Cardiff is a capital city, and that changes search for its businesses in ways an English city of the same size does not. Some customers search in Welsh, the law on renting and property tax has moved away from England’s, and much of the city’s work comes from public bodies, broadcasters and financial firms with their own rules about what can be published. I am not based in Cardiff. The work is done remotely from London and Reading.
How a Cardiff project runs remotely
A Cardiff business works with me entirely online: I am given access to the site and the Google tools, and we talk by video call or phone, with shared documents in between. The general process is set out once, on how I run SEO projects remotely across the UK.
What Cardiff adds is three questions at the start. Which languages do your customers use with you? Do you sell to public bodies, or hope to? And does your catchment stop at the city boundary, or reach up the Valleys and along the M4? The answers decide which pages we build first, and I set Google’s search location to places such as Pontcanna, Caerphilly or Penarth to see the results your customers see, instead of trusting a single reading for “Cardiff”.
What changes about search in Cardiff
Some of your customers search in Welsh
Most searches in Cardiff are made in English, but not all. A Welsh speaker may type Caerdydd instead of Cardiff, and for anything tied to Welsh-medium schooling, culture or public life, the Welsh-language search can be the one that brings the right customer. Google matches pages to the language of the query, so a site that only has Welsh hidden behind a toggle on English pages has nothing for those searches to find.
If Welsh speakers matter to you, give each language its own page at its own address, link each pair with hreflang tags, and make the language switcher go to the matching page rather than the Welsh home page. Translate the title tags, meta descriptions and image text as well. And have the Welsh written or checked by a fluent writer: an unedited machine translation reads badly to the very people it is meant for.
Public bodies have language duties, and their suppliers feel them
Under the Welsh Language (Wales) Measure 2011, Welsh Language Standards require councils, the Welsh Government, health boards and many other public organisations to treat Welsh no less favourably than English, including on their websites. Public sector sites must also meet the accessibility regulations that apply across the UK. A Cardiff agency, developer or consultancy building sites or campaigns for these bodies may be asked to deliver to both.
If you bid for that work, the buyer will look at your own website after reading your tender. Give them a page on how you deliver bilingual work, state plainly how you test against WCAG accessibility guidelines, list only the accreditations you actually hold, and keep your policies one click from the footer. Opportunities are advertised on Sell2Wales; your site is where the shortlist gets checked.
Renting and property tax use different words in Wales
Since December 2022, the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016 has turned most tenancies into occupation contracts and tenants into contract-holders, and landlords and letting agents must be registered or licensed with Rent Smart Wales. Buyers pay Land Transaction Tax, which replaced Stamp Duty Land Tax in Wales in 2018. A letting or conveyancing guide written for England will mislead a Cardiff reader on every one of these points.
Write your guides in the Welsh terms, but meet people where they start. A first-time buyer in Llanishen may still search “stamp duty Cardiff”; the page that answers it should say early on that Wales has Land Transaction Tax and then explain it properly. Retire any page about section 21 notices aimed at Welsh landlords, since that route no longer applies to them.
The catchment runs up the Valleys and along the M4
Cardiff draws customers from well beyond its own council area: Penarth and Barry in the Vale of Glamorgan, Caerphilly and Pontypridd to the north, Newport to the east. People there search with their own town name when they want someone nearby, and add “Cardiff” when they are willing to travel in. Trades and mobile services covering that area should be listed as a service area business, which keeps a home address off the map, and only build a page for a town when there is something genuinely different to say about working there. For broad terms such as “accountant South Wales”, check who actually appears: firms from Newport and Bristol often sit alongside Cardiff ones, and your page has to be better than theirs, not merely closer.
Match days reshape the city centre
Restaurants, bars and hotels around St Mary Street, Westgate Street and the Bay compete in a crowded local pack on an ordinary Tuesday. On a rugby international or a big concert at the Principality Stadium, the same streets fill with visitors who search on their phones for food, drinks and somewhere to stay. Fixtures are announced months ahead, so put them in your calendar: set special opening hours on your Business Profile, publish a short event-day page with booking details and how far you are from the stadium, and schedule any ads to run in the hours before kick-off rather than all week.
Insurers, banks and broadcasters work under extra rules
Financial services are a large employer in Cardiff, with insurers, banks and a building society running head offices and operations here. Their web pages, ads and social posts can count as a financial promotion under FCA rules, so an SEO plan for them needs an approval step built in. The city is also home to BBC Cymru Wales at Central Square and drama studios at Roath Lock, with production and post-production companies around them. Those firms win work from commissioners across the UK, so their sites need written project pages, naming broadcasters and clients only with permission, that say what was made and what part the company played.
When a London-based consultant is the wrong choice
If your website must be fully bilingual, the Welsh pages need a fluent writer who knows your sector. I can plan the structure and the technical set-up and work alongside whoever writes them, but if a Welsh-speaking agency in Cardiff can handle the writing and the SEO together, one supplier may suit you better than two. The same applies if you want someone at your premises for regular meetings, or beside you at a supplier day for a public tender.
Hiring someone in Cardiff Bay instead of London would not move you up the map results either. Google ranks a profile by the business’s own location, relevance and reputation, never the adviser’s, which I cover in more depth on local SEO for UK businesses.
Services that fit a Cardiff business
- Content SEO and strategy, for firms planning Welsh and English pages together, or writing guides on topics where Welsh rules differ.
- SEO for estate agents and letting agents, for Cardiff agents whose pages need to reflect occupation contracts, Rent Smart Wales and Land Transaction Tax.
- B2B SEO, for suppliers to Welsh public bodies and to businesses across South Wales whose buyers check a website before shortlisting.
- Google Business Profile optimisation, for hospitality in the centre and the Bay that needs its profile ready for match days.
Getting started
To begin, request a free SEO audit with your website address, whether your customers use Welsh, English or both, and which parts of Cardiff and the region they come from. I will check your pages in each language you publish, look at the results from those places, and name the one change I would make before any other.