This section is for UK business owners and marketing managers who want to see how I would approach SEO for their kind of business before getting in touch. Each industry page covers how customers in that sector search, what Google and the relevant regulator expect of the pages, who else takes up the results, and the problems I would look for first on your site.
Why the industry changes the SEO plan
Crawling, indexing, page content and links work the same way for a dentist as for a steel fabricator. The industry changes the decisions made on top of those basics, and those decisions settle whether the effort pays for itself.
- The kind of search. Some customers search in a hurry with a place in mind, such as “boiler repair Croydon”. Others research for weeks, compare suppliers and come back several times. The first calls for strong map results and quick, clear service pages; the second for content that answers questions at each stage of the decision.
- How strictly Google judges the pages. Health, money and legal topics fall into what Google’s quality rater guidelines call “your money or your life”. Pages on those subjects need named authors, visible credentials and evidence behind claims, which is where E-E-A-T stops being an abstract idea and turns into a practical checklist.
- Who else holds the results page. In many sectors you are up against a platform rather than the business down the road: Rightmove and Zoopla for property, online travel agents for hotels, comparison sites for insurance and loans, trade directories for builders and plumbers. Part of the plan is deciding where you can win outright and where a strong listing on the platform is the realistic aim.
- What you are allowed to claim. The ASA applies the CAP Code to the claims on your own website, not only to paid ads. Clinics, dentists, financial firms and solicitors also answer to their own regulators, so wording that is ordinary for a café can be a problem for a clinic.
- What a good enquiry looks like. A booked consultation, a valuation request, an instructed case and a quote request are different end points. If the tracking counts every form submission the same way, nobody can tell which pages are earning their keep.
Find your sector
The seven groups below bring together sectors that face the same pressures. Start with the one closest to your business, then open its sector page.
Health and wellbeing
Private clinics, dental practices, gyms, studios and personal trainers. Patients and members mostly search close to home, so the map results carry a lot of weight, but they also read before they book, especially for treatments that cost hundreds of pounds. SEO for private clinics and healthcare practices starts with service pages a clinician has reviewed, written within the rules on advertising medicines and treatments. Dentists have GDC guidance on top of the CAP Code. Fitness businesses face fewer rules but still need honest claims about results.
Hospitality and travel
Hotels, guest houses, restaurants, cafés and bars. Bookings are tied to dates and occasions, the Google Business Profile does much of the selling, and booking platforms often rank above a venue’s own site for its own name. The work for hotels that want more direct bookings concentrates on the searches guests make by occasion and location, and on making the direct route as easy as the platform. Restaurants lean even harder on the map listing, a menu Google can read as text and opening hours that are always right.
Finance
Banks, building societies, insurers, brokers, financial advisers and fintech products. Google holds these pages to its strictest standard, and much of what a financial firm publishes about its products counts as a financial promotion under FCA rules. SEO for banks, brokers and other regulated financial firms builds compliance approval into the content schedule from the outset, so pages do not sit in review for months. Fintech products also compete on comparison searches, where comparison sites usually hold the top places.
Property and home
Estate agents, letting agents and developers, along with trade businesses such as plumbers, electricians, roofers and builders. Both are local, and both compete with large portals and directories. Agents usually do better chasing vendors and landlords than buyers, because the portals own most property searches. For plumbers, electricians and other trade businesses, the Google Business Profile, the service-area set-up and a steady flow of reviews count for as much as the website.
Education
Independent schools, colleges and training providers plan around intake dates and open days, and their audience includes parents and employers as well as learners. Course pages left out of date, near-identical pages for every intake and thin location pages are the usual problems. There is no separate SEO page for education yet; the digital marketing industry pages listed under related services cover it, with search alongside the other channels.
Professional and business services
Solicitors, accountants, consultancies, architects, IT support firms and software developers. Buyers want to know who will do the work, so pages about named people and specialist services achieve more than general “about us” copy, which is the starting point for SEO for accountancy, consultancy and architecture practices. Law firms also have to fit the SRA’s rules, including the Transparency Rules that require published price and service information for certain kinds of work. IT and software firms are searched for by technology, problem and location, and usually need a page for each.
Industry and non-profit
Manufacturers, industrial suppliers, car dealers, garages and registered charities. They look unrelated, but in each case the searcher often has a precise requirement. A buyer looking for a manufacturer or industrial supplier searches by process, material, tolerance or standard, and wants data sheets rather than adjectives. Car dealers manage stock pages that appear and disappear every day, and any dealer arranging finance has FCA rules to respect. Charities need one site to serve the people they help, their donors and their volunteers, who each arrive looking for something different.
Have I worked in your sector?
The sector pages describe how I would approach your market and what I would check first on your site. They do not name clients or quote results, because I publish a case study only once the client has agreed to it and the figures can be shown.
If experience in your sector matters to your decision, and in a regulated sector it reasonably might, ask me on a call. I will tell you what I have done that is relevant and say plainly if your sector would be new to me. In that case I will also explain how I would get up to speed: reading your regulator’s rules, studying the sites that rank for your terms and talking to the people in your business who deal with customers every day.
How industry pages relate to the other SEO services
An industry page is a way in, not a separate product. The work itself comes from the core SEO services: a technical audit, keyword research, on-page fixes, content, links and, where customers search nearby, local SEO. What the sector changes is the order and the emphasis. A trade business might start with its Google Business Profile and service-area pages; a financial firm might start with author pages, sources and a sign-off process before any new content is written.
Some businesses are better described by how they sell than by their sector. Online shops, software companies and B2B suppliers each have their own page in the main SEO section, and one of those may fit better if your sector is broad.
How the work runs in any sector
- A first call. What you sell, who buys it, where they are, what a customer is worth to you and which rules apply to your marketing.
- An audit with your sector in mind. The usual technical and content checks, plus the ones your sector raises: regulated wording, author credentials, stock or listing pages, review profiles.
- Keyword research and a page map. One main search intent per page, so your pages do not compete with each other, and an honest view of which terms are held by platforms you are unlikely to outrank.
- Fixes and content, in order of value. Whatever is blocking results comes first. Content for regulated firms goes through your own sign-off before it is published.
- Reporting on what you count. Rankings and traffic are included, but the measure is the enquiries, bookings or orders your business actually records.
If your sector is not listed
The list covers the sectors where SEO most clearly needs to be run differently, not every kind of business I would work with. If yours is missing, the general SEO services apply and the questions on the first call are the same. The quickest way to see what I would change on your site is a free SEO audit: send me the address and tell me your sector, and I will come back with the issues I would tackle first.