# Stephen Sumner

> British-Swedish international SEO consultant and one of the most experienced SEO specialists working in Sweden. 27+ years in search: local SEO, the legal sector, and AI search visibility. Founder of Local SEO Ltd. Based in Gothenburg, Sweden, working worldwide.

## Pages
- [Home](https://stephensumner.com/): Projects, experience and an overview of Stephen Sumner's work in search.
- [Blog](https://stephensumner.com/blog/): Long-form writing on AI search, local SEO and the legal sector.
- [Search Console platform properties: how to actually use them](https://stephensumner.com/blog/search-console-platform-properties/): A working method for in-house marketing teams now that Google has made Search Console platform properties globally available (29 July 2026). Covers what a platform property is — a Search Console property for an Instagram, TikTok, X or YouTube account, verified without owning a domain, reporting clicks, impressions and search queries across Google Search, Discover and Google News — plus setup steps, what to read in the Insights report and query groups card in the first 28 days, comparing formats (/watch against /shorts/, /p/ against /reels/) and platforms with comparison mode, using annotations to test caption and title rewrites, the limits of the data, and a copyable 30-minute monthly review checklist.
- [The directory moat: data, audience and AI](https://stephensumner.com/blog/business-directory-moat/): A thesis on why business directories are a durable asset in the AI-search era — owned, structured business data; an audience you reach directly rather than renting from Google or Meta; and a clean, citable source that AI answer engines quote. Explains the local-SEO foundation (citations, NAP consistency, vertical authority), why directories are well-shaped for AI citation, and the flywheel between the three. Written as the thesis behind acquiring JusticeDirectory.co.uk, a UK legal-sector directory used to generate leads for Stephen Sumner and partner companies.
- [The five pillars of eCommerce SEO, rebuilt for the AI-search era](https://stephensumner.com/blog/ecommerce-seo-four-pillars/): A 2026 rebuild of a long-standing framework — technical, authority, relevance and experience, plus a new fifth pillar for AI search — covering crawlability and schema, E-E-A-T and earned links, search intent, Core Web Vitals (LCP, INP, CLS) and getting cited by AI systems.
- [The 120-Point AI Readiness Framework](https://stephensumner.com/blog/ai-readiness-framework/): A six-category rubric for auditing whether a site is eligible to be cited by AI search, what its content is worth citing, and whether it can be extracted cleanly.
- [How I built this site: near-perfect PageSpeed, no framework](https://stephensumner.com/blog/how-this-site-is-built/): A practical how-to behind the site's PageSpeed scores — a clean 100 for SEO, accessibility and best practices from hand-written static HTML, self-hosted fonts, sized webp images, and one _headers file deployed free to Cloudflare's edge.
- [About](https://stephensumner.com/about/): Background, focus areas (AI search, legal sector, local SEO, systems) and career.
- [Where to find me](https://stephensumner.com/where-to-find-me/): The verified, canonical list of Stephen Sumner's profiles across the web, anchored to Wikidata entity Q137536965.

## Contact
- Email: hello@stephensumner.com