UK SEO Strategist · Freelance

SEO strategy that sits inside the business, not in a silo next to it.

Most SEO strategists work the same way. Open a keyword tool. Export a list of phrases. Hand the client a deck called "Strategy" that is really a content calendar. Six months later the rankings have moved a little and the revenue has not moved at all. The strategy was never connected to the business in the first place.

I do it differently. Before I write a single keyword down, I sit with the business. I understand how it makes money, who actually buys, what the sales team hears on calls, what the operations team can support, and what the brand is genuinely competing on. The SEO strategy comes after that. Not before.

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7+ years as an SEO strategist
Business first, keywords second
UK based, UK focused
Brands I've built SEO strategy for
Motorfinity ChooseMyCar The Original Biltong Co DJH Innov8 HR Sweetiz Worcester Executive Cars Motorfinity ChooseMyCar The Original Biltong Co DJH Innov8 HR Sweetiz Worcester Executive Cars
My positioning

SEO strategy is a business function, not a marketing department deliverable.

Here is what that actually looks like in practice.

The shift

I don't show up to "do SEO." I show up to understand the business first.

Most SEO strategists open a keyword tool and start there. By the time the strategy lands on a CMO's desk, it has lost the connection to the business it was meant to grow. The keywords are accurate. The recommendations are technically correct. And nothing in the document explains how this work makes the company more money.

I work the other way around. The first two weeks of any engagement are spent learning. Reading sales call notes. Speaking to operations. Looking at the actual conversion data. Understanding what the brand sells, who it sells to, and what is genuinely different about its offer. Only then does the keyword work start, and by that point it has somewhere real to land.

SEO in a silo

What most agencies deliver

  • Strategy starts in a keyword tool
  • Disconnected from sales and operations
  • Same approach for every client
  • Reports on rankings, not revenue
  • Never sits in a commercial meeting
  • Hands over briefs that go unbuilt
  • Treats SEO as a marketing line item
SEO in the business

How I work

  • Strategy starts with how the business makes money
  • Built around sales conversations and CRM data
  • Custom positioning for every brand
  • Reports on pipeline and conversions
  • Sits in the leadership conversation
  • Writes briefs the content team can actually ship
  • Treats SEO as a P&L contributor
What I hear most

This is what brands tell me when they're tired of vague SEO advice.

Almost every discovery call I take starts the same way. The brand has tried agencies, freelancers, sometimes both. They got a deck. They got a content calendar. They got a Slack channel full of recommendations. And they still don't have a strategy that ties to the business. Here is what comes up over and over.

"I've tried Fiverr, Upwork, marketing firms who do SEO too, and gotten nowhere. It's either a glance at SEMrush or a 'start producing content' plan. I can't tell what good looks like anymore."

What I hear from founders

"The strategist we hired never sat in our sales meetings. They didn't know what our customers actually ask. The strategy felt generic because it was."

What I hear from heads of marketing

"Every previous SEO told us to 'just start getting content out there.' That's not a strategy. That's a content calendar with extra steps."

What I hear from growth leads

"I want one person who actually knows our business, not an agency where the senior strategist disappears after we sign the contract and a junior takes over."

What I hear from CMOs

The diagnosis

Why most SEO strategies underperform.

Same five patterns show up in almost every "previous strategy" I review. None of them are about missing keywords. All of them are about how the strategy was scoped in the first place.

  1. The strategy was written in isolation from the business

    Most SEO strategies could be swapped between two competitor brands and you wouldn't notice. That is the tell. A strategy that doesn't speak to the specific business it was written for isn't a strategy. It's a template with a logo swap.

  2. No conversation with sales, ops, or customer service

    The richest source of SEO insight in any company is the sales call transcript. The second is the customer service inbox. Most SEO strategists never look at either. They miss the actual language buyers use, the real objections, and the genuine moments of doubt that high intent content should answer.

  3. Briefs that the content team cannot actually deliver

    A brief that asks for "expert thought leadership tied to industry trends" is a wishlist, not a brief. A real brief specifies the question being answered, the source of the answer, the angle, the entities to cover, the internal links, and the conversion intent. Briefs that the content team can ship are the difference between a strategy on paper and a strategy in the SERP.

  4. No connection to the wider marketing engine

    SEO that doesn't talk to paid media, email, social, and product is missing most of its compounding effect. The brands that win have all of these working together. The strategists that win are the ones who can sit in the marketing leadership meeting and explain how SEO interlocks with everything else.

  5. Reported on rankings instead of business outcomes

    "Average position improved from 24 to 18" is meaningless if revenue from organic is flat. The KPIs that matter are organic conversions, branded search lift, qualified leads, and revenue attribution. Most strategy reports still lead with vanity metrics because they're easier to defend than commercial outcomes.

My process

My discovery and strategy process.

Six stages before a single keyword goes into a document. This is what separates a strategy that sits inside the business from one that sits next to it.

01
Sit with the founders or leadership

Understand the business model before anything else.

How does the company actually make money. What's the gross margin on each line. What's the cost of acquiring a new customer through other channels. What's the operations team genuinely able to support if demand scales. The strategy gets shaped by the answers to these questions, not by a keyword tool.

02
Sit with the sales and customer service teams

Listen to the real conversations.

Sales call transcripts. Customer service tickets. Support chat logs. This is where the actual buyer language lives. The phrasing in these conversations is the phrasing that should appear in the content briefs. Most SEO strategists never get into these rooms. I make it the second meeting of every engagement.

03
Study the SERP and the competition

Understand what winning currently looks like.

Who ranks. Why they rank. What kind of content is winning. Where the gaps are. Where the SERP is changing because of AI overviews or zero click results. The competitive landscape sets the strategic ambition. Without this view, the keyword list is a wish list.

04
Find the unique value proposition

Find the angle only this brand can credibly own.

The most useful strategy work happens here. What is this brand genuinely better at than its competitors. What can it say that nobody else in the SERP can say with credibility. This becomes the strategic positioning that every piece of content and every commercial page is built around.

05
Build the strategy and the briefs together

Strategy that ships, not strategy that gets filed.

The strategy document and the first wave of content briefs land at the same time. The briefs are detailed enough that a writer can produce ranking content from them. The strategy is detailed enough that the leadership team can defend it in a board meeting. Both come out of the same workstream because they're the same thing.

06
Sit in the room when it's being executed

Strategy doesn't end at delivery. It ends at performance.

I stay in the room. I sit in the monthly marketing meeting. I review the first briefs as they get produced. I adjust the strategy when the data tells us something we didn't know at the start. This is what most agencies don't do, and it's where most strategies quietly stop working.

Voices from the work

What people I've worked with say.

A few words from former managers, colleagues, and clients across the brands I've supported.

I had the pleasure of working with Zeeshan, and I can honestly say he's one of the most talented SEO professionals I've met. He brought a level of knowledge, clarity, and analytical thinking that had a real impact on our company. What stood out to me most was how he could take very technical SEO concepts and explain them in a way that was simple and easy to understand. His data led approach meant every decision was backed by insight, and he consistently delivered excellent results.
Oliver Waszkiewicz
Videographer · Motorfinity
I am delighted to recommend Zeeshan as an exceptional Growth Manager within the motoring sector. Working alongside him has been a complete honour, and I can confidently say that his expertise and deep knowledge of Growth practices are nothing short of remarkable.
Dean Skiba
Marketing Executive · Motoring
I was Zeeshan's line manager for nine months. He brought a proactive attitude to testing new approaches and regularly used data to inform his decisions. He was particularly interested in how small changes could make a meaningful impact, and was keen to explore new tools and tactics. He contributed to several campaigns across paid social and search, supported landing page testing, and worked to increase lead volume and quality.
Rachel Ramsay
Marketing Director
Insightful and energetic. In touch with data and able to visualise whilst providing solution based results.
Ben Fildes
Agency Owner

Want me to look at your strategy?

I'll do a free walkthrough of where your current strategy fits the business before you commit to anything.

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The four pillars

What every strategy I build is anchored on.

Different industries, different platforms, different audiences. Same four pillars. They're what makes a strategy hold together instead of falling apart at the first re-org.

01 · POSITIONING

Find the angle only you can credibly own.

Before keywords. Before audits. What is the strategic position this brand has earned the right to claim. Every piece of content and every commercial page is built around that. Without this, everything downstream is commodity work.

02 · INTEGRATION

SEO that sits next to paid, email, sales, and product.

Search lives in the marketing meeting, not in a Slack channel by itself. I map how organic interlocks with paid spend, email, social, and product so each makes the other more efficient. That is where the compounding starts.

03 · BRIEFS THAT SHIP

The strategy is the brief is the deliverable.

A strategy that doesn't translate into briefs the content team can ship is a strategy that sits in a Drive folder forever. I write briefs detailed enough to ship and structured enough to compound. The strategy and the execution are the same workstream.

04 · COMMERCIAL REPORTING

Report on revenue and pipeline, not rankings.

Rankings are a leading indicator at best. The reporting I build maps organic to qualified leads, conversions, branded search lift, and revenue attribution. So the leadership team can see exactly what this work is buying.

What sets the work apart

How I write content briefs the team can actually ship.

Most SEO strategists hand writers a Google Doc with a keyword, a word count, and three "topics to cover." The result is content that ranks for nothing in particular. Every brief I write contains the specific information a writer needs to produce content that converts and ranks.

The buyer question Pulled from Reddit, reviews, or sales call transcripts. The exact wording the buyer used. Not a paraphrase.
The commercial intent What conversion event this content should support. Where it sits in the funnel. What the next step looks like.
Entities to cover The semantic entities, attributes, and concepts that need to appear for genuine topical authority. Not keyword stuffing. Coverage.
The angle only this brand owns The piece of expertise, data, or positioning the writer should anchor the content around. The reason this version of the article exists.
Internal linking plan Where this page links from. Where this page links to. How authority flows through the cluster.
Success criteria What we'll measure 30, 60, and 90 days post publish. What "winning" looks like for this specific brief.
Scope of work

What an engagement actually covers.

Every SEO strategy engagement is scoped to your business and stage, but the building blocks usually include:

→
Business and SERP discovery The first two weeks. Sitting with leadership, sales, and operations. Understanding how the business makes money before any SEO work begins.
→
Strategic positioning and UVP definition The angle this brand can credibly own in the SERP. The strategic spine every piece of content and commercial page is built around.
→
Keyword and topic strategy Mapped to buyer journey stage, commercial intent, and content type. Prioritised by revenue impact, not search volume vanity.
→
Pillar and cluster architecture Topic clusters mapped to the SERP, the business, and the buyer. Built so topical authority compounds instead of fragments.
→
Detailed content briefs Briefs that include the buyer question, commercial intent, entity coverage, the brand angle, internal linking plan, and success criteria. Briefs writers can ship from.
→
Multi channel integration Working with paid, email, social, and product so the organic engine compounds across every channel rather than running alone.
→
Reporting and attribution GA4, GSC, and Looker dashboards built around revenue, conversions, branded search lift, and pipeline. Not impressions.
→
Ongoing strategic partnership Monthly meetings with leadership. Quarterly strategy reviews. Adjusting the plan when the data says something the original strategy didn't. Strategy doesn't end at delivery.

Let's talk about your SEO strategy.

If you're a UK brand tired of generic strategies that never quite fit the business, I'd like to hear what you're working on. The first call is free, and you'll leave with at least three things you can act on whether we work together or not.

BOOK A FREE CONSULTATION 30 MINUTE CALL · NO SALES PITCH · NO OBLIGATION

Zeeshan Bashir

1 hales place Stoke On Trent zeeshanzha@gmail.com +447384500964

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