SEO Chester services since 2008

No, yes and yes. The way people search and the platform that they search on has been changing for many years. It is true that the influence of AI now means that people are using engines like ChatGPT more often. But the behaviour of search and the underlying algorithm that serves search results to that person fundamentally hasn't changed. It is still possible to reverse engineer success and then build a campaign around what is successful. It is true that perhaps Google have lost some control over the search market but Google is a single search engine. ChatGPT is also a search engine. YouTube is a search engine. Amazon is a search engine. All of these run on an algorithm that can be unpicked. So no, SEO isn't dead and it is still worth it. It still produces commercial and transactional results, as my results prove.

It depends on several factors such as how competitive your industry is, where you offer your services geographically speaking and how old your website is and which platform it is built upon. For businesses based in or near Chester offering a local service usually require local SEO which usually starts at £550+vat a month but can vary. If you are a business based in Chester but offers your services throughout the UK (or worldwide) then the fee increases to start at £900+vat per month and this is purely due to the scale of the campaign required. If you are a Chester based E-Commerce business then the starting price is usually £1250+vat per month, again this is due to the scope of what is required to take your business further for Search Engine Optimisation.

However, all of these prices will be determined by an SEO audit. An audit uncovers how the other websites in your industry have become successful. It is possible to reverse engineer their success and audit against your own website - this is called gap analysis. It is the requirements to bridge this gap and how long it usually takes everybody else to achieve their level of success that determines how much and how long your own success will likely take.

If you read my answer above then you will know it takes an SEO to determine this. However, SEO can take time and I am literally at the mercy of the search engines such as Google. I also have no influence over external factors such as what your competitors are doing and other factors, such as what was going on in the world at the time including technical technology advances such as AI. It is because I can't control these factors that it is almost impossible to state specifically how long an SEO campaign will take. However a good SEO audit will cover how your competitors did it and how long it took them and this can give me a good guide.

Look past the sales pitch and a top-rated badge. Ask who will actually work on your website, how long they have been doing SEO, and ask to see real data from Google Search Console or Ahrefs rather than cherry-picked screenshots. A good SEO firm will explain its process in plain English, be open about pricing and never promise guaranteed #1 rankings. Whether you pick a Chester SEO company or an SEO specialist like me, you want skilled hands, honest reporting and a plan built around your business.

Paid advertising such as Google Ads puts you at the top of the search engine results page as soon as you pay, and it stops the moment you stop paying. SEO earns your place in the organic results, so it takes longer to build but keeps bringing in visitors without a cost per click. Many Chester businesses get the best return from using both, which is why I often run them side by side.

Yes. SEO is my specialism but I can also help with every single aspect of your digital infrastructure. I can help with your hosting, your website, your emails and content creation services. I can do a pay-per-click campaign for you. I can help with social media. I can help with AI, automations, and business growth systems. However my core skill is in business growth, primarily through organic channels.

SEO agencies are built to scale. They build repeatable systems that are based on a set of principles that sometimes work and sometimes don't. When it doesn't work, the ability for that agency to still get you good results depends upon the skillset and experience of the person that deals with that particular problem.

I work with agencies every month to help them solve these issues.

I've owned two separate digital agencies and I can tell you firsthand that the best thing about agencies is their sales pitch.

The quality of the work comes with what happens next after you've signed up.

If your campaign doesn't work and you fire your agency their sales team will just replace your somebody else.

Digital marketing agencies usually have bigger offices and therefore bigger overheads and will charge more than they should. If they charge a smaller amount you usually get what you pay for. When I first started with SEO in 2008, it wasn't a career choice.

I'd started to do it back in 2008 because I just fell in love with the whole thing and being honest it made me good money so I was able to escape my 9 to 5. Then I found that I could help other people with their own business success - this is a where my job satisfaction comes from helping you and your business succeed.

These days SEO is a career choice and you often get people with little experience carrying out the work on your behalf.

There still is no officially recognised qualification or courses that you can take to learn this. You just have to do it, practise at it, and get better and better at it.

Yes if you like, it's a good metric but you also have to consider how long they've been there for and how they did it. There are many shady tactics in SEO that a good honest morally uncorrupt person would never use on your website, but it is fine to use on their own.

I've ranked at #1 for SEO Chester four times with different websites in a ten year period and kept those rankings for a long time.

I've been involved with internet since it took off in 1994 and I found SEO in 2006 and started to implement it into my own ventures fully in 2008. The first Google algorithm updates didn't happen until 2012 (to put this into context).

I'm ex-RAF and I'm disciplined, I am passionate about what I do. I am friendly and you can talk to me directly.

I have not built my business to scale. It is a lifestyle choice for me.

I no longer chase local rankings because my work simply comes from word-of-mouth recommendations.

I cap the number of clients that I work with for a good work-life balance and I have a very good relationship with each and every one of them. I have had them for many years. They all recommend other people my way. Sometimes I can accept the work if I have a position open. But ranking at position number one for keywords like SEO Chester hasn't been on my radar as a priority for a very long time now.