What is Search Engine Optimisation?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is my absolute passion and I firmly believe it is where small businesses should be focusing their efforts. In the current “new normal”, more and more people are not using or trusting Social Media, so SEO is now more important than ever.

So many businesses I have worked with think because they have a website, organic search will just happen! Sadly, this is not the case.

Another mistake is building a new website and doing the SEO after it has launched, resulting in major changes post launch, utilising redirects which slow sites down and doubling the spend.

If you have not thought about, chosen to ignore or just don’t get SEO, read about why your website needs SEO.

Why is Search so important?

Over the years we were told search had had its day! Luckily us old-school SEO marketeers didn’t listen, we kept our faith and as Social Media gets busier, and engagement harder, it is a time to consider consolidating multiple tactics towards a robust SEO strategy.

No matter how a visitor lands on your website, they will use Google at one point of their sales cycle, it is imperative your website is found! And now with the world of AI, your site needs to be valuable enough to feature as a link in the results they serve to users, you can read more about this in my GEO Blog post.

What is Search Engine Optimisation?

SEO is designed to help users to find and navigate your website, drill down to more and more content as they move through the sales cycle and act on Call To Actions.

First we start with research - what are the interests of your users and what content can you build to support that, capturing their intent means a higher conversion rate. Most businesses are surprised how their current site either has no SEO, or SEO that is not relevant to their business objectives and target audiences.

Next, we implement the on-site optimisation, key terms, visible content, Meta Data, image optimisation and correct internal linking. This helps Google understand your website pages and rank you accordingly.

Off-site SEO includes content writing to create back links into your website, this is where some Social Media efforts will help. The conversion rate for search is much higher than Social Media, the amount of fake news, fake advertisers and sponsored links in Social platforms can mean your target audience are not “tuned in” to their profiles as much as they used to and rely on Google more than ever.

Is SEO something you can do once and leave alone?

In short, no, it may sound easy enough, but it is one marketing strategy that needs a plan, and consistent work to gain those golden top spots in Google and then maintain them.

The benefit that comes from regular optimisation ensures you offer the right content to the right audience at the best stage of the sales cycle to convert them, and this will and should change over time, adapting to changes in user behaviour and business objectives.

When should I consider SEO?

The most important time is if you are building a new website - SEO should be at the absolute heart of all the conversations and decisions - it will dictate what pages are included, the user journey and ensuring visitors land on the right page from their search.

If you have a current website, I find an audit will clearly tell you if your SEO is right or not, and in many cases SEO has sadly been put at the bottom of the to-do-list and ignored, so if you don’t rank well, are seeing few visitors and low conversion, it is clear that your SEO is not right.

SEO still matters (maybe more than ever)

With AI tools pumping out content by the second, the internet’s getting noisier. But here’s the thing — if everyone’s using AI, how do you stand out? That’s where smart, strategic SEO comes in.

Search engines are getting smarter too. They’re not just looking for keywords — they’re looking for quality, clarity, and content that genuinely helps people. So if you want to be found (and not buried), SEO still needs to be part of your game plan. It’s your compass in a content-saturated world.

Good SEO helps the right people find you. Great SEO — guided by human insight — helps them stick around.