Freelance SEO services in Cheltenham
Digital Marketing Services across Cheltenham & Gloucestershire
Search engine optimisation, local search, content and digital PR for Cheltenham and Gloucestershire businesses. A graduate of the University of Gloucestershire, with over 15 years in search.
Search engine optimisation (SEO) should be at the forefront of every business owner’s thinking. Search engines such as Google are the go to place nowadays for customers when they are looking for services, both regionally in towns across the Cotswolds and Gloucestershire and more specifically in Cheltenham. If you searched for SEO Cheltenham and I appeared, that is testament to my ability to optimise visibility, not only for myself but for other businesses.
Owain will work with you to establish your business objectives and KPIs and the competitive landscape, then work to identify on-page and off-page SEO opportunities. On-page being optimisation opportunities across your website, whether content, images or technical SEO requirements. Off-page being the quantity and quality of citations your website has attained from third party sites, which relate to your backlink profile and overall domain authority. Both are hugely important elements which determine the strength and authority your business website has with search engines.
In addition to providing SEO across Cheltenham and the surrounding areas, Owain is Google Ads certified for running PPC advertising campaigns for your Cheltenham based business, to supplement any lack of organic visibility or to reaffirm visibility through Google search. Paid search has its own page: PPC services Cheltenham.
If your website is nowhere to be seen, or is not attracting the right kind of traffic and conversions, contact Owain to see how he can support. Local clients have ranged from Cotswold Kerbing, an SME whose whole job is being found by people within a sensible driving distance, to the Queen’s Hotel in the centre of town and Iress in financial services, where the audience is national and specialist.
Local clients
Cheltenham and Cotswolds clients
Four local accounts, four different search problems. Each logo links through to their site.
The approach
My approach to the work
Search engine optimisation is not a science but an art. Google rewards websites for providing great user experiences, rich and rewarding on-page content, and valuable media backlinks from reputable publications pointing back to your website. These factors all influence your domain authority, which in turn raises your overall level of online visibility against your closest marketplace competition.
As a freelancer I use a project managed approach with Asana to ensure complete transparency and seamless collaboration. The project board is a central hub where you can track progress, set new tasks and adjust objectives in real time. Communication runs through Asana and email, supplemented by a monthly reporting call to discuss progress and the objectives for the month ahead.
What matters here
What local SEO changes here
Three things that change the approach in this market.
Local search
Invaluable for businesses serving customers near their location. To be discovered in Google or Bing map listings you need a fully optimised local listing, and local citations developed alongside it.
Content marketing
Content is assessed through qualitative research rather than word count or keyword density. Your copy has to be contextual enough to be indexed for the services you offer while still reading well for the people on the page.
Reporting
Your website is the face of the company, so you deserve to know how people engage with every part of it. Only when the data behind performance can be interpreted can improvements start to be made.
The services
SEO services Cheltenham
Paid search and organic search, run by the same person so they inform each other rather than competing for the same clicks.
PPC services Cheltenham
Google Ads across search, shopping and remarketing. Keyword research, competitor analysis, campaign build, budget pacing, conversion tracking and ongoing optimisation, charged by the hour with no commission on your ad spend.
PPC services CheltenhamSEO services Cheltenham
Technical SEO, query research, on-page content and FAQs, structured data, local visibility and citations, plus the authority building that makes a brand quotable rather than merely present.
SEO services and managementFreelance or agency
Freelance consultant, or a digital agency?
Agencies earn their fee on large, multi-channel programmes. For a search account, four things usually decide it.
Where the fee goes
An agency retainer funds premises, account management and new business alongside the work. Freelance PPC services are charged by the hour from £70, so more of the budget reaches the account.
No minimum term
Agencies commonly ask for a minimum six month agreement, signed before there is any evidence the work is paying. Hours here are booked as they are needed, with no minimum term and one month of good grace either way so both sides can plan ahead. A smaller number of agencies also still take a percentage of your media budget, which gives them an interest in that budget growing; I charge for time only, so the advice on what to spend is not tied to what I earn.
The same person throughout
No senior pitch followed by a junior in the account, and no handover in month two. The person you brief in Cheltenham is the person building and optimising the campaigns.
Scaling either way
Hours go up when there is work to do and down when there is not. That suits seasonal businesses and anyone who wants a flexible extension of an existing marketing team rather than a fixed retainer.
Questions
Before you commission the work
What people ask before commissioning search work locally.
What makes Owain a top freelance SEO specialist in Cheltenham?
Sound knowledge of the area counts for a great deal in local search. Having studied and lived in the town, I know Cheltenham and the surrounding towns and villages across Gloucestershire well, from Cirencester, Stroud and Tewkesbury to Burford and the Cotswold villages, which is what makes local landing pages, citations and Google Business Profile work land rather than guess. The way of working is also different from a digital agency in Cheltenham: you deal with one specialist throughout, charged by the hour, and the person you brief is the person doing the work.
How long have you been working with Cheltenham businesses?
Over 15 years. One of my first freelance gigs came within a year of graduating from the University of Gloucestershire, so local work has run alongside the agency and enterprise side of my career from the very start rather than being a recent addition.
How long does SEO take to show results?
Expect three to six months before the compounding really shows, longer in competitive national niches. Technical fixes and local listing work often move things sooner, which is usually where the first round of effort goes.
What does the SEO work actually involve?
Rather more than managing listings. The bulk is on the site itself: page structure, internal linking, the technical issues holding back crawling and indexation, and content written to answer the queries people actually type. Structured data then tells search engines and language models what each page is and what it answers, and citations from sources that already carry authority are what make a brand quotable in AI answers rather than merely present in the index.
Do you meet Cheltenham clients in person?
Yes. Rugby to Cheltenham is a straightforward drive, so in person kick-offs and reviews are easy to arrange. Most of the ongoing work is handled remotely.
Can you run Google Ads alongside the SEO?
Yes, and many Cheltenham accounts use both. Paid search buys visibility immediately while organic compounds, and run by one person the paid data informs the organic priorities directly. See PPC services Cheltenham.
Next step
Ready to get more from search in Cheltenham and the surrounding areas?
A thirty minute call is usually enough to tell whether paid search, SEO or both are worth the spend for your business. No obligation either way.
Contact Owain
Discuss your requirements over a call or a coffee
Tell me where you rank now, what you are spending and what you want search to do for the business. You will get a straight answer on whether there is enough opportunity to justify the work.
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