You’re not alone. Let’s cut through the jargon and focus on what matters for your business.
Most conversations about SEO sound more complicated than they need to be. As a consultancy that helps clients rank well on Google and attract the right visitors to their websites, we’re in a good position to help explain the reality. The truth is, organisations become overwhelmed because they’re told they need to “do SEO” without understanding that SEO isn’t a single thing; it’s multiple related activities that work together.
Think of it like running your organisation: you don’t just “do charity work” or “run a business.” You manage finances, serve your community, communicate with stakeholders, maintain your premises, and handle administration. SEO works similarly; different types serve different purposes, and understanding them helps you make better decisions about where to focus your limited time and budget
The SEO Myths That Keep Organisations Stuck
Before we go further, I wanted to touch on some of the persistent SEO misconceptions that prevent businesses and organisations from making progress. These aren’t just harmless misunderstandings; they often lead to wasted resources and missed opportunities to amplify your impact.
“We need to rank #1 for everything.”
This is like trying to be the loudest voice in every room rather than the most helpful voice in the right room. What you need is to rank well for searches where you can genuinely help. An accountancy firm ranking #3 for “small business tax advice (your city)” will generate far more qualified leads than ranking #15 for “finance” or “business services” nationally – because someone searching for tax advice has a specific need, whilst someone browsing “finance” could want anything from investment advice to mortgage brokers.
Ask yourself: Which specific searches would bring you people ready to engage with your services, rather than just casual browsers?
“SEO is too technical for our team.”
Many organisations avoid SEO entirely because they think it requires coding expertise. That’s like preventing stakeholder communications because you’re not a graphic designer. Yes, there are technical elements, but much of effective SEO involves clearly explaining what you do, who you serve, and how people can get involved – skills your team can develop with the proper training.
The reality is that SEO sits on a spectrum. At one end, you have highly technical aspects that genuinely require specialist knowledge. But at the other end, you have content strategy, keyword research, and writing helpful pages – all perfectly learnable skills with the proper guidance.
Most teams can master creating content that answers their audience’s questions, researching what terms people search for, and structuring information in ways that both humans and search engines understand. These aren’t mysterious arts – they’re systematic approaches that can be taught, practised, and improved over time.
Aside from having team capacity and willingness, the key is having someone willing to teach these fundamentals properly, rather than assuming your team must either figure it out alone or outsource everything. With solid training in content strategy and audience research, your team can handle the majority of impactful SEO work themselves.
For the genuinely technical elements – site speed optimisation, crawl error fixes, or structured data implementation – that’s when you bring in specialists. But don’t let technical complexity stop you from developing internal capability for the strategic, content-focused work that drives real results.
Ask yourself: What SEO skills could your team develop with proper training, and which genuinely require external technical expertise?
“We can’t compete with big organisations’ SEO budgets.”
This assumes SEO is purely about outspending competitors, but that’s not how search engines work. A focused regional social enterprise can outrank national competitors for searches like “ethical procurement services Manchester” because they can create more relevant, specific content for that audience. Your advantage lies in being more targeted, not having a bigger budget.
Large organisations often struggle with SEO precisely because of their size. They’re trying to rank for everything, everywhere, which dilutes their focus. Their content usually feels generic because it needs to be effective across multiple locations and audiences. Meanwhile, their approval processes mean content takes months to publish, and their corporate tone rarely matches what real people search for.
Smaller organisations have inherent advantages: you can move quickly, speak authentically about your work, and create genuinely helpful content for your specific community. You understand your audience’s real problems because you work with them directly. You can publish content today that addresses an issue you heard about yesterday.
The key is playing to these strengths. Instead of trying to compete on broad, expensive terms, focus on the specific searches where your local knowledge, sector expertise, or community connections give you an edge. Create content that only you could write – case studies from your actual work, practical guides based on your real experience, answers to questions your community asks.
Your budget might be smaller, but your relevance can be greater. And relevance wins more often than resources.
Ask yourself: Where does your specific knowledge, location, or community connection give you advantages that larger organisations can’t match?
“Social media followers matter more than search rankings.”
Both serve different but overlapping purposes in your communication strategy. The key is understanding how they work together rather than treating them as separate channels competing for attention.
The real difference lies in intent and context. Someone searching “employment lawyer redundancy advice” has an immediate, specific need and is actively seeking professional help. Someone seeing your LinkedIn post about employment law changes might not need legal services today, but they’re building awareness of your expertise for future reference or recommendations.
Both channels also reinforce each other. A potential client might discover you through a search, then check your social media presence to get a sense of your personality and approach before making contact. Conversely, someone who follows you on social media might later search for your specific services when they need them.
Many organisations focus all their effort on building follower counts, yet remain invisible to people actively searching for their services. Others focus solely on search rankings whilst failing to develop ongoing relationships with the people they serve. The most effective approach recognises that different people discover and engage with your business in various ways.
Ask yourself: How do these channels work together in your audience’s journey from awareness to engagement, and are you present at the right touchpoints?
“We need to publish content constantly to rank well.”
The truth is more nuanced than either “publish daily” or “publish whenever.” Much of the pressure to publish constantly comes from SEO advice designed for e-commerce sites trying to sell products to consumers. But different organisations have different goals, different audiences, and different measures of success.
Consistency is crucial for building authority and maintaining visibility, but it doesn’t mean sacrificing quality for arbitrary publishing schedules. Search engines do favour sites that regularly publish fresh, relevant content – it signals that you’re active and current in your field. However, the keyword is “relevant.” Ten rushed blog posts that rehash the same points won’t help you rank, but neither will publishing one excellent guide and then going silent for months.
The sustainable approach is finding a realistic publishing rhythm that your team can maintain without burning out. Whether that’s weekly, fortnightly, or monthly depends on your resources and capacity. What matters is that when you do publish, the content genuinely serves your audience’s needs.
Different types of content serve other purposes, too. You might publish a comprehensive guide quarterly, shorter insights monthly, and timely responses to industry developments as they happen. This mix keeps your site active whilst allowing time for deeper, more valuable pieces.
Ask yourself: What publishing frequency can your team realistically maintain while ensuring each piece adds genuine value to your audience?
The 4 Main Areas of SEO
Now that we’ve cleared away some of the confusion, let’s break down what SEO involves. When we approach SEO, we’re looking at four interconnected areas that work together like different departments in your organisation: each has a specific role, but they collaborate to achieve your overall goals.
1. Technical Foundation
This ensures that your website can be crawled, indexed, and understood by search engines – the basic infrastructure that everything else builds upon. The key elements include site speed and performance, mobile-friendliness and responsiveness, crawlability through proper robots.txt files and XML sitemaps, secure HTTPS connections, structured data using Schema markup to help search engines understand your content, canonical URLs to avoid duplicate content issues, and fixing any crawl errors or broken links that might prevent search engines from accessing your content.
This focuses on creating valuable content and optimising individual pages to help search engines understand what you offer and who it serves. It encompasses keyword research and strategy to understand what your audience searches for, content creation that genuinely answers user intent, crafting effective title tags and meta descriptions, proper header structure using H1 and H2 tags, strategic internal linking to connect related content, image optimisation including alt tags and appropriate file sizes, and logical URL structure and site organisation.
3. Authority & Trust
This involves external factors that demonstrate your credibility and expertise to search engines and users. The main components are quality backlink building from reputable sources, brand mentions and citations across the web which may contribute to your online authority, industry recognition and partnerships that validate your expertise, guest contributions and thought leadership that showcase your knowledge, social media presence that supports your overall digital presence, and digital PR and outreach efforts that expand your reach and credibility.
4. User Experience
This ensures that visitors can easily navigate and engage with your content, improving overall site quality, which generally correlates with better search performance. It includes intuitive site navigation that helps users find what they need, accessibility standards that make your content available to everyone, creating positive user interactions through engaging content and clear site structure, clear calls to action that guide users toward their goals, content readability and logical organisation, and overall user journey optimisation that creates a smooth experience from arrival to conversion. You can read more about User Experience here.
Want clarity on which SEO activities would serve your organisation’s goals? We help you understand your options and create realistic plans that fit your resources and constraints. Ready to move from SEO confusion to practical action? Let’s have a conversation about your specific situation and explore what strategic SEO support could look like for your organisation’s unique needs.
