Marketing & Growth

SEO that starts with the site, not the keyword list

Technical SEO, content structure and authority — measured in enquiries, not impressions.

Most SEO proposals begin with a keyword list. That is the third step, not the first. If your pages are slow, your structure is flat, your titles are duplicated and your content answers no specific question, a keyword list changes nothing — it just gives everyone something to report on. We start where the leverage is: the technical foundation. Can search engines crawl and render every page you care about? Does each page have a distinct title, description and purpose? Is the site fast on a mid-range phone on a slow connection, which is how most of your audience actually arrives? Is there structured data telling search engines what your pages are? Only then does content strategy make sense — and it makes far more sense, because now every article published lands on a site that can rank it. This is the same work we did on our own properties, which is why the SEO service and the engineering service are run by the same people rather than sold by one and subcontracted by the other.

The problem

What this solves

The recurring pattern we are called into: a business has paid for SEO for a year, has a monthly report full of impressions and average positions, and cannot point to a single additional enquiry. The report is not lying. Impressions genuinely went up. But impressions are the easiest metric to move and the least connected to revenue — you can rank for terms nobody buying anything ever searches. Meanwhile the pages that would convert are slow, thin, or missing entirely.

Reports full of impressions, empty of enquiries

Metrics that rise every month while the phone stays quiet.
A technically unrankable site

Slow pages, duplicate titles, broken canonicals — content cannot outrun the foundation.
Content written for search engines

Pages that repeat a phrase and answer no actual question.
Commercial pages with no internal authority

The pages that convert are buried where nothing links to them.
No idea which traffic is worth having

Analytics that counts everyone the same, so nobody can see what works.

Our approach

How we go about it

A technical audit first — crawl, render, index coverage, Core Web Vitals, canonical and duplicate handling, sitemap and robots correctness, structured data. Fix what is broken before adding anything new. Then the information architecture: one page per genuine intent, internally linked so authority reaches the pages that matter commercially. Most sites have their commercial pages buried three clicks from anything with authority. Then content, written for a specific question a specific buyer has. And throughout, measurement on enquiries and qualified traffic — never on impressions alone, because a metric you cannot bank is a metric that hides bad news.

Outcomes

What changes for you

Fixes before campaigns

The technical foundation is repaired first, so everything after it compounds.
One team, site and search

The people optimising the site are the people who can change it — no ticket queue between diagnosis and fix.
Intent-mapped content

Every page answers a question somebody with a budget is actually asking.
Structured data done properly

Schema for your organisation, services, articles and FAQs, valid and complete.
Reporting you can act on

Enquiries and qualified sessions, with the change that caused them named.

Frequently asked questions

Common questions about seo services.

How long does SEO take to work?

Technical fixes can show within weeks — indexing and speed problems resolve quickly once removed. Competitive rankings take months, and anyone promising page one in thirty days is either buying ads or misunderstanding the question. We would rather give you a realistic curve and hit it.

Do you guarantee rankings?

No, and we would be wary of anyone who does. Nobody controls the ranking algorithm. What we control is whether your site is technically sound, structurally sensible and genuinely useful — which is what the algorithm is trying to measure.

Can you work on a site you did not build?

Yes, that is most of the work. The audit tells us what we are dealing with; if the platform makes basic fixes impossible — and some page builders do — we will say so rather than charge you monthly to work around it.

Is SEO worth it for a small local business?

Often more than for a large one, because local intent converts. A well-structured local presence with correct schema and genuinely useful pages competes well against national sites that ignore local specifics.

What does it cost?

It depends on the state of the site and the competitiveness of the terms. The audit is the honest starting point: it tells both of us what is actually required before anyone commits to a retainer.

Related services

Getting traffic that never enquires?

Send us your site. We will tell you honestly whether the problem is technical, structural or editorial — and which one to fix first.

Start a project Talk to our team