What is SEO? A plain-English guide

If you run a business, you've had the emails. "We noticed issues with your website's SEO." "Guaranteed page one of Google." Usually from someone you've never met.

Before you can judge any of that, you need to know what SEO actually is. The good news: it's a simple idea behind an off-putting acronym.

The plain-English version

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. Strip the jargon and it means: everything you do so that when someone nearby searches for what you sell, Google recommends you.

That's the whole thing. Every technique, tool and consultant in the industry is in service of that one sentence.

What Google actually looks at

Nobody outside Google knows the full recipe, but the main ingredients are well understood, and none of them are mysterious:

• Your pages say what you do and where. If you're a barber in Didsbury, the words "barber" and "Didsbury" need to appear on your site: clearly, in real sentences, not repeated fifty times.
• Your site is fast. Google measures how quickly your pages load, especially on a phone. Slow sites get recommended less, because Google knows people give up on them.
• It works properly on a phone. Most local searches happen on mobile, so Google judges the mobile version of your site first.
• It's built so Google can read it. Under the surface, a well-built site labels things for machines: this is the business name, this is the address, these are the opening hours. This is invisible to visitors and enormously helpful to Google.
• Other people vouch for you. Reviews, mentions and links from other websites all act like references. Google trusts businesses that other people demonstrably trust.
• Your Google Business Profile is claimed and current. That's the panel with the map, photos and reviews. It's free, and for local searches it's arguably as important as the website itself; the two work together.

How "near me" searches decide

When someone searches "nail salon near me", Google weighs three things: how close you are, how well you match what they asked for, and how established you look (reviews, a proper website, consistent details everywhere). You cannot move your salon closer to the searcher, but the other two are entirely winnable.

An honest word about timing

SEO is slow. Real improvements show up over weeks and months, not days, because Google takes time to notice changes and more time to trust them. Anyone promising page one within a fortnight is either mistaken or using methods Google eventually penalises, and the penalty lands on your website, not theirs.

That slowness has an upside. Rankings, once earned, don't vanish overnight, and competitors can't buy their way past you in a weekend either.

Offers to treat with caution

Be careful with any offer that includes the following:

• "Guaranteed first place on Google." Nobody can guarantee rankings; Google says so itself.
• "We found errors on your website." These messages are usually sent to thousands of businesses at once, without anyone having looked at your website.
• "We'll submit your site to 500 directories." A tactic from around 2010 that now does more harm than good.
• A monthly fee with no explanation of the work. Good SEO can be described in plain English. If a provider cannot explain what they're doing for the fee, that tells you something important.

What you can do yourself, this week

Some of the highest-value SEO work needs no technical skill at all: claim your Google Business Profile if you haven't, check your opening hours are right, add recent photos, ask your happiest customers for a review, and reply politely to the reviews you have, including the critical ones. All of it is free, and all of it genuinely works.

The technical side (speed, structure, and the machine-readable labelling) is the part your web team should be handling. It's built into every site we build from day one, because adding it later costs more and works less well.