SEO has a reputation for being complicated, expensive, and vaguely mysterious. There’s an entire industry built around making it feel that way. But the fundamentals (the things that actually determine whether Google thinks your site is worth showing to people) are not that hard to understand.
The truth is, Google isn’t looking at your site the way you do. It’s not admiring your logo or reading your about page with a cup of tea. It’s crawling your pages for signals that tell it whether your site is relevant, trustworthy, and worth ranking. Once you understand what those signals are, you can start doing something about them.
Here’s what Google is actually paying attention to, and what you can do about each one.
Whether it can find and read your pages
Before Google can rank your site, it has to be able to crawl it. That means following links, reading your page content, and indexing what it finds. If your site has technical issues (e.g. broken links, pages blocked from crawling, or content that’s buried in ways Google can’t read), it might not even know those pages exist.
What to do: Set up Google Search Console (it’s free). It will show you which pages Google has indexed, flag any crawl errors, and tell you if there are pages it can’t access. If you’ve never set it up, this is the single most useful thing you can do for your site’s SEO today.
What your pages are actually about
Google reads your page titles, headings, and content to work out what each page is about and which searches it should appear for. This is where most small business websites leave a lot on the table. Pages with vague titles like “Services” or “Welcome to our site” tell Google very little. Pages that are specific and clear about their topic give Google much more to work with.
This doesn’t mean stuffing your pages with keywords. Google has long since moved on from that approach and will actually penalise sites that try it. It means writing clearly and specifically about what you do, who you do it for, and where you do it – in language your customers actually use.
What to do: Check the title tag and H1 heading on each of your main pages. The title tag is what appears in the browser tab and in Google search results. It should be specific, include the main topic of the page, and ideally mention your location if you serve a local area. If your title tags are generic or missing, fixing them is a quick win.
How quickly your pages load
Page speed is a ranking factor, but more importantly, it’s a visitor experience factor. Google knows that people abandon slow sites, and it factors that into how it ranks them. A site that takes five seconds to load on a phone is losing visitors before they’ve read a word – and Google knows it.
The most common culprit is images. Large, uncompressed image files are usually the reason a site loads slowly. It’s one of the easiest things to fix and one of the most consistently overlooked.
What to do: Run your site through Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool (pagespeed.web.dev). Pay attention to the mobile score – that’s the one that matters most. A score below 50 is worth acting on. The tool will also tell you specifically what’s slowing your site down.
Whether it works properly on mobile
Google now uses mobile-first indexing, which means it primarily looks at the mobile version of your site when deciding how to rank it. If your site is hard to use on a phone (e.g. tiny text, buttons that are too close together, content that doesn’t resize properly), that matters to your rankings, not just your user experience.
What to do: Open your site on your phone and actually use it. Try to navigate to your services page, read your about page, and submit your contact form. If anything feels fiddly or awkward, it’s worth fixing. You can also use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool for a more technical view.
Whether other sites link to you
Links from other websites to yours are one of the oldest and most reliable signals Google uses to judge authority. The more credible sites that link to you, the more Google trusts that you’re a legitimate, authoritative source. This is why new sites often take time to rank – they haven’t yet built up that network of links.
This is the part of SEO that takes the longest to influence, but it’s also where a lot of businesses have easy opportunities they haven’t pursued. Being listed in relevant directories, getting a mention in a local publication, being cited in a guest article – all of these count.
What to do: Start with the obvious ones. Make sure you’re listed on Google Business Profile, in any relevant industry directories, and on any partner or association websites. If you’ve been featured in any press or publications, check whether they’ve linked back to your site.
Whether visitors stay or immediately leave
Google pays attention to what happens after someone clicks on your site in search results. If they land on your page and immediately go back to Google to look at a different result, that’s a signal that your page didn’t answer their question. Over time, this affects how Google ranks that page.
This is where messaging and SEO overlap. A page that ranks well but doesn’t deliver on its promise will eventually lose its ranking. The best thing you can do for your SEO is make sure your pages are genuinely useful and relevant to the people landing on them.
What to do: Look at your Google Analytics (or Search Console) data and find the pages with the highest bounce rates. Ask yourself honestly: does this page deliver what a visitor would expect when they land on it? If not, the content may need updating before the ranking will improve.
The honest truth about SEO
None of this is magic. Google is trying to answer one question: is this site good? A site that loads quickly, communicates clearly, works on mobile, and is trusted by other credible sources will rank better than one that doesn’t. That’s essentially it.
You don’t need to hire an SEO agency to get the basics right. What you need is to understand what Google is looking for and make sure your site is giving it the right signals. Most of the time, that starts with things you can check and fix yourself.
If you’re not sure where your site stands, the website audit checklist covers all the SEO basics in plain English – no jargon, no specialist tools required. Download it here.
