How can we improve on-page SEO to boost our local SEO?

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Date: 08/07/2025
Subject: Local SEO

 

When any local business, regardless of industry, wants to improve its SEO, it’s judged on three main criteria.

Proximity

The first is “proximity”: how far is the shopper from your business premises?

Prominence

Next is “prominence,” which, in terms of local SEO, refers to the number of positive reviews your business has accumulated. This mostly refers to your Google Business account, yet positive reviews on Trust Pilot are still important.

It also includes the quality of your business’s backlink profile.

Relevance

Then there’s “relevance”. For example does your businesses content marketing—such as your product pages—match what the customer is

actually looking to buy?
If you sell say fishing rods, how have you made the pages relevant for each product that you sell.

How to improve on-page SEO for local businesses

Let’s go over those three areas in a bit more detail:

Relevance

Does the page you match what the searcher is looking for?

Part of the SEO process—and the magic, if you like—is making sure your website is as relevant as possible to the services you offer.

Now, this is where it gets hard if your business sells many different product lines. If you stock say over 1,000 different products, this is it gets harder to get every product line to rank high on page one of Google.

 

Distance/Proximity

Whether it’s the local organic search results or Google Map listings, where your business appears is based on the geographic areas you’ve optimised your website for. In Google Business, it’s based on the shopper’s actual location at the moment in time. For example, are they five miles away or 500 miles away?

Google usually only wants to show businesses that are close to the shopper- that’s if its clear they want to buy a product / service locally.

 

Prominence

If you have a lot of positive reviews—for example, on Trustpilot or your Google Business account—this can improve your prominence.

Many leading SEO consultants also believe prominence comes mainly from your backlink profile.

If you have a lot of good positive reviews on your Google Business profile, you’re more likely to be prominently placed in the Google Business results.

That’s all well and good, but how do you actually go about improving local SEO?

For Google Business optimisation, a key ranking factor is how close the shopper is to your company.

However, with organic SEO, there are over 200 different ranking factors Google takes into account.

And when it comes to Google Business, it’s not just about where the shopper is—it’s also about other factors, like how many positive Google reviews your business has, how many good backlinks, how often you have kept the profile updated.

 

How to optimise local landing pages

You want to create landing pages—often called main pages—that clearly outline the different services and products you offer.

Good On-Page SEO

This is definitely not just about ticking boxes with SEO tools. I’d recommend avoiding any tools that oversimplify the process—like ones that just use a traffic light system (red, amber, green). In my opinion, that’s way too simplistic.

Instead, you need to put yourself in your customers’ shoes and give them high-quality, helpful information that’s valuable to them. Basically content marketing that helps them to make a buying decision, that answer there queries regarding that product or service.

Here’s an example of how you can help the customer while improving your on-page SEO:

Write really helpful product descriptions

Use a well written page title that sets out what the page is about

Write a strong meta title and meta descriptions, which can boost your CTR

Make sure your pages aren’t thin on content; the page should give enough information to help the customer make a buying decision

Make sure your pages load quickly, so customers aren’t kept waiting

Provide clear contact options so people can get in touch easily

Meta descriptions and meta titles

Meta descriptions aren’t a Google ranking factor—Google doesn’t use them to determine the strength of your SEO.

However, they do let customers know exactly what the page is about, grab their attention, and encourage them to visit your page.

For example, if you write within your meta description “We sell e-bikes under £2000” and that shows up in Google’s search results, it will immediately catch the attention of customers looking to spend that amount on a new bike, improving your click-through rate (CTR).

 

Time Poor

Our SEO agency would argue that people are more “time-poor” than ever today. You need to factor this into your SEO strategy.

 

What does this mean?

When you want to improve a business’s on-page SEO, think about how you can get your message across as quickly and clearly as possible.

Start with the meta description and quickly get across the positives of the page in just a few seconds.

Use bullet points so customers can quickly decide if your product is right for them.

Focus on quickly highlighting the benefits, using strong product descriptions, embedded YouTube videos with staff members explaining the benefits of that product, and try to reduce your bounce rate.

This is a key factor many SEO companies talk about: people are short on time and often buy products or services on the go—on the bus, train, or while out and about. Therefore think about how you can make your company website faster, but also more simple to use. This will improve the shoppers user experience, which will help to reduce bounce rate and improve conversions.

So, how can you convince someone in just a few seconds that your product is better?

Again, this comes back to a well-written meta description.

It’s all about improving your website’s visibility and getting it to rank higher in organic search.
Make sure that you have consistent Name, Address, Phone (NAP) Information

 

Does NAP Consistency Still Matter?

Earlier, we talked about proximity, where businesses is often selected based on how close they are to the searcher.

The way Google’s algorithm determines if your business is truly local is by checking your NAP information.

Some people think we’re now in the era of AI and citations don’t matter—but we disagree.

We believe business citations—your name, address, and phone number listed consistently across the internet—are still essential for improving your business’s local SEO.

 

The need for clarity

What can sometimes happen is that a business has strong search engine optimisation.

However, for whatever reason, the business may change its address and not update its NAP information, for example, on its Google Business account. This means the company website may say they based at new address, yet the companies Google Business profile may say it’s the old address, causing confusion to customers and Google.

Therefore what can sometimes happen is that changing an address, then having conflicting business citations, can cause the SEO to falter.
That’s because Googlebot and Google’s algorithms won’t know where you’re based—are you at your new or old address?

Use Schema Markup

 

Many businesses use schema markup to markup information, such as product reviews.

What this can do is help your business stand out more and grab shoppers attention in the search engine results pages by displaying your business as a featured snippet.

For example, you might have received 700 reviews for a particular product, and your customers are happy with that product, giving it an average rating of 4.8 out of five star rating.

This is an excellent product rating, so you may want to stand out as a featured snippet on the search engine pages, or “SERPs” for short.
One way to do this is by adding schema markup, which can be completed in just a matter of seconds.

Content marketing is an essential part of organic and local SEO.

As we have already mentioned, landing pages and main pages are essential parts of the search engine optimisation process. They are primarily used to make your website more relevant to the product or service you are selling. For example, if you’re writing hundreds of guides on bikes, it’s crystal clear to Google that your business sells bicycles and electric bikes.

Content marketing helps customers make buying decisions, for example, by answering any questions they may have. It also helps search engines understand more about the products and services your company offers. That’s because, regularly, the Googlebot crawls and indexes your main pages and determines how relevant your website is when deciding where to rank your business in the search engine results pages.
For example, if you have written in-depth guides about bikes, then this can help your website to rank higher for keywords related to e-bikes.

 

Internal links should be added within your website.

For example, a blog post might be written to promote a product or a service on your company website.
Therefore, if you are not using a blog post and internal link to a main product page, you could be missing out on an opportunity to generate more sales.

Technical SEO

It’s also important, regardless of whether you’re optimising your website to improve your local or national SEO, to take some time to improve your websites technical SEO.

This can mean:

  • Fixing broken links
  • Fixing indexation issues
  • Improving page speed

Sometimes, a business—whether it’s a brochure site or an e-commerce website—can encounter technical issues. For example, the XML sitemap might be incorrectly written.

The XML sitemap may indicate that certain pages are not to be indexed- when actually they should be. This can mean that those pages will never appear in Google’s results, which means that unless the technical SEO issue is fixed, the page will never appear.

Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are essentially about how quickly your company’s website loads.

Remember that we discussed earlier how people are time-poor and impatient.

This means that if a business has a slow website, it can massively increase the business’s bounce rate.

What you will find, especially in large businesses such as e-commerce companies, is that they work on improving the site speed of their company website a lot.

You should work on this also, as having a faster company website can mean that your company in Bristol ranks higher on Google.

 

Keyword Stuffing

Why you shouldn’t keyword stuff your businesses content marketing

If your business sells fireworks, you might think it’s a good idea to keep repeatedly mentioning this keyword “fireworks”—like a dripping tap within your content marketing.

However, it’s not a good idea, it’s most likely going to end up with a Google penalty being applied to the website.
Google’s algorithms are very sophisticated; they recognise when a business mentions a keyword excessively.

This can lead to what is called over-optimisation issues.

We like to think of search engine optimisation a bit like tuning up an engine.
Just like when an engine’s power can be compromised if you tune it incorrectly, especially if it’s stressed too much. This can mean it will overheat and potentially blow up!

This is similar to your business’s search engine optimisation, in the sense that you can basically ruin your SEO efforts—and this can most definitely be achieved if you keyword stuff.

Instead of obsessively mentioning the keywords you want to rank for, you should naturally include them within your sentences.

Write your content to help the customer, as if you are doing your very best to assist them in their buying journey.

Imagine, therefore, when you’re writing content marketing, that you’re having a conversation with a real customer in your shop.

Consequently, it should be written naturally, as if you’re having a real-life conversation.

 

Utilise titles and FAQ-style content marketing

You may have noticed that we write content marketing using short and sharp sentences.

We also combine this with using a lot of page titles, which allows the reader to take a breather, and also to skip to the section where they want to read more of.

This can help reduce bounce rates and increase dwell times, which also helps Google’s algorithm better understand what the content marketing is about.

For example, suppose you split a 3,000-word piece of content marketing into sections using page titles and questions; this can help a shopper to skip to the sections of the page they want to read more about.
In that case, this can help Google better understand more precisely what the page is about.

 

FAQ on On-page SEO:

What can improve a business’s on-page SEO the most?

We would say that well-written content marketing with a very high Google E-EAT score is key; that is, well-written content marketing will significantly improve your business’s search engine optimisation.

Therefore, don’t write too many blog posts that contain thin content. Instead, focus your time and effort on writing better quality content marketing, perhaps less frequently.

 

Contact Us Today for a free quote

If you would like a free quotation, why not give us a ring?
We specialise in organic and local SEO for Bristol based businesses.

 

Link building for SEO: A beginner’s guide

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Link Building to Improve Your SEO: A Beginner’s Guide

For over 10 years, we’ve been diligently working to help businesses improve their search engine optimisation. This article will focus on link building, which is a cornerstone of any business’s organic or local SEO. In the business world, regardless of the size of the company, you will often need to build high-quality links (do-follow and no-follow).

This guide will therefore walk you through the process and provide our expert knowledge in a clear and easy-to-understand way.
Shoppers and new businesses will often choose to link to your company because you might rank high on Google. Perhaps even you rank number 1.

Therefore, often you will be regarded by customers as the best at what you do.

However, what many businesses will realise is that once you have got your business onto the first page of Google, you will often need to be a very busy bee building backlinks.

 

Experienced link builders

We’ve been helping businesses for over 10 years, enabling them to generate more sales through search engine optimisation. Now, one of the time-consuming aspects is improving a business’s SEO to build backlinks. It can, in our experience, consume a significant portion of a client’s marketing budget, as it’s one of the most time-consuming aspects of improving a business’s SEO.

However, neglecting this aspect of improving your SEO often means that your company will not rank at the top.

Therefore, link building is something that must be done; however, it must be done to a high standard.

 

Our table of contents

  • The basics of link building
  • How can we build quality and authoritative company backlinks
  • Which backlinks make a difference to a business’s search engine optimisation
  • Why it’s essential to have a link-building strategy in place
  • What are some of the best link-building tools that you use (we highly recommend Moz Pro)
  • Why do many people hire Digital Tailors in South West England

The basics of link building

We understand that you may not fully understand how Google’s algorithm works.

Some of the most skilled marketing companies globally do not precisely understand how Google’s algorithm works. The reason is that the exact inner workings of Google’s algorithm are a closely guarded secret.

However, what might make it easier to understand is that Google uses an algorithm that is constantly being perfected, improved, and worked on to make it better. Therefore, the point we are trying to make here is simple: focus on quality. When enhancing your business’s SEO, always focus on quality.

For example, consider a retro computer games console for a moment. In your day, the Nintendo 64 was the bees’ knees. Fast-forward to today, and the gaming console is more powerful and significantly improved.

This is the same when it comes to Google’s algorithm.

Back in the day, we had Google PageRank; however, now, in 2025, we are starting to see AI being used to sort the results, just as gaming consoles have evolved, so has Google’s algorithm.

Back in the day, Google’s PageRank algorithm was a very early iteration of Google’s algorithm; it was like the Nintendo 64 – in its time.

However, the algorithm has evolved in terms of its operation.

To understand the importance of link building, we must revisit the early days, specifically the introduction of PageRank. In layperson’s terms, what happened then was that other websites linking to your company website were seen as a “vote of confidence”. A link was, therefore, like a thumbs-up, approval of your business; the more you obtained, the higher your business ranked.

Therefore, the more links you obtain, the more powerful your website is in terms of SEO.

However, many businesses attempted to manipulate SEO by purchasing links and spam links for as little as a few pounds.

Therefore, the algorithm could be somewhat manipulated; thus, Google requires a clampdown on businesses using spam, low-quality and purchased links.

This is when Google rolled out the Almighty Google Penguin algorithm update. Many businesses have disappeared overnight from Google because they have built spammy links.

The reason businesses would receive a link penalty is if they participated in purchasing low-quality links; they would then incur an algorithm penalty or a manual penalty from Google.

Why are backlinks an essential part of the SEO process?

First of all, you have to put yourself into Google’s shoes for a second

Google is presented with millions of new pages published every day, which have to be crawled and indexed.

Businesses globally are publishing content marketing at a rapid rate.

For the survival of some businesses, they must rank at the top of search engines like Google or Bing. Therefore, companies often have to produce and publish a large amount of content marketing.

Therefore, the company may have a dedicated team of content marketing writers, also known as copywriters, who produce content daily.

Businesses understand that they need to publish content marketing if they want to improve their Google rankings.

An essential aspect to remember is that good-quality content marketing can help you obtain good-quality backlinks.
Google’s algorithm works by taking into account various ranking factors.

Sometimes these are also referred to as Google ranking signals. Now, what is regarded as one of the primary ways Google uses to determine the quality of a business’s organic SEO is calculating the actual strength of a business’s backlinks.

Let’s summarise this neatly in one single paragraph: if your website has a long list of high-quality backlinks linking to you, you are most likely to rank on the first page of Google.

Businesses that have purchased rubbish links, links bought for a few quid, are likely to languish on page 10 of Google or worse, receive a Google Penguin link penalty.

 

Okay, enough of the suspense, how to go about building back?

You may read several articles that discuss how to improve your website’s authority and why it’s essential to review the authority of your company website. For example, a company’s backlink strength is calculated using a DA or “domain authority” score.

The reason is simple: a website, a business that has backlinks from respected other businesses, gains more authority.

Therefore, if a website has a high volume of quality links, it will likely have a high DA score.

But, hold your horses, don’t even though the back link is!

This explains clearly what backlinks are:

A link is simply a connection (a link) from one website to another; when you click on some text, called the “anchor text”, you are transported to the other website- this is called following a link.

The reason links are added is pretty straightforward: businesses often collaborate closely with other companies, such as suppliers. Therefore, if you make a product that includes a quality part or component, you may link to that supplier’s website.

For example, when you’re about to go on holiday, you book your flights on an airline’s website. Y
Once you finish making your booking, the website asks, ‘Would you also like to hire a car?’

They click the anchor text that says ‘Hire a Car’ and are directed to a local car hire company in the destination country.

This link is offered to help the customer, as they can now book a car much more simply after booking their flight on the airline’s website.
And therefore, the car hire website benefits from the incoming link because the airline has linked to it. Thus, when link building is done right, in a “white hat” way, it can help both the customer and the business’s SEO.

How do you go about building backlinks?

There are many ways to build links; you could choose to add a link, ask for a link, or request a backlink.

Here’s a snapshot of how you can build links; however, we would only recommend “earning links”.

 

You can build links in the following ways:

– Buying links
– Earning links
– Completing broken link building
– PR
– Outreach

 

What’s the hardest way to obtain a back?

We would say that the most challenging part is earning a backlink, but really, earning backlinks is the best way to obtain them.

Why was this so? Why do you only recommend earning backlinks?

The answer is quite simple; other methods of link building could be viewed as spam. It could be considered that you purchased the links, which is frowned upon. This could attract a Google penalty, and it could damage your search engine optimisation because it may be perceived as an attempt to manipulate your SEO by buying backlinks.

However, what you want to do is to link.

For example, suppose your business offers an excellent piece of content marketing that is both helpful and enables customers to solve a problem. In that case, you are likely to get linked to by other businesses.

The content marketing could range from how-to guides related to car repair to topics involving offering legal advice.

Other companies might want to choose the link because you have conducted market research; for example, you might have cited statistics that the company found interesting and related to their blog posts, so they cited your business as a source of those statistics.

There’s also a wide range of reasons why others want to link to your business.

This, therefore, involves writing content marketing, which is of excellent quality, just like the article that you are reading here.

Business directory links

It can be beneficial, especially if your focus is on improving your business’s local search engine optimisation to build some local backlinks.

These are often referred to as business directory links, and they can be easily obtained from sources such as the Yellow Pages.

However, we recommend building business citations, just enough to reinforce your company’s name, address and phone number. The number of citations you have, for example, NAP links from sources like Thomson Local, will help reinforce your company’s name, address, and phone number. Again, you need a considerable number of this type of link and NAP citations.

 

 

Outreach and asking for links

This often involves a lot of emails and perhaps phone conversations with other websites which are related to the website. For example, it could be a blog you have written about a particular brand of car, and how to change the oil of that car.

You might be a manufacturer of high-performance oil filters.

You might write a rather comprehensive article explaining how to change oil filters for a particular range of cars. Then you could write a high-quality piece of content marketing, which could be well-placed on another company’s website. Because you’re helping other businesses, readers and customers of our company will be interested in what you have to say as you dispense your knowledge about oil filters and related products.

Therefore, in return for your efforts in writing a detailed piece of content marketing on how to change the oil in their car, you can request a do-follow backlink from the publisher.

This is what is called a win-win situation; you’ve offered a high-quality piece of content marketing that the other company knows its audience will want to read.

Your efforts in writing, spanning approximately 2000 words, in dispensing your knowledge, you can then ask for a link back to, say, the homepage of your website.

 

What does link prospecting mean?

If you were to join an SEO agency as part of the team, they would likely have one or more link builders working for them. Because link building is such a critical part of the search engine optimisation process, as part of a large marketing agency, there will be a team of link builders.

However, their job is to analyse competitors’ backlink profiles, which can sometimes contain many thousands of links that they need to review line by line diligently, using, for example, Ahrefs’ backlink checking tool.

This is hard and tedious work because not all of those backlinks can be replicated.

However, some of them can be replicated, which means that they can contact those businesses with the ambition and aim of building a similar backing for their clients or the marketing company’s website. The purpose of this work is, therefore, simple: competitors are ranking higher than them because they have better backlinks; consequently, you can try to replicate some of those links.

It’s then simply a matter of seeing if you can replicate those links and whether you can also obtain high-quality links for your client, with the ambition of thereby ranking higher.

 

What is the skyscraper technique?

We think that this method is often overhyped in SEO and could lead to a possible waste of your time if you were to pursue it.

Essentially, the skyscraper link-building technique is defined as a page with numerous backlinks. However, the content marketing might have become outdated and stale, therefore offering obsolete advice.

Then, this technique dictates that you need to create a better piece of content marketing.

Then, after you have published a better article, you can contact all the websites that are linking to the other piece of content marketing and say, ‘Look at this; isn’t it better?’ Why don’t you link to me instead?

We believe that this technique is likely to fall on deaf ears, as businesses often don’t want to link to other companies solely because they have received an email telling them to do so.

What is far better is to link to or participate in outreach when a business wants a particular topic or subject covered.

 

Broken link building

Again, we believe this is another link-building method that is slightly overhyped and likely won’t yield the results that warrant investing a lot of time into it.

This method essentially means finding a page that receives a large number of links, but the page is no longer online, possibly due to a page error.

This, therefore, means that the link is broken because a piece of content marketing has been removed.

Therefore, the suggestion is that you then contact the company and ask them to link to your page, because the other link is broken.

We would place too much time and effort into this type of link building; for us, it is time-intensive compared to the benefits that it could potentially bring.

 

HARO and journalist requests –

Just as a journalist is doing a live broadcast, they often want to bring in an expert for their opinion live on air.
This is also true for content marketing, where, in exchange for your contributions to the article, you can often request a backlink in return.

 

Unlinked mention

Now, in our opinion, this is a compelling way to build backlinks.

Often scattered throughout the Internet, there will be many mentions of your brand and your company name.

Therefore, this presents an opportunity for you to contact those businesses and request that the brand mention be converted into a link back to your company website.

This gives you an example, let’s say that you run a restaurant and you were awarded a particularly prestigious award for your food.

Then, once you have been awarded this award, you can look at which bloggers and other companies have mentioned the Gold award you have won.

Then ask those companies to offer a link back to your website.

 

Should we purchase backlinks?

So, there’s an unequivocal answer to that question: you shouldn’t purchase backlinks.

The only reason businesses purchase a link or links is to try to fool Google’s algorithm, attempting to deceive Google’s algorithm into thinking that your search engine optimisation is stronger than it is

Therefore, businesses might try to cut corners and purchase backlinks.

You might think that’s a good idea, trying to buy, say, a hundred links, which might seem like a good idea, but it’s not.

However, buying links can cause a Google algorithmic penalty, which means that, in the flick of a switch, your website disappears from Google.

The reason this happens is simple: Google knows the websites that are selling links, often referred to as “link farms”.

Therefore, if you have a large number of links pointing to your website that originate from these link farms, which charge for links, it’s apparent that you have engaged in spam and low-quality link building.

This, therefore, means that if you have a lot of spammy links, your website will be removed from Google.

This is because a link penalty could have been applied to your website.

 

Why do you advocate for earning links as the best way of obtaining backlinks?

If you create quality content marketing, it can work for your business in two different ways.

Content marketing helps to make a website relevant.
For example, if you are writing content marketing about, say, “motorbikes,” you are already making your website relevant for relevant keywords about motorbikes.

There are also second benefits to this work, which, if helpful blog posts, helps people solve a problem. This can help a company accumulate backlinks.

What you often have to appreciate is that businesses that rank in the first position on Google may have a relatively high number of backlinks.

For example, it’s not uncommon for an excellent page to have over 1000 backlinks; therefore, this needs to be understood if you’re trying to rank higher than the current page on Google. The reason is quite simple: if you want to rank higher than that business on page one, you need better backlinks.

If you are competing with a page that has 1000 quality links, then it will be very hard to overtake that page.

Therefore, you do have to pick your fights

What is meant by that is that the competition has powerful backlinks; you have to be serious about whether you can compete with them.
With search engine optimisation, you have to be mindful of your time.

 

Which backlinks can genuinely make a significant impact?

Different types of backlinks will affect businesses’ search optimisation differently.

For example, a single back link from the BBC News could jump you up seven pages on Google.

Let us provide you with another example: suppose you run a solicitors’ practice, and there is a widely respected news website that thousands of solicitors in the United Kingdom enjoy reading and gaining news from. This is therefore a primary source for news in your particular industry.

Now, one single link from a website like that can often have a dramatic impact on a business’s organic search engine optimisation.
However, finding such links is akin to finding a needle in a haystack and is a challenging task.

 

Google E-EAT

If you’re thinking about starting work on improving your business’s search engine optimisation, you must begin by reading about Google’s E-EAT update. This stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.
Essentially, this is what Google quality evaluators are looking for when assessing the quality of businesses’ search optimisation.
How authoritative is your website?
The primary way to enhance a business’s authority is to gain backlinks. As we mentioned right at the start of this article, backlinks are still widely regarded as one of the most important ranking signals.

 

How do backlink tools calculate the value of a link?

Backlink building tools such as Ahrefs are used to measure a link’s domain rating (DR) or domain authority (DA).

 

Anchor text

For those unfamiliar with anchor text, it is simply the clickable text that follows a link. Now the anchor text is branded, for example, it could just mention your company name.

It can also be anchor text, which says ‘click here’.

Yet the anchor text can also be written descriptively; for example, it might mention Nike running trainers.

The descriptive anchor text indicates to search engines what the link is for.

However, just like building spam links, you can also damage your company’s SEO by over-optimising the anchor text, which can result in a link penalty in itself.

For example, your business often needs to rank highly on Google for, say, one main keyword.
Therefore, if you mention that keyword in the hundreds of anchor texts, this will result in a link penalty.

 

Placement of the link

Bill Slawski stated in 2010, after studying a Google patent, that the patent essentially explains the likelihood of a particular link being clicked on. For example, a link that’s more likely to be clicked on will often transfer more link authority. Therefore, the location of the link on the page determines its importance.

For example, if your link is positioned high on the page and in a main paragraph, it will pass more link equity.

However, links in the footer are generally considered less effective; therefore, a link that is prominently placed in the opening paragraph is likely to be clicked on more, receive more attention from readers, and thus is expected to pass and transfer authority to the linking page.

Competitor backlink research is essential for any article on backlink building, as it would be incomplete without discussing competitor backlink research.

We briefly discussed this earlier, but it is worth examining in more depth now.

Most marketing agencies find that the most effective way to build brand backlinks for a business is to conduct competitor backlink research.

This means identifying your main competitors and then examining their backlink profile to determine where they have obtained their links from.

SEO agencies globally utilise this method to build backlinks for their clients.

It can be very effective, the reason being that it identifies already established websites that are on the first page of Google; therefore, simply replicating those links can significantly boost your business SEO

Visit one of the top Bristol SEO agencies.

If your business is located in the South West, contact us. We are the SEO experts in Bristol.

 

 

What You Should Know About YMYL in SEO

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What does YMYL mean when improving a business’s SEO?

Google crawls and indexes millions of different business pages every single day of the week. This can range from a page explaining the best fishing rods to buy in 2025, through to the best hypercars available right now. Therefore, the amount of content marketing indexed by Googlebot is colossal.

 

Some of these pages indexed by Googlebot might be about celebrity gossip, thus deemed as low-importance pages that won’t significantly impact your life. These pages are often considered enjoyable reading, such as articles about the latest celebrity wedding.

YMYL pages, however, are entirely different. The abbreviation stands for “Your Money, Your Life”. This basically means there will be pages on Google that you use to make life-changing decisions. For example, advice about the divorce process, which mortgage to choose, or which pension pot is best suited for you.

These decisions are pivotal to your life; they shape your future and influence your life significantly. Therefore, many of the best SEO agencies globally believe that Google applies far more scrutiny to ensure the accuracy of these pages. Google therefore uses Google E-E-A-T and YMYL updates to check if the page is of high quality or not. Additionally, Google wants to ensure the information is up-to-date and accurate. Many SEO companies believe Google employs the semantic web for this purpose.

Google is thought to use its Google Knowledge Vault to check the accuracy of facts.

Valuable, Trustworthy, and Relevant Information

 

Google simply wants to provide the best possible answer to any question asked, whether it’s about the best local Greek restaurants or the best dentist in a particular area. Google’s algorithms assess how relevant, trustworthy, and accurate an answer is. Google uses E-E-A-T alongside over 200 ranking factors to determine the quality of a page. If a page falls into the YMYL category, Google applies additional scrutiny to ensure the content is accurate.

In short, Googlebot crawls and indexes countless different pages daily, providing a wide range of business advice. However, certain pages are more important, especially when shoppers make significant life decisions based on the information provided—such as selecting the best mortgage. These pages fall under the YMYL category.

These pages are therefore much more closely scrutinized by Google’s algorithm to ensure all the information is accurate. Hence, Google uses not just the Google E-E-A-T update to assess page quality but also applies additional YMYL considerations.

aims to provide the best possible answer to any question asked, whether it’s about the best local Greek restaurants or the best dentist in a specifict is YMYL?

“Your Money or Your Life” was an important update rolled out by Google.

Spam

 

There will always be businesses trying to persuade you to buy their products or services, even though their content marketing may be inaccurate or misleading. Google has become very efficient at removing these pages by eliminating them from its index.

Google is constantly battling spam and has used updates like Google Panda, for example, to remove numerous spam pages. Part of this involves removing pages that provide misleading information. Google is now better equipped to check facts and ensure all information is accurate, using the Google Knowledge Vault and Google’s algorithm.

Which Types of Pages are Thought to be Impacted by Google’s “Your Money or Your Life” Update?

 

  • News and current events
  • Pages providing health advice
  • Finance-related topics
  • Government pages

 

Why Does YMYL Matter in SEO?

YMYL matters because if an SEO agency is working for a client operating within the YMYL sector, they must ensure their content marketing is written to a very high standard. This is because Google scrutinizes the accuracy of content marketing using Google E-E-A-T. If the content is inaccurate or poorly written, it simply won’t get indexed. Therefore, marketing companies and copywriters must ensure their work is accurate and well-written.

Misleading content published by businesses is likely not to get indexed at all. For example, some businesses may try to mislead consumers by exaggerating a product’s effectiveness, such as a hair growth product. If these claims are inaccurate, the page might not get indexed.

Additionally, Google’s E-E-A-T makes it challenging for a business to build authority and obtain backlinks if the information provided about a product is misleading or false. Without quality backlinks, the page won’t rank highly in Google’s search results. Thus, incorrect or misleading information could prevent indexing due to the YMYL update and further limit rankings due to insufficient backlinks.

How Can You Use E-E-A-T to Improve Your YMYL Content?

You must use E-E-A-T to improve content marketing as well. Your content marketing needs to demonstrate real-life experience and expertise. You also need to enhance authority by building backlinks and obtaining quality business reviews.

 

Good Quality Copywriters are Needed

When you speak to digital marketing agencies, they’ll often tell you the top marketing companies employ the best copywriters. Even though artificial intelligence can now write a blog post in seconds, journalists and high-quality copywriters are still essential for creating original, high-quality content, which typically ranks better on Google.

 

Cite Your Sources

Similar to writing a dissertation at university, Google’s algorithm evaluates how accurate and well-researched a page is. Therefore, linking to your sources is an excellent way to improve the quality of your business’s content marketing.

 

Come to One of the Best SEO Agencies in Bristol

We have been around for a very long time, and have helped many businesses reach the first page, whether they are based in Bristol or Bath.

We always use the best white-hat methods, and our content marketing is consistently high quality. Regardless of the sector your business operates in, we can help improve your search engine optimisation.

Fee quotes start from £1,000. Bristol businesses often choose us because we offer high-quality SEO services at affordable prices throughout the South West of England.

Do not hesitate to contact us for a quote today.

A Guide to Technical SEO for Ecommerce Websites

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A quick guide on how your business can improve its technical SEO.

 

 

What exactly is Technical SEO?

 

A core component of technical SEO is simply ensuring your website is indexed.

Helping your website to get indexed can significantly improve your search rankings. For example, there could be a problem with the indexation of the main page. Once this has been identified and resolved, that page can then appear in the index.

 

Why is Technical SEO so Important?

 

You might spend an entire day improving the on-page SEO for main pages, such as the homepage. However, if the page can’t get crawled and indexed, it will never appear in search engine results.

 

This is why technical SEO is so important. Good-quality marketing tools, such as Screaming Frog, can help detect indexation problems. Once these issues are fixed, you can request search engines to crawl and index that page. Appearing in the index can therefore increase the number of organic visitors to your website.

 

Fast Load Time

 

Another important aspect of technical SEO, whether you run an e-commerce business or a service-sector business, is ensuring your website is as fast as possible.

 

UX designers and technical SEO consultants should work together to improve the speed of your company website. Even shaving milliseconds off your company’s website load time can significantly help improve your organic rankings.

 

Just as boats rise as water comes into a harbour, making your website faster across all main pages and blog posts can help improve your business’s organic search engine optimisation.

 

Internal Linking

 

Are you making good use of internal links?

 

You should add internal links to main pages and blog posts, as this can help shoppers and also bots find pages more easily.

 

For example, let’s say you’re selling a product such as electric bikes. Somebody might want to buy a new bike saddle at the same time. Therefore, you should add an internal link using anchor text like “bike saddle.” By doing this, you effectively add internal links to your website.

 

Search engines use links as a way to navigate the web, crawling and indexing pages. Additionally, powerful backlinks leading to your website can transfer link equity to other pages through internal links.

 

Therefore, ensure you use internal links effectively, which also means writing anchor text in a white-hat way.

 

Sitemaps

 

Do you have a sitemap?

 

For those who don’t know what a sitemap is, it’s simply an up-to-date list of all pages and blog posts on your company website. Often referred to as an XML sitemap, this list of pages and blog posts usually has its own URL extension.

 

This allows bots to crawl and index the sitemap. It’s like giving bots satnav directions to the pages that need to be crawled and indexed.

 

Without a sitemap, bots might not find and index all pages. For example, orphan pages—pages without internal links—might not be crawled and indexed by bots. A sitemap ensures all pages and blog posts on your website get indexed.

 

Breadcrumb Navigation

 

Have you added breadcrumb navigation?

 

This is about creating a better user experience. For instance, have you ever shopped for products on an e-commerce website with thousands of products?

 

It can often feel like you’re going around in circles, looking at a product you might have seen before. To improve user experience, you should make it as simple as possible for users to navigate your website so they can browse the different products and services you offer.

 

For example, someone looking at bathtubs might want to return to copper bathtubs. Having breadcrumb navigation allows them to know exactly which section of the website they’re on, and easily navigate back to previous product sections.

 

Therefore, breadcrumb navigation makes navigating your company website simpler.

 

Conclusion

 

Are you looking for the best SEO agencies around?

 

We simply know our stuff. We only implement white-hat SEO and provide top-quality technical SEO. We have encountered content management systems that have indexation problems and were able to resolve them effectively. Many agencies concentrate solely on links and content, overlooking technical aspects like indexation, which can cause major SEO issues as highlighted in this article. For example, what’s the use of a 3000-word article if it can’t get indexed?

 

Our team wants to solve any technical SEO problems you might have.

 

We offer local and national SEO fixed-price packages starting at just a thousand pounds per month, making them affordable for small and medium businesses. We take care of improving all aspects of your business’s organic search engine optimisation, including link building, content marketing, and improving technical SEO.

 

If you’d like a quote, please contact us today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

How exactly do search engines work?

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Table of Contents:

 

  • How exactly do search engines work?
  • How do search engines use bots (Googlebot) to discover pages and blog posts?
  • How do search engines determine page rankings?
  • How do search engines identify the best possible answer to appear at the top of Google’s search results?
  • How can an SEO agency like ours improve a business’s ranking?

 

Introduction

Search engines are powered by highly sophisticated mathematical algorithms and artificial intelligence. When you enter a website query, you’re presented with a page offering a highly relevant answer. But you already knew that, right?

 

Businesses across the South West of England, especially in areas like Bath and Bristol, will be interested in how search engines rank pages, how their company can reach the first page of Google, attract more customers, and ultimately generate more sales. We are experts in helping businesses across the South West achieve this.

 

How exactly do search engines work?

 

Crawling:

This involves discovering new pages and blog posts on the internet.

 

Without crawling, search engine indexes would become outdated as no new information would be included.

Crawling is therefore essential, and businesses must ensure that pages can be crawled.

For example, if a “noindex” tag is accidentally left on, search engines can’t crawl that page.

 

Indexing:

When search engines find well-written content marketing, they index it.

Businesses must remember that not all pages get indexed. If the content is poorly written or of low quality, it won’t be indexed.

For example, if you sell products like e-bikes, you’re competing against thousands of other businesses, making high-quality content essential for indexing.

 

 

Ranking:

Ranking is complex as pages are evaluated based on over 200 SEO ranking factors.

For instance, a comprehensive, well-written article without quality backlinks may never reach the first page of search results.

 

If you’re competing against global brands, these brands produce high-quality content marketing written by experts and typically have extensive backlink profiles, sometimes over 30,000 links.

Such businesses have a higher chance of ranking well.

 

Thus, ranking requires a combination of high-quality content marketing, technical SEO, and strong backlinks.

 

How do search engines discover new pages and blog posts?

Search engines use bots, also called spiders, which follow backlinks to discover new websites and content marketing. Once a page is found, internal links help crawl additional content.

Crawl depth depends on your website’s crawl budget.

Important websites receive extensive crawling, while less critical websites get less crawling.

 

What prevents search engines from crawling and indexing a page?

 

Sometimes, a “noindex” tag might be accidentally left, preventing indexing entirely.

 

Crawl Budget:

The crawl budget refers to the amount of time and resources a search engine spends crawling your business’s blog posts and pages.

Businesses often preserve crawl budgets by placing “noindex” tags on pages they don’t want indexed, like CMS login pages.

This ensures that crawling resources focus on valuable pages, such as newly written content marketing.

 

The two main factors influencing crawl budget are:

 

Crawl demand: How popular is your website? Popular sites, such as the BBC, have high crawl demand.

 

Crawl capacity: How quickly your website responds to crawler requests.

 

Site Maps:

Create a detailed flow diagram explaining how having a sitemap enhances business SEO, specifically for companies in Bristol. Every Bristol business aiming to improve its SEO should have an updated sitemap, essentially a “shopping list” that indicates the pages and blog posts the business wants indexed.

 

How do search engines determine a page rankings?

After crawling and indexing, search engines use SEO ranking factors to determine page positions.

Pages with quality backlinks and strong on-page SEO typically rank highly.

Conversely, pages lacking backlinks, or having thin content rarely rank well.

 

Are there any other factors that can prevent a page from getting indexed?

Search engines don’t crawl and index every page.

Pages deemed spam or containing thin content won’t be indexed.

Indexed pages require high-quality content and a strong E-E-A-T score (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness). Businesses publishing spam or low-quality content risk not being indexed.

 

HTTP Status Code Errors:

Pages returning HTTP errors (4xx or 5xx) prevent indexing.

For example, broken links causing 404 errors can’t be crawled and indexed.

 

The “noindex” tag:

A “noindex” tag left on a page prevents crawling and indexing.

 

Submitting your Site for indexing via Google Search Console:

You can manually submit URLs for indexing, speeding up crawling and indexing compared to waiting for natural crawling.

 

How Our Agency Can Help:

We have partnered with South West businesses for years, employing knowledgeable SEO consultants in Bristol with over 10 years of experience.

We know how to get companies on the first page.

 

Prices for local and organic SEO services start at just £ 1,000 per month, making them affordable for SMEs.

SEO is a slow process requiring long-term investment.

Even medium-competition industries can sometimes take over six months to rank on the first page of the search results.

 

However, we have a 100% success rate—every business we’ve worked with has achieved first-page rankings. For a no-obligation quote, call us today.

 

 

Organic Traffic: What It Is & How to Increase It (6 Ways)

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Organic Traffic: How can our business improve our organic traffic/SEO?

 

Table of Contents

  • What exactly does organic traffic mean?
  • Why is organic traffic an important part of SEO?
  • How can you check the number of new visitors your website is obtaining each month?
  • How can our business improve organic visitor numbers?
  • Why is it important that we only implement white hat SEO?

 

Introduction

Regardless of what your business sells, you want more shoppers to visit your website. This is why businesses track their organic SEO performance. It basically tells you whether you’re getting one or a million visitors per month.

 

What exactly is organic traffic?

Simply put, organic traffic is the visitors that land on your main page or SEO blog post directly from the organic search engine results. Businesses want this traffic because it brings customers to the website, and a lot of it is also free traffic when done right. This is why businesses fight so fiercely to rank high on Google.

High-quality content marketing is key

Writing and creating high-quality content marketing to help customers is really important. The reason this is such an important part of the SEO process is quite simple: in order to rank highly in search engines, you need to supply good quality answers to questions.

For example, let’s say your company sells bikes—potentially thousands of businesses sell the same product. However, the page that ranks highest on Google’s organic results is the one that offers the best-quality answer in terms of expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.

However, businesses need to understand this clearly: to rank highly for search terms with high search volumes, your content marketing must be of extremely high quality. You are literally sometimes competing against tens of thousands of other businesses to be ranked number 1 on Google. This is what makes search engine optimisation difficult, challenging, but also really interesting at the same time.

 

Why do businesses want to rank highly organically?

It’s a bit like finding a free car parking space outside an office in the city centre which you need to visit. It’s something you want—everyone prefers the free option if they can get it.

Businesses around the world, whether large or small, want to rank on the first page of Google in the organic results, because it can bring in free visitors to your business.
You can never underestimate the power of this because it can significantly boost your business.

Businesses can generate more online sales via social media advertising, increase brand awareness to get more direct traffic, and obviously pay for traffic through ads as well.

However, whether you’re a multinational company or a sole trader, generating more free traffic and visitors to your website is highly desirable if possible. This is why so many companies in Bristol pay us to get them ranked on page 1 of Google’s organic results.

Builds Authority

A business needs to build authority. You can achieve this through writing high quality content marketing, but you won’t succeed in the search engine results without building powerful backlinks as well. Links must have good domain authority, come from relevant sources, and be built in a white-hat way.

Increasing organic visitors to your website isn’t just about good-quality content marketing—there are hundreds of other variables at play that must also be improved, such as technical SEO, on-page SEO, and off-page SEO.

 

E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) signals

This is a massive part of search engine optimisation. Basically, this is a framework that Google uses to assess how authoritative your blog posts, main pages, and evergreen content marketing are on your website are.

For example, with expertise, search engines know your author’s expertise—perhaps because you have linked to their LinkedIn profile?

Citations and backlinks, for example, improve your authority: how many links has the page obtained?

Real-world experience involves offering helpful advice and demonstrating that you’ve actually implemented what you’re talking about. For instance, a plumber talking about how to bleed a radiator would give helpful tips from recalling on an actual experience of doing this.

 

Trustworthiness

Trustworthiness includes adding company policies, contact information, whether the domain has been live for a long period, and whether the company has been trading for a long time. Many SEO consultants also believe trustworthiness is tied to how many positive reviews the business has received.

 

How to Check Organic Traffic

The problem with organic SEO is that it can take a long time to build authority, trustworthiness, experience, and expertise.
Getting onto the first page through local SEO is typically easier than national SEO but can still take six months or more.

Therefore, there’s a long lag between when you start paying an SEO agency and when you start seeing results. Paid traffic, however, brings immediate results and customers but requires ongoing investment, unlike organic SEO.

 

Google Analytics

Monitor your organic traffic using Google Analytics. Google Analytics is amazing—it allows you to track organic visitors coming to your website in real time. It also lets you see how many organic visitors you received last month and to compare it to this month, to see if things are improving.

Google Analytics is brilliant, and businesses all across Bristol should use it because it helps analyse the bounce rate. The bounce rate shows how engaged or disengaged the visitor is.

For example, someone spending a long time browsing your site suggests an engaged shopper.
However, a disengaged shopper who spends only a few seconds on your homepage indicates you may need to redesign it to reduce the bounce rate.

 

What can cause organic traffic issues?

Crawlability problems

These could be crawl errors or issues with your website. For example, your main page could have a “no-index” tag, blocking search engines from indexing it. If the page is blocked, it won’t appear in search results, meaning no organic visitors.

 

Internal linking errors

Broken internal links can prevent people from visiting additional pages. Someone who enjoys reading a blog post and wants to continue reading more may leave if a link is broken, increasing the bounce rate.

 

Performance issues

Performance issues, such as slow loading speeds or glitches with the design, can increase your bounce rate. A higher bounce rate sends signals that visitors aren’t interested in your website, potentially lowering your organic ranking and reducing visitors and sales.

 

Keywords

When optimising your website, regardless of your business, some keywords have much higher search volumes than others. For instance, selling ladders might get thousands of searches per month, whereas niche products such as wooden ladders may receive fewer searches.

Optimising for high-volume keywords is harder, takes more time, and is costlier. Long-tail keywords are easier to rank for but might bring fewer visitors and sales. Therefore, it’s a balancing act to optimise your site for both high-volume keywords and lower-competition terms to generate immediate and long-term traffic.

 

What could be causing our website not to get many organic visitors?

Many reasons can cause low organic visitor numbers. Generally speaking, the main factors are low-quality backlinks and poor quality content marketing.

However, any good SEO expert knows there are hundreds of factors to optimise for improved search engine results. Link velocity, keyword stuffing, and overly optimising your site can all harm rankings and result in penalties.

 

Why does SEO take so long?

SEO takes time because businesses ranking at the top of search engines can potentially get millions of visitors per month, significantly boosting sales. Companies invest heavily to maintain these positions, creating fierce competition.

SEO is a constant battle to rank highly, stay on the first page, and maintain a competitive advantage. If competitors improve while you slow down, your rankings can quickly fall.

 

Why should you pick Digital Tailors?

Digital Tailors have been around for a very long period. We only work with businesses that fully appreciate that organic SEO is a slow process. However, as the old Guinness saying goes, good things come to those who wait. Once businesses get a taste of ranking on the first page, they tend to stay with our agency long-term.

In our humble opinion, SEO is more effective than any other form of marketing SMEs could invest in because it targets customers actively searching for your products or services. We have extensive experience helping businesses in Bristol and the South West rank highly on search engines using white-hat SEO techniques. Don’t hesitate to contact us today.

What is link equity? (And what does it mean for SEO?)

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What exactly is link equity? How can link juice be used to improve a business’s SEO

Introduction

Businesses globally, if they want to appear on page one of Google, typically need backlinks.

Additionally, the backlinks that need to be built must be of high quality and come from a relevant website.

The links should also pass “link equity” or “link juice,” which is the more powerful links, such as backlinks from leading brands and well-known companies. These will typically have a high DA score. This means that if your business obtains a do-follow backlink, it can send more link juice through to your website.

 

The most important ranking factor

For most businesses to be ranked on the first page of Google, they must improve their ranking factors. Backlinks are widely considered by SEO agencies globally as the most critical ranking factor, which Google and other search engines take as the most crucial factor when deciding how strong a business’s SEO is. Now, not all links are beneficial; some will help improve your SEO, while others will damage it.

The backlinks you want are do-follow and some no-follow, with well-written anchor text that is written in a white-hat manner and comes from a relevant website.

The links your business should avoid are spam links.

 

What does link equity mean?

Link equity is simply the strength of a backlink that’s linking to you.

For example, if your business has, say, 100 high-quality links linking to you, these are all beneficial links; they come from well-known brands and companies, which can significantly help improve the business’s search engine optimisation.

For example, what you will often find is that companies currently occupying the number one spot on Google are typically there because they have several high-quality backlinks. Some businesses, some global brands, can have thousands of quality links. This is what gives those businesses a higher Domain Authority (DA) score.

Google PageRank

Ever since Larry Page and the co-founders of Google created PageRank, links have been an essential way of deciphering how vital a company website is. For example, if it has good links, it will rank higher. Scott Hassan is the person who first programmed the initial code for Google, and it was thought from the start that backlinks were the key factor in determining how strong a business’s SEO is.

 

 

How is link equity determined?

The backlinks your business wants are quality links. These need to come from companies which have a high DA score.

 

Relevance

You will want to build links from businesses that have a high Domain Authority (DA) score. The links should also be relevant.

 

How do you obtain backlinks?

We believe the best way for any business to obtain high-quality links is to earn them. Businesses, therefore, need to publish well-written articles and content marketing, which has a very high Google E-EAT score. When this work is helpful, and the reader finds it useful, they may offer a link.

For example, a blogger may link to you. The best way to earn links is to remember that businesses should only seek to obtain quality links. If your business accumulates spam links, you need to talk to an SEO agency so that they can resolve the issue.

Should you buy backlinks?

The simple answer to that question is no.

Businesses should never buy links, as they are often spam.

 

Spam links can damage your SEO.

Therefore, your business needs high-quality links with a high DA score. Don’t build spam links, as this could mean the company receives a penalty.

What is a Google Penguin Penalty?

Businesses that build spam links, or low-quality links, can sometimes result in a business obtaining too many spam links, which can lead to a link penalty. A link penalty can tell the website is de-indexed, which means it’s removed from Google altogether. This is because Google doesn’t want websites to use spam links. The only links which should be built are quality links.

 

How does your SEO agency build links?

We have worked for several businesses in Bristol. The way we build links is always the same; we use Moz Pro to look for link-building opportunities. We may then approach the company, ask if we can write a piece of content marketing or offer our expertise in an upcoming article, in return for a link. Yet we do not buy links.

We believe that the best way for any business to build links is by creating content marketing with a high Google E-EAT score. The work must be original, well-written, and helpful.

These pages can then attract quality links if your business offers helpful advice.

How does SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) work? — The 2025 Roadmap

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Author: John Lang
Date: 31/05/2025

Search-engine optimisation, or “SEO” for short, has evolved from a keyword-stuffing sideshow to a data-driven, multidisciplinary skill set. Most markets are now highly competitive. To get a company on page one of Google, you must be skilled in search engine optimisation.

This is where we come in.

In 2025, the discipline is less about “tricking Google”, which so many businesses tried in the past, and ended up being “de-indexed”. It’s now more about building an experience (User Experience) so good that ignoring your site would be a disservice to users.

That means rock-solid technical foundations, so for example, making sure every page you want to appear in Google’s index can get indexed.

The content marketing also needs to satisfy search intent, so if someone had a question, such as “what’s the range of average e-bike, then the content marketing should answer this question.
Google E-E-A-T

We highly recommend reading about Google E-E-A-T, as this is crucial to understand before your business begins publishing articles and creating evergreen content marketing.

Your business’s backlink profile screams authority. Done correctly, SEO can help attract a substantial volume of customers. Done poorly, it’s an endless treadmill of lost rankings, penalties such as Google link penalties, and firefighting problems.

 

What would your company say are the three core Pillars to improve a business’s SEO?

The success of a business’s SEO rests on these three interlocking pillars:

 

Technical SEO

The foundation of crawl, indexation, and performance. In brief, can Googlebot crawl and index the page?

 

On-Page SEO and content marketing

Does the content marketing signal relevance, expertise, and engagement? What’s the bounce rate like, for example, on each piece of content marketing?

 

Off-Page SEO

This is perhaps the most critical area, as the strength of your backlinks can ultimately determine where the business ranks on Google. Good backlinks can help you rank higher, while weak or spam links could even result in your website being deindexed.
Earning authority through high-quality backlinks, brand mentions, and digital PR.

Ignore any one pillar and the structure collapses; therefore, mainly if you operate in a highly competitive niche, such as car insurance, you must spin all of these plates at once. Get all three areas right, and you have a self-reinforcing flywheel: technical excellence (the work can get crawled and indexed by Googlebot), which magnifies content visibility, superior content attracts authoritative do-follow links, and a stronger backlink graph accelerates crawling and indexation.

 

Technical SEO — Building a fast company website which can be crawled and indexed.

Think of technical SEO as the autobahn for Googlebot. Every roadblock—slow server responses, such as servers timing out, faulty XML sitemaps, or rogue robots.txt rules—forces the crawler to detour or turn back, or give up and start working on crawling and indexing a competitor’s website instead. Treat these checkpoints as non-negotiable:

 

Crawlability and indexation

Googlebot must be able to crawl and index the work. XML Sitemap and running index coverage reports, your SEO agency monitoring “crawl areas” can help minimise wasted “crawl budgets”.
Submit sitemaps in Google Search Console (GSC) and monitor the Index Coverage report weekly.

Canonical Management – Use <link rel=”canonical”> to Google toward the canonical version of duplicate or near-duplicate URLs and avoid dilution.

Structured data (Schema markup)
Make sure that your SEO consultant implements schema.org markup to improve SERP eligibility for rich results.

  • Google Core Web Vitals and speed
  • Google’s performance metrics now sit in the ranking core. Aim for:
  • Largest Contentful Paint < 2.5 s
  • Interaction to Next Paint < 200 ms
  • Cumulative Layout Shift < 0.1

Collaborate with your web developers and SEO team to optimise load times. This is especially important on essential pages of your company website, such as the homepage, About Us page, and your main product pages.

Deloitte published exciting data in 202, it was called the “mobile-commerce study”, it found that shaving just 0.1 s off mobile load yielded an 8.3 % bounce-rate reduction– . Speed is revenue.

 

Mobile

Mobile accounts for roughly 62% of global internet traffic; therefore, as a business in Bristol, you should question whether the mobile design of our company website is as good or better than that of our direct competitors (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_browser). Any desktop-only experience is DOA. Embrace responsive design, compress images aggressively, and lazy-load most pages where non-critical assets may be slowing some pages down.

 

Content marketing

Keyword density is dead – don’t use SEO tools that tell you to hit a percentage to better optimise the page; this doesn’t work. It’s an outdated method of search engine optimisation (SEO).

 

Keyword Research

Create a content calendar, and write the types of shoppers you are bringing to the page through that work. For example, is the work informational, commercial, transactional, or navigational in intent?
A guide targeting “how to audit an e-commerce SEO stack” deserves different on-page elements than a product page optimised for “buy running shoes size 9”.

 

Good on-page SEO.

Make sure to optimise your page titles, meta descriptions, and headings using white-hat methods.

Place the primary keyword near the front of the H1 and <title>.

Use descriptive, curiosity-inducing meta descriptions to lift CTR (they may not rank you higher, but better engagement feeds RankBrain-style signals).

Use H2–H6 tags logically; they’re a topical outline for both crawler and skim-reader.

 

Google E-E-A-T the litmus test

Google’s quality raters guide frames content evaluation around Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Bake in:

Experience – therefore, add business case studies where you have succeeded for your customers or clients, screenshots, and personal data points.

Expertise – show why your company are the expert at what you do.

Authoritativeness – acquire .edu, .gov, or top-tier publication links.

Trust – HTTPS, transparent disclosure pages, and up-to-date author bios.

Content velocity matters, but 72 % of marketers say quality content remains the most effective growth lever (https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/content-marketing-strategy/content-marketing-statistics).

Authority — Off-page SEO Signals

 

Backlinks (both do-follow and no-follow) are still the loudest off-page ranking signal, but the bar is higher than ever:

Choose digital PR over using spam links, such as directory spam links. A single mention in TechCrunch, BBC, or let’s say another respected website, such as Sky News, beats 1,000 spam sites. Spam links can damage your SEO to the point that the website gets de-indexed, meaning it’s removed from Google. So don’t build low-quality links!

 

This is about link velocity

Not Volume – sudden spikes trigger spam heuristics. For example, if you had a domain live for, say, 2 years, with no links built, and then all of a sudden you build 100 in a weekend, this is most likely to look like spam. Links need to be built slowly and surely—drip links at a natural cadence aligned with content publication.

 

Have to stay on top of Google’s algorithm changes.

Because Google’s ranking recipe morphs constantly, Google is continuously improving and changing its algorithm.
The platform shipped ≈approximately 3,200 algorithm changes in 2024 alone, according to a very reliable source at Search Engine Land.

Adaptation is survival.

Further, the rise of Google AI Overviews and SGE (Search Generative Experience) is already shrinking the legacy 10 blue-link clicks: Gartner projects 25 % less classic search volume by 2026.
That’s a clarion call to secure featured visibility— this can be achieved through rich snippets, topical authority clusters, and entity-level knowledge panel citations—before generative SERPs cannibalise click share.

Measurement, maintenance, and the long game

SEO without measurement is like Formula 1 without telemetry. Prioritise these KPIs:

KPI Why It Matters Tool Stack

Organic sessions- tracks how many visitors are coming to the site

Click-Through Rate (CTR – how many shoppers are clicking through and visiting a page on your website?

Dwell Time – How long are shoppers spending on your website? A long time indicates they are interested in the products or services you are selling.

Core Web Vitals – how fast is your company website?

Referring Domains Quality – How many high-quality websites do you have linking to your website, sending link equity?

A slow-and-steady “drip” approach outperforms burst campaigns. Instead of blasting 40 thin posts/content marketing and 200 directory links in a month – this is a recipe for disaster (hello, spam filter) – release one in-depth guide weekly and try to get one or two very high-quality links per month.

 

 

 

FAQ —

What would you say is the single biggest SEO mistake that many businesses make in Bristol regarding their SEO in 2025?

Neglecting Core Web Vitals. This results in a slow website, a high bounce rate, and low dwell times: poor LCP, INP, or CLS scores throttle rankings and conversions.
Next is content marketing quality; many businesses still write 500-word content-thin articles, which often don’t get indexed. Google typically

flags these in Google Search Console as ‘crawled but not indexed,’ indicating low quality.

 

How long should a modern SEO campaign take to show a return on investment?

We hate to say this word, but it depends.

It depends on the level of competition and the competitiveness of your business sector.

If it’s relatively low competition, experienced SEO agencies like us can get you on page one of Google in a matter of months.

For highly competitive business sectors, it will take much longer.

Expect meaningful uplift after 4–6 months of consistent technical, content, and outreach work—faster in low-competition niches, slower in saturated ones.

 

Are backlinks still crucial with Google AI Overviews on the rise?

Absolutely. Authority signals (do-follow and no-follow backlinks) influence whether your content is selected as a cited source within those AI summaries.

 

How often should I audit my site?

Run a light technical crawl monthly to identify broken links or website faults. A full crawl plus content cannibalisation check quarterly, and a holistic strategy review annually or after any major core update.

 

Should I pause SEO while investing in paid media?

Treat paid and organic as twin engines, yet separate entities: PPC supplies instant visibility and testing data, while SEO compounds long-term rewards if done correctly. Cutting one starves the other of insights.

Bottom Line: SEO success in 2025 is equal parts engineering, editorial rigour by your copywriters, and PR savvy. Master the technical groundwork, publish genuinely helpful content that radiates E-E-A-T, cultivate authoritative citations, and iterate relentlessly with data as your compass. Do that, and you won’t just ride the algorithm waves—you’ll steer the boat.

Can my business be mentioned in Google’s AI Overviews?

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Author: John Lang

Table of Contents

  • What exactly are AI Overviews?
  • What type of queries/questions asked to Google usually trigger an AI overview answer?
  • How can your business stand a better chance of appearing in the AI Overviews?
  • How to better optimise your on-page SEO
  • Why is it essential to keep your content marketing, i.e blog posts, up to date
  • Why Google E-EAT is now more critical than ever
  • It’s essential to write your business’s content marketing using a conversational tone and a lot of question-and-answer writing style.

 

Introduction

Artificial intelligence is something of a buzzword in 2025. As a matter of fact, at the recent Google I/O conference, the subject was the main topic of conversation. It’s changing how people gain answers, how the Google SERP looks, and how Google Gemini is now part of most modern Google Android phones.

There’s too much happening in AI right now to cover this in just one blog post. However, with that said, we can concentrate on one area, which is Google AI Overviews, which is a hot topic among many Bristol SEO companies right now.

 

What are Google AI Overviews?

The best description we have heard is that Google AI Overviews comes from a synthesised answer. Which sounds complicated, yet the simple way of explaining it is that Google is simply understanding your question in a much more exact way. Google then supplies an answer gained from multiple businesses, mashing them together into the information, and presenting the answer in a pleasant paragraph or two.

There’s now a race on, that’s among businesses to make sure that they get mentioned as a source of the information shown in the Google AI Overviews. So, for example, if someone were to ask, “I am a first-time driver, how can I bring my insurance premiums down?” The business linked as a source of a Google AI Overview answer could be getting thousands upon thousands of extra monthly visitors.
Will an AI Overview answer be presented for every query?

Entity building

For a long period in search engine optimisation, various marketing companies were banging on about the “semantic web”, “entity building”, “things not strings”, do you remember that?

Well, that is good because we think it is linked to AI.

The well-known things, “Will Smith”, Margaret Thatcher”, “Adam Sandler” celebrities, landmarks, events, products, you name it if it’s a thing, a well-known entity, and you want to know about it, well, this is likely to trigger a Google AI Overview.

Like when you’re sitting across the sofa watching a film, you want to know how old an actor is:

So you ask Google Gemini, “How old is Sir Anthony Hopkins?”. At the same time, you’re pushing popcorn in your mouth, well, this question asked on Google will likely trigger a Google AI Overview, as one of the best actors in the world, Anthony Hopkins, is a well-known entity.

 

Right, I got it. So, which searches are unlikely to trigger an AI overview from Google?

YMYL- so crucial advice, that could mean you base an essential decision on, which impacts your life, well, that’s unlikely to be triggered as an AI Overview answer to appear, or just yet.

That’s because AI can generate some unpredictable answers (inclusions). You may ask,

How do I start divorce proceedings, which may come out with something you didn’t expect, such as “Do you not want to leave him? Perhaps marriage counselling is best for you?”- so that’s why YMYL questions are unlikely to trigger an AI Overview response.

You get our drift.

So, for now, most marketing companies believe that the YMYL searches are less likely to show a Google AI Overview answer. That’s at least while Google is fine-tuning its responses.

I run a business; I need to get in on this. How can I increase my business’s chances of appearing as a Google AI overview answer?

So, AI Overviews is fed and works by reading businesses’ content marketing. When they are used, they are cited as a source.

So there’s our first clue on how to increase your business’s chances of appearing in an AI Google Overview answer.

For your content marketing to be cited, well, it needs to be really and one more good.

Think Google E-EAT, think long form content marketing, think good on-page SEO, think so many powerful backlinks it crashes your Excel spreadsheet when you read them.

Yes, you got it, traditional SEO is not dead, at least not for now. That’s because the content marketing must be written well if you want it to appear in Google’s organic results and be used as a Google AI Overview answer.

 

Conversational answers

Ever asked someone a question, then you wished you hadn’t, because they are waffling on, boring you, to the point you nearly fell off your seat? Been there?

Well, this is the same with content marketing.

Bore the reader, stick a ton of unnecessary detail, drone on, waffling until the cows come home, well, you’re going to lose the reader’s interest. Plus, Google may not know what you’re waffling about, either.

So please keep it to the point.

Write in short, sharp, to-the-point sentences. Demonstrate to Google and the reader you know what you’re talking about (Google E-EAT), but don’t go overboard so that they feel they are reading a university dissertation, when they may want a recipe to make a chicken korma for their tea.

Please keep it on point, show you know your stuff, and don’t overdo it.

 

Keep the information up to date.

In the world of AI, things move fast.

Calculations are made of how good your content marketing is and how up-to-date and relevant it is.

So, if someone wants advice on anything, it’s safe to say Google wants to offer up-to-date information.

They don’t want to cite an article from 2018 when an article has been written in 2018 but clearly shows its been updated, well every year since its been updated, and the revised date gets updated and re-indexed, this work is more likely to be cited, as its clear the author wants to keep the work up to date as possible.

 

Keep your Google Business up to date.

So, if someone asks where the best burger takeaway place in Clifton open late tonight is, Google will turn to Google Business profiles near that person.

So, keep your Google Business profile updated with opening hours, business information, phone number, and address. Then, when Google has multiple listings to pick from, it’s likely to come down to reviews, so get as many positive reviews as you can, but don’t fake them.

 

Google E-EAT

Your business’s content marketing must be well-written. Whether a main page or a blog post, it must have a high Google E-EAT score.

Need help to improve your company’s search engine optimisation?

We have SEO experts who can help you.

We are working with more and more companies in the South West of England.

This includes Bristol and Bath. Therefore, if your business wants to improve its organic or local SEO, why not give us a ring?

 

 

 

How to market your business locally

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19/05/2025

John Lang

Table of contents:

  • Why is local marketing so important
  • Why your marketing needs to know your audience
  • How to use social media to grow your business
  • How to improve your mobile SEO
  • How to improve your search engine optimisation
  • Local directories
  • Google E-EAT
  • Local PR

How our marketing agency can help

For so many businesses, global or national marketing is not for them. They don’t want to be drawing in customers from the other end of the country.

For some businesses, local SEO is where it’s at, and this is where we can help you.

Why is local marketing important / what is local search engine optimisation?

Whether you’re looking for a local handyman, lawyer or you want your mop styled in a new way, often people turn to Google for advice.

Here’s an interesting statistic, 88% of customers, according to HubSpot, who search for a local business will call or visit within a day.

Buying locally often doesn’t mean that your business will be the cheapest. Often giant online retailers will be cheaper.

However, a lot of people are willing to pay a premium, pay that bit more, in order to get local face-to-face customer service.

However, to get that personalised service, well, often they go through one of the biggest companies in the whole planet- Google.

This is where we come in, we can help any business to improve its visibility locally. We are the experts when it comes to improving a business’s local SEO.

Use social media

A whopping 97% of people will use website / businesses social media to find out more about your business. This therefore is good to communicate with your customers what your company is all about, what makes you different and standout. It could be something as simple as you run a coffee shop and all of your coffee is organic. People, such as the author, appreciate these details, and will pay a premium, and visit you, if this is communicated through, say, your business’s Instagram account.

Its 2025-there’s now no excuse not to have a “mobile ready” website

A huge number of local sales take place on smartphones, in matter of fact this statistic places it at £1 trillion in sales.
Every business should have a mobile ready and optimised website, that’s for sure. The importance of a mobile ready website differs from business sector to business sector.

For example, if you’re an online e-commerce business, then its essential. If you run a local coffee shop, its still important, yet less so, it just needs to be “mobile ready”. A local small independent coffee shop is unlikely to be monitoring daily bounce rates for example, in the same way an e-commerce business would, but you never know!

Site speed, user experience and the mobile design are all very important factors for your SEO company to consider. At Digital Tailors, we will make sure that your website is mobile optimised.

 

Search engine optimisation- practically every business now needs it

People now talk to their phones as if they are speaking to a real human. With “near me” and “find me businesses close by” searches on smartphones growing by more that 900% over the last years alone.

Also, it’s also commented that a massive 46% of Google searches are for people looking for local information to buy products or services right now. So, the question businesses need to ask in Bristol is whether they can really afford not to invest in quality search engine optimisation in order to draw in more business.

 

Google My Business

So, we get it, it really does.

You’re starting your business, you have a million and one things to do, so things get rushed.

Rooms get painted in a rush.

Furniture is purchased, unwrapped thrown into place

And suppliers are called to say, please can you update on the deliveries of supplies.

Yet, there’s one thing you shouldn’t rush and that’s setting up your Google My Business account. Instead, you should dedicate a lot of time and effort into making sure that you add as much detail as you possibly can, and make sure you try and make your Google My Business standout, perhaps by adding good photos of the shop, the business premises or let’s say your stock.

Here’s why you shouldn’t rush setting up your Google My Business account.

The reason is, a lot of shoppers use Google My Business to find local companies. Therefore, it’s a really effective way for a business to market its services or products. However, there’s often three businesses which are displayed in the Google My Business results, therefore its very competitive and hard for a business to be shown there. This is why we return our previous point, and that is; to stand a good chance of your business being displayed, you must put a lot of effort in setting up your Google My Business account.

 

Google EEAT and local SEO

Whichever type of business you run, often there’s more competition that some people realise.
Take plumbers, there’s often hundreds in any one city.

Therefore, the website, for it rank in the Google Business results, or the Google organic results, the business must be seen as an authority.

For that to happen the business must have a high Google EEAT score. For that to happen, part of the formula, is that you must show your business is an authority.

Whether that’s on mountain bikes, or the latest smartphones, as you write blog posts, such as helpful articles Google overtime starts to view your business as an expert on what you’re writing about. That’s if what your saying is good quality advice, your gaining links, the dwell time is high.

And proving you’re an authority, an expert on what you’re talking about, this takes time. So therefore, don’t expect any short-term results, often, in some competitive business niches, proving your business is an authority on the products or services you sell, well that takes many years to build that recognition from Google. Plus, the work needs to be super high quality because your business is in huge amounts of competition with other companies these days.

 

Business reviews truly matter

So, our first nugget of advice is this, don’t buy reviews.

So many companies in Bristol and every other city do this, but just do it.

Google is too clever, it knows it’s a fake review. It knows the accounts that are leaving fake business reviews for money, so just don’t do it.

Instead, you want a steady trickle of positive reviews. This improves your businesses “trustworthiness” again another part of the Google E-EAT framework of advice that Google advices you use when writing content marketing and optimising your company website.

In a nutshell, good reviews, positive reviews, what these can do is improve your businesses trustworthiness, because of this, you’re more likely to be displayed in the Google Business results. Also, on top of that, it is thought by many leading SEO consultants that this can only help to improve your companies organic search engine optimisation as well, because, lets face it, genuine reviews from customers, that they say love your restaurant, well this bound to help improve your company’s organic SEO.

 

FAQ 

How can local SEO help my business?

Local SEO can help get your business on page one of Google’s organic results.

It can also help your business to be displayed more often in the Google Business results.

Do many businesses invest in this type of marketing?

A huge amount of companies in Bristol invest in this type of marketing. For some companies we work with, near enough 100% of their sales come via organic SEO.

 

How long does it take to see results?

This depends on how competitive your business sector is, yet SEO is a slow process. You therefore need to be willing to wait many months before you start to see results.

 

What are keywords?

Keywords are simply words or short sentences which describe the products or services your business sells.

Its therefore important for that business, in order to make more sales, that the marketing company optimises the website for these keywords. This is to generate more clicks, which can lead to more sales.

How much does local SEO cost?

Our monthly fee starts from £500 per month and we are one of the best in the business.