SEO, done to Google's published rules — not agency guesswork

SEO is the work of helping Google understand and trust your site so the right people find it in search. That is all it is. Not a secret, not a trick, not something only insiders know. Google publishes exactly what it looks for, in plain documentation anyone can read. We do the work against that documentation, show you what we changed and why, and measure it with Google's own free tools, so you are paying for evidence, not promises.

We are a small UK team ourselves, so we know what you actually want: fewer suppliers, no jargon, and someone who can tell you the truth about what moves a page up Google and what does not. This page gives you the documented version of both.

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Why optimising for Google is the market, not optional

In the UK, Google handles 91.17% of all search traffic (Statcounter, May 2026). There are 68.1 million internet users here, with online penetration at 97.8% of the population (DataReportal, Digital 2026 UK). For a UK small business (and there are 5.64 million of us, 99.18% of the private sector — Department for Business and Trade, 2025), that means one company decides whether a searcher finds you or a competitor. Optimising for Google is not a tactic among many. It is the channel.

The good news, often lost in the noise: Google's own position is that overall click quality from Search has gone up, and it is "sending slightly more quality clicks to websites than a year ago," even as AI features have rolled out (Liz Reid, VP of Search, on Google's official blog, August 2025). The opportunity is real. The trick is doing the work Google actually rewards, not the work agencies like to bill for.

How Google finds and evaluates your site

Google Search works in three documented stages — crawling, indexing, and serving results (Google Search Central). Understanding these sets a realistic expectation for any SEO work, because a page has to be discovered, then crawled, then indexed, before it can ever rank.

• Crawling — Googlebot discovers pages by following links and reading your sitemap. If a page is not linked to and not in your sitemap, Google may never find it.
• Indexing — Google reads the page and decides whether to store it. Errors in robots.txt, blocked resources, or duplicate content can stop a page being indexed.
• Serving — when someone searches, Google picks the most relevant indexed pages to show.

One fact that catches many sites out: Google uses the mobile version of your site for indexing and ranking — it crawls with a smartphone agent (mobile-first indexing, Google Search Central). If content appears only on your desktop layout, Google may not pick it up at all. We check this first, because it can quietly undermine everything else.

The technical foundations — the floor before anything else matters

On-page words and content quality only count once the technical base is sound. These are the non-negotiables, each one straight from Google's documentation.

HTTPS

HTTPS has been a Google ranking signal since August 2014 and is one of the page-experience factors Google documents (Google Search Central). The UK's National Cyber Security Centre recommends HTTPS for all public-facing services. If your site is not fully served over HTTPS, that is the first fix.

Core Web Vitals

Google's "good" thresholds are specific and public: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) within 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint (INP) at 200 milliseconds or less, and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) at 0.1 or less, assessed at the 75th percentile of page loads and scored separately for mobile and desktop (web.dev). INP replaced First Input Delay as the responsiveness metric on 12 March 2024.

These are not exotic problems. According to web.dev, 40% of sites in the Chrome UX Report do not meet the recommended LCP threshold. 73% of mobile pages have an image as their LCP element (usually the banner photo), yet only 15% of eligible pages use the fetchpriority attribute to load that image first. And 66% of pages have at least one image with no set dimensions, which is the most common cause of layout shift. Your LCP image is probably your hero photo. Without fetchpriority="high", and with loading="lazy" left on it, Google treats it as low-priority and loads it last. Those are exactly the kinds of fixes that move the number.

Mobile-first indexing

Because Google indexes and ranks the mobile version, your mobile site has to carry the same content as your desktop one. Mobile performance is also harder, given network and device limits, which is where most sites fail their Core Web Vitals.

Canonicalisation

When the same content sits at more than one URL, Google has to pick which one to show. The signals it uses are ranked by strength: 301 redirects are a strong signal, rel="canonical" annotations are a strong signal, and sitemap inclusion is a weak signal (Google Search Central). Combining them increases the chance Google picks the URL you want. This matters most for online shops, where filters and sort options can spawn dozens of near-duplicate URLs.

Crawlability

Each piece of content needs a unique, crawlable URL, links built from real anchor elements (not JavaScript-only click handlers), and no robots.txt rule accidentally blocking pages you want indexed. For most small-business sites, well-linked with a modest number of pages, crawl budget is not something to worry about. It becomes a real concern only for large e-commerce catalogues with heavy faceted navigation.

On-page signals — what goes on each page and why

Once the foundations hold, the per-page work is about clarity, for both Google and the reader.

• Title tags — unique and descriptive per page. There is no prescribed character limit, though Google may truncate long titles in results.
• Meta descriptions — unique and concise. Google may rewrite them, but a good one still earns clicks when it is kept.
• Headings — use them to structure the page for readers and screen readers. Google says there is "no magical, ideal amount of headings," and from a Search perspective it does not matter if they are out of order. Heading order matters for accessibility, not for ranking.
• Images — high-quality, placed near relevant text, with descriptive alt text. Because the LCP element is so often an image, this is also a performance job, not just a content one.
• URLs — descriptive words and a consistent hierarchy help readers. But keywords in the domain or URL path alone have, in Google's words, "hardly any effect beyond appearing in breadcrumbs." So we will not rename your whole site for the sake of stuffing a keyword into a slug.
• Internal links — crawlable anchor elements with descriptive anchor text, so Google can follow the structure of your site and understand how pages relate.

This is also where shop-specific SEO lives. For online stores, ecommerce SEO is mostly the same documented work applied to product and category pages: unique titles and descriptions per product, clean canonical handling across variants and filters, and fast-loading product images. The same goes for Shopify SEO — the platform is fine; the wins come from the technical and on-page fundamentals above, done properly.

E-E-A-T and content quality — what "helpful content" actually means

Google's content guidance sits on a framework called E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust, and Google is explicit that trust is the most important; the others contribute to it (Google Search Central). The practical test is whether your content offers original information, research, or analysis rather than restating what is already everywhere. Google evaluates the Who (is authorship clear?), the How (is the creation process transparent?), and the Why (does the content serve the reader, or just chase rankings?).

This matters most for what Google calls YMYL topics (Your Money or Your Life), anything affecting health, finances, or safety, where the trust bar is highest.

On AI-written content, Google's position is calm and specific: AI-assisted content is acceptable when it adds genuine value and meets the quality standards, and Google recommends being transparent about how content was made. The problem is not the tool — it is low-value output at scale. Mass-producing pages with AI and no added value is a named spam policy, "scaled content abuse," that can lower rankings or get pages removed (Google Search Central). We use AI to assist production, never to flood your site with filler.

Structured data — the markup that earns richer results

Structured data is code that tells Google what a page means — that this is a local business, these are your opening hours, that is a review score. Google recommends JSON-LD as the format, using the schema.org vocabulary (Google Search Central). For a small business, the schemas that earn their keep are LocalBusiness, Organisation, and BreadcrumbList.

It is worth doing because it makes you eligible for rich results, and rich results measurably lift click-through. Google's own documentation cites Nestlé at an 82% higher click-through rate on rich-result pages versus non-rich pages, and Rotten Tomatoes at a 25% higher rate on pages with structured data.

One caveat: structured data does not directly improve your ranking, and Google has confirmed it is not required for AI search and that there is no special schema to add for AI. We add it for what it genuinely does — rich-result eligibility and better click-through — not as a magic ranking lever.

Google Business Profile and local search

If you serve a geographic area — and for most Peterborough and Cambridgeshire businesses, local search matters more than national ranking — your Google Business Profile is the main route into Google Maps and the local results. It is free, and verifying ownership is the first step.

Google's local results are based mainly on three things: relevance, distance, and prominence, where prominence reflects, in part, how many sites link to your business and how many reviews you have (Google Business Profile Help). LocalBusiness structured data on your website reinforces the profile, and consistent NAP — Name, Address, Phone — across the web keeps Google confident it is looking at one real business.

Your Business Profile and your website's SEO are separate systems that work together. Neither one alone gives you full local visibility.

AI search — what has actually changed (and what has not)

There is a lot of panic about AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google's documented position is reassuring and worth stating plainly: there are no additional requirements to appear in Google's generative AI features. A page simply needs to be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet. Standard SEO is the whole foundation (Google's AI optimisation guide, June 2026).

Google goes further and debunks several things you may have been sold:

• You do not need llms.txt files, AI text files, custom AI markup, or Markdown. Google Search ignores them.
• You do not need to "chunk" your content a special way.
• You do not need a special "AI writing style."

In other words, the work that gets you found in normal search is the same work that makes you eligible for AI answers. There is no separate AI checklist to buy. (Getting cited in AI answers — strengthening the entity and brand signals around your business — is a related but distinct piece of work; we cover that on our GEO / AI-visibility page rather than overload your SEO with it.)

The free tools Google gives you — and that we work from

You do not need expensive third-party software for the fundamentals. Google provides the measurement baseline for free, and it is the baseline we report against:

• Google Search Console — clicks, impressions, click-through rate and position; an Index Coverage report; a Core Web Vitals report; the URL Inspection tool; and sitemap submission. Verifying site ownership is the recommended first step.
• PageSpeed Insights — combines lab data (Lighthouse) and real-user field data (Chrome User Experience Report), for mobile and desktop. On its lab score, 90+ is good, 50–89 needs improvement, and below 50 is poor.
• Rich Results Test — validates your structured data before it goes live.

Because these are Google's own tools, the numbers in your report are the numbers Google sees, not a flattering dashboard from a tool with something to sell.

What True Noise does

We map every piece of work to a documented Google requirement above. No mystery, no "proprietary algorithm."

• Technical audit — crawlability, indexing, canonical issues, mobile-first readiness, and HTTPS, against what Google publishes.
• Core Web Vitals remediation — LCP image prioritisation (fetchpriority, removing lazy-loading from the hero), CLS fixes (setting image dimensions), and a JavaScript audit for INP.
• On-page optimisation — titles, meta descriptions, heading structure, alt text, and internal linking.
• Structured data — LocalBusiness, Organisation, and Breadcrumb schemas in JSON-LD.
• Google Business Profile — setup, verification, and audit for local visibility.
• Search Console setup and baseline reporting — so you have a real before-and-after, measured with Google's tools.

And, just as importantly, what we do not do: no buying or selling links, no excessive link exchanges, no automated link schemes, all of which Google's spam policies prohibit. No keyword stuffing. No scaled AI content. These are the practices that get sites penalised, and avoiding them is part of doing the job properly.

We are clear about the ceiling, too. Google's documentation is explicit that meeting its requirements does not guarantee crawling, indexing, or ranking. Any agency promising you "page one" is either misinformed or hoping you are. What we can promise is that the work is correct, documented, and measurable.

Proof

We would rather show you evidence than adjectives. The proof we report is framed as outcomes, never ranking guarantees:

• Search Console, before and after a technical audit — impressions, clicks, and Core Web Vitals status.
• PageSpeed Insights, before and after — with the specific fix called out (for example, "LCP reduced from X to Y by adding fetchpriority="high" and removing lazy loading from the hero image").
• Index Coverage cleaned up — crawl and indexing errors resolved so pages Google was ignoring are correctly indexed.
• Structured data validating — a LocalBusiness schema passing the Rich Results Test with zero errors, producing review stars or a knowledge panel.

For a UK e-commerce retailer, our SEO work has them ranking on page one of Google for over 350 search terms — more than 100 of them in the top three — across their core commercial keywords. Beyond that result, the position is the evidence above — Google Search Central's published requirements and web.dev's Core Web Vitals thresholds, the same documentation we do the work against and measure with Google's own free tools.

If you would like to see live examples relevant to your sector, ask and we will walk you through real Search Console data on a call.

How this fits our pricing

Most SEO work runs as part of one rolling monthly plan, with capacity pointed where it matters most for your business — and you can see the tasks and time in your client portal, with a consolidated report each month. Plans start at £350/month (Essential), with £750/month (Growth) and £990/month (Scale) for more capacity. One-off projects — a full technical audit, a Core Web Vitals remediation, a structured-data implementation — are scoped as custom work at £60/hour, with a proposal first.

No lock-in. Rolling monthly, 30 days' notice. Full detail is on our pricing page.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take to see results from SEO?

It depends. Anyone quoting you a flat "3–6 months" is guessing. Remember Google's three stages: a page has to be crawled, then indexed, then served. Technical fixes — crawl errors, indexing problems — can show up in Search Console within days to weeks. Content and authority signals take longer and vary with how competitive your market is. We focus on what is measurable and within our control, and we show you the movement as it happens rather than asking you to trust a timeline.

Do I need to do anything special to appear in Google's AI Overviews?

No. Google's documented position is that there are no additional requirements and no special optimisation needed. Standard SEO — crawlable pages, quality content, good page experience — is the foundation. Google specifically says llms.txt files, content chunking, and special "AI writing styles" are all unnecessary, and that Google Search ignores such files.

Does the number of keywords on a page affect ranking?

Not in the way the old myth suggests. There is no "ideal keyword density" — that is a legacy idea Google's systems left behind; they understand natural language and synonyms. Worse, deliberately filling a page with keywords is "keyword stuffing," a named spam policy that can lower rankings or get a page removed. We use relevant terms naturally in titles, headings, and body text, and stop there.

Is my Google Business Profile the same as my website's SEO?

They are separate but complementary. Your Business Profile controls how you appear in Maps and the local results (based mainly on relevance, distance, and prominence). Website SEO controls how your pages appear in organic web results. LocalBusiness structured data on the site reinforces the profile. You need both — neither alone gives you full local visibility.

Do backlinks still matter?

Yes. Google's ranking systems include PageRank and other link-analysis systems that assess how pages link to each other. But Google's spam policies prohibit buying or selling links, excessive link exchanges, and automated link programmes. Earned links from relevant, authoritative sources are legitimate and valuable; bought links are a liability. We will never promise or guarantee a link-building "number," because doing it the way Google rewards means earning links, not manufacturing them.

Will using AI to write content hurt my rankings?

Not in itself. Google's documented position is that AI-assisted content is fine when it adds genuine value and meets the quality bar — the issue is the output, not the tool. What gets penalised is "scaled content abuse," generating many low-value pages, which is a named spam policy. Google also recommends being transparent about how content was created. The E-E-A-T quality standard applies however the content was produced.

How can I check how Google currently sees my site?

Use the free tools Google provides. Google Search Console shows Index Coverage, Performance, and Core Web Vitals reports — verify ownership first. The URL Inspection tool shows how Google last crawled and rendered a specific page. PageSpeed Insights gives you mobile and desktop scores with real-user and lab data. The Rich Results Test validates your structured data. No paid third-party tool is needed for the basics, and if you would rather we ran all of this for you, that is exactly what our free audit does.

Does my site need to be fast on mobile or desktop?

Both — but mobile is the priority, because Google indexes and ranks the mobile version of your site. PageSpeed Insights and the Search Console Core Web Vitals report score mobile and desktop separately. Mobile performance is usually the harder of the two, given network and device constraints, and it is where most sites fall short.

See what Google can currently find on your site

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