WordPress SEO Consultant – About Sergiu George

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Sergiu George

Nurdic.com is an SEO consultancy run by Sergiu George. The name as well as the initial idea originated in 2014 at Middlesex University as part of an assignment to create a digital marketing blog that turned into a thesis on SEO and then into a full-time career. Over the last decade, Sergiu has worked on both agency and client-side SEO roles in London, Berlin and Amsterdam, while developing the consultancy as a side project.

Nurdic aims to provide not as much recycled information from other sources as instructions and formulas that form an SEO Implementation Framework for WordPress, by presenting it in systematic ways, facilitated by proper structures and in-depth explanation of topics as well as practical implementation instructions.

You are, of course, welcome to use all website information in any way you see fit, whether it’s to document yourself on SEO topics at large or find SEO implementation instructions for WordPress. If, however, you prefer to have someone do it for you or consult you on the development of SEO within your organisation, feel free to reach out.

Pricing

Despite popular belief, not all websites can greatly benefit from SEO input. As it happens, some websites serve a market which is difficult to reach through organic search, while others are not yet at the point in their development where SEO makes sense. So, before choosing any of the SEO packages, a preliminary check of the website will be carried out free of charge in order to determine if your website could benefit from SEO work.

Free WordPress SEO Eligibility Check and Review

Carry out a free-of-charge preliminary check of your WordPress website to determine if it could benefit from SEO input and schedule a meeting for review. Please feel free to touch on any details meant to help better understand your current circumstances on the SEO front as well as what you’re after.


£900

Granular research into the website and its market in organic Google search and SEO concerns raised by client.

A 2-hour video call briefing you on market trends and competitor movements within the last 2 years.

A separate 1-hour discussion to clarify any of the written recommendations on:

  1. Onpage SEO
  2. Technical SEO
  3. Offsite SEO

±100 landing pages


Keyword Research

Onpage Review*

Technical Audit

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Content Audit

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Content Strategy

Backlink Audit

Link Building Strategy

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Tracking & Reporting


£1900 pm

Everything on the consulting side, but with optimisation instructions* instead of recommendations*.

  1. Instructions for content writers are on a per landing page basis.
  2. Instructions for web developers are specific to technical issues and the technologies needed to fix them.
  3. PR Managers will receive a script and a list of most relevant online sources to outreach.

±100 landing pages


Keyword Research*

Onpage Instructions*

Technical Audit

Content Audit

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Content Strategy

Backlink Audit

Link Building Strategy

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Tracking & Reporting*


£3900 pm

Everything on the strategy side, implemented directly in your WordPress (subject to your approval).

The set up, configuration and fine tuning of analytics, including Google Tag Manager, Google Search Console and Google Analytics for ongoing reporting.

Rank Tracking set-up for 1K keywords at the Strategy phase and reporting back 1 calendar month after the implementation took place.

±100 landing pages


Keyword Research*

Onpage Optimisation*

Technical Audit

Content Audit

Content Strategy

Backlink Audit

Link Building Strategy

Tracking & Reporting



SEO Consulting Process Description

The SEO Process depends first and foremost on the approach you decide to go for. The main difference between the three is the degree of involvement by each party. The Consulting approach is all about enabling you to make informed decisions on your SEO moving forward. The Strategy approach is aimed to provide you a clear strategy to follow, but retain complete control over the implementation. The Implementation approach is completely hands-off with the only involvement from your side being a final approval on implementing the recommended changes.

1. Keyword Research

Employing a handful of main target keywords to expand the list to all possible keyword variations (short or long-tail) to target in the future. Can be market-specific or cross-markets. Can be limited to evergreen keywords.

Specifying the Search Intent of each identified keyword and providing directions on how to match the content with the search intent.

Identifying your customers’ topics of interest to target with niche product landing pages and blog posts, all based on your industry and a select number of head terms.

Identifying all organically ranking keywords of your competitors to include in the keyword research.

Grouping keyword variations together and assigning a landing page to each group.

2. Onpage Optimisation

Optimisation of key onpage elements such as page titles, meta descriptions, page URLs (slug), and onpage headers.

Troubleshooting and optimisation of website taxonomy (permalinks settings), improper use of symbols in URLs, SSL encryption (migration to https), verifying the canonical domain, subdomain to subfolder migration, preventing automatically-generated duplicated pages.

Reviewing all internal links across the website (nav, in-content & footer), with account to crawl depth, and anchor text relevancy. Spotting and fixing orphan pages. Homepage internal linking optimisation.

Visual assessment of image uniqueness and originality*, assessing if any text is present as an image, properly naming and describing images (i.e. file names, titles, alt tags, longdesc, specifying which images should be png, jpeg, gif or svg (webP optional) for optimal quality and loading speeds. Testing image resolution for Retina displays. Using responsive images, enabling lazy loading. Creating image sitemaps. Proper Image attribution (CC)*, if needed. Specifying OpenGraph for Social Media. Flagging Broken Images, if any.

3. Technical Audits

Carrying out a standardised Technical SEO Audit processing over 300 common optimization checks. All checks are prioritised based on potential impact. Every issue has detailed explanations and how-to-fix info. Every issue is linked to affected URLs. Technical Audits require input from developers and additional validation checks are possible after the implementation. The Technical Audit also contains an Indexation Audit which accounts for its most important part and includes the following aspects:

  1. Flagging all 404 issues (hard and soft)
  2. Rewiring all redirects with wrongfully assigned code (i.e. 302 to 301). Fixing redirects chains and loops and broken redirects.
  3. Auditing all canonical tags
  4. Auditing all indexable vs non-indexable pages. Aligning the results with sitemaps and robots.txt.
  5. Providing recommendations for select optimisations of all non-indexed pages due to duplication or thin content to facilitate reindexing.
  6. Ensuring only https pages are indexed (not http)

4. Content Audit and Strategy

  1. The scope of the Content Strategy is defined by thorough Keyword Research. Considers the customer decision-making funnel (AIDA model).
  2. Prioritised Topic Selection and Detailed Content Briefs*: Title, Headers, Intro & Conclusions, Topic Angle Selection, Internal Linking.
  3. Considers Content Scaling* and Repurposing* opportunities outside of Organic Search.

5. Backlink Audit and Link-Building Strategy

The Backlink Audit is a rather straightforward report that includes the current state of your website from an offsite point of view. Some of the points that are researched and described in the audit are:

  1. General Stats
    • Referring domains
    • Backlinks
    • Authors
  2. Link Velocity Analysis
    • Broken backlinks & Solution Instructions
    • Nofollow Backlinks and Solution Instructions

Unlike the Backlink Audit, the Link Building Strategy is far from straightforward. Link Building strategies can only be implemented by Digital PR Managers and, although not difficult to measure, are quite difficult to set expectations for. At this stage, the Link Building Strategy as part of the Premium Monthly SEO Package involves the selection of a number of targeted SEO tactics that would be expected to work in the individual case of the website. This will also include a list of potential publications to acquire backlinks from, along with an insight into the long-term development and management of the website authority. Some more specific aspects will include:

  1. Extended Link Velocity Analysis
    • Lost Backlinks Report split by causes and describing solutions
  2. Link Intersect for up to 10 competitors
  3. Outreach pitches to journalists for contextual backlinks (optional)

6. SEO Tracking and Reporting

Setting up Google Analytics to monitor the performance across the entire website and from all the digital channels.

Setting up and monitoring Google Search Console to track the organic performance coming from Google along with an indexation across the website.

Setting up Keyword Tracking in Ahrefs* to follow the dynamics of the organic rankings in Google for the target keywords identified and selected at the Keyword Research stage.

Setting up Google Tag Manager to manage the code snippets used by various analytics tools (including, but not limited to Google Analytics). This tool is only needed if you’d like to employ multiple specialised analytics tools in addition to GA4.


The Inspiration for a better SEO at Nurdic

A decade in SEO is just about enough time to realise how different of an approach one can apply when optimising a website for organic search. There are many variables at play and some of them are changing on a regular basis. If there is one thing where Nurdic and its SEO process is different from most other SEO players and their methods, it’s the commitment to a pragmatic approach to SEO. It starts with an understanding of search engine history and uses it as a basis for an SEO Philosophy that is capable of delivering sustainable results.

The only way to understand the future of a Search Engine and SEO to go along with it is by looking at its evolution over time, noting the things that worked and those that didn’t. Any efforts directed at a website in the public domain that are not naturally geared towards fulfilling the underlying mission of a Search Engine will likely become a liability in the long run.

Sergiu George