Most of what you read about SEO is not for service-based businesses.

Most SEO Advice Isn’t for You – It’s for Bloggers Trying to Sell Toasters.

Most of the SEO advice you read online isn’t written for people like you or a business like yours.

It’s not aimed at business owners, consultants, or charities who want to rank well and get more leads from their website.

It’s written for affiliate marketers and content bloggers – the people who make money when you click a link to buy a blender.

There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not the same game. And if you’re following their playbook, you’ll do a lot of SEO work that gets you nowhere.

Different goals, different rules.

Affiliate SEO is all about content volume.

These people are trying to hoover up as much traffic as they can by ranking for everything under the sun – “best ergonomic keyboards for programmers,” “top 10 inflatable hot tubs,” “how to clean a waffle maker” – and then pointing you to Amazon or some other referral link.

That means their strategy is usually:

• Write hundreds of blog posts
• Target low-competition, high-volume keywords
• Build backlinks through guest posts and round-ups
• Create content clusters with pillar pages and internal linking
• Worry more about pageviews than conversions

Now, if you’re running a service business – let’s say you’re a local accountant, a B2B consultant, or a company that installs commercial kitchens – what exactly will you do with that strategy?

Nobody looking for a new accountant reads your 2000-word post on “The History of Corporation Tax in the UK.” They want to know: what do you do, how can you help me, and why should I trust you?

You don’t need more content – you need better content.

If your website has 300 blog posts and you’re still not ranking, it’s probably not a volume issue. Most business sites don’t need 300 blog posts. They need 5–10 excellent pages:

• A homepage that makes it clear what you do
• Services pages that speak directly to your customer
• A few helpful blog posts or case studies that show how you work
• A contact page that makes it easy to get in touch

You also need to wrap some blog posts around this, but you need to view these like Domestiques in the Tour De France: they are here to support the leader, not win themselves.

Focus on what people actually search for when they want to hire someone. That usually means:

• “[Your service] in [your location]”
• “Best [your service] for [your niche]”
• “How much does [your service] cost?”
• “[Your problem] + [your solution]”

These are the search terms that lead to enquiries. Not “What is SEO?” or “Ten reasons WordPress is better than Squarespace.”

SEO that actually works for real businesses.

Good SEO for service-based websites isn’t about tricking Google. It’s about clarity, structure and intent. Your site needs to:

• Load quickly and work on mobile
• Use proper heading structure and page titles
• Explain what you do in plain English
• Include location and contact details
• Be crawlable and indexable (no weird JavaScript hiding your content)

It’s boring stuff. There are no secrets. But it works.

Most of my clients came to me after their last agency told them they needed more blog content, backlinks, and keyword density. They also needed a site that didn’t take 10 seconds to load and services pages that weren’t buried three levels deep in the menu.

Stop following SEO advice that isn’t meant for you.

If you’re running a business – not a blog – stop taking advice from people trying to get you to buy a toaster on Amazon.

• Get your structure right.
• Make your services clear.
• Write for your customer, not for Google.

Get some of yourself in there.

One big thing that’s also often overlooked in SEO advice is that your content needs to sound like you – it can’t be some generic AI-generated text.

You need to get some soul in your copy – it should be written as you actually say it, rather than being written in a bland and boring manner.

And if you need a hand figuring out what’s worth doing, call me.