Look. SEO (search engine optimisation – marketers do love an acronym) sounds terrifying because it’s supposed to. Half the jargon was invented by people that want you to pay them £2K a month to ‘fix’ your website.

But the truth? It’s mostly just common sense, Google stalking and not giving up halfway through. Even if you’re allergic to tech, you can absolutely duct-tape an SEO strategy together that works. Here’s how to survive it in five steps. Simple.

SEO Strategy – The extremely basic version

SEO = getting your website to show up when people ask Google random questions.

The point is more traffic. And, in an ideal world, more sales, instead of you doomscrolling into the depths of despair. There are a million complicated ways to do SEO, but you don’t need a PhD in ‘Algorithm Whispering’ to get started. This is the starter pack, the ‘something’s better than nothing’ version.

The Five Steps

1. Figure out who actually gives a sh*t.

Before you start throwing keywords around like confetti, ask yourself:

• Who is this for?
• What is their problem?
• Why should they give you money instead of literally anyone else?

Understand what’s rattling around their brain at 2am. Know their frustrations – what keeps them awake at night? Their heart’s desires – what can’t they say no to? Their: “Oh god, I hope no one sees my search history” needs

Also, not just for SEO reasons, figure out where they hang out online, not where you want them to be. Where they actually are. You have to meet them where they’re at – not try and coax them with god knows what to your favourite hang out. Suck it up.

2. Know your keywords (and your enemies)

You need to know what your audience is typing into Google with grim, sweaty determination. Make a list of keywords your brand should show up for.

• Brainstorm a bit
• Stalk your competitors
• Use Google’s free keyword planner if you want to feel like a real marketer for 10 minutes. (We’ll wait.)

Bonus points | Search your keywords and see who’s currently winning. Quietly seethe, then plot your revenge with better content and steal the show.

3. Make a content plan that doesn’t suck.

Your keywords = your content ideas. Who knew? (spoiler: we did.)

Create content that:

• Answers questions people are actually asking.
• Isn’t longer than it needs to be.
• Sounds like a human wrote it (because, shocker, humans read it).

If you do it right and people will find your stuff, trust you enough as anyone can trust someone they’ve never met, and maybe even link to it. (That’s free marketing, baby.)

4. Hustle for links (the good kind)

More websites linking to your site = Google thinks you’re legit.

But no, you can’t just sit there waiting for it to happen.

You’ll have to ask, network, trade favours, and maybe even *gasp* create content people want to reference.

Need ideas? Backlinko has actual, usable advice without making you feel like you’re dying inside. Go, now. Quickly. Tell them we sent you.

5. Set goals. Pretend you’re tracking them

If you don’t track what’s working, you’ll just keep doing random rubbish and hoping for the best. Set a few KPIs, aka Key Performance Indicators (Ugh, we try to limit the jargon unless we have no choice), which is stuff that proves this isn’t a complete waste of time.:

• Website visits | How many people stumbled onto your site, either on purpose or by accident
• Keyword rankings | How high you show up in Google when someone searches your chosen keywords
• Number of backlinks | How many other websites have deemed you worthy of a shout-out.
• Leads or sales from your website | actual humans who found you via Google and then did something useful, like signing up or buying something.

Then check them monthly, cry a little, tweak the plan and keep crawling towards victory.

Plot Twist | You’re not alone if you stare at your phone wondering if posting another random Canva graphic is worth it. It’s not you. It’s the existential horror of making content no one engages with.

The good news is: content creation doesn’t have to feel like self-inflicted torture. With a bit of strategic-ish planning, you can push out content that sounds like you, connects with your audience and doesn’t make you want to throw your laptop in a lake.

Why bother with content creation (aka another necessary evil

(you’ll start to notice that there’s a lot of necessary evils…)

Congrats, burnt out business owner, you’re a publisher now. Didn’t you know? Whether you like it or not, if you exist online, you’re already doing PR and Marketing just by breathing near a Wi-Fi signal. Content is how people find you, trust you, and eventually pay you. Maybe. It’s the backbone of [warning: jargon alert] “Inbound Marketing”, which is just a fancy way of saying: making people come to you because you’re not annoying.

How to start content creation without spiraling

You need three things:

1. Who you’re actually talking to.
   Your ‘ideal’ audience, not the imaginary one that lives in LinkedIn case studies.
2. What everyone else is doing.
   Your industry and the cooler kids from other industries.
3. What actually makes you like someone else’s brand.
   Spoiler: it’s not another “Monday Motivation” post.
   

Pro Tip | Know your people. Spy on your competitors. Steal inspiration responsibly. It’s not rocket science, it’s just mildly exhausting.

Content without purpose is just noise

Because you hit publish because you’re “supposed to”, ask yourself: Why am I even doing this?

Your post needs a job. Are you trying to:

• Make someone laugh?
• Teach them something?
• Prove you know what you’re doing?
• Subtly herd them toward buying without sounding like a desperate MLM recruiter?

If you want to do it right. (More jargon is heading your way. Sorry not sorry.) Set SMART objectives. Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-based. You know, the stuff your corporate overlords yelled about in 2016. Give your content a deadline and something to track it by. Even if it’s: make 5 people click this before I give up and go live in a cabin, off-grid.

Picking the right content (so you don’t burn out by Tuesday)

You don’t need to be everywhere.

Pick a few types of content you can stand making on repeat and get really good at those. That’s it. That’s the whole hack.

Decide what you want your content to do:

• Educate
• Entertain
• Inspire
• Convert

Spoiler | Not every post needs to sell something. Building brand awareness means not treating your audience like walking wallets 24/7. Wild concept, we know.

Formats people actually consume

People either:

• Read it
• Listen to it
• Watch it

Cover at least two. Bonus points if you can do it without needing 17 editing apps, a ring light and the willpower of a Royal Marine.

Where to find content ideas when your brain’s burnt out

Ask yourself:

1. What’s my audience already freaking out about?
2. What am I not totally unqualified to talk about?
3. What’s happening in the world that I can (strategic-ishly) piggyback off?

You don’t need to reinvent the internet. You just need to make stuff that:

• Solves problems
• Sounds like a real human wrote it
• Is marginally more interesting than scrolling TikTok for 45 minutes

Bottom Line | Content creation isn’t impossible. It’s just annoying. Break it down, lower your expectations slightly, and you’ll accidentally stumble into something strategic. Maybe even profitable. Probably tolerable. And, honestly? That’s a win.

Whether you’re dragging your business back from the dead or just stubbornly pushing forward because capitalism refuses to give you a day off, you’re going to need new customers. Which brings us to this month’s grim but necessary topic: lead magnets.

Spoiler alert | Optimistically hoping for word-of-mouth referrals does not a marketing strategy make. Nice try.

Hold up. What even is Lead Generation?

You know we hate marketing jargon as much as you hate being told to: “just post more consistently.” But needs must, when we’re explaining it. We include the jargon so you can delete it from your brain and move on with your life. We’re not here to make you fluent in marketing speak. We’re here to translate it so you can stop pretending to understand and start actually doing stuff that works.

Lead Generation is just a fancy way of saying: “Hey, stranger. Please notice my business before I self-combust.”

It’s the first nudge. The icebreaker. The awkward: “Do you come here often?” of business growth. Except instead of buying them a drink, you offer them something useful (or at least mildly distracting) in exchange for their contact info.

From there, you very slowly and strategically wear them down into paying customers. Romantic, right?

Why bother with Lead Generation?

Because otherwise you’re just yelling into the void and praying someone hears you.

Lead generation lets you:

• Catch the attention of people who might actually want what you’re selling.
• Build a relationship that doesn’t immediately feel like a door-to-door energy salesman.
• Grow your brand awareness, sales and customer base without cold-calling your way into an existential meltdown.

It’s basically less soul-crushing than traditional ads and more likely to actually work.

Lead Magnets aka Bait – but make it ethical

There are two kinds of lead magnets:

1. Bribe Magnets | Discounts, giveaways, free trials etc. Basically: “Please take this shiny object and love me.”
2. Content Magnets | Checklists, templates, guides etc. Essentially, useful stuff that makes you look smart without having to explain yourself too much.

Either way, you’re giving them something semi-valuable in exchange for their sacred contact info. It’s the marketing version of trading candy for personal secrets. And yes, it works.

How to make a lead magnet without losing your last shred of sanity

Step 1 | Pick your poison – bribery or content.

Step 2 | Build the thing. Make it actually good, or at least good enough to make them feel mildly indebted to you.

Step 3 | Set up a landing page (aka a digital mousetrap) where people can grab your freebie in exchange for their email address.

Step 4 | Promote the hell out of it across your website and social media. No one will magically find it. Unfortunately.

Step 5 | Once they bite, start drip-feeding them useful content, occasional offers and just enough guilt-free reminders that you exist until they buy something.

Lead Magnets: Where you pretend to have a sales funnel

Look, you don’t have to love lead magnets. You just have to make one that doesn’t suck. Give people a reason to care, get their email and build something that resembles a relationship. Without feeling like you’re speed dating for money. You’re not trying to win an Oscar here. You’re just trying to grow a business without fully losing your will to live. And hey, if you can’t be the loudest brand on the internet, at least be the one giving out free stuff with strategic-ish intent.

Fact | Owning your audience is better than begging for algorithm scraps on socials.

The internet mutates faster than your motivation. Every year, there’s some shiny new platform stealing your attention span. But here’s the blunt truth: owned media (like your website’s sad, neglected blog tab) is still the only place where you actually control the message and the audience interaction. Go you.

Everyone else is out there posting into the algorithm voids. Giving away their goods on social willy nilly. Awks. You? You could be quietly building a content fortress where you call the shots.

That is…if you ever get past the existential horror of the blank page when blogging for your business. Killer.

Step 1 | Lower your standards

You don’t need Pulitzer prize-winning prose. You need a semi-coherent paragraph about what you actually know.

Whether you’re a one-person circus, a slightly scrappy startup, or a full-blown corporate machine, posting something useful on your site is better than posting nothing at all.

Realistically, your blog should do two things:

• Show people you’re not a complete amateur.
• Prove you’ve helped someone besides your mum.

Step 2 | Pick a content flavour

Your blog post doesn’t need to change the world. It just needs to not suck. Figure out what you want each post to do:

• Entertain | Mildly amuse them before they click away.
• Inspire | Pretend to uplift them before they click away.
• Educate | Actually teach them something before they click away
• Convince | Sell them something before they click away

If you want to be fancy about it, there’s a whole “content matrix” thing marketers use. It’s basically a big colourful chart that says exactly what you already know: different content = different outcomes. Shocking.

Step 3 | Manufacture some ideas

Topic brainstorming sounds exhausting, so let’s make it painful-but-quick:

• What does your audience already care about?
• What’s actually relevant to your business?
• What can you talk about without Googling it first?
• What’s happening in the news that you can hijack for clicks?

Answer these without crying, and you’ve got yourself a rough content plan.

Step 4 | Stretch those topics like expired yoga pants

Congrats, you have topics. Now beat them into multiple posts:

• Top Tips | Low-effort. Listicle it up.
• Explainers | “What even is [insert topic]?”
• Meet the Expert | Thinly veiled bragging, packaged as an interview.
• How-to | Teach them something.
• How not to | Roast the common mistakes.

Feeling spicy? Post a controversial opinion and watch the engagement spike (or your LinkedIn connections plummet). Either way, you’re alive. You’re publishing. You’re playing the game.

And honestly? That’s a start.

Listen. You can shout, “I’m amazing!” until you’re blue in the face, but people have vats of trust issues. You don’t need to tell them you know what you’re doing. You need to show them, with actual proof.

Enter | Case Studies. The business equivalent of: “pics or it didn’t happen.”

Keep it structured so people don’t fall asleep

Different words need different outfits. A case study is not a novel. It’s not a diary. It’s a strategic show-and-tell. Here’s the blueprint:

• Situation = the “before” picture
• Problem = the mess they needed fixing
• Approach = how you fixed it
• Results = the part where you look awesome

Blueprint Breakdown

Step One | Set the scene without oversharing

Start by introducing the main character, aka your client, without sharing their life story. Then, paint the “before” picture:

• What dumpster fire were they dealing with?
• What end goal were they hoping for?

This is your permission slip to be brutally clear, not dramatically vague.

Step Two | Show your working out

Now that everyone’s emotionally invested, or at least mildly curious, walk them through how you tackled it:

• What research did you do?
• What secret sauce did you whip up?

And no, you don’t have to leak your entire business model, just enough to make it clear you weren’t guessing.

Step Three | Drop the mic with results

This where you throw numbers like confetti.

• Sales? Up.
• Leads? Inundated.
• Engagement? Actually engaged.

No one’s impressed by a vague “things got better”. They want receipts: percentages, increases, £$€ signs. Give them the snack-sized data they can brag about to their boss.

Make it look less boring

Words are great. Pictures are better. Quotes are even better than that.

• Grab a testimonial.
• Slap in a quote.
• Throw in a chart if you’re feeling fancy.

And don’t forget to tell people what to do next: “Click here so we can rescue you, too.” Otherwise they’ll just wander off and forget you exist.

Offer the lazy version

Because nobody has time anymore, or if we’re being honest, an attention span . Include a TL; DR version. Think:

• Bullet points
• Skimmable stats
• Highlights reel, but for your ego

This lets the “I’m-just-browsing” crowd still get the gist without needing a snack break halfway through.

Recycle. Repurpose. Survive.

Congratulations, you made a case study. Now squeeze every last drop out of it:

• Infographic it
• Video it
• PowerPoint it (Ugh, if you really have to.)

Video is king, queen and court jester right now. So, if you’re not filming some kind of flashy 60-second breakdown, what are you even doing?

The Bottom Line

Case studies are proof you’re not just winging it. Make them good, make them clear and make sure they do more heavy lifting than you feel like doing today. Because if you don’t show people what you can do, someone else will. And yes, they’ll steal your clients while you’re still thinking about it.

SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, if you want to impress your LinkedIn connections, is basically the sad, eternal struggle to make sure your website doesn’t die alone on page 47 of a Google search. It’s about getting more people, and ideally, the right people, to stumble across your site without paying for ads.

So, What’s SEO, exactly?

SEO is like putting a giant flashing arrow over your website that says: “Hey, I’m kind of relevant!” to search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo! Yes, somehow Yahoo is still a thing – albeit it’s holding on for dear life by its pinkie. It’s the art, science and soul-crushing process of trying to rank higher in organic (read: free) search results.

Your goal:

• Get more visitors to your website.
• Get better visitors to your website.
• Pretend you’re not slowly losing your will to live whilst doing it.

How search engines work aka why it feels like witchcraft

Here’s the gist: search engines send their little robot minions out to crawl the internet. They sniff around, gathering info to toss into their giant, incomprehensible databases. All to decide who gets to sit at the cool kids’ table based on the mysterious, ever-changing algorithms.

Translation:

• Search engines are moody.
• The rules change constantly.
• You’re not imagining it. It is exhausting.

Your Web Presence

Spoiler | A website alone means NOTHING.

Bad News | Just because you built a website doesn’t mean anyone will find it.

Worse News | There are literally over a billion websites out there.

Actual Nightmare | Your competition is doing SEO too. Probably badly (we hope). But still.

And the cherry on top?

A website is NEVER “done”.

It’s a needy, constantly evolving entity. Neglect it and it will absolutely ghost you when you need it most.

Good News (kind of) | You can absolutely improve your odds without sacrificing your last shred of sanity. A few basics go a long way.

First things first: Analyse your site like it’s a crime scene

Before you start blaming the algorithm, check your own site for:

• Broken Links | Both within your site and outgoing ones
• Site Speed | If it loads like it’s powered by a hamster wheel, you’re doomed
• Mobile Layout | It should work well on a phone, that’s a given. It’s 2025, not 2005.

Fix your broken stuff. Make it easy for both humans and robots to find things. It’s not glamorous, but neither is being invisible.

Content SEO, because (unfortunately) words still matter

If you take away one thing, make it this:

Content is THE boss.

Three things control whether your content stands a fighting chance:

• Site Structure | Can a sleep-deprived squirrel find their way around your site? No? Fix it.
• Keywords | Use words people actually search for, not just what sounds fancy.
• Copywriting | If your site’s content is as bland as a beige buffet, Google won’t like it. Neither will people.

Pro Tip | If your site builder has an SEO plugin, use it. Those little traffic-light buttons are your new best frenemies.

Keyword Research aka why your Google searches now feel personal

Good SEO isn’t about guessing. It’s about stalking what your audience is already searching for.

Ways to do this without spontaneously combusting:

• Use keyword tools – they exist so you don’t have to suffer alone.
• Type stuff into Google and creep on the auto-suggestions. Shockingly effective. Free. Also, slightly unsettling. (You’ve been warned.)

If you’re not using actual search terms your people use, you’re basically handing out flyers in a ghost town.

SEO is an insufferable journey. Not a destination.

Once you’ve patched up your SEO basics, you can dive into the heavy stuff:

• Link-building
• Local SEO
• Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) – yes, it’s as boring as it sounds.

But honestly? Our advice:

Start small. Stay alive.

Nail the basics first. That alone will make your site 1000x less invisible, and complement anything else you’re doing like ads, carrier pigeons or interpretative dance.

The real question to ask is: how deep into SEO hellscape do you want to go? Figure that out and act accordingly.