# Gautam Khorana

> Co-Founder and COO at Seahawk Media. WordPress, SEO, and the agencies that build for them. London-based, 9 years and 12,000+ sites shipped. Personal site at gautamkhorana.com.

## About

Gautam Khorana is a London-based full-stack developer and operator. Co-Founder and COO of Seahawk Media — a WordPress development, migration, and managed support agency operating across four global hubs since 2018. Personally built HostList.io, a programmatic-SEO directory of 28,000+ web hosting companies. Hosts WP Legends, a YouTube interview series with founders, agency owners, and product builders shaping WordPress.

## Key resources

- [Home](https://gautamkhorana.com/): Overview of work, writing, and current projects
- [About](https://gautamkhorana.com/about/): Background, role at Seahawk Media, and personal context
- [Contact](https://gautamkhorana.com/contact/): Form, Calendly, LinkedIn, and direct email
- [Blog](https://gautamkhorana.com/blog/): Dated essays, comparisons, and operator narratives on WordPress, SEO, agencies, and AI tooling
- [Guides](https://gautamkhorana.com/guides/): Working library of evergreen reference guides on WordPress, headless architecture (Next.js, Astro), SEO, performance, agencies, brand, and life off-screen. Pillar guides per topic plus supporting long-tail guides, filterable
- [WordPress guide](https://gautamkhorana.com/guides/wordpress/): Modern WordPress in 2026, the operator guide. When WordPress wins, when it loses, hosting, plugins, themes, headless, maintenance discipline. From 12,000+ sites at Seahawk Media
- [Work](https://gautamkhorana.com/work/): Selected projects from 9 years across 12,000+ sites
- [WP Legends](https://gautamkhorana.com/wplegends/): YouTube series with WordPress founders and operators
- [HostList](https://gautamkhorana.com/hostlist/): Programmatic-SEO directory of 28,000+ web hosting companies on Next.js + Supabase
- [Services](https://gautamkhorana.com/services/): Hub page for the five core services
- [Web Consultant London](https://gautamkhorana.com/web-consultant-london/): Senior independent advisory hub — architecture review, agency selection, migration planning, retainer engagements. Independent of build execution. 200-25,000 GBP per engagement
- [Web Analytics Consultant](https://gautamkhorana.com/web-analytics-consultant/): GA4 audits, attribution modelling, Plausible / PostHog setup, dashboard design. 1,500-25,000 GBP
- [Best Headless WordPress Agencies London](https://gautamkhorana.com/best-headless-wordpress-agencies-london/): Honest comparison of 8 agencies — Big Bite, Human Made, 10up, Wholegrain Digital, others — with public price bands and conflict-of-interest disclosure on the Seahawk Media entry
- [WordPress Migration Agency](https://gautamkhorana.com/wordpress-migration-agency/): Selection criteria, RFP template, red flags, and 2026 price bands for hiring a WordPress migration agency
- [Next.js Development Agency London](https://gautamkhorana.com/next-js-development-agency-london/): Next.js development agency for London brands. Headless WordPress + Next.js front-end, full-stack Next.js builds. 25K-150K USD
- [Hire a Next.js Developer](https://gautamkhorana.com/hire-next-js-developer/): Direct engagement with a senior Next.js developer. No agency markup. Fixed-price feature builds, hourly senior consulting, audit + remediation. 5K-45K USD
- [Hire Nuxt JS Developer](https://gautamkhorana.com/hire-nuxt-js-developer/): Senior Nuxt 3 developer for Vue-based headless WordPress front-ends and full-stack Nuxt apps. 5K-90K USD
- [Astro vs Next.js](https://gautamkhorana.com/astro-vs-next-js/): When Astro is the right choice vs Next.js — comparison, decision tree, performance and DX trade-offs
- [Vercel Edge in 2026](https://gautamkhorana.com/blog/vercel-edge-explained-2026/): What Vercel Edge is after the June 2025 Edge Functions deprecation — the Edge Network, the Edge runtime now on Vercel Functions, Edge runtime vs Node runtime, Edge Config, Edge Middleware, and when to use each
- [Netlify Edge Functions in 2026](https://gautamkhorana.com/blog/netlify-edge-functions-2026/): What Netlify Edge Functions are — Deno-powered code at the network edge — how they differ from serverless Netlify Functions, the free invocation limits, and when to use each
- [Netlify vs Vercel in 2026](https://gautamkhorana.com/blog/netlify-vs-vercel-2026/): How the two frontend hosts differ on framework support, edge runtimes (Deno vs V8), pricing, and build limits, with a clear answer on when to pick each
- [VitePress in 2026](https://gautamkhorana.com/blog/vitepress-2026/): What VitePress is — a Vite and Vue powered static site generator for docs — how it compares to VuePress and Docusaurus, and when it is the right pick
- [llms.txt explained (2026)](https://gautamkhorana.com/blog/llms-txt-explained-2026/): What llms.txt is, how to write one, the difference from llms-full.txt and robots.txt, and an honest take on whether AI crawlers actually use it
- [Best vector database for RAG (2026)](https://gautamkhorana.com/blog/best-vector-database-for-rag-2026/): How to choose a vector database for RAG — pgvector, Pinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate, Chroma — by scale, cost, hybrid search, and operational fit
- [Best Next.js Development Agencies (2026)](https://gautamkhorana.com/blog/best-next-js-development-agencies-2026/): Eight Next.js development agencies worth shortlisting in 2026, spanning headless CMS specialists, Jamstack boutiques, and headless WordPress shops, with how to choose between them
- [Legacy Application Modernization (2026)](https://gautamkhorana.com/blog/legacy-application-modernization-2026/): A practical playbook for legacy application modernization, the five strategies (rehost, replatform, refactor, re-architect, rebuild), rebuild vs replatform, cost ranges, and SEO-safe migration
- [How to Modernize a Legacy Web Application (2026)](https://gautamkhorana.com/blog/modernize-legacy-web-application-2026/): The strangler-fig approach to incremental web app modernization, choosing a target stack, migrating off AngularJS and jQuery, and an SEO-safe cutover
- [Best HIPAA-Compliant Web Development Agencies (2026)](https://gautamkhorana.com/blog/best-hipaa-compliant-web-development-agencies-2026/): Honest editorial comparison of eight HIPAA-compliant web development agencies for US healthcare projects in 2026, with BAA posture, pricing ranges, and clear ideal-fit guidance for each
- [Best Cafes in the World (2026)](https://gautamkhorana.com/blog/best-cafes-in-the-world-2026/): Ten cafes worth planning a trip around in 2026 — Onyx in Arkansas, Tim Wendelboe in Oslo, Apartment Coffee in Singapore, Hermanos in London, New York Café in Budapest, and more — with what to order at each
- [Edge Compute Directory](https://gautamkhorana.com/edge-compute/): Catalogue of edge runtimes — Cloudflare Workers, Vercel Edge, Deno Deploy, AWS Lambda@Edge, Fastly Compute — with side-by-side comparisons and an honest take per runtime
- [WordPress Support](https://gautamkhorana.com/wordpress-support/): Managed WordPress support and care plans, 200-2000 USD/mo
- [Web Design and Development](https://gautamkhorana.com/bespoke-web-development/): Custom-coded sites with original design across WordPress, headless WordPress, Next.js, Astro, Nuxt, 15K-90K USD
- [Branding and Logo](https://gautamkhorana.com/brand-identity-trademark/): Brand identity, logo design, trademark workflow, 5K-25K USD
- [Site Migration](https://gautamkhorana.com/site-migration/): WordPress migration, headless re-platforming, host moves, 8K-45K USD
- [Technical SEO](https://gautamkhorana.com/technical-seo/): Audit and remediation across crawl, schema, Core Web Vitals, hreflang, AI search citability — WordPress, headless, Next.js, Astro, Nuxt, 5K-60K USD
- [Enterprise DAM and Brand Portal](https://gautamkhorana.com/enterprise-dam/): Custom Digital Asset Management platforms or white-labelled Brandy HQ deployments. 15K-250K USD.
- [Directory Website Development](https://gautamkhorana.com/directory-website-development/): Programmatic-SEO directory and listing platforms on Next.js plus Supabase. HostList.io case study. 18K-90K USD.
- [Headless WordPress Development](https://gautamkhorana.com/headless-wordpress-development/): Headless WordPress on Next.js, Astro, or Nuxt. WPGraphQL, ACF, Faust.js, ISR, preview mode, full SEO transport. 25K-90K USD.
- [Programmatic SEO Implementation](https://gautamkhorana.com/programmatic-seo/): Programmatic SEO that survives the Helpful Content Update. The HostList playbook applied to your data. 18K-90K USD.
- [WordPress to Next.js Migration](https://gautamkhorana.com/wordpress-to-nextjs-migration/): SEO-preserving migration with redirect map, Yoast/Rank Math metadata transport, plugin replacement plan. 25K-150K USD.
- [Outsource Web Development](https://gautamkhorana.com/outsource-web-development/): Bundle the full lifecycle under one team
- [Play](https://gautamkhorana.com/play/): PacWords, a WordPress-themed Pac-Man clone built in HTML5 Canvas

## Topical authority

Gautam writes and works professionally on:
- WordPress development (classic, Bricks, Gutenberg, Elementor, Beaver), migration, and managed support
- Headless WordPress with Next.js or Astro front-ends
- Modern stacks: Next.js (App Router), Astro, Nuxt 3
- Headless CMS layer: Sanity, Strapi, Payload, Storyblok, Contentful
- Technical SEO, GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation), AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation)
- Programmatic SEO at scale (HostList.io: ~28,000 pages)
- Schema.org structured data, hreflang at scale, Core Web Vitals
- AI search visibility — AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Bing Copilot
- Multi-language SEO with bidirectional hreflang clusters
- Build-time SEO linting and CI gates
- WordPress agencies — operations, hiring, scaling
- AI content pipelines (Claude, FAL, humanisation gates)

## Companies and projects

- Seahawk Media — Co-Founder and COO. https://seahawkmedia.com
- HostList.io — solo build. https://hostlist.io
- WP Legends — host. https://gautamkhorana.com/wplegends/
- Brandy HQ — co-builder. https://brandyhq.com

## Contact

- Email: gautam@seahawkmedia.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gautamkhorana/
- X: https://x.com/gautamkhorana
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@seahawkmedia
- Calendly: https://calendly.com/gautamkhorana/30min

## Translations

This site is published in English plus Spanish, Hindi, French, Japanese, and German. Locale prefix in URL: /es/, /hi/, /fr/, /ja/, /de/. English is at root.