SEO Consultant · Product Advisor · Speaker · Author · Community Builder

The technical SEO’s
technical SEO

I’ve spent years building the tools SEOs use every day, driving massive growth for some of the biggest companies in the world, and educating the search industry. Now you can hire me to fix your toughest search challenges.

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{ SEO for leading brands }

IBM
Ahrefs

What people say about me

“All those scary technical SEO concepts that make most marketers break out in a cold sweat? Patrick eats them for breakfast. He's one of the smartest technical SEOs I've ever worked with. A big part of why Ahrefs is seen as a company that actually knows what it's doing in search marketing is because Patrick helped build that reputation.”

Tim Soulo · CMO at Ahrefs

“The thing I appreciate about Patrick is that while he's one of the most talented technical SEOs in the industry he's also grounded in the fundamentals. Great content. Great experience for the users. Move fast and be ambitious. That's how companies win.”

Bryan Casey · VP of Digital at IBM

“Patrick is one of the most experienced technical and strategical SEO leaders in the industry! If you want to hire a well experienced SEO and AI search specialist with a wealth of experience and understanding of the industry, the technical side of things as well as strategical and business mindset... what are you waiting for? Hire him!”

Aleyda Solis · Founder of Orainti

“I've worked with Patrick at an SEO agency as well as IBM and he's the most capable technical SEO I've met. He could figure out any problem thrown at him and delivered results across a wide range of websites from local companies to large e-commerce sites. He also drove performance improvements in-house at IBM identifying technical issues, fixing site-speed, developing effective content strategies, and more.”

James Pate · Head of AI Advancement & SEO at IBM

“Patrick is hands down one of the best technical SEOs in the world. I've known Patrick for over a decade, and he always blows me away not only with his tech SEO knowledge and skills, but also his generosity and willingness to help and support others. I've watched Patrick speak a dozen times, attended his conference a few times, and have spent many years learning from his vast knowledge of all things SEO. He's one of my top go-to consultants for tech SEO projects and one of the people I trust most to figure out my most complicated tech SEO challenges.”

Lily Ray · Founder of Algorythmic | VP, SEO & AI Search at Amsive

Highlights

1M+

websites audited

see the study →

10k+

website migrations

wrote a script to match redirects

142

articles & guides written

126

talks, podcasts & videos

104

free SEO tools

search awards judged

continents where I've talked about SEO

Books written, edited, or reviewed

SEO communities founded

SEO conferences founded

SEO role defined for the US DOL

Google knowledge panel

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Speaker

80 conference talks Worldwide
41 podcasts Interviews & appearances

Author

Co-author Ahrefs’ SEO Book for Beginners
Technical Review Editor The Art of SEO, 4th Edition
Web Almanac — SEO Chapter Lead author 2021 · Reviewer 2022
37 data studies Browse studies
56 articles & guides Browse all content

Community Builder

Co-founder Tech SEO Connect conference
Co-founder Triangle SEO Meetup
Co-founder Raleigh SEO Conference
Co-founder Beer & SEO Meetup
Founder Tech SEO Connect Slack
Co-founder Reddit r/TechSEO

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Written for

AhrefsSearch Engine LandSearch Engine Journal

Spoken at

Tech SEO ConnectBrightonSEOAhrefs EvolveSMXPubconSERP Conf.Sydney SEO ConferenceDigital Summit& more

{ About me }

Patrick Stox is an SEO consultant, product advisor, speaker, author, and community builder. Ex Ahrefs and IBM. He’s been called “the technical SEO’s technical SEO.” Patrick is passionate about helping the next generation be successful. He educates SEOs with his content, runs massive data studies, presents at conferences all over the world, judges search awards, builds the tools SEOs use every day, and drives growth for some of the largest companies in the world.

Notably, Patrick helped define the official “Search Marketing Strategist” role for the US Department of Labor, establishing the standard that allowed universities to build official digital marketing degree programs. He is co-author of Ahrefs’ SEO Book for Beginners, he’s been lead author and editor for the Web Almanac’s SEO chapter, and was the Technical Review Editor for The Art of SEO (4th Edition).

Patrick works hard to give SEOs communities to learn, network, and grow. He co-founded the Tech SEO Connect conference, Reddit’s r/TechSEO, and founded the Tech SEO Connect Slack group. Locally, he helped grow Raleigh into a strong SEO community as the co-founder of the Triangle SEO Meetup, Raleigh SEO Conference, and former co-organizer of the Raleigh SEO Meetup.

Services

Technical SEO Audit Service

A prioritized audit that helps you fix what matters and ignores the noise.

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SEO Website Migration Service

De-risk replatforms, redesigns, and domain moves so you keep the rankings you've earned.

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Programmatic SEO Services

Build useful and interesting things with proprietary data and unique insights.

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JavaScript SEO Service

Make sure your content can be crawled, rendered, and indexed by search engines.

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Hreflang & International SEO Service

Fix the international signals most audits miss, across regions and languages.

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PageSpeed & Core Web Vitals Service

Slow pages lose users before they start. Diagnose your LCP, INP, and CLS and get a clear fix list your team can act on.

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Product Advisory

Roadmap, positioning, and category insight from someone who built the tools you use.

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Enterprise SEO Consulting Service

Strategy, stakeholder buy-in, and playbooks your team can actually run.

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GEO & AI Search Consultant

Earn visibility and citations inside AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Gemini — backed by data.

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SaaS SEO Consulting Service

Product-led growth SEO that builds a compounding organic channel.

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Ecommerce SEO Consulting Service

Faceted navigation, indexation control, and scaling patterns proven on enormous catalogs.

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SEO for M&A

SEO due diligence and post-deal integration so acquisitions actually deliver.

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Tools

Free SEO tools

Browse 100 public tools. Filter by category or search by name, purpose, or keyword.

Search tools

patrickstox.com › tools › Crawling & indexing

Scout Site Audit Free

Run a bounded same-site raw-HTML crawl, compare detector and inferred-cohort changes across snapshots or sites, and export provenance-rich CSV and finding-packet reports.

Check · Live check · Open the tool →patrickstox.com › tools › Crawling & indexing

Google Index Checker

Check one URL’s observable indexability blockers, or reconcile sitemap, crawl, and supplied Search Console evidence across a URL set before verifying Google’s actual state in URL Inspection.

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Canonicalization Checker

Audit HTML and HTTP canonical signals, test the canonical target, and identify observable conflicts that can cause Google to choose a different URL.

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robots.txt Tester

Test pages against bots with a matcher ported from Google's open-source robots.txt parser — a blocked/allowed matrix with the exact winning rule per cell, file lint, sitemap-conflict detection, a diff mode for proposed changes, and a separate live robots.txt fetch for each entered origin.

Check · Local + live · Open the tool →patrickstox.com › tools › Crawling & indexing

XML Sitemap Validator

Paste, upload, or fetch a sitemap by URL — errors, warnings, and a health score with line numbers. Pasted and uploaded sitemaps are validated entirely in your browser.

Check · Local + live · Open the tool →patrickstox.com › tools › Crawling & indexing

Log File Analyzer

Drop a server access log and see crawl budget by bot and section, status-code waste, an AI-vs-search breakdown, and a spoofer report that names impostors faking a crawler user-agent. Parses nginx, Apache, IIS/W3C, and JSON logs entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded.