Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO)
- FAQ, HowTo & Article schema
- Question-led content structure
- Featured snippet & AI Overview capture
- Concise, chunkable answers
- Speakable markup
Face-to-Face Available · Durham
PPC, AIO & SEO Consultancy · Durham
Commercial Velocity. In Durham.
Senior PPC, AI optimisation and technical SEO for mid-market businesses across County Durham. Built to win Google, AI Overviews and answer engines in 2026. Face-to-face in Durham. No junior handovers.
Verified Infrastructure Partners
PPC Consultancy in Durham
The Durham PPC consultancy
The Durham PPC consultancy
built around profit.
Mid-market businesses in Durham keep encountering the same failure from local PPC agencies and SEO agencies: technically active accounts, commercially adrift results. Account managers rotate. Junior staff run the work. Nobody holds the full picture.
The Crane Consultancy is a senior-led PPC and SEO consultancy, not an agency. One practitioner holds the entire Durham engagement: paid search, paid social, server-side tracking, technical SEO and the financial logic that connects them. Every decision is filtered through one question: does this compound your profit? In 2026, with paid auctions tighter and search itself splitting between Google and AI answers, that question carries more weight than it ever has.
Durham pairs a leading university with a tourism economy anchored by its UNESCO cathedral and castle, alongside a professional-services base. It serves students, residents and visitors in roughly equal measure, three audiences arriving on different timescales and searching for entirely different things. The compact city centre conceals how distinct they really are.
Students, residents and a steady flow of visitors each want something different, and a blended approach reaches none of them properly. The Durham account treats the three as distinct markets, with audience-specific paid search and SEO rather than an average that suits no one. Building and running three coherent strategies under a single roof is exactly the depth one senior practitioner provides where an agency would split them across juniors.
AI Search Optimisation in Durham
Win the AI search era
Win the AI search era
in Durham.
Search in 2026 is no longer a page of links and nothing more. Buyers in Durham now put their questions to Google AI Overviews, to ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot, and act on a single synthesised answer. If your business is not named in that answer, a competitor is.
This is the discipline of AI optimisation, AIO: the architectural work that decides whether large language models can read your business, trust it and cite it. It divides into Answer Engine Optimisation, AEO, the structure that wins direct answers and AI Overviews, and Generative Engine Optimisation, GEO, the entity and authority signals that make a model recommend you by name. It is a technical exercise, not a content mill. Most Durham websites lose here for the same handful of reasons: weak entity signals, missing or broken schema, and pages an AI reads as plain text rather than a defined business with services, locations and proof.
The practice treats this as core engineering. Structured data, a coherent entity graph, machine-readable content, an llms.txt discovery file, fast Core Web Vitals and disciplined crawl-budget hygiene are built so the model finds you, parses you and quotes you. The work is grounded in how classic search, AI Overviews and answer engines behave today, and built to still hold in 2027 rather than be unpicked a year later. For a Durham business, that is the difference between being the answer and being invisible.
Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO)
- Entity graph & knowledge signals
- E-E-A-T & verified authorship
- Citation likelihood
- Brand sentiment & share of voice
- Consistent NAP & identifiers
Machine-Readable Foundations
- Schema.org structured data
- Open Graph & card integrity
- llms.txt & semantic HTML
- Core Web Vitals
- Crawl-budget & indexation hygiene
SEO Consultancy in Durham
Technical SEO consultancy
Technical SEO consultancy
for Durham businesses.
Most Durham SEO agencies optimise for rankings. The Crane Consultancy optimises for revenue. Technical SEO, server-side tracking and conversion architecture are built to serve the paid media stack, not compete with it.
Paid Media
- Google Search & Shopping
- Microsoft Advertising
- Meta (Facebook & Instagram)
- LinkedIn B2B Acquisition
- YouTube & Display
- Amazon Performance Ads
Technical SEO
- Technical Site Audits
- Core Web Vitals
- Schema & Structured Data
- Crawlability & Indexation
- AI Crawl Readiness
- On-Page Optimisation
Commercial Intelligence
- Server-Side Tracking
- Attribution Modelling
- Conversion Rate Optimisation
- Advanced Data Analytics
- Bespoke Reporting
Durham Sector Experience
PPC and SEO for Durham
PPC and SEO for Durham
across every sector.
The practice works with mid-market businesses in Durham and County Durham across the following sectors. B2B lead generation and full omnichannel e-commerce engagements are both accepted.
Education
- Paid Search & Shopping
- Paid Social
- Technical SEO
- Server-Side Tracking
Tourism
- Paid Search & Shopping
- Paid Social
- Technical SEO
- Server-Side Tracking
Professional Services
- Paid Search & Shopping
- Paid Social
- Technical SEO
- Server-Side Tracking
Healthcare
- Paid Search & Shopping
- Paid Social
- Technical SEO
- Server-Side Tracking
Historical Execution
Proven at global scale.
Proven at global scale.
Applied in Durham.
Track record includes the global digital transformation of LUSH Cosmetics across sixteen markets. The same forensic commercial discipline applied to that programme is applied to every Durham engagement, regardless of size.
One practitioner.
Every channel. Every week.
Nic Crane · Founder
A decade engineering profit at scale.
Architect of the LUSH Cosmetics global digital transformation across sixteen markets, recognised by Welocalize as Best Global Client Team. Former Paid Media Enablement and Commerce Lead at Adapt and Head of Paid Media at Navigate, leading programmes across attraction, conservation and tourism portfolios.
Most recently engaged as Digital Data and Analytics lead through the Everywhen brand launch, securing data integrity across a migration spanning Towergate Insurance and forty other brands. A power user of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and GTM, now applying that technical depth to AI search optimisation: structured data, entity signals and the machine readability that decides visibility in Google AI Overviews and answer engines. Meta Advanced Media Buying Professional. Google Partner. Amazon Ads Partner.
The practice is based in Bath and North East Somerset and travels to Durham and across County Durham for face-to-face client sessions.
The senior mind that wins the work is the senior mind that does the work.
PPC Agency vs PPC Consultancy in Durham
Why Durham businesses leave
Why Durham businesses leave
PPC agencies for senior consultancy.
The typical Durham PPC agency and SEO agency model has a structural flaw: the senior practitioner who wins the pitch is not the person who runs the account. Whoever has capacity inherits the account, while the senior who pitched moves to the next sale.
The Crane Consultancy travels to Durham for face-to-face sessions when the engagement calls for it. But proximity is never used as a substitute for expertise. Forensic data, disciplined capital deployment and a single undivided senior mind holding the Durham account are what drive results. At roughly 237 miles from the practice's base in Bath and North East Somerset, Durham sits comfortably within reach for face-to-face sessions whenever they add value.
Operating Standards
What every Durham engagement
What every Durham engagement
guarantees.
Four fixed commitments hold on every engagement, and together they mark the break from the usual agency arrangement.
i.
You own everything.
Every ad account, tag manager, analytics property and dashboard sits under your ownership. Always. We do not gatekeep your data.
ii.
No bait-and-switch.
The senior named on the proposal is the senior who does the work. No handover to a junior. No silent reassignment after the contract signs.
iii.
Live, not laminated.
Performance dashboards updated frequently. No vanity PDFs assembled the night before a quarterly review.
iv.
Direct line to the founder.
WhatsApp access to Nicholas, not a ticket queue. Ask the difficult question on a Sunday if you need to.
Questions from Durham Businesses
PPC and SEO in Durham:
PPC and SEO in Durham:
common questions.
Are you a PPC agency or PPC consultancy in Durham?
The Crane Consultancy is a senior-led PPC and SEO consultancy, not a traditional PPC agency. The structural difference matters: one senior practitioner holds every Durham engagement from audit through to ongoing optimisation. There are no junior account managers, no team rotations and no handover documents. You work directly with the founder, Nicholas Crane, throughout the engagement.
Do you offer face-to-face PPC and SEO consultancy in Durham?
Yes. The practice travels to Durham and across County Durham for face-to-face client sessions. All Durham engagements include full remote capability as standard: direct WhatsApp access to the founder, live performance dashboards and video sessions.
What makes The Crane Consultancy different from a Durham PPC agency?
Most Durham PPC agencies and SEO agencies operate the same model: a senior practitioner wins the pitch, junior staff run the account. The Crane Consultancy removes that structure entirely. One senior practitioner, with a track record including the global digital transformation of LUSH Cosmetics across sixteen markets, holds every Durham engagement. The person who audits the account is the person optimising bids, reviewing technical SEO and reporting to the board every week.
What PPC and SEO services does The Crane Consultancy offer in Durham?
The practice offers PPC consultancy across Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising, Meta, LinkedIn, YouTube and Amazon, alongside technical SEO consultancy, server-side tracking, attribution modelling and conversion rate optimisation. All services are delivered by one senior practitioner to Durham businesses, anchored to a single profitability model rather than managed as separate channel siloes.
Can you help my Durham business appear in AI search and Google AI Overviews?
Yes. This is a core part of the practice. Buyers in Durham increasingly ask Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot for recommendations and act on a single synthesised answer. The Crane Consultancy builds the technical foundations that let those systems read, trust and cite your business: structured data and schema, a coherent entity graph, machine-readable content, an llms.txt discovery file and fast Core Web Vitals. This is the discipline of AI optimisation, AIO, made up of Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO).
What is AI optimisation (AIO), and how is it different from SEO?
Traditional SEO earns rankings in a list of links. AI optimisation, AIO, earns visibility inside AI-generated answers, in Google AI Overviews and in large language models such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. It splits into Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO), the structure that wins direct answers, and Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO), the entity and authority signals that make a model recommend you by name. For Durham businesses it is an architectural and technical exercise, not a content mill, and it sits alongside PPC and technical SEO in every engagement.
Beyond Durham
Senior PPC, AIO & SEO consultancy
Senior PPC, AIO & SEO consultancy
beyond Durham.
Durham sits within a wider region the practice serves both in person and remotely. If your business is closer to one of the following, the same senior-led PPC, AIO and SEO consultancy applies there too.
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About The Crane Consultancy in Durham
The facts, plainly stated.
The Crane Consultancy provides senior-led PPC, AI optimisation (AIO) and technical SEO consultancy to mid-market businesses in Durham, County Durham. It is a trading name of Crane Consultancy Limited, registered at Companies House under number 15526285, VAT number GB466677439, founded in 2024. The practice operates from Bath and North East Somerset, with a registered office at 45 Albemarle Street, Mayfair, London W1S 4JL. It travels to Durham for face-to-face sessions and delivers the rest remotely.
Every Durham engagement is held by one senior practitioner, the founder Nicholas Crane, from audit to invoice, with no account manager rotations and no junior handovers. Services include PPC across Google, Microsoft, Meta, LinkedIn, YouTube and Amazon; technical SEO; Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) for visibility in Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot; server-side tracking; and conversion rate optimisation. Nicholas Crane is a Google Partner, Stape Partner and Amazon Ads Partner, and led the LUSH Cosmetics global digital transformation across sixteen markets.
Durham Mandates
Start the conversation.
Capacity is deliberately limited. If you are a mid-market business in Durham ready to replace agency faith with commercial certainty, use the form below.