Getting found is not a one-off job.
A website is a starting position, not a ranking. SEO is the monthly work that moves you up the page and keeps you there while your competitors drift back down.
What SEO
actually is.
Search engine optimisation is the work of making Google understand what your business does and where, so it shows you to the people looking for it.
Nothing more mystical than that. Google reads your website and your Google Business Profile, works out what you do, and decides whether you are a better answer than the business down the road. SEO is the ongoing job of making that decision easier and making the answer yes.
It is not advertising. You are not paying Google, and nothing here is a sponsored slot. It is not a one-off setting somebody switches on either — your competitors are doing the same work, so positions move, which is why it is monthly rather than a job that finishes.
And it is not a trick. Anything that promises to game the ranking works until Google notices, and then it costs you more than it ever earned. There is no clever shortcut in any of this, which is why so much of the industry would rather you did not know what the work actually is.
The monthly work
SEO has a reputation
for being vague
on purpose.
Here is the specific list.
- 01
Keyword research and targeting
Finding what people in Leicester actually type when they need your business — then making sure a page on your site is built to answer exactly that.
- 02
On-page work
Titles, headings, copy and internal links, page by page. The unglamorous part that does most of the lifting.
- 03
Google Business Profile
The highest-leverage thing in local search, and the one most local businesses leave half-finished. Set up properly, kept current, and matched exactly to the site.
- 04
Local backlinks and citations
Real links from real local sources — suppliers, trade bodies, directories worth being in. No bought links, no networks, nothing that risks a penalty.
- 05
Consistent details everywhere
Your name, number and area identical across every listing. Inconsistency is the most common and most expensive local SEO mistake there is.
- 06
A monthly report you can read
What we did, what moved, what we are doing next. Written in English, not exported from a tool and forwarded.
Why local
is the whole game.
Nobody in Loughborough is searching for the best electrician in Britain.
They are searching for one near them, right now, who can come out. That is good news: competing nationally against thousands of businesses is close to hopeless, while competing in Leicester against the handful of firms who have bothered to do this properly is very winnable.
It also means the work is specific. The pages target service-and-place terms. The links come from local sources. The Google Business Profile does a lot of the heavy lifting. And when the phone rings, it is someone eight miles away with a job.
What it costs
£200 a month.
The whole figure.
Not a starting point, not a range that moves once we have seen your books, and not a number we would rather discuss on the phone.
There is no contract
It is monthly, and you can stop at the end of any month. Tying people into twelve months is how agencies protect themselves from work that is not producing anything, and we would rather have to keep earning it.
If you stop, nothing is taken away. The pages stay, the profile stays, the links stay. What stops is the work that keeps you moving while everybody else is still at it, so expect to drift down slowly rather than fall off.
What is not included
Google Ads. Anything paid is separate — we will tell you if we think it is worth it, and we do not take a cut of your ad spend.
Social media. Posting for you is not part of this and we would rather not pretend it is SEO.
New pages beyond the site you have. Improving what is there is included; building something new is quoted and agreed first, like any other job.
What we need
from you.
About an hour in the first month, then almost nothing.
The first conversation is the bit that matters: what you actually want more of, which jobs pay best, which ones you would rather stop being rung about, and the towns you genuinely cover. Nobody else can tell us that, and getting it wrong costs months.
After that: access to your Google Business Profile if it exists, and photographs when you have them. Real ones, off your phone, of work you have actually done. Five a month beats a stock library, and it is the single easiest thing a client can do to help.
You will not be chased for content, asked to approve a keyword spreadsheet, or invited to a monthly call that could have been an email. If we need something we will ask once, plainly, and tell you what it is holding up.
When not
to bother.
Monthly SEO is wrong for some businesses, and we would rather say so than take the money for a year.
If you are booked solid and not trying to grow, it is a bill with nothing to do. If you are about to change what you sell or where you work, wait until that has settled, because we would be optimising for a business that is on its way out.
If your website is one page, or was built on something that cannot be changed, the site is the problem and no amount of monthly work fixes it. We will tell you that before you start paying, even though it means a smaller job for us.
And if your Google Business Profile has never been filled in, start there. It is free, it takes an afternoon, and for a lot of local businesses it does more than the first three months of anything else. If that is all you need, do it yourself — here is how.
What that means
round here.
Local SEO in Leicester is a different job to local SEO in Melton Mowbray, and pretending otherwise is how agencies justify charging everyone the same for the same work. In the city you are competing against businesses that have been at it for years, plus national firms bidding on the same terms with far bigger budgets. In the market towns you are often competing against businesses that have never finished their Google listing.
That changes where the money goes. For a city business, most of the first few months is spent on the pages — building one for each job you actually want, in the words customers use, because the broad terms are already taken and the specific ones are winnable. For a town business, most of it goes on the listing and the citations, because that is usually enough to move you into the map pack.
It also changes what we tell you to expect. A business in Oakham or Market Harborough can reasonably hope to see movement inside a few months. A business chasing a competitive term in Leicester is looking at longer, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you the feeling of progress rather than the thing itself.
Questions we get asked
How long before I see results?
Longer than anyone selling it would like to admit — think months rather than weeks. We will not put a number on it before we have looked at your business, your area and who you are competing with, and we will not promise page one in thirty days, because that is not something anyone can control. We would rather lose the job than start it with a promise we cannot keep.
What are backlinks and do I need them?
A backlink is another website linking to yours, and Google treats it as a vote of confidence. For a local business the useful ones are local: suppliers, trade bodies, local directories, the chamber of commerce. A handful of genuine local links beats hundreds of junk ones, which can actively hurt you.
Can you do SEO on a website you did not build?
Usually yes. We will look at it first and tell you honestly whether the site can be made to rank or whether the platform is the thing holding it back. Some site builders make certain work impossible, and we will not take a monthly fee to fight a losing battle.
What do I get each month?
Work on the site, work off it, and a summary of what changed and what it moved, written to be read rather than decoded. You will have access to Google Search Console so you can see the same numbers we see. No dashboard theatre.
Do I have to sign up for a year?
No. It is monthly and you can stop whenever you like. Tying people into twelve months is how agencies protect themselves from work that is not producing anything, and we would rather have to keep earning it.
What if my competitors are doing the same thing?
Some will be, most are not. Across a lot of Leicester, the businesses at the top of the map pack got there by filling in a listing properly once, several years ago. That is a lower bar than people assume, and it is beatable by doing the same thing consistently.
Do you do national SEO?
No. Everything here is built around somebody searching for a business near them, and that is a different discipline to competing nationally. If that is what you need, we would rather say so at the start than take the work and learn on your money.