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Graeme Whiles

SEO Consultant and AEO Strategist, Leeds, UK

Most businesses hire an SEO agency and end up talking to a junior who has been in the industry for six months. I built GWContent so that it would never happen to my clients.

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Graeme Whiles, SEO consultant and AEO strategist based in Leeds, UK

The short version

I did not plan to end up in SEO. I trained as a journalist at the University of Worcester, and for a while that is all I wanted to do. But journalism taught me something that turned out to be more valuable than any byline: how to find out what people actually want to know, and how to give them a clear answer.

That skill pulled me into content marketing. Content marketing pulled me into SEO. SEO pulled me into technical auditing, schema markup, and topical authority strategy. And in 2023, when AI started reshaping how people search, I was already asking the obvious question: if ChatGPT is answering my clients' customers, how do I make sure it is citing my clients?

Every step in my career has come back to the same thing: understanding how people find information, and making sure the right answer is there when they look.

Over the last decade I have worked with brands including PureGym, La Redoute, Connecteam, Originality.ai, 6sense, and Peppr. Some household names, some fast-growing startups. All of them came to me for the same reason: they wanted a senior SEO consultant who would actually do the work, not delegate it.

Alongside the consultancy work, I stay at the cutting edge of how search is evolving by working across enterprise AI search projects and testing strategies across every major platform. That constant exposure keeps my SEO consulting services sharp in a way that working in isolation never could.

I started GWContent because I kept watching the same thing happen. A business hires an agency, gets promised the world by a senior team in the pitch, then the account lands on someone who does not know the difference between a canonical tag and a meta description. I wanted to build something where that could never happen. One consultant. One point of contact. One person accountable for every deliverable.

The person you speak to is the person who does the work. That is not a tagline. It is the entire business model.

About Graeme Whiles

Graeme Whiles is an SEO consultant and AEO strategist with over a decade of experience in search engine optimisation, content strategy, and technical SEO. He is the founder of GWContent, an SEO consultancy based in Leeds, West Yorkshire, delivering AI search visibility, organic search strategy, and technical SEO for growth-stage businesses.

His consultancy work spans brands including PureGym, La Redoute, Connecteam, Originality.ai, 6sense, and Peppr. He specialises in E-E-A-T infrastructure, schema markup, topical authority, keyword research, and AI search optimisation across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews. His full professional background is available on LinkedIn.

  • Specialisms: Technical SEO, content strategy, AI search optimisation (AEO/GEO), E-E-A-T, schema markup, topical authority
  • Tools: Ahrefs, SEMrush, SurferSEO, Clearscope, Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, Google Search Console, Google Looker Studio, Schema App, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Klaviyo, Shopify
  • Former Clients: PureGym, La Redoute, Connecteam, Originality.ai, 6sense, Peppr
  • Training & Qualifications: Journalism, University of Worcester / CIM Digital Marketing Diploma
  • Location: Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK (working globally)
  • LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/graeme-whiles

Ask me anything

Curiosity. I was writing content and kept wondering why some pieces got traffic and others did not. That question pulled me into keyword research, then technical SEO, then the whole ecosystem. The journalism background helped because SEO, at its core, is about understanding what people are looking for and giving them the best possible answer. That has not changed, even as the platforms have.
Most mornings start in Ahrefs or Screaming Frog, digging into a client's data. Afternoons are usually spent building deliverables: content briefs, audit documents, strategy decks, or AI visibility reports. I block time for calls but keep them focused. The actual work happens in the tools and the documents, not in meetings.
It is the biggest shift in search since Google introduced the Knowledge Graph. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews are all pulling from the web and deciding which brands to cite. If your content is not structured for AI extraction, you are invisible to a growing segment of search behaviour. I have been testing and building strategies for AI search visibility since 2023, and it is now a core part of every engagement I run.

If ChatGPT is answering your customers' questions, the question is whether it is recommending you or your competitor.

Because the person you speak to is the person who does the work. At most agencies, you meet a senior strategist in the sales process and then your account gets handed to a junior. I do not operate that way. I run the tools, analyse the data, build the strategy, produce the deliverables, and present them to you directly. There is no account management layer, no outsourcing, and no handoffs.
Growth-stage SaaS companies, ecommerce brands, and professional services businesses that are investing seriously in organic search. The common thread is a team that understands SEO is a long-term investment, wants data-backed strategy rather than guesswork, and values working directly with someone senior.
I test constantly. AI search platforms update their citation behaviour regularly, Google rolls out algorithm changes multiple times a year, and what worked six months ago might not work today. I run live tests across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews every week as part of my client work. That is not something I set aside time for separately. It is built into how I work.
They treat it as a project instead of a programme. A business will invest in an audit, fix the issues, publish some content, and then stop. Six months later they wonder why the rankings have dropped. SEO compounds. The businesses that win are the ones that stay consistent, keep publishing, keep monitoring, and keep adapting to how search engines and AI platforms are evolving. The ones that treat it as a one-off always end up back at square one.

Like what you have read so far? Start with a free audit, and I will show you exactly where the opportunities are for your site.

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Client case studies

Connecteam — Deskless Workforce Management SaaS
Closing the gap between a strong product and untapped organic visibility

Connecteam already had a capable internal marketing team and solid foundations. I came in to identify the gaps: building out authentic review content written by genuine industry experts rather than generic writers, designing industry-specific calculators to attract backlinks, and scripting YouTube content to diversify traffic sources. Referral domains grew from 3,191 to 7,511 and AI Overview visibility increased from 3,522 to 6,320 appearances.

+62.6% organic traffic growth, +135.4% referral domains, +79.4% AI Overview visibility Learn More →
Originality.ai — AI Content Detection
From early-stage startup to industry leader in organic search

I started working with Originality.ai at a crucial period. The AI detection market was brand new, competition was low but growing fast, and whichever brand established topical authority first would own the space. I mapped out an SEO and AEO content strategy that focused on E-E-A-T signals, competitive comparison content, and LLM visibility from day one. The result was a brand that went from early entrant to the go-to name in AI detection.

+324.7% organic traffic (278K → 1.18M), +805% referral domains (1,098 → 9,942) Learn More →
Peppr — Restaurant Tech SaaS
Brand new domain to 396K impressions in seven months

Peppr was a cloud-based restaurant POS startup competing against Toast, Clover, and Square. Young domain, minimal content, no organic presence. I built the entire SEO engine from scratch: a comparison-page architecture targeting switching-intent searches, technical foundations, and product-level SEO for their flagship Grow product. Average position improved from 18.3 to 7.6 and daily impressions grew from 46 to over 5,600.

396K total impressions, +451% daily impression growth, avg position 18.3 → 7.6 Learn More →

Common questions

Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK. I work with clients across the UK and internationally. All communication happens via video call, email, and Loom recordings, so location has never been a barrier.
Ahrefs for keyword research and competitor analysis. SurferSEO for NLP entity analysis and content scoring. Screaming Frog for technical SEO auditing. Google Search Console for performance tracking. For AI search work, I manually test across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews.
Yes. The tools, the process, and the strategy work the same regardless of geography. I have worked with clients across Europe and North America. The only thing that changes is the competitive landscape in the target market.
Start with a free SEO and AI visibility audit. Submit your site URL, and I will crawl it, pull your competitive data, and run a spot check across AI search platforms. From there, we can discuss what makes sense for your situation. No commitment, no sales pitch.

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