A client asked me a great question last week.
“I’ve heard about SEO for years. But what’s actually worth doing?”
It’s a fair question. SEO gets talked about constantly, but a lot of the advice out there is either outdated, too technical, or written for huge corporate websites rather than a small business trying to get found locally.
So here’s what I actually focus on when I’m improving a client’s SEO — no jargon, just the things that make a real difference.
Set up your Google Business Profile properly
If you only do one thing for local SEO, make it this.
A Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is what puts you on the map — literally — when someone searches for a business like yours nearby. It’s free, and for most local businesses it drives more visibility than anything else on this list.
Fill it in properly. Add your opening hours, photos, your services, and your correct address and phone number. Keep those details consistent everywhere else you’re listed online too — directories, your website footer, social media — since mismatched details can confuse Google about which business is genuinely yours.
Reviews matter here as well. A steady flow of genuine reviews, and replying to them, signals to Google that you’re an active, trustworthy business — and it’s often the first thing a potential customer reads before they even visit your website. If you ever get hit with a fake or malicious review, it’s also worth knowing how to get it removed.
If you haven’t claimed and verified your profile yet, that’s the very first SEO task I’d tell you to do — before anything else on this page.
Start with the words your customers actually use
Before I touch anything else on a website, I look at the words a potential customer would actually type into Google.
Not the words a business owner thinks sound professional — the words a real person searches for when they need what you do.
Business owners often describe what they do in the language they use internally — bespoke, integrated, solutions. But nobody searches for that. They search for things like “kitchen fitter Scarborough” or “emergency plumber near me”.
Swapping vague, corporate-sounding phrases for the words people actually search is one of the simplest ways to improve a page’s SEO — and it costs nothing but a rewrite.
Write content that answers a real question
A lot of business websites have pages that talk about the business — history, values, mission statement — but never actually answer what a customer typed into Google.
If someone searches “how much does a new boiler cost”, they want a straight answer, not three paragraphs about how passionate your company is about heating. Google notices this too. Pages that genuinely answer the question people searched tend to rank better and hold attention longer than pages that talk around the topic.
A simple way to find these questions: think about what your customers actually ask you before they book, and write a page or blog post that answers each one directly. It doesn’t need to be long. It just needs to say the thing they came looking for.
Don’t ignore page speed and mobile
If your website takes more than a couple of seconds to load, some visitors will leave before they’ve even seen it. Google knows this too, and it factors page speed into how highly your site ranks.
Mobile matters just as much, if not more. Most local searches now happen on a phone, and Google primarily judges your site by how it performs on mobile, not desktop. A site that looks great on a laptop but is slow or fiddly to use on a phone is working against you.
You don’t need to be technical to check this. Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool is free, and it’ll tell you exactly what’s slowing your site down and how it performs on mobile. If the results look worrying, that’s a good sign it’s time to speak to whoever built your website.
Off-page SEO matters, but don’t obsess over it
You’ll often hear that social shares, backlinks, and online reviews all feed into your search rankings. That’s true, to a point.
But I see business owners get so wrapped up chasing backlinks and social engagement that they neglect the basics on their own site — things like page speed, clear headings, and content that actually answers the question someone searched.
My advice: get your own website right first. A fast, well-structured site with genuinely useful content will do more for your rankings than a handful of social shares ever will. Backlinks and reviews are worth building over time, but they’re not where I’d start.
Keep an eye on what’s actually working
SEO isn’t a one-off job — it’s something you check in on.
Google Search Console is the one tool I’d say every business owner should have set up, even if you never touch anything else. It shows you exactly which searches are bringing people to your site, how many times your page has appeared, and how many people actually clicked through.
That last part matters more than people realise. A page can show up thousands of times in search results and still get almost no clicks — usually because the title or description isn’t giving people a reason to click. Fixing that is often a bigger win than chasing new rankings altogether.
You don’t need expensive software to get started. Search Console is free, and it tells you more about your own site’s real performance than most paid tools do.
Where to start
If you take one thing from this, make it your Google Business Profile. It’s free, it’s quick to set up properly, and for most local businesses it does more for visibility than anything else here.
After that, work through the rest at your own pace. None of this needs doing all at once, and none of it needs to cost anything to get started.
If you’d rather have someone take a look at your website and tell you straight what’s worth fixing, I offer a website review where I’ll do exactly that.