How can I improve my SEO?

One: can it be found at all

Nothing else matters if this is broken, and it is broken more often than people believe.

• robots.txt. A stray Disallow: / from a staging deployment removes the whole site. Read the file, do not assume.
• noindex. A meta name="robots" content="noindex" left in a template is the classic silent killer. It looks like nothing is wrong.
• Canonical tags. A canonical pointing at the wrong URL — or at the homepage from every page — tells Google to ignore the page you want indexed.
• Sitemap. Not required, but it helps discovery on larger sites and it is free.
• Status codes. Pages that should 404 but return 200 fill the index with rubbish and dilute the site.

Two: titles and descriptions

The highest-value hour most sites can spend. A page needs a <title> that is unique, describes that page specifically, and reads like something a person would click.

• Aim for roughly 50–60 characters before truncation. Longer is not penalised, it is just cut off.
• Put the distinguishing words first. "Emergency plumber, Bristol — Outrings" beats "Outrings — Emergency plumber, Bristol".
• Every page different. Duplicate titles across a site are a strong signal of thin or templated content.
• The meta description does not affect ranking directly, but it affects whether anyone clicks, which affects everything downstream. Write it as ad copy, around 150 characters.

Three: does the page deliver what the title promises

This is the check most people skip. Take your title, read the page as a stranger, and ask whether the page answers it. A title claiming "complete guide to X" over four paragraphs of introduction is a mismatch, and both users and ranking systems notice.

• One primary topic per page. Two topics means neither ranks.
• Answer the question near the top. Do not make people scroll past your origin story.
• Headings that describe real sections, in order, without skipping levels.
• Enough depth to be the best answer available — which is not the same as a word count target.

Four: the technical basics that still matter

• Mobile. Indexing is mobile-first. If it is broken on a phone, that is the version being judged.
• Speed. Core Web Vitals are a real if modest factor, and a genuine factor in whether people stay.
• HTTPS. Table stakes. Also fix mixed content, which quietly breaks the padlock.
• Internal links. The most underrated item on this list. Link your related pages to each other with descriptive anchor text; it distributes authority and helps discovery for free.
• Alt text. Accessibility first, image search second.

Five: links, honestly

Links remain a major ranking factor and cannot be shortcut safely. Buying them risks a penalty; the schemes that "work" work until they do not. What actually accumulates links is publishing something worth linking to — original data, a genuinely useful tool, a definitive explanation — and then telling relevant people it exists.