SEO explained for complete beginners

Search engine optimisation, or SEO, means making your pages accessible to search engines and useful to people looking for your services. For a business, the goal is concrete: be found for searches that can bring customers, then give those people a reason to contact you.

How Google discovers and selects a page

Google crawls pages, analyses their content and may store them in its index. When someone searches, its systems select the results they consider relevant. A page can be accessible without being indexed, or indexed without appearing for the searches you target.

A diagnosis distinguishes these situations. An access problem is not fixed in the same way as incomplete content or a poorly explained offer. First, we examine what prevents your important pages from fulfilling their role.

Choose the searches that matter to your business

Start with the words your customers use: what they ask on the phone, the problems they describe and the criteria they compare. Search Console queries and observing search results help build on this list.

Someone searching for the price of a website wants guidance to help them decide. Someone looking for a redesign agency wants to know your work, method and offer. A page can answer several related questions, provided its purpose stays clear.

Specific searches sometimes offer worthwhile opportunities: a service, sector, constraint or town you actually serve. They are not automatically easy or profitable. We choose them according to their commercial relevance and the results already present, then check the impressions, clicks and enquiries obtained.

Present each service with answers and evidence

A dedicated page is useful when a service deserves its own explanation. It lets you specify the problem addressed, the customers concerned, the work carried out, the budget and the next step. Creating several pages for almost identical wording does not necessarily add value.

• Explain what is included and what requires an additional quote.
• Show a relevant project, with its context and your exact role.
• Answer questions about price, timing, how it works and ongoing support.
• Link the page to projects, advice and services that genuinely help people choose.
• Make getting in touch straightforward on phones and computers.

Precise facts are worth more than a general promise. A dated screenshot, an explained method and a result accompanied by its scope give visitors something to assess. Good content contributes your experience, not just a summary of what everyone else already publishes.

Check the website and local presence

Pages must work on mobile, load properly and allow people to take the intended action. Search engines must be able to access important content and follow its links. As an initial check, our free website audit identifies technical and presentation points to examine.

For a business that welcomes customers or visits them, its Google Business Profile complements the website. Local ranking depends in particular on relevance, distance and prominence. A well-maintained profile helps present the business without removing the effects of location or competition.

• Keep contact details, hours and services accurate on the channels you manage.
• Choose categories that describe your actual business and add photos of your work.
• Invite customers to share honest reviews without incentives, and reply professionally.
• Present your real service areas without inventing an address or local team.

SEO and GEO: shared foundations, distinct results

GEO means working on visibility in AI answers. For Google Search’s AI features, SEO best practices still apply: there is no special text format or markup to add to obtain a citation.

ChatGPT and other assistants also require checks specific to how they work. We observe how they answer prospects’ questions, which sources they cite and whether information about the business is accurate. A mention, a link, a recommendation and an enquiry received are different results.

Our SEO and GEO service combines shared website improvements with checks of AI answers. Setup starts at €1,500 excluding tax; monthly support is quoted according to the actions and content agreed. The guide to preparing an SEO and GEO project details what to gather before starting.

Measure progress before multiplying pages

Keep a baseline and a change log: pages reworked, new content, problems fixed and publication dates. Then compare periods of equal length, taking account of seasonality, campaigns and major website changes.

In Search Console, separate searches for your name from searches for your services, then examine the pages and queries involved. An increase in impressions alone does not prove a commercial gain. Track qualified enquiries too, and connect them to their source where the data allows.

For AI answers, choose precise questions before testing and keep the answers with their date, product used and displayed sources. Repeat the same protocol to observe changes without turning one favourable answer into a permanent ranking.

What budget and timescale should you allow?

The budget depends on the website’s condition, the market and the work required. A useful quote describes the fixes, pages, content production and reviews planned. The monthly amount alone cannot tell you the quality of a service: ask what will be done and how it will be checked.

Some fixes produce effects quickly; others take several months. Crawling, indexing and ranking progress follow different rhythms. No fixed timescale guarantees first place, and a new domain is not condemned to wait a predetermined number of years.

Your publishing pace should reflect your capacity to produce useful content and maintain it. Publishing a lot on the same day is not, in itself, a mistake. The problem is multiplying pages mainly to capture searches without adding value. Improving one decisive page is more useful than repeating the same promise across fifty URLs.

The first actions to take

• Review Search Console and identify your important pages and the searches that make them appear.
• Choose a priority service and the questions its page needs to answer.
• Check the mobile journey, contact details and form submission.
• Add missing, genuine evidence and links to pages that help people decide.
• Record the changes, then track visibility and enquiries to choose the next actions.

SEO becomes easier to manage when every action addresses a specific problem. The aim is to build a presence that helps your future customers find you, understand you and choose you.