SEO guides plain English, no jargon
SEO for small businesses: a practical guide.
"How much does SEO cost?" and "why am I not on page one?" are two of the most common questions I'm asked — and neither has a simple, honest one-line answer. These guides walk through how search visibility actually works, without the jargon or the sales pitch.
No guaranteed rankings here. Just a clear explanation of what's actually involved.
How rankings actually workPosition 1 vs. position 3A small ranking gap is a large visibility gap.
It depends — genuinely
SEO isn't one thing. It's several.
Search engine optimisation covers a lot of ground — technical setup, page structure, content, local relevance, and increasingly how AI tools understand a business. How much of that a particular business needs depends on the website itself, the business, its location, how much competition it's up against, what customers actually search for, how visible the site already is, and how ambitious the ranking target is.
That's why a single price list or a fixed timeline would be misleading. The guides below break the subject into its real parts, so you can work out what's actually relevant to your business.
Looking for broader website guidance?Six plain-English guides
Start with the question you actually have.
What does SEO cost for a small business?
Why there's no universal price, and how scope actually determines cost.
Read the guide → Guide 02 · One-off vs ongoingIs SEO a one-off job or an ongoing cost?
Some of it genuinely is one-off. Some of it isn't — here's the honest split.
Read the guide → Guide 03 · TimeframeHow long does SEO take to work?
Why there's no fixed answer, and what actually happens between launch and results.
Read the guide → Guide 04 · New websitesWhat SEO is included with a new website?
What a well-built site gives you from day one — and what it doesn't.
Read the guide → Guide 05 · Google, local & AIGoogle, local SEO and AI search: what's the difference?
How these three areas overlap, and what's realistic to improve in each.
Read the guide → Guide 06 · RankingsWhy isn't my business on page one of Google?
What "page one" actually means, and the real reasons rankings vary.
Read the guide →Need help understanding what your website needs?