If people already search Google for what you sell, your business needs SEO. It is how you earn a place in the unpaid search results, and a page that ranks can keep bringing in visitors without a charge for every click. It is not always the first job, though: if nobody searches for your product yet, or you need enquiries this week, spend elsewhere first.
What is SEO, in plain English?
SEO stands for search engine optimisation. Google's SEO Starter Guide describes it as "helping search engines understand your content, and helping users find your site".
In practice, that comes down to three jobs:
- Making your site easy for Google to read. Pages that load properly, can be crawled and indexed, and make it clear what you do and where.
- Answering what your customers search for. A clear page for each service, written in the words people use, covering the questions they ask before they buy.
- Showing you are a reputable business. Google uses how pages link to each other to help judge which results are most helpful, so genuine links from other sites matter. For local businesses, Google says complete and accurate Business Profile information makes you more likely to appear in local results.
None of this can be bought from Google, which does not accept payment to rank pages higher. A place in the unpaid listings has to be earned.
Why does SEO keep paying when ads stop?
Paid advertising works like a tap. In Google Ads, pausing a campaign stops your ads from showing and stops further charges. That control is useful, but the visitors stop the moment the spending does.
SEO is more like building something. A service page that ranks for a search your customers make can keep bringing people in month after month, with no charge each time someone clicks. The next useful page you publish adds to it, and so does each genuine link you earn.
That is what people mean when they say SEO compounds. It is not free: it costs your time or an agency's fees, and rankings can slip if you neglect the site or a competitor does a better job. But the pages and reputation you build do not vanish when a budget runs out.
When is SEO not the right priority?
SEO puts you in front of people who are already looking. That makes it the wrong first move in a few situations.
Nobody searches for what you sell yet. If you have launched something genuinely new, there may be very few searches to rank for. SEO captures demand; it does not create it. Social media and PR will do more to make people aware of you, and SEO becomes worthwhile once they start searching.
You need enquiries this week. SEO takes months to build momentum. If cash flow depends on leads now, paid search and social ads can put you in front of buyers far sooner.
Your website cannot turn visitors into enquiries. More traffic to a confusing site is wasted money. If people already visit and rarely get in touch, fix that first. Our guide to website traffic with no leads covers the usual causes.
A quick way to decide:
| Your situation | Sensible first step |
|---|---|
| Customers already search for what you offer, and you can wait a few months | Start SEO now |
| You need enquiries within weeks | Paid ads first, with SEO alongside if budget allows |
| A new product that few people search for yet | Build awareness through social media and PR, then SEO |
| Visitors arrive but rarely get in touch | Fix the website before paying for more traffic |
| A local business with an incomplete Business Profile | Complete the profile and start local SEO |
| Fully booked through referrals, with no plans to grow | Keep your profile accurate and review later |
What does good SEO work look like month to month?
Good SEO is steady and visible. You should be able to see what was done each month and why. A typical month might include:
- A plain-English report built on real data. Google Search Console's Performance report shows how often your site appeared in Google Search, how often people clicked and your average position. A good report connects those figures to the enquiries or sales you care about.
- Technical checks and fixes, such as pages missing from Google's index, broken links or slow pages.
- New or improved pages that answer real customer questions. Google says its ranking systems are designed to prioritise helpful, reliable content created for people, not content made to manipulate rankings.
- Local work: keeping your Business Profile up to date, adding photos and replying to reviews. Our guide to local SEO in Kent covers the basics, wherever you are.
- Earning genuine links from suppliers, trade bodies and local press. Never paying for them: Google treats buying or selling links for ranking purposes as link spam.
- A written record of every change made to your site.
If months go by with jargon-filled reports and no record of what changed, it is fair to ask what you are paying for.
What results can you realistically expect?
That depends on where your site starts, how competitive your market is and how much work goes in. We have written a separate answer on how long SEO takes to work, so we will not repeat it here.
What you should not expect is a guarantee. Google's guide to hiring an SEO is clear that nobody can guarantee a number one ranking on Google. We cannot either.
Does SEO actually work?
It can, when it is done properly and given time. A clear example from our own work is Lovecraft Gift, an Indian customised-gifting ecommerce brand. Our SEO and performance marketing took its monthly sales from ₹20 lakh to ₹3 crore in six months, and ranked it #1 for "oil smudge painting". A lakh is 100,000 and a crore is 10 million, so that is 2 million to 30 million rupees a month.
Two honest caveats. That result came from SEO and paid advertising working together, and it was an ecommerce brand in a very different market from most UK service businesses. It shows what consistent work can achieve. It is not a forecast for yours.
How do you choose someone to do your SEO?
Google's hiring guide suggests questions worth putting to any agency or freelancer, us included:
- What have you achieved for other businesses, and can you show me?
- Do you follow Google Search Essentials?
- What results do you expect, and over what timeframe?
- What experience do you have in my industry and area?
- How will you tell me about the changes you make to my site?
Be wary of anyone who guarantees rankings, contacts you out of the blue with an SEO offer, will not explain what they are doing, or promises hundreds of links quickly.
Finally, keep your domain, hosting, Search Console and Business Profile in your own name. Search Console owners can add users with set permissions and Business Profile owners can invite managers, so an agency never needs to own them.
Where to start
If customers already search for what you do, SEO is usually worth starting sooner rather than later, because the work builds over time. If you are not sure it is the right priority yet, our SEO service page explains how we work, and we will tell you plainly if something else should come first.