liam hayward

About the creator.

Liam Hayward, SEO specialist

liam hayward

seo specialist · 7+ years' experience

I'm an SEO specialist based in the UK, with a background across in-house and agency digital roles in the UK, Singapore, and Australia. I work across technical SEO and the increasingly blurred line between traditional search and AI-driven discovery.

I created The SEO Handbook to make SEO easier to understand for everyone who was curious enough to search for the answers.

My personal site is liamhayward.co.uk, where I showcase SEO tools, projects, and thought pieces.

what I do

  • Technical SEO. Crawlability, indexing, Core Web Vitals, log file analysis, JavaScript rendering, structured data, international and hreflang setup.
  • On-page and content strategy. Search intent mapping, topic clusters, on-page optimisation, content audits, and editorial systems for scale.
  • AI search optimisation. Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO), AI Overview citation strategy, entity SEO, and llms.txt-era authority signals.
  • Measurement and reporting. GA4, Search Console, Data Studio (formerly Looker Studio) dashboards, attribution, and the data work that connects SEO to commercial outcomes.
  • Tools and side projects. Outside client work: bookmarklets, Chrome extensions, and utilities for day-to-day SEO workflows. I build the things I find myself needing. See them on GitHub.

brands I've worked with

Experience across direct and agency-led projects spanning search and broader marketing.

why i created the seo handbook

The SEO handbook is the guide I needed when I first started in SEO. I had to either wade through contradictory, outdated, and occasionally plain wrong advice on blogs and Reddit, or find thinly veiled advertising masquerading as guides. They covered just enough to make you feel informed, then pointed you to their paid tool for the fix. I wanted to understand SEO properly, not just outsource it.

Even when I found good resources, they'd get added to my ever-growing pile of bookmarks, never to be seen again when I needed them. As this site develops, my aim is to cover everything essential and to point to the better resources where others have covered it well.

This site explains how things work so you can understand and solve problems yourself. I'm keeping it updated as search evolves. I hope it's worth bookmarking.

You might notice that the Technical SEO section is considerably bigger than the others. It reflects my background and speciality, and there's genuinely a lot of moving parts to cover. My favourite parts of the site are the site migration and resources sections.

It's dangerous to go alone! Take this.

If you spot one of these callouts on a page, it's one of my key bits of advice: a hard-won lesson, a common mistake I see catch people out, or a shortcut that has saved me hours. Some are my own; others I've picked up from the wider SEO community over the years. They're pulled out from the surrounding theory so they're easy to find and act on.

get in touch

Working on something where SEO matters? Reach me via liamhayward.co.uk or connect on LinkedIn.

A note on outreach: I don't do guest posts, link exchanges, or paid mentions, and I don't reply to emails or connection requests about them. This site has no sponsors and no affiliate links. Anything else, I'm glad to hear from you.