What is SEO
How search ranking actually works, what the work involves, and what to expect.
Read the guideGuide/ SEO
How to optimize
your site for search.
Work in this order. Technical problems block everything downstream, so fixing titles on a site search engines cannot crawl properly is wasted effort.
1. Confirm your pages can actually be indexed
Open Google Search Console and check the Pages report. If pages you care about are not indexed, nothing else you do matters.
Common causes: a stray noindex tag left over from development, a robots.txt blocking a section, canonical tags pointing at the wrong URL, or pages with no internal links pointing to them.
Search site:yourdomain.com for a rough count of what is indexed. If it is far below your page count, start there.
2. Fix Core Web Vitals
Google measures three things: LCP (how fast the main content appears — aim under 2.5s), INP (how fast the page responds to taps — under 200ms), and CLS (how much the layout jumps — under 0.1).
The usual culprits are uncompressed images, render-blocking scripts, and web fonts loading without size fallbacks, which shifts the layout as they swap in.
Compressing images and serving modern formats is usually the single biggest win available on a business site, and the easiest.
3. Give every page a unique title and description
Titles: put the main term near the front, keep under about 60 characters so it is not truncated, and make every one different.
Descriptions: under about 160 characters. They do not directly affect ranking, but they affect whether anyone clicks — which does.
Duplicate titles across pages are one of the most common problems on business sites, and one of the easiest to fix.
4. Structure headings properly
One <h1> per page describing what the page is about, then <h2> for sections and <h3> beneath them. Do not skip levels for visual reasons — style them instead.
Headings are how both readers and search engines scan a page. If your headings alone read as a sensible outline, the page is structured well.
5. Match content to intent, then go deeper than the competition
Search your target term and read the pages ranking above you. If they answer questions you do not, that gap is your work.
Depth means covering what the reader needs — not padding. A 600-word page that fully answers the question beats 2,000 words of filler.
Update existing pages before writing new ones. Improving a page ranking at position 12 usually returns more than publishing a new page from nothing.
6. Link internally, deliberately
Internal links tell search engines which pages matter and pass authority between them. Most sites underuse them badly.
Link from strong pages to the pages you want to rank, and use descriptive anchor text — "our data recovery service" rather than "click here".
Find orphan pages, which no internal link points to. They are effectively invisible.
7. Add structured data
Structured data (schema markup) helps search engines understand what your pages describe, and can earn richer results — FAQs, breadcrumbs, reviews.
Useful types for most businesses: Organization or LocalBusiness, Service, BreadcrumbList, FAQPage.
One rule: the markup must match what is visible on the page. FAQ schema for questions a visitor cannot see is a guideline violation.
8. Then build authority
Do this after the above, because links pointing at a weak page waste the link.
What works: being genuinely worth citing, industry directories, trade associations, supplier and partner pages, local press, and original data nobody else has.
What does not: bought link packages, private blog networks, and mass directory submissions. These carry real penalty risk.
FAQ/ Before you ask
Common questions
What should I fix first?
Indexing problems, then speed, then titles and descriptions, then content depth. Working out of order wastes effort — optimising a page search engines cannot index achieves nothing.
How often should I update content?
When it is out of date or underperforming, not on a schedule. Editing pages without improving them does nothing. Review your top pages twice a year and check anything stuck on page two.
Do keywords in the URL matter?
Slightly, and mostly for clarity. A short descriptive URL helps readers more than rankings. Never change existing URLs for a small keyword gain without setting up 301 redirects — you will lose more than you gain.
How many keywords should a page target?
One primary topic per page, plus the natural variations people use for it. Pages trying to target several unrelated terms tend to rank for none of them.
Want this
handled for you?
We do this as a service. If you would rather have search engine optimization run properly than run it yourself, tell us what you are working with.
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