Rishi Lakhani
Founder and SEO Consultant at PWANI Consulting
Leicester, United Kingdom
⭐ Top SEO Expert 2026Rishi Lakhani is a British independent SEO and digital marketing consultant based in the Greater Leicester area of the United Kingdom, and the founder of PWANI Consulting. He has more than two decades of professional experience across search, helping both large brands and SMEs since the early days of Google, and is known on social media by the long-standing handle rishil.
PWANI positions itself as a 360-degree digital marketing consultancy, with Lakhani personally leading the SEO and affiliate practice and insisting that organic, paid, and affiliate channels are not treated in silo. His own career has moved from small-business SEO to senior search consultancy for large UK brands, and into deep work on the affiliate and publisher side of the industry.
Lakhani writes at Explicitly.me, his long-running personal blog, and is a recurring speaker on the UK and international conference circuit. He remains one of the more persistent voices on how organic search, affiliate revenue, and the shift toward AI-assisted search intersect.
Key facts about Rishi Lakhani
- Co-authored commentary on affiliate marketing in the AI search era with Gareth Hoyle for Advanced Web Ranking.
- Contributing author at Econsultancy in addition to his own Explicitly.me blog.
- Recurring speaker at BrightonSEO and other UK and international search events.
- Frequently cited alongside veteran peers including Aleyda Solis, Dixon Jones, and Barry Schwartz in SEO round-ups.
- Included on the 2026 Top SEO Experts list.
What Rishi Lakhani is famous for
Rishi Lakhani is the go-to UK voice for bridging brand-side SEO consultancy with deep operational affiliate and publisher experience, a pairing that is rare in the search industry.