusing on in our content.
But ultimately, Google’s AI overviews have presented us as all very different for some reason.
Back to Results-Driven SEO
But results-driven SEO was the phrase that I found most interesting – because SEO is inherently results-driven by its very nature. Just because you don’t say it doesn’t mean you don’t do it. But then search is very literal. If you don’t list a service on your website and you don’t mention that word anywhere, you’ll not be indexed or ranked for it. Yes, the Large Language Models (LLMs) behind today’s search algorithms are better than ever at semantics, the branch of linguistics associated with meaning. But as I’ve demonstrated, search really can be that literal.
I experienced this with a client this week. They asked how their website was performing for a certain keyword. I said not at all. When they asked why, I responded that they had never written those words anywhere on their website. “But that’s what we do,” they replied. And so I used the site operator in Google Search and demonstrated that if the term was such a vital part of their business, why had they never published that keyword in their content in over ten years on the web?
But back to the notion of results-driven SEO. Of course you conduct SEO to get results, otherwise why even do it? And on the point of not mentioning it on your website, maybe that’s true too. If you don’t say that you’re results-driven then you won’t appear in the SERPs for it and, heaven forbid, website visitors may think that’s not what you do!
Which Results to be Driven?
For over two decades now I’ve received emails from people claiming they can get me to “number one in Google”. OK, cool, what for? A low-volume search term which nobody else is bothering to compete for? What good is that? Paying an overseas SEO peanuts to rank for uncompetitive terms is like… well, you can probably guess what I was going to say.
For me. I agree which results are important to every client. “What does success look like?” as the phrase goes.
Results might be “get us to page 1 of Google for our key services,”. Great. That’s my primary SEO goal. If you’re the local expert in blue widgets, then that’s what you should be ranking for and I will help you get there.
But there are other results too. Brand awareness is one, and if I can help your company name gain visibility in search, then that’s another result.
And what about leads and enquiries? Again, I can do that too. You do have an optimised landing page, right? Well, as long as the user experience (UX) and the Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) are good, I’ll get impressions and clicks for your product conversion pages.
Holistic SEO
Really effective SEO isn’t just about ranking, it’s about all those other vital sales and marketing functions – brand awareness, product visibility, leads etc.
I once got a call from a business that found my digital marketing agency in the top 5 results every time they searched for a different version of an SEO term. Not one of the results was consistently number one every time, but my agency was always in the top 5. And because of that, the call came in and we agreed on an SEO retainer. THAT is the power of good SEO – getting reliably good results.
So if you want a results-driven professional WordPress SEO consultant in Hampshire, then I’m your man.
Call me on 07730 499 539 or leave a message on my contact form.
Oh, and by the way – whilst I prefer and have the most experience in WordPress SEO, I have conducted search optimisation with Joomla, Drupal, Wix, Squarespace, Contentful, Magento and other custom-built content management systems (CMS).