On-Site SEO

On-site and off-site — and why I only do one

On-site is everything on your own pages: how they are written, how they are structured, how fast they load, and how clearly they tell Google what your business is and where it operates. It is entirely within your control, it is a one-off piece of work, and it lasts.

Off-site is mostly link building — persuading other websites to link to yours — plus ongoing content campaigns. It is a monthly retainer, results are slow and hard to attribute, and a lot of it is sold badly.

I build the on-site half into every site at no extra cost. I do not sell link building or off-site campaigns. If someone needs that later, they should hire a specialist for it, and by then they will have a site worth linking to.

What search engines actually read

Google reads a page roughly the way a person skims one — it looks for the title, the headings, and whether the words match what someone searched for. Most small-business sites get this wrong by accident, usually because a template filled it in and nobody changed it. Every page you get is set up properly:

• Page title — the line that appears as the clickable link in search results, written per page rather than the same phrase everywhere
• Meta description — the short paragraph underneath it, which is your advert as much as anything
• Headings in order — one main heading per page, subheadings underneath it, so the structure is obvious to Google and to anyone using a screen reader
• Alt text on images — a plain description of each photo, which is what search engines and blind visitors get instead of the picture
• Clean web addresses — /services/web-design/, not /?p=417

Telling Google you are a local business

There is a hidden, structured summary that can sit inside a page — your business name, what you do, your service area, your hours, your phone number — written in a format search engines read directly rather than having to guess at. It is called schema, and most small sites do not have it.

Every site I build carries it. It is a large part of how you end up in the local map results and the panel on the right of the search page, rather than buried on page two. I will also set up or tidy your Google Business Profile, which is the free listing that feeds those results.

Speed counts as SEO

Google measures how quickly your pages appear and uses it when ranking them. This is one of the places where the hand-coded approach pays for itself twice: the same decision that makes the site fast for your customers also makes it rank better. See Custom Website Design for how that works.

How long before it makes a difference

Slower than anyone selling SEO would like you to believe, and that is worth knowing before you start. Google has to re-crawl your site and decide whether it trusts the new version. In practice you tend to see movement within a few weeks and a clearer picture after two or three months.

Some of it is quicker. A Google Business Profile that is properly filled in can start showing up in the local map results within days, which for a lot of trades matters more than the ordinary blue links do.

What I will not do is promise you a position. Nobody controls Google's rankings, the results differ for every person searching, and anyone guaranteeing you the top spot is either guessing or lying. What I can promise is that the things within your control are done properly, which is the part most small-business sites are missing entirely.

What you can do yourself

A few things move the needle more than anything I can do in the code, and they cost nothing:

• Ask for reviews, and reply to all of them. Local rankings lean heavily on reviews, and a thoughtful reply to a bad one sells you better than a wall of five stars.
• Keep your Google hours accurate, especially around holidays. Wrong hours cost you calls and quietly damage the listing.
• Post your real prices if you can bear to. People search with money in mind, and pages that answer the price question tend to get the call.
• Tell me when something changes. A new service or a new area you cover is a page worth having, and on the Website Plan it costs you nothing.

What is included, and what is not

Included in every build: page titles, meta descriptions, heading structure, image alt text, local business schema, clean URLs, a sitemap, fast load times, and Google Business Profile setup.

Not included: link building, off-site campaigns, ongoing content writing, or any promise about a specific ranking position. Nobody can honestly guarantee a position on Google, and you should be wary of anyone who does.