I have spent a ridiculous amount of my working life thinking about Google.
For more than 20 years, I built websites, worked on SEO, created ecommerce sites, managed Google Ads campaigns and tried to understand why some pages climbed the rankings while others disappeared into the wilderness.
At different points, that meant competing for searches around web design in Felixstowe, SEO in Suffolk, ecommerce development, local business marketing and all the other phrases that businesses wanted to appear for.
I don't really offer those services anymore.
These days, I am much more interested in building my own products, websites and online businesses. But looking back, the years I spent working in SEO taught me lessons that still influence almost everything I build today.
SEO Used to Feel Much More Mechanical
When I first started doing SEO, there was often a feeling that rankings could be engineered.
You found the keyword. You put it in the right places. You built links. You created pages targeting slightly different variations of essentially the same search.
For a while, that worked remarkably well.
If somebody searched for something like SEO Suffolk, SEO near me or Felixstowe web design, the temptation was to create a page specifically designed around that phrase.
And plenty of businesses did exactly that.
You would end up with websites containing dozens of almost identical location pages, each one carefully adjusted to mention a different town or service.
Some of them ranked very well.
But the internet has changed.
The Search Term Is Not the Same as the Intent
One of the biggest lessons I learned was that the phrase somebody types into Google is only the beginning.
You have to understand what they are actually trying to accomplish.
Someone searching for SEO near me probably isn't interested in reading a technical explanation of search engine optimisation. They are likely trying to find somebody they can trust to help their business.
Someone searching for Felixstowe web design might be comparing local companies, looking for examples of previous work or simply trying to work out how much a new website is going to cost.
Someone searching for ecommerce websites might be much earlier in the process and still deciding whether they need Shopify, WooCommerce or something custom-built.
The search phrase matters, but the intention behind it matters far more.
That principle has followed me into everything I do now.
Good Websites Were Always More Important Than Good SEO
This is probably the part that would have annoyed the younger version of me.
You can optimise a terrible website.
You can improve its headings, rewrite its title tags, build links and make Google understand exactly what the page is about.
But if the website itself is confusing, slow, unconvincing or simply not useful, none of that fixes the underlying problem.
The best-performing projects were usually the ones where everything worked together:
- The website was easy to use.
- The content answered real questions.
- The business proposition was obvious.
- The site loaded quickly.
- The pages had a clear purpose.
- The SEO supported the website instead of trying to rescue it.
That sounds obvious now, but it was easy to forget when everybody was obsessed with rankings.
Local SEO Taught Me the Value of Relevance
Working with businesses around Suffolk, Ipswich and Felixstowe also taught me how powerful relevance can be.
A smaller local business often did not need to outrank every company in Britain.
It needed to appear at exactly the right moment for exactly the right person.
If somebody in Suffolk was looking for SEO help, or somebody in Felixstowe needed a website, being locally relevant could be far more valuable than attracting thousands of visitors from elsewhere.
That lesson still applies today, even though the platforms have changed.
Whether I am building a niche website, creating TikTok Shop content or developing one of my own products, I am still thinking about the same basic question:
Who is this actually for?
I Eventually Stopped Wanting to Build for Other People
One of the biggest changes in my career had nothing to do with Google.
I gradually realised that I enjoyed building far more than I enjoyed servicing.
There is a difference.
Client work means solving somebody else's problem, working within somebody else's priorities and often handing over something you have spent months creating.
There is nothing wrong with that. It supported me for years.
But I increasingly wanted to use those same skills on my own ideas.
Instead of building an ecommerce website for somebody else, I wanted to build my own.
Instead of improving somebody else's conversion rate, I wanted to test my own ideas.
Instead of running Google Ads campaigns for clients, I wanted to understand acquisition for products I actually owned.
That shift changed everything.
The Funny Thing Is, the Old Skills Never Disappeared
I might not describe myself as an SEO consultant anymore, but I still use SEO almost every day.
I still think about page titles.
I still think about internal linking.
I still look at search queries and ask why Google is showing a particular page.
I still think about what somebody expects to find after clicking a result.
I still build websites with structure, speed and usability in mind.
The difference is that SEO is no longer the product.
It is just one part of the toolbox.
Search Data Is Still Incredibly Useful
One thing I still love is looking at the phrases Google associates with a website.
Sometimes they reveal opportunities you would never have deliberately researched.
A site might start appearing for searches around SEO, web design, Google Ads, ecommerce or a particular industry because of work you did years ago.
The old instinct would be to immediately create a landing page targeting every one of those phrases.
I don't think that is always the right move anymore.
Sometimes the better approach is simply to ask:
Why does Google think I know something about this?
Then create something genuinely useful from the answer.
That might be a retrospective, a case study, a lesson from an old project or an explanation of how your thinking has changed.
You can acknowledge the subject without pretending you still provide the service.
I Would Rather Build Authority Than Chase Keywords
If I were starting again today, I would spend much less time obsessing over exact phrases.
I would still do keyword research, because understanding demand matters.
But I would use those searches as clues rather than instructions.
If Google repeatedly showed my website for searches related to Suffolk SEO, local web design or ecommerce development, I would not automatically create three new sales pages.
I would look for the story behind them.
Maybe I could explain how local SEO changed over 20 years.
Maybe I could write about mistakes I made building ecommerce websites.
Maybe I could talk about why I moved away from client work altogether.
Those articles would still be relevant to the searches, but they would also be worth reading.
The Best SEO Advice I Can Give Now
After all those years, my view of SEO has become much simpler.
- Build something useful.
- Write for real people.
- Make it obvious what each page is about.
- Understand why somebody is searching.
- Don't create pages purely because a keyword exists.
- Give Google enough structure to understand your content.
- Then get back to building something worth finding.
I spent years chasing better rankings.
What I eventually learned was that the ranking was rarely the most interesting part.
The interesting part was always what happened after somebody arrived.
And that is still the bit I care about today.
