SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) Services
Search engine optimisation gets talked about like it’s one thing. It isn’t. A site can rank well technically and still lose every customer to a competitor with a stronger Google Business Profile. A page can be beautifully written and still never get found because nobody fixed the broken redirects underneath it. Real SEO is the combination of several disciplines working together — and most businesses only ever get one or two of them done properly, which is why results stall.
We’ve been doing this since 2008, working with small and medium-sized businesses, directors and founders who are serious about growing — not businesses chasing a quick vanity ranking for a term nobody actually searches. Here’s what we actually do, and why each part matters.
Technical SEO: fixing what’s quietly costing you rankings
Technical SEO is the unglamorous half of the job, and it’s the half most agencies skip because it’s harder to sell. We audit and fix site speed (a slow-loading site loses both rankings and customers before they’ve even read a word), mobile usability issues, broken links, crawl errors that stop Google properly indexing your pages, duplicate content, and missing or broken schema markup. If Google’s technically struggling to crawl or understand your site, no amount of content will fix that on its own.
Local SEO: winning the searches that actually convert
For most of our clients, local SEO is where the real money is. That means optimising your Google Business Profile, building consistent local citations across the directories that matter, and targeting the specific local keyword phrases your actual customers type into Google — not generic national terms with impossible competition. A plumber in Derby doesn’t need to rank for “plumber,” they need to rank for “emergency plumber Derby” and the dozen variations of that a real customer actually searches.
SEO copywriting: content that reads like a person wrote it
Google’s own guidelines are explicit about wanting content written for people, not stuffed with keywords for algorithms. We write copy that targets the right search terms while actually reading naturally — the kind of page a real customer finishes reading and then picks up the phone, rather than bouncing off a wall of generic filler. That’s the difference between content that ranks and content that ranks and converts.
E-commerce SEO: product pages that actually sell
For online stores, we optimise individual product pages, category structures, and add the product schema markup that lets Google show star ratings, pricing, and stock status directly in search results — all of which meaningfully increases click-through rate before a shopper has even landed on your site.
AI search is changing the game
Traditional SEO gets you found on Google. Increasingly, people are also asking ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity directly for local recommendations — and those tools answer from a completely different set of signals than classic Google rankings. We cover that separately under AI SEO (GEO), but it’s worth knowing upfront: a strategy that only targets traditional Google SEO is already missing a growing share of how people actually search.
As Geoff, our founder, puts it: “Our customers tell us Semlocal is the best local SEO company they’ve ever spoken to — and when they’ve shopped around two or three other agencies first, they often tell us we came out both cheaper and better value. What surprises most business owners is realising how much revenue they were losing every month simply by not having their SEO properly looked after.”
Multi-location and franchise SEO
Businesses with several sites face a specific SEO challenge: each location needs its own visibility without cannibalising the others, and duplicate or near-identical location pages actively hurt indexing rather than helping it. We build genuinely distinct, locally relevant content for each site rather than swapping a town name into the same template — the difference between pages Google actually indexes and pages it quietly ignores.
Not sure which of these areas needs attention first? Our marketing consulting service starts with an honest audit, not a sales pitch, so you know exactly where your money will make the biggest difference before you spend it.
Frequently asked questions
How long does SEO take to show results?
Local visibility improvements, particularly around your Google Business Profile, are often visible within 4 to 6 weeks. Broader organic ranking improvements typically take 3 to 6 months, depending on how competitive your industry and area are. Anyone promising overnight results is either exaggerating or doing something that will get your site penalised.
Do I need technical SEO if my site already looks fine?
Usually, yes. Technical problems like slow load times, crawl errors, and missing schema markup are often invisible to a normal visitor but directly affect how Google ranks and indexes your site. A quick technical audit almost always finds something worth fixing, even on sites that look perfectly polished.
What’s the difference between SEO and paid ads?
SEO builds long-term, compounding organic visibility that keeps working without ongoing ad spend, while paid ads deliver immediate visibility for as long as you keep paying for it. Most serious businesses eventually want both — ads for immediate volume, SEO for sustainable, lower-cost-per-lead growth over time.
