SEO stands for search engine optimisation. It’s the work that goes into helping search engines like Google understand your website and decide how highly it’s ranked in their results.
How Google decides who ranks
Google sends out bots that crawl the internet, reading the content of every website they find. It uses that information to decide which websites are the best match for each search.
So when someone searches for “website designer Winchester”, Google already has a list of websites it thinks are a good match, based on what its bots have read.
Google publishes guidance on some of the things it looks at, such as:
- how fast your pages load
- how well structured your website is
- whether it has any errors
- whether the content makes sense and is relevant
- whether the content is original, or copied from somewhere else.
The better your website does on each of these, the more likely it is to appear near the top. Making that happen is SEO.
Why your business needs it
Every business with a website needs SEO, if you want that website to show up when people search for what you do.
It helps your visitors too. Following Google’s advice gives you a fast, well-structured website that people find easy to use. And people won’t wait around for a slow one.
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If you ignore SEO, your website will slide down the rankings. It won’t appear for the searches that matter to your business, and it won’t do as much for you as it could.
What makes the biggest difference
For a small local business, these three things matter most.
1. A Google Business Profile
This is the biggest single thing you can do. It tells Google where you are, when you’re open, how to contact you, what you offer and what your reviews say. Google uses it to show a preview of your business in its results. You’ll have seen them loads of times, maybe without realising how they got there.
2. Content that’s relevant and original
In the past, developers used all sorts of tricks to push pages up the rankings, even when the website didn’t deserve to be there. Today Google is really focused on promoting the websites with the best quality content.
3. Speed
A website that loads quickly is a big deal for Google. My post on website audits explains what usually slows a website down.
The biggest myth
The biggest myth about SEO is that someone can get you onto page one of Google quickly. Unless you work in a remarkably niche industry, that almost certainly isn’t true.
It can take months and months for a website to climb the rankings, because one of the things Google looks at is a website’s authority. A new website won’t have many other websites linking to it or much traffic yet, so in Google’s eyes it doesn’t have much authority. That takes time to build. There are lots of ways to help it along, and if you follow Google’s advice, your website will rise up the rankings.
How long it takes
It can take months to see results, but you don’t have to wait that long to know whether it’s working. Google’s own free tools show how your website ranks for particular searches, so even in the early days you can see whether things are moving in the right direction.
I’ve helped lots of clients boost their website’s ranking after around six months of work. Local searches are often what matters most. If you’re a dentist in Winchester, you want to rank as highly as you can when someone searches for “dentist in Winchester”.
What you can do for free
There’s plenty you can do before paying anyone:
- Set up your Google Business Profile. It’s free, and it’s the biggest single thing you can do.
- Make your content high quality and original, so it really answers the questions people ask when they search for what you do.
- Use the words your customers search for in your headings. There’s more on that in How much does a website cost?
What my SEO service includes
My SEO service starts at £750 a month. We begin with an audit of your website, to see where it stands and how it ranks today. Then we talk about your customers: who you want to reach, and what they’re likely to search for. Those searches become the focus of the work.
From then on, the work includes:
- fixing any technical problems with your website
- making sure your content matches the searches we’re targeting
- writing blog posts, which are a great way to add useful content to your website
- getting your website linked to from other websites in your field, or from websites Google already trusts.
Each month you get a short report showing what’s been done, where your website sits for those searches, and how things have moved.
Is AI changing SEO?
Yes, it is. One thing that helps is adding extra information to your website in a format that machines can read easily (it’s called structured data). It helps AI tools understand what your business does, and gives you a better chance of appearing in AI-generated search results. That’s now a big part of SEO, and it’s only going to grow.
In short
SEO is how you help Google show your website to the people searching for what you do. For a small local business, start with a Google Business Profile, relevant and original content, and a fast website. Expect it to take months, and look for steady progress along the way.
Tell me about your business and the searches you’d like to be found for, and I’ll tell you honestly where your website stands.