Freelance SEO Consultant

A little about Tom Crewe

UK based Freelance SEO Consultant and Content Marketing Specialist

I am genuinely passionate about SEO and Content Marketing. I’m an ex-agency Head of SEO and have been planning and implementing successful strategies for a wide variety of clients for over eight years.

I have made the most of my time as an SEO Consultant so far, having been the lead on huge audits for enterprise level clients, crafted long-term strategies for SMEs and built strong relationships with my clients in varying industries, from ecommerce and service businesses to news publishers and marketing agencies.

My offering is flexible, whether you need a one-off SEO audit or a monthly retainer. Get in touch with me to talk about how we can improve your organic search performance together.

After an initial introduction to the world of SEO when working in-house at a leading law firm, I joined a Bournemouth based full-service digital agency in January 2015. I started working on SEO and PPC campaigns for a variety of clients, but I found SEO to be my true passion.
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After four years, I worked my way up to become the agency’s Head of SEO, taking the lead on all SEO strategies. Working in a full-service digital agency for so many years has allowed me to gain a strong understanding of the wider digital landscape and how SEO works with other digital marketing channels such as PPC, Social, UX and Email.

I am now a Freelance SEO Consultant helping a wide variety of clients to improve their website’s organic performance through Search Engine Optimisation and Content Marketing.

How I can help you

My role as an independent SEO expert is to create an SEO strategy for your website which improves your visibility in the search engines, therefore enabling more of your customers to find and purchase your products and services.

I create the SEO plan, make recommendations and implement the strategy, acting as an extension of your team and taking full ownership of SEO. Contact me today to find out how I can help you to improve your website’s organic performance.

Deciding whether you want to work with an SEO Agency or an SEO Freelancer will come down to a number of factors, including budget, output required and the skills you are looking for. There are certainly advantages to both, but an SEO Freelancer can provide a service which is as good as, if not better, than an SEO Agency.

Having worked at an agency for 7 years, I am able to provide an agency-level service at a freelancer price. Here are a few reasons why you might want to consider working with me as an SEO Freelancer rather than choosing to work with an SEO Agency:

• When you work with me, you know that a highly experienced SEO is working on your website, rather than the work being passed down to more junior members of the team
• I have a network of other digital marketing freelancers that I work with who can step in to provide additional support such as PPC and Social Media Advertising, Web Design and Development, User Experience and more whenever required
• With less overheads, my prices are more competitive than SEO Agencies
• I have the same tools, skills and capabilities as an SEO Agency
• Having worked at an agency for 7 years, I have gained experience working with enterprise level businesses as well as SMEs

I’m based in Bournemouth, Dorset, but I service clients throughout the UK, from London to Liverpool, and am always available for online meetings via Teams, Zoom, Google Meet or your preferred video-chatting app or can join your team on Slack or similar chat apps. Contact me for a free initial chat about how I can help your company to increase ROI through SEO.

What is SEO?

SEO (or ‘Search Engine Optimisation’) is a digital marketing strategy which focuses on improving a website’s organic visibility in the Search Engines. It requires detailed research to understand which keywords users are searching to find the products and services you provide and a well planned strategy to ensure your website appears in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) when users search for those keywords.

At a very basic level, SEO involves creating high-quality, well-optimised content (blogs and landing pages), ensuring your website has a strong technical foundation and building backlinks from other websites.

The end goal with SEO is to improve keyword rankings and increase organic traffic and conversions.

What is SEO Consulting?

SEO consulting (or ‘Search Engine Optimisation consulting’) is a service in which an SEO Consultant (such as myself) puts together and implements a strategy to attract more organic traffic from Search Engines to their client’s websites, with the end goal of increasing conversions through the website.

What do SEO Consultants do?

SEO consultants are responsible for keeping up to date with Google’s (and other Search Engines such as Bing, Baidu, Yahoo!) algorithm in order to advise and implement a strategy which improves their client’s organic visibility in the Search Engines. Google has various ‘ranking factors’ which help it to determine which websites should rank higher than the others for specific keywords. It’s an SEO’s job to understand those ranking factors and ensure their client’s websites rank high and perform well.

An SEO consultant would generally be looking at technical SEO to ensure the website is set up according to SEO best practice, keyword research to understand how the audience searches, on page optimisation to improve rankings of specific landing pages, Content Marketing to attract new organic traffic and support the rankings of other landing pages and link building to improve the overall authority of the website.

What to ask SEO Consultants

When considering which SEO consultant to use, there are several questions you can ask to gauge their competence and ability. First, ask them what their main objective is when working on a website. If they only mention keyword rankings or traffic and don’t talk about conversions, they might be focussing on the wrong thing.

You can also ask them to detail a successful strategy, including how they decided on that particular strategy, what they did and what they achieved.

Finally, ask them what their output will be each month. If they are only sending you monthly KPI reports and not asking for you to look at technical audits or approve content changes, then they might not be doing enough to make a difference on your website.

How to hire a Freelance SEO Consultant?

The process for hiring a Freelance SEO Consultant (like myself) is pretty straightforward. Once you have decided that SEO is the right digital marketing channel for you, simply get in touch with me by emailing tom@tomcreweseo.co.uk to arrange an initial chat. Once I have an understanding of what you are trying to achieve, I will put together a proposal which details the work that needs to be done and what we are trying to achieve. If you are happy with the strategy, I get to work straight away. I am based in Bournemouth but work with clients across the whole of the UK.

Are you a Content Marketing Consultant as well as an SEO Consultant?

Yes, Content Marketing always has been and very much still is a big part of what I do. When done correctly, Content Marketing opens up a new avenue for your audience to find you organically, supports the rankings of your highest priority keywords and attracts backlinks naturally, therefore increasing the strength of your domain overall.

I have been creating successful Content Marketing campaigns for over eight years, helping my clients to drive more traffic, leads and sales through their website. Whether it be regular blogging or larger whitepapers, I create content that appeals to the audience and contributes to the overall objectives of the SEO strategy.

How quickly should you expect results from SEO?

If you’ve ever spoken to an SEO, you’ve probably heard the ‘it depends’ answer to a question you’ve asked. This is one of those questions. The speed in which you see results from SEO will depend on a lot of different factors, including the competitiveness of your industry, the current condition of your website / content and the timing of Google’s algorithm updates. In most cases, SEO is a long-term commitment involving a lot of testing, analysis and implementation. While you can see instant, overnight results on some keywords simply by creating the right landing page to target them, you shouldn’t expect SEO to transform your business that quickly. Clients that see SEO as a long-term, ongoing commitment rather than a short-term, one-off project are the ones that see the real benefits of SEO.

You can expect monthly reports from me detailing progress, which can focus in on the smaller wins that have likely been influenced by specific actions (e.g. X keyword increased by X positions after optimising X page, which has since seen an X increase in traffic and conversions) as well as bigger picture reporting which measures rankings, organic traffic and conversions across the site as a whole, looking at both year-over-year and month-over-month comparisons. This constant analysis helps us to better understand what is working and what isn’t, as well as ensuring full transparency between consultant and client in terms of website performance.