What Is SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)? A Plain-English Guide

SEO is how you get your website found on Google without paying for every click. Here's how it works, explained without the jargon.

Search engine optimisation, or SEO, is the practice of improving your website so it appears higher in Google's free (organic) results when people search for things related to your business.

How Google decides what to show

Google's goal is to show the most helpful, trustworthy result for each search. To judge that, it looks at hundreds of signals, which fall roughly into three groups:

• Relevance: does your page actually answer what the person searched for?
• Quality and experience: is the page fast, mobile-friendly, secure and easy to use?
• Authority and trust: do other reputable websites link to you and mention you? Do you have genuine reviews?

The three pillars of SEO

Technical SEO

Making sure Google can crawl, understand and index your site: speed, mobile-friendliness, sitemaps, structured data and fixing errors.

On-page SEO

Writing helpful content and optimising titles, headings, descriptions, images and internal links around the topics your customers search for.

Off-page SEO

Building authority through quality backlinks, business listings, reviews and brand mentions.

Why SEO is worth it

Unlike ads, you don't pay for each click. Once you rank, your pages can bring in customers for months or years. It takes time, usually three to six months to see real movement, but it compounds.

Want to know where your site stands? Ask for a free SEO audit.