SEO explained simply: what it is, how Google ranks pages, where to start

SEO meaning, in one sentence

“SEO meaning” is searched 6,600 times a month in the UK and “what is seo” 5,400 times. The safest definition is Google’s own, from its SEO Starter Guide: SEO “is about helping search engines understand your content, and helping users find your site and make a decision about whether they should visit your site through a search engine.”

In other words, two audiences at once. The search engine, which has to be able to read and file your pages. And the customer, who sees your title and description in the list of results and decides in a second whether to click on you or on the business next door.

• SEO stands for search engine optimisation. You will also hear “organic search” or “natural search”: the unpaid results.
• SEO is not bought from Google. You pay only for time: yours, or a provider’s.
• It covers the classic list of links and, for a local business, the map results (Google Maps).

SEO or paid search: organic or paid

A Google results page holds two kinds of links. The ads, labelled as sponsored and paid per click through Google Ads: that is paid search (PPC, or SEA in French usage). And the organic results, where nobody pays for their place: that is the ground SEO works on.

Google keeps the two strictly apart. On its page about hiring an SEO, it writes that “advertising with Google won’t have any effect on your site’s presence in our search results” and that “it costs nothing to appear in our organic search results.”

• Paid search: visible the next day, stops when the budget stops, a cost on every click.
• SEO: weeks or months before the effect, but visits that keep coming without a bill per click.
• They work together: ads to test an offer, organic search to last. An ad that lands on a clear page also costs less per enquiry.

How Google chooses the pages it shows

To know what SEO works on, you need to know what Google does. It describes it itself: Google Search works in three stages, and not all pages make it through each stage.

1. 1
   Crawling: Google’s crawlers discover your page, by following a link or because you told Google about it (sitemap, Search Console).
2. 2
   Indexing: Google analyses the page (text, images, tags) and stores it in its index. A page that is not indexed cannot appear for any search.
3. 3
   Serving: when someone searches, Google picks from its index the pages that answer best, taking into account things such as the person’s location, language and device.

The three areas of SEO work

Everything called “doing SEO” falls into three areas. For each, here is what we measure on small business websites in France: this is often where the points are lost.

• Technical: Google can crawl and index the site. A sitemap, HTTPS, a mobile-friendly layout, canonical URLs, a robots.txt that doesn’t block Google, structured data that describes the business.
• Content: each page answers a real search. A page title that names the service and the town, a single clear H1, a description that makes people want to click, enough useful text, facts only you can give.
• Reputation: Google has reasons to trust you. Earned links from other sites (local press, suppliers, trade bodies), customer reviews, visible expertise (who writes, what work you have done).

Local SEO: being chosen near the customer

For a tradesperson, a practice or a shop, a large share of customers arrives through the map in Google’s results, not through the classic links. You get there with a free Business Profile, which Google ranks on three factors: relevance, distance and prominence. Here too, Google’s help is explicit: “There’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google.”

Local SEO therefore means a complete, verified profile (exact category, opening hours, service area, photos), regular reviews that you answer, and a website whose pages clearly name the service and the town.

How long before you see a result

Google gives no guaranteed timeframe, and being wary of anyone who promises one is part of its own advice. Its Starter Guide is clear: “Some changes might take effect in a few hours, others could take several months. In general, you likely want to wait a few weeks to assess whether your work had beneficial effects in Google Search results.”

In practice, the order of effects is fairly constant:

1. 1
   A few days to a few weeks: a new or corrected page is crawled and indexed (the “Pages” report in Search Console shows it).
2. 2
   A few weeks: a page that answers a precise search well (a service plus a town) starts to appear, often far down, then climbs.
3. 3
   Several months: contested searches, where long-established competitors have content and links.

SEO for small business: what you can do yourself

“SEO for small business” is searched 390 times a month in the UK. Google’s answer is direct: “If you run a small local business, you can probably do much of the work yourself.” It recommends starting with its SEO Starter Guide, and adds that knowing the basics is useful even if you hire a professional, so you can spot a technique that is not recommended. The essentials, in order:

1. 1
   Add the site to Google Search Console and submit the sitemap.
2. 2
   Create or claim your Google Business Profile, verify it, complete it.
3. 3
   Rewrite the title and H1 of each page so they name the service and the town, the way customers type it.
4. 4
   One page per service, with a first sentence that answers straight away: what, where, for whom, at what price if you can show it.
5. 5
   Make the phone number tappable and put an enquiry form on the home page.
6. 6
   Ask every satisfied customer for a review, and reply to all of them.