10 Reasons Your Website is Losing You Customers (And How to Fix It)
You have a website. It has been live for a while. But the phone is not ringing the…
If your website is not showing up on Google when potential customers search for what you offer, it is effectively invisible. Having a great looking website is only half the job. The other half is making sure the right people can actually find it. That is where search engine optimisation comes in.
At Solar Web Design, we offer straightforward, honest SEO services for small and medium sized businesses. We do not deal in empty promises or confusing jargon. We focus on the things that genuinely move the needle, help your website rank higher in Google search results and bring in more of the right kind of customers.
SEO is a long term investment rather than a quick fix, and anyone who tells you otherwise is not being straight with you. But done properly and consistently, it is one of the most cost effective ways to grow your business online. Unlike paid advertising, the traffic you earn through SEO does not stop the moment you turn off the budget.
SEO stands for search engine optimisation. It is the process of improving your website so that it appears higher in the results when someone searches for something relevant to your business on Google or other search engines.
Think about how you find things online. You type something into Google and you click on one of the first few results. Very few people scroll past the first page. If your business is not appearing on that first page for the searches your customers are making, you are missing out on a significant amount of potential business every single day.
Good SEO works by making your website easier for Google to understand, more trustworthy in Google’s eyes and more relevant to the searches your customers are carrying out. It covers everything from the words on your pages and the speed your site loads through to the structure of your website and the links pointing to it from other sites.
We offer a range of SEO services that can be taken individually or as part of an ongoing monthly package. Everything we do is tailored to your specific business, your industry and where you are currently sitting in the search results.
Before anything else, we carry out a thorough audit of your existing website. This gives us a clear picture of where you currently stand, what is holding your rankings back and what the best opportunities are for improvement. Our audits cover your technical setup, your on-page content, your site structure, your loading speeds and your current keyword positions. You will receive a clear, plain English report of our findings and a prioritised list of recommendations.
Understanding exactly what your potential customers are searching for is the foundation of any effective SEO strategy. We carry out detailed keyword research to identify the terms and phrases that your target audience is using, how competitive those terms are and which ones represent the best opportunity for your business to rank and win traffic. This research shapes everything else we do.
On-page SEO covers all of the elements on your website that influence how Google understands and ranks your pages. This includes your page titles and meta descriptions, your heading structure, the content on each page, your image alt text, your internal linking and your URL structure. We review and optimise all of these elements to make sure every page on your website is as strong as it can be.
Technical SEO deals with the behind the scenes elements of your website that affect how Google crawls and indexes it. This includes your site speed, your mobile friendliness, your XML sitemap, your robots.txt file, your schema markup and any crawl errors or broken links that might be holding your site back. A technically sound website gives everything else you do a much better chance of working.
If your business serves customers in a specific geographic area, local SEO is one of the most valuable things you can invest in. Local SEO focuses on getting your business to appear in the map results and local search listings when people nearby search for what you offer. This includes optimising your Google Business Profile, building local citations and making sure your website clearly signals to Google which areas you serve.
Google rewards websites that publish genuinely useful, well written content that answers the questions people are searching for. We can create service pages, location pages, blog posts and other content that targets relevant search terms, builds your authority in your industry and gives potential customers a reason to choose you over a competitor.
Links from other reputable websites to yours are one of the most important signals Google uses to judge how trustworthy and authoritative your site is. We use honest, sustainable link building techniques to earn quality links that improve your domain authority and help your pages rank higher over time. We do not use spammy tactics or paid link schemes that can get your website penalised.
SEO is not a one-off task. It requires consistent effort over time to build momentum and maintain your rankings as search algorithms evolve and competitors adjust their own strategies. Our monthly SEO packages give you ongoing optimisation, regular reporting and a clear picture of how your website is performing and improving month on month.
For small and medium sized businesses, local SEO is often where the biggest and quickest wins are to be found. When someone in your area searches for the service you offer, you want your business to be one of the first things they see. That means appearing in the Google map pack as well as the organic search results below it.
Local SEO involves a combination of on-site work and off-site signals. On your website, we make sure every relevant page is optimised for the locations you serve. We structure your content so that Google understands clearly where you are based and which areas you cover. We also make sure your contact details are consistent across your website and every online directory your business appears in.
Away from your website, we optimise your Google Business Profile so that it is complete, accurate and set up to appear for the right searches. A well optimised Google Business Profile is one of the most effective tools available for getting local visibility, and it is something a surprising number of businesses have never properly set up.
We also build local citations, which are mentions of your business name, address and phone number on reputable directories and local websites. Consistent citations across the web help Google confirm that your business is legitimate and where it says it is, which has a positive impact on your local rankings.
We believe in being completely honest about what SEO can and cannot achieve, and over what timescale. Here is what you should realistically expect when you invest in SEO with us.
SEO is not a switch you flip and immediately see results from. For most businesses, it takes between 3 and 6 months to start seeing meaningful movement in rankings, and longer to reach the top positions for competitive search terms. This is normal and it is the same for every reputable SEO provider. The businesses that get the best results from SEO are the ones that commit to it consistently over time.
Unlike paid advertising where your visibility stops the moment you stop spending, the gains you make through SEO tend to be cumulative. A page that ranks well today can continue to bring in traffic for months or years with relatively little additional effort. The longer you invest in SEO, the more your results compound.
There is no point ranking for search terms that nobody is searching for, or that attract visitors who would never become customers. We focus on finding and targeting the keywords that your ideal customers are actually using, so that the traffic your website receives is genuinely useful to your business.
You will always know what we are doing, why we are doing it and what results it is producing. We provide clear, straightforward reporting that shows you your keyword rankings, your organic traffic and how these are changing over time. We do not hide behind vanity metrics or confusing reports that look impressive but do not actually tell you anything useful.
One thing that is worth understanding is that SEO and your website are closely linked. A poorly built website with slow loading speeds, bad code or a confusing structure will always limit what SEO can achieve, regardless of how much effort goes into it. If your website has significant technical issues, we will let you know and give you an honest assessment of whether a rebuild or redesign might be worth considering alongside your SEO work.
This is also why all of the websites we build at Solar Web Design are set up with proper SEO foundations from the start. Getting the technical foundations right during the build is far easier and more cost effective than trying to fix them later. If you are having a new website built by us, you are already starting from a strong position when it comes to SEO.
Find out more about our WordPress website development service and how we build SEO foundations into every site from day one.
Our SEO services are priced depending on the scope of work involved, the competitiveness of your industry and the keywords you want to target. A one-off SEO audit starts from £199. Monthly SEO packages start from £299 per month and are tailored to your specific business and goals.
We will always carry out an initial assessment of your website and your current position before recommending a package, so that we can be confident we are proposing something that will make a genuine difference to your business rather than just generating a monthly invoice.
Get in touch for a free initial consultation. Contact Solar Web Design today and let us take a look at where your website currently sits in the search results.
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What we do
Beautiful, bespoke websites designed from scratch. No templates, no compromises — just a site that's unmistakably yours and built to convert.
Deliver pixel-perfect WordPress websites under your agency's brand. We build in the background so you keep the client relationship — and the credit.
Every site we build is fast, accessible, and search-engine ready. We make sure your investment actually gets found by the right people.
Shopify and WooCommerce stores designed to sell. From product pages to checkout, every detail optimised for conversion.
Ongoing care plans to keep your site secure, fast, and up-to-date. Think of us as your dedicated web team — without the overheads.
Let's have a chat. We'll listen, advise, and point you in the right direction. Please get in contact through our enquiry form.
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Questions
For most businesses, you can expect to start seeing meaningful movement in your rankings within 3 to 6 months of consistent SEO work. Reaching the top positions for competitive keywords can take longer, sometimes 9 to 12 months or more depending on your industry and how established your competitors are. SEO is a long term strategy, but the results it produces are far more durable than those from paid advertising.
No, and you should be very wary of any SEO provider who claims they can. Google's algorithm is complex, constantly changing and ultimately outside anyone's control. What we can guarantee is that we will use honest, effective techniques that improve your website's authority and relevance over time, and that we will be transparent about the results we are producing. Sustainable SEO done properly produces lasting results. Shortcuts and guarantees rarely do.
On-page SEO refers to all of the optimisation work carried out on your website itself, including your content, your headings, your page titles, your internal links and your technical setup. Off-page SEO refers to factors outside your website that influence your rankings, most importantly the links pointing to your site from other websites. Both are important and a good SEO strategy addresses both.
SEO works best as an ongoing investment rather than a one-off project. Once you stop actively working on your SEO, your rankings can gradually slip as competitors continue to optimise their own sites and as Google's algorithm evolves. That said, a strong foundation built over time does not disappear overnight. Some businesses choose to do intensive SEO work for a period and then move to a lighter touch maintenance approach once they are happy with their rankings.
Google Business Profile is a free tool from Google that lets you manage how your business appears in Google Search and Google Maps. If you serve customers in a local area, having a properly set up and optimised Google Business Profile is one of the single most impactful things you can do for your local SEO. It allows your business to appear in the map results when people nearby search for what you offer, which can generate a significant volume of calls and enquiries.
SEO works for virtually every type of business that has customers searching online for what they offer. It tends to be particularly effective for local service businesses, tradespeople, professional services firms, health and wellness businesses, ecommerce stores and hospitality businesses. If your customers use Google to find businesses like yours, SEO is worth investing in.
Yes. Ecommerce SEO has some specific considerations compared to standard website SEO, including optimising product pages, managing duplicate content, handling out of stock products and building the right category structure. We have experience with both WooCommerce and Shopify SEO and can help ecommerce businesses improve their organic visibility and drive more traffic to their product pages.
Yes. Setting up, verifying and optimising a Google Business Profile is part of our local SEO service. We make sure your profile is complete, accurate and set up in a way that gives you the best possible chance of appearing in the local map results for relevant searches in your area.
Not necessarily, though the condition of your current website will have a significant impact on what SEO can achieve. If your site is very slow, poorly structured or has significant technical issues, we will be honest with you about whether a rebuild might be worth considering. In many cases, it is more cost effective in the long run to build a proper website first and then invest in SEO, rather than trying to optimise a site that has fundamental problems. Find out more about our website redesign service if your current site might be holding your SEO back.
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