A Glasgow-based marketing agency that specialises in search engine optimisation is aiming to become a world leader in its field thanks to a £1 million investment in the business.
As part of the seven-figure cash injection, which comes from retained profits, A1 SEO has rebranded as Peak Visibility and is looking to build on its success from its city centre headquarters.
Since originally established by Graham Grieve in 2014 as GMS Digital – it evolved into A1 SEO in 2019 – the business has been passionate about its campaigns that deliver a long-lasting return on investment for clients, who have included well-known brands such as Barrhead Travel, retailer Affordable Golf and Scottish legal firm Harper Macleod.
Consistent growth has seen the firm expand to 25 staff who service a global customer base, with more than 100 clients spread across USA, Canada, UAE, Australia, UK and Ireland.
The rebrand is the latest stage of an ambitious business plan which has been underpinned by the phased investment, with the hiring of specialist personnel and the building of proprietary software in the Glasgow hub part of the long-term vision.
“When we first set up in business, we were a full-service digital marketing agency offering everything from SEO to social media management and web design,” said Mr Grieve.
“It became pretty clear to us that we were one of many Jack of all trades-type digital agencies offering a wide range of services with only average knowledge in everything but search engine optimisation.
“Late in 2016, the company moved all social media management, graphic design, and web design over to trusted niche specialists to focus purely on SEO.
“As A1 SEO it reflected our focus on search engine marketing. We now have over seven years of experience ranking websites in some of the world’s most competitive niches and know exactly what works by keeping on top of the changing algorithms.”
The change to Peak Visibility is a move to future-proof the business as it adapts to the rapid technology changes in the sector, including the adoption of AI, as Mr Grieve explained.
“What we do now is unrecognisable to six years ago,” he said. “Back then we would optimise content, build links and ensure websites were technically optimised.
“We have since had to introduce services that complement SEO to allow us to keep doing what we do best and have had to become specialised in conversion rate optimisation.
“That’s basically making sure users are staying on websites and they are converting and it makes every single click generated more valuable.
“Everybody thinks about generating more and more traffic but they don’t always look inwards and think about how to make that traffic more valuable. People often think the value comes from getting better clicks but that actually sits on the website – we make customers more valuable by making their websites better; giving the clicks a better chance of converting.”
He added: “AI adoption is sky-rocketing among both consumers and the platforms they use. Search has changed to a highly tailored journey of recommendation. More and more people are going to large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity to discover brands and products rather than using the more traditional search methods such as Google and Bing.
“If you have a low conversion rate, it shows to Google that you have a bad user experience and they are penalising businesses as a result. Google also weights press mentions a lot more heavily and if a business isn’t press-worthy it’s not Google-worthy.
“For us to do good SEO in 2026, we have to be excellent at providing this completely different service to allow our clients to appear in those consideration journeys when people are wanting recommendations for brands.
“This is the latest phase in a major redevelopment of the business. We want to be the best in the world and 10 years from now our aim is to be the global leader for businesses scaling organically with over 500 customers.
“We can’t scale into these new services we have to offer under an SEO brand, we have to do it under a visibility brand. It’s an exciting change for us, we have ambitious targets but with the staff we have and the drive they possess, I’m confident we’ll get there.”
