I have worked in SEO, content and digital marketing for more than 20 years. When you engage me as your SEO consultant, you work directly with me, with GrowTraffic’s wider team available to help implement the strategy.
GrowTraffic founder Simon Dalley is one of the UK’s most experienced SEO consultants, with more than 20 years’ experience in search, content and digital marketing.
He has developed and led SEO strategies for businesses ranging from ambitious SMEs to some of the UK’s best-known brands, helping them improve their visibility, reach the right audiences and generate commercially valuable enquiries.
My name is Simon Dalley. I am a director and SEO consultant at GrowTraffic, with more than 20 years’ experience in search, content and digital marketing. If your website is not visible when potential customers are searching, it is missing opportunities to reach them. That is why I originally set up GrowTraffic whilst working as a freelance SEO consultant, helping businesses achieve sustainable growth through search engines such as Google.
In today’s market, businesses cannot afford to rest on their laurels. Your website needs to work hard, compete with the best and be visible for the searches that matter commercially. If you are unsure why your website is underperforming, an experienced search engine optimisation consultant can identify what is holding it back, uncover the opportunities available and help you decide what should happen next.
So, if you cannot make head nor tail of all the conflicting SEO advice out there, or you need an experienced second opinion on your current strategy, you may benefit from working with an SEO consultant like me.
Here at GrowTraffic, search engine optimisation is what we do. I combine my experience as an SEO strategist, consultant and search-focused copywriter with the technical, content and implementation capabilities of the wider GrowTraffic team. You can engage me for strategic consultancy and advice, implement the recommendations through your own team or ask GrowTraffic to deliver the work for you.
SEO consultancy means different things to different people. At GrowTraffic, it is about giving you the knowledge, experience and strategic direction needed to improve your search visibility and support the growth of your business.
As a search engine optimisation specialist, I will review your website to understand where it is underperforming and where the strongest opportunities lie. This can include analysing its technical condition, structure, content, existing keyword performance and backlink profile, as well as the search demand within your market. The aim is not simply to identify more keywords, but to determine which opportunities are commercially relevant, achievable and worth pursuing. Once your website has been analysed, you will receive clear, practical recommendations explaining what should be improved, what should be prioritised and what may not be worth your investment.
I approach this work from the perspective of a technical SEO consultant whilst also considering your content, authority, user experience and wider visibility across traditional search results, AI Overviews and AI assistants. Once the audit and SEO strategy consultancy phase has been completed, you can implement the recommendations through your own team, ask me to work alongside your existing marketing or development partners or hire GrowTraffic to deliver the work for you.
Choosing someone to advise you on such an important part of your marketing is a big decision. If you would like to discuss your website, your current SEO strategy or an issue you are trying to resolve, call us on 0161 706 0012 or call me directly on 07411 420740.
Most GrowTraffic SEO clients work directly with our account managers and delivery specialists. They may initially speak to our business development team or another director and I may never speak to them personally.
That does not mean I am absent from the agency. I am the person the GrowTraffic team comes back to when they encounter a difficult problem, something is not moving as expected or they need another perspective on the strategy. The team is perfectly capable of delivering excellent SEO without putting me in every meeting, but my experience remains available behind the scenes when they need it.
SEO consultancy is different because the client is choosing to work directly with me.
I will take the time to understand your business, diagnose what is happening and help shape the strategic direction. I may also carry out some of the work on your website myself. Where the programme requires ongoing technical SEO, content, authority building or implementation, I can bring in GrowTraffic’s wider team without handing away the strategic relationship.
I will not necessarily attend every routine meeting or complete every individual task. That would rarely be the best use of my time or your budget. However, I remain available when decisions need to be made, when something is not going to plan or when the original strategy needs challenging.
For longer term clients, I may return for a deeper strategic review every 12 to 18 months. Sometimes that confirms we are still on the right path. Sometimes it means changing direction. The point is to make sure the work continues because it remains worthwhile, rather than because it appeared in a plan written a year ago.
You may benefit from working directly with me when:
Sometimes the answer will be more SEO work. Sometimes it will be a different type of marketing work. Occasionally, the right advice will be not to spend the money at all.
I would rather tell you that than manufacture a programme of activity simply because you asked for SEO consultancy.
I began working in SEO in the earlier days of search marketing, when the industry was very different and some of the tactics that worked would make most modern SEO consultants wince.
Over time, I learned that the most sustainable results came from understanding what people were searching for, creating something genuinely useful and making it easy for search engines and users to understand why a business deserved to be visible.
I originally founded GrowTraffic in 2009 as a side hustle whilst working as a freelance SEO consultant. The business grew because clients did not only need advice. They needed people who could implement the technical changes, write the content, improve the website and continue developing the strategy.
GrowTraffic has since become an established digital marketing agency with specialists covering SEO, content, paid media, websites and wider search visibility. My role has also changed. I now spend more of my time on strategy, difficult problems and opportunities that require a broader commercial view.
During my career, I have worked with businesses ranging from ambitious owner managed companies to recognised national brands, including Skiddle, BrightHR, UKFast and WeBuyAnyCar. That experience has taught me that SEO rarely exists in isolation. It is affected by the website, the offer, the sales process, the market, the content, the brand and the organisation’s ability to turn visibility into customers.
That breadth is what clients are buying when they choose to work directly with me.
There is no shortage of SEO reports.
Most tools can produce hundreds of pages of warnings, scores and recommended actions. The difficult part is deciding which of those things actually matter, what should happen first and whether fixing them will make any meaningful difference to the business.
My role is not to make SEO look more complicated than it is. It is to understand the evidence, identify the underlying problem and help you make sensible decisions.
The result may include an audit, recommendations and a strategic roadmap, but the value is in the judgement behind them.
Before looking at rankings, tools or technical scores, I need to understand how your business works, what you sell, who you want to reach and what a commercially useful result would look like.
I review the available evidence, including your website, search visibility, technical condition, content, competitors, authority and existing marketing activity.
I explain what I think is happening, where the opportunities lie and what I believe should happen next. This is a conversation, not the ceremonial handing over of an enormous report.
I may complete some of the work personally. Your internal team may implement the recommendations or GrowTraffic’s technical, SEO and content specialists can deliver the wider programme.
Where GrowTraffic is delivering the work, you will have named people managing the ongoing activity. They understand the strategy and can come back to me whenever they need additional input.
You can come back to me when circumstances change, something is not working or a significant decision needs to be made. For longer term relationships, I may also carry out a deeper strategic review every 12 to 18 months.
Both services draw on GrowTraffic’s SEO experience and delivery capability. The difference is the relationship you have with me.
Our agency team does not need me sitting in every client meeting to do good work. I support them when they need me, but many agency clients will never work with me personally.
If working directly with me is important to you, SEO consultancy is the appropriate service.
My experience covers more than rankings and technical SEO.
I have worked across SEO, content, copywriting, paid media, websites, lead generation and wider digital strategy. I have held senior in house marketing roles, founded and developed GrowTraffic and worked with businesses at very different stages of growth.
I am also a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and regularly speak and train on SEO, digital marketing, AI search and business growth.
This means I can look beyond the isolated SEO problem.
A ranking decline may be technical, but it may also be caused by weak positioning, the wrong content, a confused website structure or a change in the way customers search. More visibility may be achievable, but it may not be commercially worthwhile. The keyword with the greatest search volume may be considerably less valuable than a technical phrase used by a small number of serious buyers.
My job is to recognise those distinctions and help you decide what to do about them.
Good consultancy should lead to better decisions and better work. The examples below show how strategic SEO thinking, supported by GrowTraffic’s technical and content team, has helped businesses improve their search visibility and compete for commercially important opportunities.
Target keywords in the top 10
Thermal spray coatings · industrial
Opening up a new market for a specialist coating. We built rankings for the commercial terms buyers use. During the campaign the site moved from page four to page one, with 94% of its tracked target keywords reaching the top 10 and a 100% increase in traffic over six months. Those rankings put a niche capability in front of the manufacturers searching for it.
More organic traffic
Modular annexe builder · construction
Competing for high-intent terms in a growing category. Content and organic SEO grew organic traffic by 79.4% and users by 92%, and reached a consistent top-three position for “granny annexe” during the campaign. The terms we targeted are exactly what ready-to-buy customers search.
Page-one rankings from a new domain
Thermal insulation manufacturer · technical B2B
A new domain without established organic authority, entering a market with established European competitors. Onsite work and technical content achieved 13 page-one rankings and 42% of target keywords in the top 10, building visibility in a specialist category. (Rankings result; traffic and enquiry data not measured.)
SEO consultancy depends on trust. You need to know that the person advising you understands the problem, will explain their thinking and is prepared to say when something is not worth doing.
“Simon is a gifted and perceptive marketer with a firm understanding of the whole marketing spectrum, with an obvious bias towards digital and unparalleled knowledge of search marketing. He uses his creative, return on investment focused marketing to create business wide strategies that drive the organisations he’s involved with to enviable levels of success.”
Former client
“Simon provided comprehensive briefs that included context, aims and objectives. He has a deep knowledge of his target market’s needs and how to customize content to meet them, along with very useful guidance on how to use keywords in a natural way so that the content is relevant to both the audience and search engines.”
Worked with Simon
“Simon is at the top of his game and a pleasure to work with; very willing to share knowledge and experience which in turn has allowed me to get to grips with the fantastic Marketing and PR strategies he has developed for Skiddle.”
Worked with Simon on Skiddle
Yes. That is the main distinction between this consultancy service and GrowTraffic’s ordinary SEO agency service.
I will work directly with you to understand the business, diagnose the problem and shape the strategy. GrowTraffic’s wider team may implement parts of the programme, but I remain available when strategic decisions need to be made.
Not necessarily.
I may carry out some of the strategic, analytical or onsite work myself. Where the programme requires ongoing technical SEO, content, development or authority work, it will often make more sense to use the appropriate specialists within GrowTraffic.
You are paying for my direct involvement and strategic judgement, not for me to pretend I am the best person to complete every individual task.
Yes.
I can work with your internal marketing, content or development teams and provide the direction they need to implement the strategy. I can also review the work as it progresses and step back in when decisions need to be made.
Yes.
GrowTraffic’s SEO, technical and content team can deliver the ongoing programme whilst I retain the strategic relationship with you.
This is likely to be the most appropriate arrangement when you want direct access to me but do not have the internal resources to complete all the work.
Yes.
Sometimes a business does not need to replace its agency. It needs an experienced independent view of the strategy, the priorities and whether the work being delivered is likely to produce the intended result.
I can review the existing activity, identify concerns and explain what I believe should happen next. If the agency is doing the right things, I will say so.
It can be.
Some clients need a single audit, strategic review or second opinion. Others want me to remain involved whilst their team or GrowTraffic implements the work.
The relationship should reflect what the business genuinely needs, rather than forcing every client into the same model.
I am involved directly at the beginning of the consultancy relationship and whenever significant strategic input is required.
I will not necessarily attend every routine meeting or supervise every individual task. For longer term clients, I may return for a deeper strategic review every 12 to 18 months, as well as stepping back in whenever something is not going to plan or the strategy needs changing.
Yes.
People now discover and assess businesses through traditional Google results, AI Overviews and assistants such as ChatGPT. These are not completely separate disciplines. They depend on many of the same foundations, including clear positioning, useful content, technical accessibility, authority and strong evidence about who the business is and what it does.
I consider those wider forms of visibility as part of a modern search strategy.
No.
Nobody controls Google’s search results and anyone guaranteeing a particular position should be treated with caution.
What I can provide is an experienced diagnosis, clear recommendations, honest prioritisation and a proper explanation of what is working, what is not and what should happen next.
If you have a difficult SEO problem, need an experienced second opinion or want to work directly with me on your search strategy, get in touch.
I will tell you what I think, what I believe is worth pursuing and whether I am the right person to help.