SEO sounds complicated because people write about it in a complicated way. In reality it breaks down into three questions. Can Google even see your page. Does your content answer what people are searching for. And does anyone else on the internet trust you. Answer those three honestly and you already know where your problem is.
Layer one: can Google see you
This is the technical part, and it is the one where mistakes are most expensive. The most important thing is that your text exists in the raw HTML of the page, not only after the browser runs scripts. A simple test: open the page, right click and choose view page source. If your headline and first paragraph are not in there, the search engine sees an empty page.
Every page needs its own title, its own description and a canonical address that points to itself. A title that usually fits fully in a search result is around 55 to 60 characters, a description around 150 to 155. One company should have one main address. If a www version and a non www version, an https and an http version all work at once, you split your value into four parts and none of them is whole.
Once that is in order, create a sitemap and submit it to Google Search Console. It is a free tool that shows which pages are indexed, which are not and why. Without it you are working blind. In the first weeks watch one number: indexed pages against total pages. If 6 out of 40 are indexed, the technical layer is broken and writing content will not help.
Layer two: does the content answer the question
People search for a solution to their problem, not for the name of your service. Write down the questions clients ask you on the phone and check whether your site answers each one. One page per question. Headings should be in plain language and the first paragraph should give the answer immediately, not after an introduction about company values.
The Latvian market has one big advantage: competition in Latvian is far lower than in English. Search volumes are small, often one or two hundred a month, but those people are local and have a real need. Twenty such searches a month that turn into two conversations are usually worth more than a thousand visits from unrelated content.
A good example of scale is intereses.lv, the site of the Riga interest education methodical centre, where there is a great deal of content and the main job is organising it so a visitor finds the right page and a search engine understands what each page is about. When content is large, structure matters more than keywords. If your site is still a business card, start with Your website as a marketing tool, not a business card.
Layer three: does anyone else trust you
Google looks at who points to you. Links from other sites, industry directories, partners, press articles and client pages show that you are real. You do not need hundreds of links. You need a few genuine ones: a partner, a local industry portal, a client who lists you as a supplier, an association you belong to.
For local businesses a Google business profile often does more than everything else combined. Fill it in completely, add real photos and opening hours, and ask for reviews from clients who are already happy. Ten genuine written reviews move the result more than fifty empty stars.
The mistakes that repeat most
- The same title on every page, usually just the company name.
- Text placed inside an image, so a search engine cannot read it at all.
- A rebuilt site with new addresses and no redirects from the old ones.
- One long page trying to win ten different searches at once.
- A blog whose latest post is from 2022.
A five step order
- Check that your main pages are indexed and submit a sitemap to Google Search Console.
- Fix titles, descriptions and canonical addresses on every page.
- Write five pages that answer the five most common client questions.
- Sort out your Google business profile and earn your first ten genuine links.
- Measure once a month and write the next page instead of rewriting the old one.
How long it takes
Google notices technical fixes within a few weeks. Content work starts to show results after three to six months, and after a year in the more competitive searches. That is a long time, which is why paid ads often run alongside it, as we describe in Google and Meta ads. You can see both channels in one place in our own tool markflow.eu. If you would rather we handled it, look at our services or write to hello@polaroaks.com.