Charlie Shaw and Patrick Carragher win SEO Agency of the Year 2026
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Californer -- Slingshot Marketing, a two-person SEO agency based in Congleton, Cheshire, has been named SEO Agency of the Year 2026 at the British Agency Awards.

The agency was founded in June 2023 by Charlie Shaw and Patrick Carragher, who carry out all of the work themselves, with no account managers and nothing outsourced.

The winning entry was a case study for a company that carries out the thorough examinations businesses are legally required to have on their equipment.

A website that barely existed on Google
Before engaging Slingshot, the company's Director had spent significant sums with agencies promising to get the business found on Google, but to no avail.

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What the agency built
Slingshot rebuilt the site from scratch in Wix Studio, with every page targeting a specific search a customer actually makes. The new site went live on 22 June 2026, eleven days after the company paid its first invoice.

The approach included:

• A hub page for each inspection type
• Pages built around what people actually search.
• Articles answering buyers' questions.
• Authority building.
• Nothing lost in the switch.

The results
In August, the new site received 108 clicks and 15,200 impressions from Google, against 1 click in the three months before launch. Average position moved from 77 to 15.

• 50 keywords ranking, 33 of them in the top 10 and 26 in the top three
• 24 pages cited in Google's AI Overviews by 8 September
• 13 form enquiries in the first ten weeks, with more coming in by phone on top
• The SEO paid for itself in month three

In month three, a company the client had been trying to work with for years found them through the website, and now spends four figures a year. Two further enquiries came through Microsoft Copilot rather than Google, one of them from a London borough council.

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In the client's words: "It's a bit crazy to see the turn around. Makes me wonder how much opportunity I've missed over the last 3 years."

What the judges said
The jury described the entry as "really really clear on what it did for client", singling out the client quotes and the proof behind the results.

The agency notes one honest caveat: the winning client sells a specialist service with less competition than, say, driveways in a busy town. How quickly a site moves depends on how strong the companies already ranking are, and Slingshot tells prospective clients where they stand before they spend anything.