James Richardson

James co-founded Optimising in 2009 and has spent 17 years in search. The agency specialises in technical SEO, platform migrations, and AI search visibility for Australian ecommerce brands — clients include Wittner, adidas APAC, Forever New, and Jim's Group. Optimising is B Corp certified, a Shopify Plus SEO Partner, and a Google Premier Partner. James also organises and MCs the Shopify Plus Partner Events series across Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

James Richardson is the co-founder of Optimising, a Melbourne-based SEO agency specialising in technical SEO, platform migrations, and AI search visibility for Australian ecommerce brands. Optimising is B Corp certified, a Shopify Plus SEO Partner, and a Google Premier Partner, and works with brands including Wittner, adidas APAC, Forever New, and Jim's Group.

James co-founded the agency in 2009 and has spent 17 years in search — long enough to see it shift from ten blue links to AI assistants that answer before anyone clicks. His current focus is helping ecommerce and purpose-driven businesses adapt to AI-era search: being cited and recommended by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google's AI Overviews, not just ranked beneath them.

He's a familiar face in the Australian Shopify community — he organises and MCs the Shopify Plus Partner Events series across Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane, has spoken at the Sydney SEO Conference, and guest lectures on digital marketing at Swinburne University.

James writes for The Hope Factory's Ecommerce Insights blog as a guest contributor, covering SEO and AI search for Shopify merchants.