about
liam hayward
technical. curious. meticulous
Hi, I’m Liam Hayward, a data-diving, code-tinkering digital marketer specialising in SEO with a spark for all things technical.
Whilst I have an affinity for all aspects of digital marketing, my core focus is on-page and technical SEO. I spend most of my time under the bonnet of a website, ensuring the technical setup and page content are working together.
I diagnose the quiet flaws that hold visibility back, turning “why is it not working?” into a clear list of practical fixes.
my approach
Built-in, not bolted on
SEO works best when it’s considered from the start, but there’s almost always room to improve + strengthen an existing site.
I’ve seen great, often expensive websites struggle to get found because SEO was treated as an afterthought rather than something built in from the start. By the time search is considered, design and development decisions have already limited what is possible.
Search performance is rarely just a technical issue in isolation. It is usually a reflection of how clearly a business communicates what it does, who it is for, and how well its digital foundations support that message.
Strong foundations
Technical structure + information architecture support long-term search performance, rather than relying on short-term tactics or quick wins.
SEO is gradual and cumulative. Strong results are built on solid technical and structural foundations, not isolated tactics. Quick wins are often possible by fixing broken or missing fundamentals, but meaningful visibility growth usually comes from consistent, long term improvement.
Visibility on its own is not the goal. The aim is to attract the right audiences, support meaningful journeys, and contribute to measurable business outcomes.
Growth + protection
SEO drives growth, but also involves ongoing maintenance to protect existing visibility + prevent gradual performance decline.
Sometimes SEO is about growth. Often, it’s about protection. In competitive industries, much of the work is defending the visibility you’ve already earned and preventing a gradual decline.
It’s the unglamorous but vital maintenance: untangling redirect chains, resolving keyword cannibalisation, and catching those 5MB uncompressed images that inadvertently drag a site down.
A large part of technical SEO is risk management. Site changes, redesigns and platform migrations can undo years of progress overnight if they aren’t handled with care. I focus on building stable foundations and guiding change so you can protect your existing rankings while moving forward.
technical seo is Invisible
When technical SEO is working properly, it supports performance behind the scenes without getting in the way of the user experience.
When technical SEO is done well, it stays out of the way. Users won’t notice it, but search systems certainly will. When it is neglected, it quietly undermines content, links, and every other marketing effort. I see it as the infrastructure that allows every other channel and tactic to perform properly.
A big part of my role is simplifying complexity, turning messy technical issues into clear priorities, practical actions, and explanations that teams can implement with confidence. Good technical SEO results in performance that holds up over time, and builds the kind of clarity and structure that modern, more semantic search increasingly relies on.
brands i’ve worked with
Experience across direct and agency-led projects.
skills and tools
core competencies
- Technical + On-page SEO strategy & execution
- Crawling, rendering + indexing optimisation
- Technical Audits & Diagnostics
- Core Web Vitals & Performance
- Site Architecture & Internal Linking
- Semantic SEO & Schema Markup
technical literacy
- Familiarity with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
- Python for SEO and data automation
- Working with search and data APIs
- Automation and code tinkering
- Managing large, complex datasets
digital toolbox
- Google Search Console & GA4
- Looker Studio (Reporting & Dashboards)
- Screaming Frog + log file analysis
- WordPress, Shopify, StoryBlok + more
- Ahrefs, Semrush + Sitebulb
background + career path
I attended the University of Huddersfield to study Marketing with Public Relations. My course included a placement year, during which I worked for a marketing agency in Singapore. After graduating, I went straight into hands-on digital roles, working client-side for the NHS Confederation to promote their annual healthcare exhibition, and at Premdor as they rebranded to Masonite UK.
I later travelled to Australia for a working holiday, spending six months agency-side as a Project Manager in-between my adventures before returning to the UK. Following a period in operational training at Amazon during the pandemic, I chose to return to the agency world. I wanted to move beyond generalist marketing and dive deeper into the digital side of things.
My most recent role was with The Bigger Boat, where I started as a Digital Marketing Executive focusing primarily on SEO. I worked across technical SEO, analytics, and content strategy, helping improve search performance, strengthen tracking, and translate technical insight into clear actions for clients.
That led to a newly-created Digital Account Manager role, working across digital strategy and bringing technical knowledge to the wider account management team.
Since leaving, I’ve taken some time out and focused on myself. This site started as a way to keep sharp, and grew into a professional portfolio and live testing environment for SEO experiments.
I’ve also built and launched seohandbook.co.uk – a free, independent SEO reference covering technical SEO, on-page, off-page, keyword research, content strategy, AI search and more.