Research has to lead to a decision
I use research to decide which page to build, which problem to fix and which idea to leave alone. A larger keyword list is not a result.
ABOUT ME
About Adnan Akram, an SEO consultant in Dubai
I'm Adnan. I have spent more than ten years working in search marketing, and I'm based in Dubai. I help teams understand what is stopping a website from performing and what they should do about it.
MY BACKGROUND
Why linguistics still matters to my SEO work
I studied linguistics before I worked in SEO. That training taught me to notice small differences in wording, meaning and context. It is useful when two keywords look similar but point to different needs, or when an English page cannot simply be translated for an Arabic audience.
My search work has covered enterprise, e-commerce and multi-market websites. Over time, I learned that finding the issue is often the easy part. The harder part is choosing what matters and helping the right team get it live.
On one project I may be talking to developers about crawling and rendering. On another, I may be working with writers on the page structure or helping regional teams decide how several country sites should fit together.
HOW I WORK
A few things I care about
The person doing the work needs a clear task
Technical advice needs an owner, enough context to act on it and a way to check the released change.
Traffic needs context
I still track visibility, but I also want to know which pages bring useful visits, enquiries or sales.
SEO cannot sit with one person
Content, product, analytics and development teams all affect the result. I try to get them looking at the same problem.
Language
How people phrase a need, what they mean and whether a localized page sounds right.
Working with teams
I prefer to work with the people who write, build and measure the site, not around them.
AWARDS AND TEAM RECOGNITION
MENA Search Awards work with Chain Reaction
Some of the work I was involved in at Chain Reaction was recognised by the MENA Search Awards in 2023, 2024 and 2025. The public winner pages credit Chain Reaction and its clients, not individual team members, so I describe these as team awards and link to the original record.
2023
Campaign and agency recognition
The official results include Chain Reaction campaign wins and recognition in the large agency categories.
View official winners2024
Search, content and software recognition
The official results include Chain Reaction work across search, content and the SEO Chainer Suite.
View official winners2025
SEO, data, content and innovation recognition
The official results include Chain Reaction work across SEO, data, content, paid search and innovation categories.
View official winnersHave an SEO problem you want a second opinion on?
Send me the website, the market you care about and a short description of what is going wrong. I'll tell you whether I can help and what I would look at first.