Content SEO services

Content SEO is deciding what your website should publish, which search each piece should answer and how the pieces fit together, before anyone writes a word. I build that plan for UK businesses: what to create, what to update, what to merge or retire, and in what order, with a written brief for every page so the writing has a clear job to do.

What a content strategy changes

The usual problem is not a lack of publishing. A typical business has a blog with dozens of posts, written whenever someone had a free afternoon, and only a handful bring in visitors. The topics were picked because they felt relevant, not because customers search for them. Several posts chase the same question, and almost none of them leads the reader towards the services that pay the bills.

A strategy replaces that with a map. Every planned page has one search it is meant to satisfy, a place in a group of related pages and a route to an enquiry or a sale. Existing posts are judged against the same map, so effort goes into pages with a realistic chance of ranking rather than into whatever idea came up in the last meeting.

What changes for you is how decisions get made. Instead of asking what to write this month, your team works down an agreed list where each item says what it targets, why it matters and how it connects to the rest of the site. I cannot promise where any page will rank, because Google decides that, but I can make sure nothing you publish competes with your own pages or aims at a search nobody makes.

Who it suits, and who it does not

It suits UK businesses that already publish, or are about to, and want that effort to show up in search: professional firms writing guides for clients, B2B and software companies with long buying cycles, online shops that need buying guides alongside their category pages, and in-house marketers who have been asked to produce content without being told what for. It also suits teams that already have a writer or agency and need direction rather than more words.

It is the wrong first step in three cases. If Google cannot crawl or index the site properly, technical SEO has to come first, because new pages on a broken site go nowhere. If your service pages exist but rank poorly, on-page SEO on those pages is usually the quicker gain. And if all you need is a list of target terms matched to the pages you already have, keyword research and mapping on its own may be enough.

What the strategy covers

The balance depends on what you have already. A new site needs mostly planning; a site with years of posts often needs as much sorting out as planning.

How I build the strategy

1. A conversation first. We talk through what you sell, who buys it, how they decide and how much your team can realistically produce. I ask for read-only access to Search Console and your analytics.
2. An inventory. I crawl the site and list every indexable page with its traffic, the searches it already appears for and the links pointing to it.
3. Research. I research the searches around your services and study what currently ranks for the important ones, so each planned page has a clear picture of what it needs to do better.
4. Mapping. Searches are grouped into clusters and assigned to existing or new pages, one intent per page. If you already hold a keyword list, my free keyword clustering tool gives a first grouping, which I then check by hand.
5. A review with you. I take you through the map and the decisions on existing content before writing briefs. You know which services matter most and which claims your business can stand behind, and the plan has to reflect both.
6. Briefs and the programme. I write the briefs for the first batch of pages and set out the order and timing for the rest.
7. A look back. Once the first pages have been live long enough for Google to recrawl and settle them, I review what has moved and adjust the plan.

Content problems I see most often on UK sites

• Writing for the wrong reader. Articles that would interest people in the same trade rather than customers. An accountancy practice writing about changes to reporting standards reaches other accountants, not the sole traders looking for help with their Self Assessment return.
• Several pages for one search. Three posts on the same subject written in different years, each weaker than a single combined page would be.
• Guides that lead nowhere. A well-read article that answers its question and then stops, with no link to the related service and no obvious next step for the reader.
• Out-of-date UK detail. Pages quoting an old tax threshold, a superseded regulation or a grant scheme that has closed. Readers notice, and it casts doubt on everything else on the site.
• Volume over usefulness. Batches of short, similar posts, sometimes drafted with AI and barely edited, that tell the reader nothing the pages already ranking do not. Google treats this kind of thin content as a weakness, not an asset.
• Area pages with only the town name changed. Twenty near-identical pages for London boroughs or Home Counties towns, none of which says anything specific about the place or the people who live there.

What you receive

• A content inventory listing every existing page with its decision (keep, refresh, merge, redirect or remove) and the reason for it.
• A page map showing each topic cluster, the target search for every existing and planned page, and how the pages link to one another.
• Written briefs for the first batch of new or rewritten pages.
• A prioritised programme for publishing and refreshing, set to the time and budget your team actually has.
• A short plain-English note on the reasoning, so anyone who joins your team later understands why the plan looks the way it does.

Writing the pages themselves is a separate service. Your own team, a freelance writer or your agency can work straight from the briefs, or I can write them if you would rather hand the whole job over.