Search Engine Optimisation
Search optimisation is three jobs done together: making the site easy for a crawler to read, publishing pages that answer what people type, and earning links from sites that have a reason to mention you.
None of it is secret. Google publishes its guidance, and most sites that rank poorly have ordinary faults: pages that cannot be crawled, titles that say nothing, ten pages competing for one phrase.
Positions are decided by the search engine. They move when it updates its systems or when a competitor improves. We cannot promise a ranking, a traffic figure or a number of enquiries, and anyone who does is guessing or buying links.
Making the site readable to a crawler
Content cannot rank if the search engine never sees it, or sees four copies of it.
Crawling and indexing
We crawl the site as a search engine would and compare the result with the page indexing report in Search Console. Pages blocked by robots.txt, stray noindex tags or wrong canonicals are listed and corrected.
Core Web Vitals
Largest Contentful Paint, Interaction to Next Paint and Cumulative Layout Shift are read from field data. The usual causes are oversized images, scripts that block rendering and fonts that arrive late.
Structure and internal links
Important pages should sit a few clicks from the home page and be linked with words that describe them. Orphan pages and redirect chains are cleaned up.
Structured data
Schema.org markup for products, articles, organisations and local businesses, validated with the Rich Results Test. Markup describes what is on the page; it never invents ratings.
Duplicates and country versions
Parameter URLs, filtered category pages and copies across country sites are handled with canonicals and hreflang, so one version of each page is indexed.
Migrations
Before a redesign or a domain change we map each old address to a new one. Most losses after a relaunch trace back to redirects that were never written.
Pages written for the person searching
A page earns its place by answering the query better than the pages already there.
Search phrase research
We group phrases by what the searcher wants to do and give each group one page. Volume numbers from tools are estimates, and we treat them as estimates.
Titles and descriptions
Each title says what the page is and for whom. Search engines may rewrite them, so the on-page heading has to carry the same meaning.
Thin and overlapping pages
Pages that say little are merged, rewritten or removed. Two pages chasing one phrase usually do worse than a single good one.
Local search
Google Business Profile kept accurate: categories, opening hours, services, photos. Name, address and telephone number match wherever they appear.
Links: what we do and what we refuse
A link is worth having when an editor chose to place it. Everything else is a risk you carry, not us.
- We offer original data, guides or expert comment to publications in your field
- We ask for a link where your name is already mentioned without one
- We redirect old addresses that other sites still point to
- We do not pay for links or for articles disguised as editorial
- We do not use private blog networks or link swaps
- We do not file a disavow list unless a manual action or clear evidence calls for it
What we measure with
Search Console is the primary source because it comes from the search engine itself. Third-party tools fill in what it leaves out.
- From the search engines
- Google Search ConsoleBing Webmaster ToolsGoogle Business ProfilePageSpeed Insights
- Crawling
- Screaming Frog SEO SpiderSitebulbServer log files
- Research
- AhrefsSemrushGoogle Trends
- Reporting
- Google Analytics 4Looker Studio
Order of work
Technical faults come first because they cap what content and links can achieve.
Audit
A written list of faults ranked by likely effect and by effort, with the evidence for each. You can take it to any developer.
Fixes
We make the changes ourselves where we have access, or brief your developers and check their work once it is live.
Content plan
A page-by-page list: keep, rewrite, merge, create. New pages are drafted with input from the people in your business who know the subject.
Review
Each month we compare impressions, clicks and conversions with the previous period and say what we think caused the change, including when we do not know.
Asked before most SEO engagements
How long until rankings improve?
Technical fixes can show within weeks of being recrawled. Content and links usually take several months. We cannot give a date, because the search engine decides and does not tell anyone in advance.
Will you promise page one?
No. Nobody outside the search engine can. We will tell you which phrases look realistic for a site of your size and which belong to much larger competitors.
Do you use AI to write content?
Drafting tools help with outlines and checks. Published pages are written and edited by a person and reviewed by someone in your business who knows the subject.
A core update hit our traffic. Can you reverse it?
We can investigate which pages lost visibility and improve them. Recovery, where it happens, usually follows a later update. It is not something we can promise.
Who holds the Search Console property?
You do. We are added as a user. Analytics, the Business Profile and every page we write also belong to you.
Send us the address of your site
Add the phrases you would like to be found for and any history of penalties or redesigns. You will hear from us within one business day.