Stephen Sumner
AI Search & AEO
The shift from blue links to answer engines is the thing I think about most right now: how brands stay visible inside AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity.
- Answer-engine optimisation
- Entity & schema strategy
- LLM visibility tracking
Twenty-five years in search, one place for all of it.
I'm Stephen Sumner, 25+ years in search and founder of Local SEO Ltd. This is my corner of the web: where I keep my projects, share what I've learned, and point to everything I'm building.
Find me
25+
Years in search
Featured & published in
Projects
What I'm building.
My flagship venture, with more in the works. This is where everything I build will live.
The agency I founded
Local SEO Ltd
The growth agency I founded. The name's a nod to where I started; today we pair proven, data-driven frameworks with AI-native execution to grow ambitious brands. While traditional agencies flounder, we lean into AI, hard.
localseo.agency
Visit site
What I work on
The corners of search I keep coming back to.
Twenty-five years in, these are the areas that still hold my attention: what I read about, experiment with, and write up here.
Legal Sector
Most of my work lives in the legal space, helping law firms and legal services get found by the people who need them.
- Law firm SEO
- Legal content strategy
- Directory visibility
Local SEO
Map packs, citations and local intent: one specialism among several, and one that rewards patience and clean, boring execution.
- Citation strategy
- Google Business Profile
- Local landing pages
Systems & Process
I'm a bit obsessed with the repeatable process behind a result: documenting it, measuring it, and making it run without me in the room.
- Documented playbooks
- Reporting dashboards
- Team enablement
Experience
Some of the brands I've helped grow.
Agencies
Agencies I've worked & consulted for.
In-house, on staff, or brought in to consult: teams I've helped build search programmes with over the years.
About
Twenty-five years in search, still learning out loud.
I started in search before "content marketing" had a name. Twenty-five years on, I'm the founder of Local SEO Ltd, a growth agency built on proven, data-driven frameworks and AI-native by default (the name nods to where I started, not the limits of the work), and I've spent my career helping brands across the legal, care and commerce sectors get found.
I've served on the International Steering Committee at BrightonSEO, and these days I'm most interested in two things: staying ahead as AI reshapes search, and building things of my own. This site is where I tie it all together: the projects, the experience, and the notes I write to think things through.
A personal note: I left the UK for Sweden in 2013 and have been based in Gothenburg ever since. The work travels well (it's borderless by nature), but the coffee and the quiet are firmly Scandinavian.
25+
Years in search
300+
Brands worked with
5
Agencies
Gothenburg, Sweden, since 2013
Say hello
Always up for talking search.
Got a question, an idea, or just want to compare notes? No pitch, no agenda. I read everything myself and reply to most things.