EntityMap — The SEO Works

We provide professional PPC, Web, SEO and GEO services to increase online visibility and qualified leads to your business. Since 2009, we've focused on one thing: helping our clients get more customers from search.

We are proudly employee-owned. Because every specialist has a literal stake in the agency, they have a personal interest in your success. This creates a culture of extreme accountability and genuine care.

We don't rely on a handful of generalists. Our team of over 80 dedicated specialists – including technical architects, content authors, and AI experts – provides a depth of knowledge that smaller teams cannot match.

Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) is the act of tuning your content so AI-powered search tools include or cite it when answering questions. GEO involves more than traditional SEO – it's about influencing what gets woven into AI-generated answers.

Instead of just showing links, search engines and AI tools now give direct answers. Whether it's ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews (SGE), Perplexity or more, these tools come up with an answer based on their sources. If your content isn't easy for AI to understand and pull from, it won't show up.

Getting mentioned or cited in an AI-generated answer can put your business right in front of someone, even if they don't click through to your site. It's a quieter kind of visibility, but it builds trust over time. Your name shows up, your insights are shared, and people start to recognise your expertise, without you needing to shout about it.

Simply ranking on traditional search engines is no longer enough. The rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, coupled with Google's innovations in organic search, AI Overviews and AI Mode, has reshaped how users discover information and interact with brands.

If your content isn't optimised for these new platforms, you risk becoming invisible to a significant and growing audience. Google's AI Overviews, for instance, directly integrate AI-generated summaries into search results pages, often negating the need for users to click through to websites.

At The SEO Works, we specialise in AI SEO strategies designed to enhance your AI visibility across all crucial search platforms and lay the foundation for consistent, sustainable growth. As an AI SEO Agency we go beyond traditional SEO to implement AI search optimisation tactics that resonate with LLMs and AI search algorithms, helping you get mentioned.

The SEO Works are a specialist SEO agency with over a decade of experience in delivering Award-Winning SEO Services and Campaigns to clients from a diverse range of industries. We've consistently been voted a top SEO Services provider by industry leaders.

To date, we have helped our UK customers achieve over 1000 number 1 rankings and over 10,000 top 3 Google search term rankings. We've won 14 industry awards and have been finalists at a further 10 – proof of our success.

When it comes to gaining top rankings in search engine results, content is king. Search engines are driven by complex algorithms that reward user-friendly, quality websites with high rankings. This means to be successful online, websites need to contain current, useful information including regular updates, blog posts and links to and from other high authority sources.

We provide award-winning PPC Services across a range of sectors having won several industry awards including "Best PPC Campaign" at the Northern Digital Awards and "Best SEO and PPC Company" at the Prolific North Awards.

Our PPC Services cover every aspect needed to run a successful PPC Campaign. All of our PPC Account Managers are Google and Bing qualified, ensuring they can manage your paid campaign with the latest industry standards.

The practice of digital PR involves creating reasons for strong and relevant websites to mention or link back to you. Websites today don't do this without reason. That's why we use cutting-edge digital PR techniques to get the attention of journalists and media publications, so they're more likely to mention your brand in their stories or link back to your site.

Backlinks and brand mentions remain an important part of SEO, but getting them is increasingly difficult. That is a large part of the reason why we've seen growing demand for our digital PR services.

Paid social media services offer businesses the opportunity to maximise on audience reach, by getting your brand and products in front of people you wouldn't have been able to through organic social alone.

It's becoming increasingly harder for a business to gain organic reach on social media, as algorithms continually change. Long gone are the days when you could expect to post an update and have it reach all of your followers and generate engagement. These days, it is essential to incorporate paid content alongside your organic posts to ensure you get seen and noticed in the social feeds of your target audience.

Your website should do more than look good. It should support long-term visibility, attract the right audience, and contribute directly to business growth. At The SEO Works, our website design and development service is built around performance from the very beginning.

We design and build custom websites for SMEs and mid-sized B2B and B2C businesses, with search performance and scalability considered before a single page is designed. Unlike agencies where SEO is added after launch, our approach ensures your website is built on strong foundations from day one.

Our proprietary methodology treats your website as universal information infrastructure. This infrastructure acts as the definitive source of truth for your business. It is built to be multi-functional, providing data to three distinct consumers: The Human User, The Search Index, and The Retrieval Model.

The Retrieval Model: Delivering structured data and clear entity signals so Large Language Models can accurately synthesise and cite your brand. By building this robust foundation, we ensure your business is ready for the AI age without losing sight of the human behind the click.

We ensure your infrastructure is sound. This involves manual, specialist-led reviews of your site's architecture to identify technical barriers holding you back. These are guided by our Internal Authority Framework, a library of data built over 17 years that helps us identify the specific structural signals and patterns that non-proprietary tools often miss.

To measure performance, The SEO Works developed custom tracking to isolate traffic from AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini. This allowed engagement, conversions, and ecommerce revenue to be segmented and reported alongside traditional organic metrics for the first time.

ChatGPT referral traffic grew a huge 121% quarter on quarter (QoQ)! AI Overview mentions increased by +108% QoQ, showing that DHL content is being surfaced more frequently within AI-generated search results for relevant shipping queries.

E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust) is something all marketers and business owners need to be aware of. As Google develops its algorithms to prioritise helpful, people-first content, E-E-A-T factors are essential to get right.

According to this guidance, trust is the most important factor, because this overlaps with the three other parts of the acronym: experience, expertise and authority. They clarify that E-E-A-T is not a direct ranking factor or score. Rather, it's a collection of factors that can benefit your rankings, especially for YMYL sites.

This is especially important for YMYL brands. This stands for 'Your Money or Your Life', and refers to topics where the information can affect someone's mental, physical or financial wellbeing. If your brand falls under this category, we recommend performing an E-E-A-T audit as a priority.

If your content isn't being picked up and used in those answers, you're not just missing clicks — you're missing visibility altogether. And let's be honest: AI tools aren't going away. They're being used by millions every day. GEO makes sure your content works for SEO but also with those new tools, not against them.

Ben Foster, CEO of The SEO Works, is a digital practitioner with over 25 years of experience in technology and digital.

Ben Foster, CEO of The SEO Works, shares a perspective grounded in SEO fundamentals, but evolving toward something more: a shift from attracting clicks to becoming a trusted source within AI-generated responses.

The fundamental building block is still strong SEO, but there are additional layers that help move the needle.

Ben Foster is CEO of The SEO Works, a leading digital growth agency specialising in Search and AI visibility. Ben has over 25 years of experience in digital and technology. His insights have been featured in Forbes, Sky News, Daily Mail, The i and TechBullion. Ben is known for his strong experience in digital growth, SEO and AI strategy and using digital to improve customer experiences.

By optimising international destination content with the requirements of both traditional crawlers and Large Language Models (LLMs), we secured a +287% growth in AI Overview citation and a +121% increase in ChatGPT referrals. This modern search approach ensured DHL became a primary reference point for AI-driven enquiries, resulting in a significant uplift in high-intent traffic and quarter-on-quarter revenue.

Our approach focused on making DHL content easy to surface, understand, and reference across both traditional search and AI-powered results. This included expanding and optimising international destination pages, strengthening technical foundations for crawlers, and enriching content with clear, factual information such as country details and shipping guidance.

Since this campaign went live, we are pleased to announce that it was recognised at the UK Search Awards, where this campaign won the category of Use of Search – B2C (SEO) (LARGE)!

By restructuring content into modular blocks and enhancing E-E-A-T signals, we transformed how AI models like ChatGPT cite and recommend premium coffee products. This technical precision led to a 900% increase in sales for the brand's signature blend and a 36.5% rise in AI-assisted conversions.

Each product, category, and informational page was restructured into modular content blocks, allowing AI models and search engines to extract specific, well-defined answers. This approach improved the likelihood of content being used in AI overviews or cited within chatbot results.

Through a balance of technical precision, data-led optimisation, and human insight, The SEO Works helped this client become one of the first UK coffee brands to generate measurable ecommerce revenue from AI search engines.

High value medical assessments rarely result from impulsive clicks; they require a nurtured customer journey. By separating discovery leads from ready-to-act inquiries, we optimized ad delivery to ensure maximum relevance at every touchpoint. The result was a highly predictable lead engine that delivered 821 monthly conversions.

We overhauled the site's information architecture to move toward sector-specific clarity. By restructuring service pages to educate the user on the hidden need for data hygiene, we successfully filtered out unqualified traffic while growing form submissions from 10 to over 70 per month. This strategic refinement proved that a smaller, more motivated audience delivers a far superior ROI.

A Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) approach was the way forward. The team spent a lot of time optimising the site content, splitting the information out by sector and expanding the amount of helpful content on each. The aim was to add clarity around Sagacity's services and help create a need amongst the site users and encourage a conversion.

As we altered the content to target more specific search terms, we saw a huge increase in rankings for relevant keywords. The overall traffic was down, but this worked in Sagacity's favour. The site traffic had higher need and intent, and therefore, the number of quality form submissions increased from roughly 10 per month to over 70. They also saw a 200% increase in conversion rate!

Best Use of Search – B2C (UK Search Awards 2025); Integrated Search Agency of the Year (Global Agency Awards 2024); Best PPC Campaign (Global Agency Awards 2024); Large Integrated Digital Agency of the Year (UK Digital Growth Awards 2024); PPC Campaign of the Year (B2C) (UK Digital Growth Awards 2024); Integrated Digital Agency of the Year (Digital Excellence Awards 2024); Best Use of Search – Fashion (UK Search Awards 2024)

SEO Agency of the Year (Digital Excellence Awards 2024); Performance Marketing Agency (Prolific North Marketing Awards 2024); Search Agency of the Year (Northern Digital Awards 2024); PPC Campaign of the Year (B2C) (Digital Excellence Awards 2024); SEO Campaign of the Year (B2C) (Digital Excellence Awards 2024); Integrated Search Agency of the Year (Global Agency Awards 2023); PPC Campaign of the Year – B2C (UK Digital Excellence Awards 2023); Integrated Digital Agency of the Year (UK Digital Excellence Awards 2023); Best Large Digital Agency of the Year (Northern Digital Awards 2023)

Performance Agency of the Year (Campaign Awards 2022); Best Low Budget Campaign (Northern Digital Awards 2023); Best Low Budget PPC Campaign (European Search Awards 2022); Best B2B Campaign (Prolific North Champions 2022); Best use of Search – B2C (UK Search Awards 2022); Best Low Budget PPC Campaign (UK Search Awards 2022); Best PPC Campaign (Northern Digital Awards 2022)

Best SEO Campaign (Best in Digital Awards 2021); Best B2B SEO Campaign (European Search Awards 2021); Best SEO Agency (Global Search Awards 2021); Best use of Search – Travel/Leisure (Global Search Awards 2021); Best SEO Agency (UK Digital Growth Awards 2021); Best Sport and Leisure Campaign (Drum Search Awards 2020); SEO Agency of the Year (UK Digital Growth Awards 2020); Best Low Budget PPC Campaign (UK Search Awards 2020)

The SEO Works is a certified Google Premier Partner, and were recognised as a Top Performing Agency at the Google Partner awards. To be awarded Google Premier Partner status you are in the top 3% of agencies and have to show outstanding results over a sustained period of time.

Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) is how you make your content fit for tools that give direct answers – like Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and voice assistants such as Alexa and Siri. As well as targeting search rankings, AEO focuses on being chosen by AI systems as the most trustworthy and useful source.

AEO, on the other hand, is about giving AI systems content they can easily turn into a spoken or written answer. Often, there's no list of results. There's just one response. If your content is chosen, you're seen as part of the answer. If not, you're not part of the conversation at all.

Getting seen now means being the answer, not just being on the list. Your website needs to be the one that AI chooses. That means content needs to be written differently. It needs to be clear, reliable and directly focused on the kinds of questions people are actually asking.

Since we started working with them, we've seen around 50-60% year-on-year growth in our turnover. We've seen conversions, on mobile devices in particular, double during that period. Our conversions on desktop and tablet have increased about 50% as well. Beyond that, we noticed an immediate improvement in the communication we were getting. We've seen a dramatic increase in our business levels. — Allan Green, Weldricks.co.uk

We did a whole campaign around our floor heating page, and we set a KPI to increase the organic traffic by 20%. They achieved over 100%, and we did have a new website at the same time, so there were two contributing factors. It was really impressive, and a lot better than we expected. — Liam Taborn, Nu-heat.co.uk

ZoomDoc has partnered with The SEO Works for six months, and the results have been phenomenal. Our new SEO strategy has driven an impressive +30% month-on-month organic growth. Zak and the team have listened to our needs and implemented the necessary upgrades and recommendations. It's been great working with them, and we're happy to recommend The SEO Works to other businesses. — Neil Taub, Zoomdoc.com

Within about four weeks, our specific product searches jumped to the top half of the first results page, purely due to their site recommendations. It was phenomenal. Over the last three years, we've gotten to know them and understand just how capable they are. They have a reputable team with some exceptionally talented individuals. — Jonathan Ellis, Morganandquinn.co.uk

We've seen palpable efficiency improvements, with spend decreasing YoY and revenue holding steady. We've also seen huge SEO keyword improvements and visibility, even after replatforming. They're friendly, down-to-earth individuals that explain complex topics simply. They give you confidence in the investments you're making, with the results to back it up. — Paula Bullas, Denbypottery.com

ChatGPT ads are sponsored placements that appear below AI-generated responses, clearly labelled and visually separated from ChatGPT's organic answers. The format is a sponsored card: a short title, body text, an image, and a destination link. It is a focused format, which means the creative work is about saying the right thing in a small space to an audience that is already mid-thought.

Targeting works differently from traditional paid search. Advertisers provide contextual signals about their products and services rather than bidding on keywords, and OpenAI's system matches those signals to the topics of live conversations in real time. User conversations are not shared with advertisers, and ads do not influence ChatGPT's organic answers.

The SEO Works manages both. Our GEO service builds the organic AI visibility that supports long-term brand presence within ChatGPT's answers. ChatGPT advertising handles the paid placements. Businesses managing only one side of this cede impressions to competitors on the other.

ChatGPT advertising works best for businesses where customers research and compare options before buying. B2B services, professional services, software, education, travel, and ecommerce brands with considered purchase journeys tend to fit the channel well.

Programmatic advertising has transformed the way brands buy media. Rather than negotiating placements manually, programmatic ads are delivered automatically via demand-side platforms (DSPs), matching your message to relevant users across display, video, native, audio, connected TV and digital out-of-home environments, all in real time.

Programmatic advertising lets you place ads across some of the biggest digital environments around including Netflix, Channel 4, Sky, Spotify and YouTube reaching precisely targeted audiences at scale.

Over a 20 week period the campaign delivered over 21.2 million impressions at an average frequency of 3.4. Branded search volume increased by 18% during the campaign window. Assisted conversions through paid search, where programmatic was the first touchpoint, were up 23%.

Display advertising can cover a range of formats such as a banner ad on a news site, a sponsored article that reads like the piece next to it, or an offer inside a mobile game. We plan and buy these campaigns, bidding for the right ad space in real time rather than negotiating with individual publishers one by one.

A TV ad still lands differently to a banner ad: the big screen, the sofa, an uninterrupted broadcast. CTV (Connected TV) advertising keeps that impact and adds what traditional TV never could. Precise targeting by audience rather than time slots, and measurement that goes beyond a gut-feel reach number. Digital out of home (DOOH) advertising covers any digital ad seen in public spaces, including billboards, bus shelters, retail screens and more. Digital is now the default tier in the UK, accounting for 67% of all OOH advertising.