Hi, I’m Graham McCormack, a UK-based SEO Consultant providing services to companies worldwide who need an SEO specialist on their side. You have a lot of choices of who you trust for SEO, only the results matter.

Graham SEO has been around since 2010 and is led by SEO Consultant Graham McCormack (me).

I carry out as much of the work myself but do have a small team that help me with writing and client communications.

I am ex-forces (RAF) and had an 18-year career in IT & Telecoms before one of my team members showed me how to make money online using SEO, that was around 2008 and I never looked back. I started making good money online and before I knew it people were asking me to look at their own websites too. I like helping people and found that client-based SEO is an area I really enjoy.

I started by working at various digital agencies before starting my own agency with a couple of business partners in 2015 which was a general marketing agency named We Are Web.

Realising that I really wanted to spend more time doing SEO I then started a different dedicated SEO agency, again with a couple of other people, based near Manchester called Serpify.

After a few years and the birth of my daughter, I opted for a lifestyle change and decided to operate as an SEO Consultant and freelancer, working for other agencies, with my own clients and also training staff members to do SEO from other companies.

In 2020 I made the decision to expand my business and have now surrounded myself with a great team to help me expand the busines.

The following text is written from the point of view of an SEO Consultant because I still operate in this way – your SEO will be done by myself and aided by my team.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation (spelt with an ‘s’ here in the UK and ‘Optimization’ everywhere else in the world). If you ask most people they will give you the standard answer which is either “getting to the top of Google for keywords” or “it is a way of increasing the visibility of your website in the search engines”. These are pretty stock answers.

Let me give you my answer.

Think about the buying process for your business and the sales funnel that’s involved.

At some point, it is very likely that your target customer will use the internet to either research or buy something related to what you do. I’m going to assume you know some basic terminology such as “keywords” and “backlinks” or “content marketing”.

So let’s use my own website for example. I am an SEO Consultant. If I start looking at the keywords that people are using to find a Search Consultant then I find things like:

• hire SEO freelancer
• what is SEO consulting
• SEO consultant services
• Google SEO expert

These are not bad keywords as such except for one thing – if I relied upon these keywords alone then I’d be missing out on HUGE opportunities.

The fact is when people are looking for a service (your service for example), often people don’t know what they don’t know. This means instead of me targeting a keyword such as “Google SEO expert” I should consider what people would be searching for higher up the sales funnel. “how to attract customers to my website” for example or “how to market a website”.

Imagine if I wrote a piece of content that answered these questions in such a way that it was more useful than any other answer found on Google and due to this I appeared at the top of the Google search results, then I have:

1. Made the potential customer aware of my brand
2. Influenced future personalised Google searches
3. Drive people to a single post / page on my site and enticed them to check out the other great stuff I can offer them

The number of people searching for these keywords is much lower than the other keywords but that doesn’t matter and this is where most “SEO experts” go wrong, they:

1. Target search volume for singular or a small group of keywords
2. Try to reach the number 1 position in Google

When it comes to national or E-Commerce SEO or bigger scale SEO then this is the wrong approach.

The idea of google SEO is to drive visitors to your website at all points of the SEO funnel. So rather than simply trying to rank for “SEO Consultant” I should have a page dedicated to this service and then drive traffic from a number of smaller, less competitive but nevertheless relevant and useful keywords.

How can SEO help a business?

I want you to read the paragraph above regarding search volume and user intent. SEO can help your business by establishing your business as an authority and useful source of information for your target customers.

The more times you help them the more likely they are to turn to you when they require your service.

What about Local SEO?

Local SEO is similar to national and E-Commerce SEO but due to a different set of search results the focus here should still to offer the best and most useful resource to your customers but to focus on influencing local searches, for example, if you are a local solicitor you should still be creating content that answers national enquiries because this will influence personalised results and also whether or not the end-user clicks on your site or competitors.

As a way of an example, a local solicitor could write about topics such as:

• How much does it cost to see a solicitor?
• Can I get legal aid for custody of my child?
• Can I get legal aid for divorce in the UK?

Then when people find these posts they may decide to contact you directly or they may search again in Google and ask another question. If they do this then Google may decide to show YOUR site above competitors based upon your previous searches.

Here’s a reference for you to check out regarding personalised searches: https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/personalized-search-for-everyone.html 

What does an SEO Agency / Digital Agency do?

An SEO Consultant is different to an Internet Marketing or Digital Agency. A Digital Agency will use “channels” – these are the digital marketing platforms that surround your website such as Pay Per Click, Social Media Marketing, Video Marketing, Email Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation and combine a marketing strategy together using these channels to promote your business campaign.

What does an SEO Consultant do?

As an SEO Consultant I can work with you in several ways:

Work alongside your current provider

As an SEO Consultant, I can work independently of your Digital Agency. You don’t need to give up their service.

What I can do is to carry out an investigation into how effective their campaign efforts are and to advise you where they are getting it right or wrong. I can then either help them to get it right or I can act anonymously and provide you with a report that you can work with to ensure things improve.

Design you a custom Plan of Action for Search Marketing

You don’t necessarily need to pay a regular fee for an SEO Consultant. I can carry out a detailed investigation into

1. Your business and current position
2. Your competitors and what they’re doing right
3. Your target market/customers

Armed with this data I can then put together a strategy (usually spanning 3 months or more) that you can then use to create an awesome Search Marketing campaign.

Become your sole SEO provider

I can also handle everything on your behalf. Pay monthly for SEO and I or my agency will handle everything for you, including the other channels if required – PPC, Social Media etc. I can provide a complete Digital Marketing solution, I am an SEO expert but I am well versed in overall Digital Marketing.

Help you overcome a particular web/search problem

I am very technically minded and have lots of technical SEO experience and I can help you overcome any website-related issue, please just ask.

How much does SEO Consultancy cost?

It depends upon what you are asking. Each task has a separate cost based on a number of factors. Apologies for being so vague but it depends upon where your website is up to, how big your target market is, how much is your budget etc. I also have to factor in how much time I currently have.

Frequent questions an SEO Consultant should answer

I think Google itself pose this question perfectly, it also spells out how I work.

I’d love to chat with you about how exactly I can help your business.