SEO for startups in London

Positioning in search terms

The category buyers put you in and the words they use for the problem you solve, checked against what people in London and the UK actually type, before anyone writes a tagline.

Launch-ready structure

URL plan, navigation and page templates agreed with your developers or ours before the site is built, so you never pay for a migration you could have avoided.

The first twenty pages

The product or service pages, the category page, the comparisons, the questions buyers ask and the about page that makes you a recognisable entity, written in the order they will earn.

Brand search owned

Your name, your name plus "reviews", "pricing", "login" and "vs", and a consistent entity across the site, Companies House, LinkedIn, Crunchbase and the Business Profile if you see customers.

Technical set-up at launch

GA4, Search Console, an XML sitemap, structured data, speed checked on a phone, staging kept out of the index, all in accounts you own.

A founder-sized content plan

What to write next and why, in a list you can hand to a writer or follow yourself. We write it or you do; the plan is the same.

A one-page monthly report

Three numbers that matter to a founder (brand searches, category impressions, sign-ups or sales from search) with the work completed and the next step.

A budget plan with the triggers written down

When the evidence justifies moving to a retainer, when to add paid search, and when to do nothing more for now.

How we do it

Positioning comes first, in search terms. A startup usually describes itself in the language of its pitch deck, and buyers almost never search in that language. We find the category people already use, the words they type for the problem you solve, and the phrases your nearest alternatives rank for, from Keyword Planner, Search Console once it has data, and hand research. The result is a one-page note that decides the page titles, the navigation and the first twenty pages. It is also the document that stops the site being rebuilt around a new tagline every quarter.

Structure is the cheapest decision and the most expensive to reverse. Before a designer opens a file we agree the URL plan, the navigation and the templates with whoever is building the site, ours or yours. Muhammad Abubakar, our Full-Stack Developer and Lead, builds in Next.js and Shopify; Abdur Rehman handles WordPress; Muhammad Saad, our Web Designer, shapes the hierarchy so visitors understand the offer and know what to do next. If you already have developers, we write the plan as a specification they can build from and we check the staging site before launch. The web design page covers the build itself.

Then the first twenty pages, in order of what they will earn: the product or service pages, the category page, the comparison pages buyers read before they choose, the questions they ask, and an about page that names the founders and matches Companies House and LinkedIn, because that is how both Google and AI assistants decide you are a real company. Brand search is secured within weeks of indexing: your name, your name with "reviews", "pricing", "login" and "vs", each pointing at a page you control. Then the category and problem searches, which take longer and are planned with a six-month horizon so nobody is surprised. Muhammad Ali, our SEO Specialist, leads the plan; Faisal Latif, Growth Director, keeps it centred on outcomes rather than activity.

What changes and when

Technical fixes are usually re-crawled within two to eight weeks. Local search changes often show within one to three months. Competitive London head terms usually take six to twelve months. These are typical ranges from our own work, not a promise for your site, and we report progress every month so you can see which it is.

A startup starts from zero, which changes the shape of those ranges. Brand searches usually show in Search Console within weeks of the site being indexed, and they are the first thing we check. Category and problem phrases take months, because a new domain has no history and competes with sites that have years of it; we write down which are winnable inside six months and which are a year away. At 90 days we sit down with the evidence and decide together whether to grow the budget, hold it or stop, and the decision is written into the plan. The guide to how long SEO takes explains why the clock runs differently for a new site.

How it is measured

What we report, on one page: brand impressions and clicks (is the name being searched, and are you winning it), category impressions (are you appearing for the problem you solve), pages indexed against the plan, and the sign-ups, demos, orders or bookings that came from search. Where it comes from: Google Search Console and GA4 in accounts you own, plus your sign-up or order data where you share it. How often: monthly, with a 90-day review where the budget decision is made.

What we do not report: a traffic number with no sign-up behind it, a ranking for a phrase nobody types, or a "domain score" from a tool. Founders have enough dashboards; the report is three numbers, the work done and the next step.

What it costs to find out

Nothing. The free SEO audit is a written review of your site by an SEO specialist from the team, delivered within two working days of your request. If nothing is live yet, send us the staging link or the plan and we review that instead, on the same two-working-day promise. It ends with one honest paragraph on fit, including, where it is true, that you do not need an agency yet and should spend the money on the product.

Startup work is sold as a launch project (positioning, structure, set-up and the first pages, with an end date) or as the entry tier of a managed retainer once there is something to grow. What drives the price is whether we build the site or your developers do, how many of the first twenty pages we write, and how contested your category is. Pricing is published on the pricing page; our terms, including that there is no minimum term, are on the before you sign page. These terms are proposed and are confirmed in writing before you sign.

Common mistakes we see on London startups

• A "coming soon" page for six months, so launch day is the first day Google learns the site exists.
• The staging site left indexable and outranking the live one for the company name.
• A brand name shared with something bigger (a common word, a film, a US company) and no plan to own the search for it.
• Blog first, product pages last. The blog brings readers who never buy while the pages that would convert do not exist.
• A .io or .ai bought for the brand and a .co.uk bought for the search, with neither redirected to the other and both half-built.
• URLs changed at every redesign, so a two-year-old company has had three sites and kept the history of none of them.
• Chasing "fintech London" or "coffee London" head terms when the searches that pay are the product plus the problem plus, where it applies, the place.
• An about page written for investors with no founder names, no address and no company number, so Google and AI assistants cannot tell it is a real company.

How it fits with other services

When the evidence says search is working, the plan becomes a managed retainer and the budget grows with it. If the site needs building, web design runs alongside with the structure already decided. The first twenty pages are content work with a tight brief. Paid search is the right way to test a category before you build pages for it, and our SEO versus Google Ads guide explains which to fund first. A startup that outgrows its first platform will need a migration, which is far cheaper if the structure was right to begin with. Because new companies are described by AI assistants from whatever they can find, we check how they describe you as part of the launch; see AI search optimisation.

Proof, stated plainly

Brand system for Bodyrade: identity, product visuals, film and sponsorship assets built before launch, so the name, the imagery and the search presence arrived together. This case describes creative delivery before launch, not a measured sales outcome, and we say so. Read the Bodyrade case.

We have not yet published a startup SEO case with a traffic or sign-up figure. Our London clients to date are in social and reputation work, and we would rather say so than borrow a case and call it a startup. Ask us for a reference call; every case we publish names the client, the figure, the source and the date.

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