SEO for Small Sites

The small-site advantage

Search engine optimisation has a reputation for being technical, mysterious and endless. For big sites with millions of pages, it can be. For a small site — a shop, a portfolio, a service business, a product with a blog — most of what matters fits in this guide.

Here's the good news: Google's stated goal is to show the most helpful result for each search. A small site that answers one specific question better than anyone else can outrank a big site that answers it vaguely. You can't out-spend the big sites. You can out-focus them.

What this guide covers

1. How search works — just enough to make good decisions
2. Finding what people search for — with free tools
3. Pages that rank — titles, headings, structure
4. Technical basics — the checklist that stops Google ignoring you
5. Content worth finding — what to write, and how
6. Local SEO — if you serve customers in a place
7. Links and measuring — earning links, and knowing what's working

The appendices give you a 30-day plan, an on-page checklist and a glossary.

What SEO is not

It isn't fast. A new page typically takes weeks to months to settle into its position. It isn't a trick — keyword stuffing, hidden text and bought links can get a site penalised. And it isn't guaranteed: anyone who promises "page one in 30 days" is either selling something or doesn't know.

What it is, is compounding. A page that ranks keeps bringing visitors every month, for free, long after you wrote it. That's why it's worth doing properly.

How search actually works

You don't need to understand the algorithm. You need to understand three stages, because a problem at any of them means you don't show up.

Crawling, indexing, ranking

1. Crawling. Google's crawler follows links around the web and fetches pages. If no links point to your page and it's not in your sitemap, Google may never find it.
2. Indexing. Google reads the page, works out what it's about, and decides whether to store it. Pages that are thin, duplicated, blocked or broken may not be indexed.
3. Ranking. When someone searches, Google picks from the indexed pages and orders them by how well they match the search and how trustworthy and useful they seem.

Most small sites that "don't show up" have a problem at stage 1 or 2, not 3. That's good news: those are the easiest to fix.

Check whether you're indexed

Search Google for:

This shows (roughly) which of your pages Google has indexed. If important pages are missing, Chapter 4 will help. For an accurate picture, use Google Search Console — set it up in Chapter 4.

What makes a page rank

Google uses many signals, but for a small site they boil down to:

• Relevance — does the page clearly answer what was searched?
• Quality — is it genuinely helpful, accurate and written by someone who knows the topic?
• Experience — does it load quickly, work on a phone, and avoid intrusive pop-ups?
• Authority — do other trustworthy sites link to it or mention it?

You control the first three entirely. The fourth comes over time, mostly as a result of the first three.

Search intent is everything

Every search has an intent behind it. Matching intent matters more than matching words.

If people searching "freelance contract template" want to download a template, a 3,000-word essay about contracts won't rank — however good it is. Look at what already ranks for a search: that's Google telling you what it thinks the intent is.