SEO for small firms — where to start and what to avoid

SEO is not reserved for companies with six-figure budgets. A small firm can rank — provided it does things in the right order and does not start with the one that is easiest to sell.

Month one: the parts nobody can do for you

Decide what you actually want to rank for. Not "kitchens" — fitted kitchens Manchester. The broad phrase brings traffic that never buys; the narrow one brings five people a month, three of whom call.

Write the pages that answer those phrases. One page per thing you sell, written for a person who has the problem, not for a search engine. If a page cannot answer "what is this and what does it cost", it will not rank and would not convert if it did.

Fix what makes the site slow. Usually photographs straight from a camera. This is a single afternoon and it moves more than most link-building.

What to avoid in the first year

Buying links. It works until it does not, and the recovery costs more than the whole campaign.

Paying for "positions" without traffic. Ranking first for a phrase nobody searches is a screenshot, not a result. Ask what the phrase is searched for monthly before you agree to anything.

Publishing weekly for the sake of it. Four pages that answer real questions beat forty that answer none.

How to spot an offer that does not make sense

Ask three questions:

• Which phrases, and how often are they searched? A proposal without numbers is a proposal without a plan.
• What will change on the site? If the answer is only "content and links", nobody has looked at the site.
• How will we know it worked? The answer should mention enquiries, not positions.

The uncomfortable part

SEO takes months, and the first two look like nothing is happening. Any offer that promises otherwise is either buying links or selling phrases nobody types. Both end the same way.