The only commercial firm in a top five made of directories and the regulator
Anonymised case study: a UK accountancy and advisory group went from 24 to 2,104 ranking keywords in eight months, and from 4 to 130 AI-cited pages.
Numbers from the client's own reporting
| Metric | Result |
|---|---|
| ranking keywords, Jan 2026 → Sep 2026 | 24 → 2,104 |
| pages cited across AI surfaces | 4 → 130 |
| impressions, six-month compare (65.9K → 1.1M) | +1,569% |
| keywords in the top ten | 2 → 74 |
| clicks, six-month compare | 1.45K → 3.62K |
| service pages published | 59 |
| most-cited UK financial advice brand in AI search | 5th |
| Period | 8 months, ongoing |
Keyword positions from Ahrefs, client domain, United Kingdom. The brackets compare the same domain eight months apart — most of the base still sits beyond page two, so this is a library being built rather than a finished position.
The situation, goals & challenges
The group does four different things — accountancy, wealth management, corporate services and corporate finance — and search treats each as a separate market with a separate set of incumbents. A single "services" page cannot compete in four categories at once, and that is roughly what existed.
Twenty-four ranking keywords across the whole domain, two of them on page one, no top-three position and no SERP feature of any kind. The competitive analysis then produced an uncomfortable number: across 24 benchmarked firms, one competitor blog post — a single reactive article about an HMRC savings tax warning — was pulling 19,151 visits a month on its own across eighty keywords. Another firm held 174 keywords with one page listing UK tax dates. Entire practices were being outperformed by two URLs.
SEO strategy for a multi-service advisory group
A firm selling four different things is competing in four different markets, each with its own incumbents. The work is structural before it is editorial.
One silo per market, on its own URL path
Accountancy, wealth management, corporate services and corporate finance each got a top-level path and a full page set beneath it. Four categories cannot be won from one services page, however well written.
Split service pages by client, not by service name
A landlord, a sole trader, an ecommerce seller and an esports professional need different things from an accountant, and search for them differently. Each gets a page rather than a bullet on a shared one.
Publish the whole structure before the blog
Fifty-nine service pages shipped first. Topical content routes authority into pages that exist; publishing articles into a site with no destination page routes it nowhere.
Read what one competitor URL is actually doing
A single reactive news post was outperforming whole firms. That is worth knowing, and worth not chasing: a news spike is rented traffic, and the same effort in service architecture compounds instead.
Take the cluster nobody else claims
UK residents setting up in Dubai search for company formation, PRO services, crypto licensing and golden visas. Almost no UK accountancy firm has a page for any of it.
The findings behind the numbers
An independent study of 450 AI search queries across ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity ranked the firm the fifth most-cited source brand in UK financial advice. The four above it are national directories and the FCA. It is the only commercial practice in that top five — which is to say the assistants are treating a single firm's service pages as reference material alongside the regulator.
One rival article on an HMRC savings tax warning held eighty keywords and 19,151 visits a month — more than most of the benchmarked firms earn from their entire site. The temptation is to write the same post. We did not: a reactive news page rents traffic for one cycle and decays, while the same weeks spent on service architecture compound into four categories. Worth reading a competitor's best URL closely. Rarely worth copying it.
What the eight months contained
Almost all of the effort went into structure and service pages. The topical library sits on top of that rather than in place of it.
- 24 competing firms benchmarked on authority and traffic, from domain rating 4 to 46
- 1,114 competitor keyword placements analysed across 268 of their URLs
- 251 keywords put through the map with intent, difficulty and target page assigned
- A four-silo URL structure proposed down to individual service level
- 60 URLs specified with title, meta description and approved keyword set
- 59 service pages written, approved and published
- Client-type pages split out inside accountancy rather than merged into one
- A UK-to-UAE cluster built for company formation, licensing, visas and relocation
Numbers that speak louder than claims
All figures from the client's own Search Console, rank trackers and delivery workbooks, recorded on the dates shown.
Page-one positions for high-value queries
Keyword rankings, January 2026 vs September 2026
| Position band | January 2026 | September 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| All ranking keywords | 24 | 2,104 |
| Top 3 | 0 | 1 |
| Positions 4–10 | 2 | 73 |
| Positions 11–20 | 2 | 404 |
| Positions 21–50 | 8 | 1,073 |
| Positions 51–100 | 12 | 528 |
| AI Overviews | 0 | 23 |
| Other SERP features | 0 | 2 |
Search Console, last six months against the previous period
| Metric | Previous period | Last 6 months |
|---|---|---|
| Clicks | 1.45K | 3.62K (+150%) |
| Impressions | 65.9K | 1.1M (+1,569%) |
Six-month comparisons flatter a programme that started from nothing. The three-month window is the honest read on current momentum: clicks 1.39K → 2.23K (+60%) and impressions 411K → 689K (+68%) — still compounding rather than plateauing.
Visibility inside AI search, before and after
| Surface | January 2026 | September 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Google AI Mode | 1 cited page | 91 cited pages |
| Google AI Overviews | 0 cited pages | 39 cited pages |
| Gemini | 0 cited pages | 23 cited pages |
| ChatGPT | 3 cited pages | 13 cited pages |
| AI visibility score | 0 | 14 |
The per-surface counts add up to more than the 130 total, because a page quoted by two assistants is counted once in the total and once on each surface.
The four silos we built
| Silo | Pages | What sits inside it |
|---|---|---|
| Accountancy | 20 | Bookkeeping, payroll, VAT, statutory accounts, audit, inheritance tax — plus landlords, sole traders, ecommerce, influencers, esports and AI companies |
| Corporate finance | 18 | Business valuation, management buyout, due diligence, fundraising — plus Dubai company formation, VARA crypto licence, golden visa and HNW relocation |
| Corporate services | 13 | Company formation, company secretarial, directorship, nominee shareholder, crypto fund administration, proof of reserves, banking support |
| Wealth management | 8 | Estate planning, investment management, retirement planning, succession planning, cashflow planning, mortgage advice |
What we delivered
- Ranking keywords from 24 to 2,104, with 74 of them in the top ten
- 23 AI Overviews held, from none in January
- Cited pages across AI surfaces from 4 to 130
- Fifth most-cited source brand in UK financial advice in an independent 450-query study
- Fifty-nine service pages published across four silos, each on its own URL path
How it unfolded
Where the figures come from
Search Console compares, the January and September keyword bracket exports, the AI search domain overview and the delivery workbook — all the client's own reporting. The independent AI study is third-party research the firm was named in, not our measurement.
The verdict: strategic SEO transforms businesses
A firm selling four things needs four sets of pages, and it needs them before it needs a blog. Building the structure first took the domain from twenty-four keywords to 2,104 — and put a commercial practice into a most-cited list otherwise occupied by directories and the regulator.
Kanwal Shahzad is a founder, strategist and AI enthusiast with 20 years of experience spanning finance, digital marketing and AI. She started her journey at EY, then spent a decade building Digidot into one of the region's pioneering AI-powered agencies. Today she leads two companies, including aisfy.ai at DIFC AI Campus — governance-first AI infrastructure designed to embed compliance, ethics and resilience at the core of business growth.
Services used: Web Development · SEO Dubai · AEO & GEO · Sector: Accounting & tax · All case studies
