An honest SEO proposal
for olliepearce.com

Where things stand.

The ads are working. You're spending around £1,000 a month and getting bookings from it. The Google Ads account has been running for nearly a decade and it keeps the phone moving. That's the floor.

But the ads are doing all the work. When the daily budget runs out, you disappear from Google entirely. No organic presence picking up the slack. No content compounding in the background. No rankings that exist independent of what you're spending.

The site has been live since around 2018. It was built properly and it was good. But it hasn't been actively maintained from an SEO standpoint in years, and the web moves on whether you're paying attention or not. What was solid in 2019 isn't enough in 2026. That's not a criticism of the original work. It's what happens to any site that isn't actively looked after over time. Technical standards shift, competitors invest, and the gap quietly grows.

The gap is bigger than you think.

I've done a full technical crawl and competitive audit of olliepearce.com. The numbers aren't great. But almost everything on the list is fixable, and the site has real strengths to build on.

What's actually wrong and why.

Most of these are maintenance issues, not failures from the original build. Sites accumulate technical drift over time. Here's what matters most and what each issue is costing you.

Where you should be. Where you are.

The Tinder no-matches article ranks fourth nationally. That's proof the domain can rank. But that page attracts curiosity traffic — people wondering why they're not getting matches. The people with their card out are searching "dating photographer London" or "dating coach London." That's the gap this work is designed to close.

What they're doing that you're not.

Koby Photography

Koby is a London photographer who added dating photography more recently than you've been doing this. No coaching, no styling background, no 20-year editorial fashion career. On paper you're the stronger offer. But his site is outperforming yours on nearly every SEO metric right now. He published one long-form guide in March 2026 on dating photos for Tinder, Bumble and Hinge. That single post will generate more ongoing organic traffic than anything on your site published in the last few years.

He's winning on consistency and execution, not experience. That's fixable.

Hey Saturday

Hey Saturday is the market leader. BBC, FT, GQ, Radio 4. A serious backlink profile built over years. You're not beating them head-to-head on brand authority in the short term and that's not the goal. But they don't do coaching. They don't do styling. They're an agency, not an individual expert. On specific long-tail keywords, London-specific coaching terms, and the areas where your integrated offer is genuinely unique, they're beatable. That's where the focus goes.

What is this actually worth to you?

Before we get into what this costs, I want you to sit with this. Not as a sales pitch. As a real calculation that only you can answer.

The sensible next step.

This is the main recommendation. It's a one-time, defined piece of work with a clear scope and a clear end. No ongoing commitment required. Fix what's broken, refresh what's dated, set a proper baseline, and then decide whether monthly SEO makes sense from there.

Here's exactly what the Foundation includes:

• Full technical SEO audit with a prioritised fix list before any work begins
• Fix the internal broken link and update the five redirect chains pointing to old URLs
• Meta descriptions written for every page, keyword-first and compelling, not auto-generated
• "London" added to the homepage title tag, H1, and meta description — the most straightforward step toward improving "dating coach London" from position 18
• Multiple H1 structure fixed across all pages
• Alt text added to 316 images currently missing it — written with proper context, not just file names
• Sitemap verified, cleaned up, and submitted to Google Search Console — taxonomy pages reviewed for whether they should be indexed or excluded to avoid crawl budget waste
• Internal nofollow removed so pages can pass authority between each other
• 24 oversized images compressed and fixed for mobile load speed
• Schema markup implemented across the site — helps Google understand the business, the services, who Ollie is, and what clients have said. Where eligible, this improves how results appear in search.
• Google Business Profile audited and fully optimised: categories, photos, services, description, and consistency with the site
• Rank tracking set up using Google Search Console with a proper baseline from day one — no paid tools needed, no ongoing software cost
• Keyword research done properly and used to inform everything that follows
• Image refresh across the site — outdated photos replaced, including any images that no longer accurately represent the business. New imagery produced to look professional and on-brand, not obviously AI-generated
• Service page copy refreshed with Ollie's input — thin copy is one of the reasons service pages aren't converting the traffic they already get
• Email provider set up (MailChimp or a cheaper alternative — options presented before anything is committed to; software cost is separate and yours) and a 5 to 10 email welcome sequence built around the existing lead magnet, turning cold sign-ups into warm enquiries with a clear path to booking a free consultation

Monthly SEO. Two options.

The Foundation gets the site into proper shape. If you want to go further, the monthly work is where the compounding happens. New content, new rankings, closing the gap on competitors over time. But this is a decision to make after the Foundation is done, not before.

If I were in your position, I'd either do the Full for a minimum of six months and assess honestly, or commit to Intermediate for 12. Both get you to roughly the same place. Full gets there faster. Intermediate is steadier and lower cost over the same period.

Either way, 12 months is the honest minimum before you can judge whether it's working. Anyone telling you otherwise is telling you what you want to hear. Pulling out before then is like cancelling a gym membership in February and concluding the gym doesn't work.

This isn't "write me a blog."

Yes, you can generate a blog post with AI in about a minute. It'll be generic, it probably won't rank, it won't sound like you, and without proper formatting it will look rough on mobile. That's not what this is.

What takes time is doing it properly. The keyword research to know what to write about. The structure. The formatting for desktop and mobile. Creating images that look like they belong on a professional site rather than obvious AI placeholders. Internal linking to other pages. SEO optimisation. And then actually publishing it so it reads well and looks right. That's the work. That's what you're paying for.

The workflow for each guide: I give you the title and a simple outline. You record a voice note, talking through it the way you'd explain the topic to a client. Twenty minutes, no script needed. I take that audio, build it into a proper long-form guide in your voice, produce the imagery, format it correctly, and publish it. The content sounds like you because it comes from you. That's also what Google is rewarding in 2026 — genuine expertise, not generated filler. And it needs to go out at a natural cadence, one piece per month, not ten in a week. Consistent publishing signals an active, authoritative site. A burst of content then silence signals the opposite.

What I can't promise.

I've known you long enough to not dress this up.

This takes time. The Foundation fixes will show some movement within weeks. Getting to page 1 for "dating photographer London" or seriously closing the gap on Hey Saturday is a 12-month minimum. There will be months where the visible change feels slow. That's normal. It's also when most people walk away, which is exactly why their competitors move ahead.

Nobody can guarantee rankings. Anyone who does is lying. Google's algorithm changes constantly. AI is changing how results are displayed. What I can tell you is that the work described here is the right work. It's what your competitors are doing. There is no version of this that doesn't require consistent effort over time.

You don't have to do this forever. The honest advice is to commit to 12 months of monthly work and then stop if you want. The content and fixes don't disappear when you stop paying. The rankings stay. Ideally you keep publishing because that's what compounds. But 12 months of solid work leaves you in a fundamentally better position than you're in today. We used to do content together. It worked. We stopped. That's a large part of why the gap exists now.

The Foundation alone is valid. If the monthly commitment isn't right yet, the £2,000 Foundation is a complete, standalone piece of work. It improves existing rankings, cleans up years of accumulated drift, and gives a real baseline. Start there. See the movement. The monthly work will make more sense once you can see it happening.

When you're ready.