Guides
Eight guides to read before you hire any SEO company, including this one
Written by the person who does the work, from what Search Console and client accounts show every week. Each opens with the short answer, carries a table or a checklist you can use tonight, and ends with the questions people ask us about it. There are no prices in the guides and no sales pitch at the end; the pricing page and the quote form are one click away if you want them.
How businesses get found on Google in 2026
What a Google results page contains now (AI Overview, ads, map, organic, questions), which customer each part sends, and what decides who appears.
8 min read
How to choose an SEO company: the questions, the red flags, and what a good proposal contains
Ten questions to ask any SEO company, eight red flags that end the conversation, and what a proposal has to contain before you sign.
9 min read
Why your website is not ranking: the eight causes, how to check each, and the fix
Eight reasons a business website is invisible on Google, from not being indexed to nothing worth linking to, with the check and the fix for each.
9 min read
SEO agency, freelancer or in-house: which one fits a small or mid-sized business
Agency, freelancer or in-house SEO compared on seven dimensions, and the hybrid most small and mid-sized UK businesses end up with.
8 min read
How much should a business spend on SEO? The arithmetic, not a price list
How to set an SEO budget from customer value and real search demand, the four pricing models, what a fee buys in hours, and when to spend nothing.
8 min read
What a monthly SEO report should show, and what a bad one hides
The five numbers a monthly SEO report must contain, where each comes from, what belongs in words, the red flags, and how to read one in ten minutes.
8 min read
SEO vs Google Ads: which to use, when, and in what order
SEO and Google Ads compared on speed, cost, control and what happens when you stop; where each wins; the order to run them; the common mistake.
8 min read
How long does SEO take? The honest timeline, by type of work
How long each kind of SEO work takes to show, from technical fixes in weeks to competitive pages in a year, and what you should see by when.
8 min read
The guides are in the order most people need them. The first explains what a Google results page contains now and which part of it your customers use. The second and the fourth are about choosing who to hire. The third is the diagnostic to run on your own site. The fifth, sixth and eighth are about money, reports and time, which are the three things that go wrong in most SEO relationships. The seventh settles the SEO or ads question.
For a shorter answer to a single question, the questions pages answer six of them in the first two sentences.
Find out what an SEO company would fix first on your site
Send your website address and your sector. Within one working day you get a written audit from Search Console and PageSpeed data, the three competitors above you, and a quote from the public price list. No sales call unless you ask for one.