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SEO basics, without the jargon

SEO means making it more likely that search engines show your business when someone searches for what you do. It is not a trick and there is no secret. It is mostly a set of unglamorous things done consistently.

How search engines decide

A search engine is trying to answer a question: of all the pages about this topic, which one will best satisfy the person who typed this? It works that out from hundreds of signals, but they fall into three groups.

Relevance

Does the page actually cover what was searched for? This is where your words matter — the page needs to talk about the thing in the language customers use, not internal jargon. A page titled "Our Solutions" tells a search engine nothing. "Emergency plumber in Leeds" tells it everything.

Authority

Do other credible sites link to or mention this one? Links from real, relevant websites act as votes. This is the slowest part to build and the part people most often try to cheat, which is why buying links is a good way to get penalised.

Experience

Is the page fast, readable on a phone, secure, and free of obstacles? A page that loads slowly or covers itself in pop-ups gets pushed down regardless of how relevant it is.

The things worth doing, in order

1. Have a page for each thing you do. One page listing eight services will lose to eight pages that each cover one properly.
2. Write proper page titles. Every page needs a unique title describing that page. This is the blue line in search results and it matters more than almost anything else on the page.
3. Use headings properly. One main heading per page, subheadings below it, structured like an argument rather than styled at random.
4. Say where you operate. If you serve a town, name it, in normal sentences.
5. Make the site fast and mobile-friendly. See our site speed guide.
6. Claim your Google Business Profile. For local businesses this often matters more than the website itself.
7. Get listed accurately elsewhere. Directories, trade bodies, suppliers — with identical name, address and phone number everywhere.
8. Add content that answers real questions. The questions customers ask you are, word for word, the things they type into search engines.

What to ignore

• Keyword stuffing. Repeating a phrase unnaturally has not worked for well over a decade and now actively harms you.
• Buying links. Detectable and punishable.
• Cold emails offering to fix your SEO. Anyone genuinely good at this is not sending unsolicited mail about a site they have not looked at.
• Guaranteed rankings. Nobody can guarantee a position on someone else's platform. It is not theirs to promise.
• Meta keywords. A tag that search engines stopped using long ago and some people still sell as a service.

Measuring whether it is working

Rankings are a vanity metric — they vary by person, location and device. What matters is enquiries. Track how many people contact you and where they came from. A site that ranks tenth but converts well is worth more than one that ranks third and does not.

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