SEO and search

Search engine optimisation is the work of helping people find you through Google and other search engines. In practice it splits cleanly in two.

The first job is making your website readable - so a search engine can reach every page, work out what each one is about, and show it accurately in results. This is technical and structural. It is finite work with a finishable end, and it either has been done or it has not.

The second job is making your website competitive - so that when several businesses could answer somebody's question, yours is among the ones that get shown. This is about content, evidence, reputation and demand. It is not finite. It is a programme, not a task, and it competes against everyone else doing the same thing.

Almost every argument about the value of SEO is a disagreement about which of these two jobs somebody thought they were buying.

A website that a search engine cannot read is invisible to search regardless of how good your business is. That is not a marketing problem, it is a plumbing problem, and it is the reason the first job is not optional.

The second job is different. It is required when search is how your customers find businesses like yours, and it is not when they find you another way - by referral, by walking past, through a marketplace, through a directory your industry uses, or because somebody already knows your name. Plenty of businesses do well with the first job done and the second one never started.

Deciding which of those two you are is worth more than any amount of tactical advice.

The readable job is included in every site we build, whatever its size. Three of our eleven standard inclusions cover it - the site being set up so search engines can find and read every page, analytics and Search Console in accounts you own, and a written record of where the site stood on launch day. Set out in full, that means:

• Links a search engine can follow
• Clear, tidy web addresses
• A sitemap, so no page is missed
• Control over which pages appear in search
• One clear subject per page
• Page titles and summaries written for the results page, not left to chance
• Headings in a sensible order
• One preferred address where a page can be reached more than one way
• Redirects from any page being replaced
• Image names and descriptions
• Structured data, a machine-readable summary of what the page is about, where it fits
• Checks on mobile and on speed
• Analytics and Search Console, set up in accounts you own
• A written record of where the site stood on launch day

Three more of the eleven do search work without being labelled as search work. A site built to load quickly and stay still while it loads, reviewed for accessibility, and working on a phone is a site search engines can handle. Those are build decisions, not optimisations added afterwards - how the site is built covers why.

It does not create demand. If nobody is searching for what you do, a readable website will not bring enquiries.

It does not create authority. Being readable gets you considered. Being chosen over other readable sites depends on evidence, reputation and content that answers the question better.

It does not compete on your behalf. In a crowded market the baseline is the entry requirement, not the advantage.

The gap between "technically sound" and "commercially visible" is where most disappointment with SEO lives.

Ongoing search work. Search demand and competitor research, content planning, service and sector and location pages, article production, improving pages that already exist, internal linking, and monthly prioritisation. This is the second job, run as a programme.

Local visibility. If you serve an area: claiming and improving your Google Business Profile, making your name, address and phone number consistent everywhere they appear, location content, categories and photographs, a process for asking for reviews, and tracking of calls, directions and enquiries. None of this is part of a standard build.

Content. Words on the page are what search engines assess and what customers read. We can write them, edit yours, or work from interviews.

Digital campaign management. Running and measuring paid campaigns alongside the site, which is a different discipline from search and is usually the faster answer when you need visibility before organic work has had time to compound.

Reporting. Ongoing measurement that leads to a decision rather than a monthly bundle of charts.

Any of these can be taken on their own, and none is a condition of anything else. Each is delivered by us or by a named specialist partner, and the proposal says which before the work starts.

It is usually worth it when people search for what you sell in meaningful volume, when a customer is worth enough to justify months of work before the return arrives, when you can supply or approve content at a steady rate, and when you are prepared to judge it over quarters rather than weeks.

It is usually not worth it when the market is tiny or nobody searches for the category, when your customers arrive by referral or repeat business, when nobody internally can approve content, or when you need results this month - in which case paid campaigns are the answer, not organic search.

If the second list describes you, we will say so.

There is no submission form that puts a business into an AI assistant. Different products combine web crawling, search indexes, licensed sources, product data and model behaviour in different ways, and those arrangements change without notice.

What can be done is real but bounded: deciding what crawlers may access, making what your business does explicit rather than implied, publishing evidence worth citing, using structured information accurately, keeping your public facts consistent everywhere they appear, and measuring whatever referral data becomes observable.

What cannot be done is guarantee inclusion.

• A position on Google, for any search term
• A number of visits
• Inclusion or citation in ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot or any other assistant
• That structured data will produce a particular search feature
• That publishing a large volume of AI-written articles will create authority
• Results by a date, before anyone has assessed the market and your starting position

Treat any guarantee that does not define the search term, the location, the duration and the commercial value as meaningless. "Page one" is easy to deliver for a phrase nobody searches for.

Being found is fast. A new or changed page may be discovered quickly, though there is no fixed timetable for it, and the baseline work is done before launch.

Being competitive is slow. Meaningful movement on anything contested is usually measured in months, and the first months of a programme often produce more groundwork than visible change.

A useful report answers seven questions: what changed, which pages and searches matter, what people did after arriving, which enquiries or sales connect to the work, what is blocking further improvement, what should be done next, and whether the expected value still exceeds the cost.

"More traffic" is rarely a good enough measure. The question worth asking is whether the right people arrive and take a meaningful next step.

Your analytics, Search Console, Google Business Profile and advertising accounts should be in your name, with your supplier granted access - not created inside a supplier's account you later have to recover.

It decides whether your own history and evidence stay with you when a working relationship ends. We set these up in accounts you own as standard.

• Which of the two jobs is this, readable or competitive?
• What exactly is included, and what is charged separately?
• Whose accounts will the data live in?
• What will you measure, and what would count as this not working?
• What are you assuming about my market that we have not checked?
• What would you tell me if you thought I should not do this?

The last one is the most useful question on the list.

If you want to talk through where your business sits on any of this, send us your requirements - in as little or as much detail as you like.