SEO for small businesses

What SEO actually is

Making your website the result Google wants to show when your customers search for what you sell. That's the whole discipline.

In practice it has three layers. Technical: the site is fast and machine-readable. Content: every important page answers one real search. Local: Google knows where you are and shows you to the people nearby.

How it's done

1. 1

   Find the searches that matter. They're rarely the ones you'd guess, and almost never the industry jargon from your old brochure.

2. 2

   Fix the technical layer: speed, mobile, structured data. Google measures these whether anyone likes it or not.

3. 3

   Build pages that answer those searches. One page, one question, no filler.

4. 4

   Measure and wait. Rankings move over weeks, and you watch the movement in Google Search Console, the same data I see. Anyone promising page one within days is selling Google Ads with extra steps.

Why is my website not showing up on Google?

Four causes cover most cases. All four checks are free:

• Google doesn't know your site exists. Search for site:yourdomain.com. Zero results means you're not in the index at all. Set up Google Search Console and submit your sitemap, that usually solves it.

• You're indexed but answer nothing. A homepage that says 'Welcome to our website' competes for no search on earth. Every page needs to answer something a customer actually types.

• Your site is slow. Test it at pagespeed.web.dev. If mobile scores sit deep in the red, Google notices, and so does everyone on a phone.

• You have no Google Business Profile. For local searches the map box takes a big share of the clicks. Claiming your profile is free and takes an afternoon.

That's the free starter kit. Do those four things and you're ahead of a surprising share of your local competition.

Why me anyway

The list above is my first afternoon on any project. After that comes the part where a developer pays off: page speed a site builder can't reach, structured data, and pages built around one search each.

You get reports straight out of Google Search Console: your position, your clicks, the actual searches people typed. Numbers you can pull up yourself, so you never have to take my word for anything.

What I don't sell: guaranteed rankings. Nobody controls Google, and anyone offering a guarantee is charging you for a coin flip.