"SEO" might be the most oversold word in small business. There's an industry built on making it sound like dark magic that costs £500 a month forever. For a local business, the truth is simpler and mostly free, so here's the honest list, in order of what's worth your time.
1. Your Google Business Profile
When someone searches "plumber near me", the map results at the top are Google Business Profiles, not websites. Claiming yours, filling in every field, adding real photos and keeping your hours accurate does more for local visibility than anything else on this list. It costs nothing and takes an evening.
2. Reviews
Reviews are the local currency. Ask every happy customer, make it easy with a direct link, and reply to the ones you get, including the bad ones. A steady trickle of recent reviews beats a pile of old ones.
3. Being consistent everywhere
Your business name, address and phone number should be identical everywhere they appear: your website, your Google profile, Facebook, directories. Mismatches make Google trust all of them a little less.
4. A fast site that says what you do and where
This is where the website earns its keep. It needs to load quickly on a phone, and it needs to actually say "emergency plumber covering Harborough and surrounds" somewhere Google can read it, not just "welcome to our website". Every site we build gets this as standard: proper page titles, descriptions, and the speed scores Google rewards.
5. A blog, maybe, eventually
Blogging helps if you'll genuinely publish useful answers to things your customers ask, and keep doing it. Two posts followed by silence looks worse than no blog at all. Do the first four things first; they're where the results live.
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