The words, without
the mystique.

The work of making your pages findable and understandable to search engines, so they can be matched against what people type.

Why it matters. It is mostly unglamorous: having a page for the thing people search, making sure it can be read, and answering the question directly.

Common mistake. Treating it as a trick. Repeating a phrase until the writing suffers has not worked for many years, and buying links is a risk rather than a shortcut.

The subset of search work that decides whether you appear when someone searches for a service in a place — usually driven by your business profile rather than your website.

Why it matters. For anyone with premises or a service area, this is normally the highest-return work available and costs nothing to claim.

Common mistake. Leaving the business profile half-filled while investing in the website. The profile often decides the map results outright.

The phrase a person enters into a search box. Not a magic word to sprinkle into copy — a description of what they want.

Why it matters. Writing for real phrases means writing pages that answer real questions, which is the same thing as being useful.

Common mistake. Targeting the phrase you would use professionally rather than the one customers use. "Domestic electrical installation condition report" and "landlord safety certificate" are the same job to you and different worlds to them.

A search engine finding a page, reading it and storing it as a candidate to show. Nothing can rank until it is indexed.

Why it matters. Most small businesses that "cannot be found" are not being outranked — they have no page for the thing at all, so there is nothing to index.

A link from someone else’s website to yours. Search engines treat it loosely as a vote of relevance or credibility.

Why it matters. Genuine mentions — a supplier, a local paper, a trade body, a directory people actually use — help. They accumulate slowly and legitimately.

Common mistake. Buying them. It breaches search engine guidelines and is a well-known way to damage a site rather than help it.

Generated answers that appear above or instead of the usual links, drawing on public material including your site and profile.

Why it matters. Content that answers a question plainly and factually is easier to quote than content that is mostly persuasion. Clear structure and direct answers help.

The number of distinct accounts that saw a post at least once.

Why it matters. Useful for comparing your own posts against each other over time.

Common mistake. Treating it as the goal. For a local business the potential audience is a few thousand finite people — recognition over time matters more than reach on any one post.

The number of times a post was displayed, including repeatedly to the same person.

Why it matters. Impressions are always higher than reach. Comparing one to the other across platforms is meaningless because each defines them slightly differently.

Any interaction with a post. Engagement rate expresses that as a proportion of reach or followers.

Why it matters. Useful for comparing creative work — which of your posts held attention.

Common mistake. Reporting it as a business result. An engagement is not revenue, and paying to optimise for engagement reliably finds people who react and do nothing else.

Anything you get without paying for placement — normal posts, shares, people finding you.

Why it matters. Organic keeps working after you stop spending, which is exactly why it behaves differently from advertising when money is tight.

The ranking system deciding which posts appear in whose feed, and in what order.

Why it matters. It changes, without notice, and differs per platform. That is why any specific posting frequency or format advice ages badly.

Common mistake. Building a strategy around a rumoured algorithm rule. Build it around being consistently worth watching instead.

A non-personal account type that several platforms require before they allow scheduling or third-party publishing.

Why it matters. This is the single most common reason a connection to a scheduling tool refuses. Switching is done inside the platform, is normally free, and usually unlocks the platform’s own analytics too.

What you pay each time someone clicks your advert.

Why it matters. Useful for comparing adverts against each other.

Common mistake. Optimising for a low CPC. Cheap clicks from people who never buy are worse than expensive clicks from people who do.

What you pay for a thousand displays of your advert, whether or not anyone acts.

Why it matters. Relevant when you are buying awareness rather than a specific action.

The proportion of people shown your advert who clicked it.

Why it matters. A reasonable signal of whether the creative and the offer are interesting to the audience you chose.

Common mistake. Judging a campaign on CTR alone. A high click rate into a page that converts nobody is an expensive way to be popular.

Showing adverts to people who have previously visited your site or interacted with you.

Why it matters. Usually cheaper per result than reaching strangers, because you are talking to people who already showed intent.

What you paid, in total, to get one customer.

Why it matters. This is the number that decides whether advertising is working, because it can be compared directly against what a customer is worth to you.

Revenue attributed to advertising divided by what you spent on it.

Why it matters. A common headline figure in ad platforms.

Common mistake. Reading platform-reported ROAS as fact. It rests on attribution assumptions that often credit the platform generously, and it counts revenue rather than margin.

The reason someone chooses you over the two or three others they are actually considering — not the reason you are unlike every business in the country.

Why it matters. Your customer has a shortlist, not a survey. Being visibly different from the other names on that shortlist is a far lower bar than being unique, and it is the only bar that ever gets tested.

Common mistake. Claiming something a competitor could never claim the opposite of. Nobody advertises shoddy work or unfriendly staff, so "quality workmanship" and "friendly service" are the price of entry rather than a reason to pick you.

A visitor doing the thing the page existed for — booking, enquiring, buying, calling.

Why it matters. Defining the conversion before you spend anything is what stops you judging a campaign by whether the number felt large.

Common mistake. Having several. If a page is asking for four different things, it is usually getting none of them.

The specific next step you are asking for, in plain words: Book a slot, Get a quote, Call us today.

Why it matters. The most common weakness in small business content is beautiful work with no indication of how someone would get that done for themselves.

Common mistake. Being polite to the point of vagueness. "Get in touch to find out more" asks for nothing in particular.

The page someone arrives on from an advert, post or link — ideally one that matches what they just clicked.

Why it matters. Sending paid traffic to a homepage is a reliable way to lose the visitor you just paid for.

A person who has given you a way to contact them — an enquiry, a form, a call, a message.

Why it matters. Leads are the thing most service businesses should measure, because a sale usually happens later and offline.

What a typical customer spends with you over the whole time they stay, rather than in one transaction.

Why it matters. Without it you cannot tell whether an acquisition cost was good, and you will judge spending by whether the total felt like a lot of money.

Assigning responsibility for a sale to the marketing that preceded it.

Why it matters. Some signals are direct — a tracked link, a code used, a booking record. Those are evidence.

Common mistake. Treating a coincidence as proof. "Bookings rose during the campaign" is an observation; "this post caused £4,000 of sales" is a causal claim needing much stronger evidence.

The name people type, such as yourbusiness.co.uk, registered to you and pointed at wherever your site lives.

Why it matters. It is the one asset that stays yours when you change platform — provided it is registered in your name.

Common mistake. Letting an agency or platform hold it. If someone else controls your domain, you do not fully own your address.

An instruction that forwards anyone visiting an old page to its replacement. A permanent one also tells search engines the move is final.

Why it matters. This is the step that decides whether a website move keeps its traffic. Missing redirects is the most common reason a migration quietly loses everything it had.

Common mistake. Pointing every old page at the homepage. That is barely better than an error for someone who wanted a specific service.

A site that rearranges itself to fit whatever screen it is opened on.

Why it matters. Most people will meet your business on a phone. A site that only works properly on a desktop is broken for the majority of its visitors.

A tag telling search engines which address is the real one when the same content is reachable at several.

Why it matters. It quietly prevents duplicate versions of your site competing with each other.

A machine-readable file listing the pages you want found, so search engines do not have to discover everything by following links.

Why it matters. Cheap to have, and it makes new pages discoverable faster.