Having a website and being found are two different things. A website makes you findable by name. SEO is what makes you findable for the work you actually want: the searches people type when they do not know you exist yet. Whether you need it depends entirely on where your enquiries currently come from.
Six checks you can do in ten minutes
Before paying anyone, run these yourself. They tell you more than an automated audit report.
- Search your business name plus your town. Do you appear?
- Search the service you most want work from, plus your town. Are you on page one?
- Open your site on mobile data. Does it load in under three seconds?
- Do you have a separate page for each service you sell?
- Do you have a page for each town you actively work in?
- Is your website linked from your Google Business Profile?
If you answered no to the second, fourth or fifth question, you have room to grow and it is structural rather than mysterious.
When you probably do not need ongoing SEO
You already dominate your own name
If almost all your work comes from referrals and repeat customers who search your business name, your site is doing its job. Spending on ongoing SEO before that changes is optional.
You are not chasing new enquiries
If you are booked out for months, SEO buys you enquiries you cannot service. Better to spend on the pages that convert the enquiries you already get.
Your market is not searched
A small number of trades genuinely get almost no local search volume. It is worth checking the numbers before paying monthly for a search nobody makes.
The one-off fixes worth doing on almost any site
These are jobs with a beginning and an end. They are not a monthly retainer, and on an older site they often account for most of the available gain.
Split one page into proper service pages
A single page cannot rank for roofing, guttering and fascias at once. Separating your services into their own properly written pages is the biggest one-off gain most sites have available.
Rewrite titles and descriptions per page
Every page needs its own title under about 60 characters and a description under about 160. Plenty of older sites repeat the same title on every page, which wastes the strongest signal you have.
Fix headings and page structure
One clear H1 per page, then H2s and H3s in a sensible order. Where a template has used headings for styling, search engines cannot work out what the page is about.
Compress the images
Photos straight off a phone are often several megabytes each. Resizing and converting them is usually the single fastest speed improvement on an existing site.
Add structured data and a sitemap
Local business markup, service markup, FAQ markup, a sitemap and a robots file. Housekeeping, but plenty of cheap builds launch without any of it.
Tidy the local signals
Consistent name, address and phone number everywhere, your real service area written into the copy, and your site properly linked from your Google Business Profile.
Every one of those is built into a new site from day one, which is exactly what I cover in my guide to how to choose a web designer and on my website design page.
What ongoing SEO actually buys
Once the foundations are right, monthly work is about competing rather than repairing.
- New pages targeting the searches you are not visible for yet
- Improving pages that rank on page two into page one
- Local content for the towns you want more work from
- Genuine links from suppliers, directories and local sites
- Monitoring what people actually search before they enquire
- Fixing technical issues before they cost you rankings
That is the work covered by my SEO services, from £119 a month, with no long contract.
Fix the site or start again?
Be honest about the starting point. If your existing site is quick, has room for separate service pages and simply needs better content, improve it. If it is a locked template that cannot be restructured, cannot be made fast and cannot have proper local pages, ongoing SEO is money spent working around the problem. My guide to what a website costs sets out the numbers either way.
Common questions
Do I need SEO if I already have a website?
Only if you want more enquiries from people who do not already know your name. A website makes you findable by name. SEO is what makes you findable for the services you sell, in the towns you work in. If your existing pages are already ranking and your diary is full, ongoing SEO is optional.
Isn't SEO already included when a website is built?
The foundations should be: separate service pages, unique titles and descriptions, clean headings, readable URLs, compressed images, structured data, a sitemap and HTTPS. That is what I build in as standard. Ongoing SEO is the work of adding content, earning links and improving pages afterwards.
How long does SEO take to work?
Expect movement in weeks and meaningful change in three to six months for competitive local searches. Anyone promising page one in a fortnight is either targeting searches nobody makes or not being honest with you.
Can I do SEO myself?
Some of it, yes. Keeping your Google Business Profile current, adding real photos, answering customer questions on your pages and asking happy customers for reviews all help and cost nothing. The technical and content-structure work is where most people get stuck.
Is it worth doing SEO on an old website?
It depends on the site. If the structure is sound, fixing content and technical issues is good value. If the site is slow, template-locked and cannot have separate service pages, you are paying to improve something that limits you, and a rebuild is usually cheaper overall.
What does ongoing SEO cost?
My monthly SEO packages start at £119 a month, with a larger package at £249 a month for businesses competing across several towns and services. Both are monthly with no long lock-in.
Where to go next
Send me your web address and the searches you want to win, and I will tell you honestly whether you need monthly SEO, a handful of one-off fixes, or nothing at all yet.