Stratos / Blog / SEO

How to reach Google's first page — 7 steps

It doesn't take magic, it takes a system. These seven steps are worth doing in order — and until you're past the first, the seventh is pointless.

Category SEO Written by Stratos

Illustration for the article about search engine optimisation.

Two half-truths circulate about search optimisation. One says it's all about money, the other that it's a trick. Neither is true. Google is trying to decide whether your page answers what somebody typed best — and it uses signals that you set yourself, for the most part.

The first page isn't the goal. The enquiry is. What sits between them is getting there for the right question.

1. Decide which question you want to answer

The most common mistake is a business trying to rank for its own trade term while its customers type something else entirely. Nobody searches for "landscape architecture delivery" — they search for "automatic irrigation system price".

Write down what people ask you on the phone. Those phrases are your starting point, not the ones you would use at a trade conference. If you are still at the basics, our article on what SEO is gives you the frame first.

2. One question, one page

If one page tries to rank for five different services, it will rank for none. Every service you take seriously deserves its own page, with its own headline and its own copy. That's an SEO decision and a sales decision at once: the visitor sees exactly what they came for.

3. Write the copy the way you'd say it

There's no need to cram keywords into sentences. If your service is described plainly, the phrases will be there anyway. What is worth doing deliberately:

put the point in the first paragraph, not under the third subheading;
say where you work — in local search that's decisive;
let the headline say what the reader gets, rather than repeating the brand name.

4. Sort out the headings

Every page should carry exactly one H1, and it should say what the page is about. H2s below it break up the content. This isn't an aesthetic question: search engines read the page's structure from it, and a visitor using a screen reader literally navigates by it.

How does this add up for you?You don't have to finish reading before you ask. Tell us your situation and you'll get a specific answer.

Let's talk about it

5. Make the page faster

Speed matters in two places: indirectly in ranking, directly with the visitor. Anyone who backs out of a slow page to the results list is a lost enquiry — and Google sees that behaviour.

The most common cause is almost always the same: oversized images. A photo taken on a phone and uploaded as-is is often several megabytes, where a fraction of that would do.

6. Get a Google Business Profile

For a local business the map result often brings clients before the website does, and it's free. If it isn't set up yet, this is the fastest-paying step on the whole list.

We wrote a separate guide about it: Setting up a Google Business Profile, step by step.

7. Give it time, and measure

Search optimisation isn't a switch, it's compound interest. The first changes are usually measured in weeks, not days. That's why you need measurement: if you can't see what visitors arrive for, you're guessing.

Where we come inSteps 1–5 are part of building the site, not something bolted on afterwards. On a new site they cost nothing extra; on an existing site they're a rebuild. That's why it's worth discussing at the start.

What not to do

Don't buy links, don't copy your competitor's text, and don't believe anyone who guarantees first place. First place isn't for sale, because the seller doesn't decide it.