SEO: the basics,
without the jargon

Let me start by taking some of the mystery out of this, because I think the mystery is doing a lot of damage.

SEO. Search engine optimisation. It sounds like something requiring a degree and expensive software and a fella in a hoodie who talks too fast. For most people running a tourism business, it sits in that category of things you know you probably should be doing something about, but have never felt confident enough to go near.

I want to change that today, because the reality of this for a small tourism business is far simpler, and far more within reach, than the industry built around it would have you believe.

SEO is not magic.

It is just making sure Google understands what you do and where you do it.

That is it. Everything else, all the terminology, all the tools, all the agencies charging serious monthly retainers, exists around that one idea. And the most effective things you can do flow directly out of it.

Let me explain how Google actually works, because once you have that, the rest follows naturally.

Think of Google as a very keen librarian. Her whole job is to file every website she knows about in exactly the right place, so that when somebody comes in with a question, she can put her hand straight on the best answer. She reads your website, works out what she thinks it is about, and decides which drawer you belong in.

If your pages say clearly what you do and where you do it, she files you correctly. And when somebody asks for exactly that thing in exactly that place, up you come. She found your file and it matched the question.

But if your pages are vague, and I mean great experiences, warm Irish welcome, stunning scenery, then she is stuck. She has a file in her hand that could go in four different drawers and she is not sure which. So she puts you somewhere general. Which means you only show up for vague searches, which means you miss the people looking for precisely what you do.

And Google is not the only one reading anymore. The AI tools people now use to plan trips are doing the same job. Social platforms use the same signals. The travel sites pull from the same sources. All of them are looking for the same thing: clear, specific, credible content about what you offer and where you offer it.

So what is the single most effective thing you can do? Be specific. It is free, it is available to you this afternoon, and hardly anybody is doing it properly.

Here is a real example.

Say you run walking tours in Connemara. A dedicated page on your website called Guided Walking Tours in Connemara. And on it, the actual routes. The ground underfoot. What is included, what to wear, how long it takes. Who leads it and what she knows. Why Connemara in particular repays walking it slowly.

That page will outrank a vague Our Tours page nearly every time. Not because of any trick. Because it answers, directly and in detail, the question a real person typed into a search box at ten o'clock last night.

And here is the useful consequence of that. The content work and the SEO work are the same work. Writing clearly and specifically about what you do, in your own voice, using the words your visitors would naturally use themselves, is good content and good SEO at the same time. You are not doing two jobs. You are doing one.

There is one more thing on specificity that is worth the minute, because it catches nearly everybody out.

Use the words your visitors use, not the words your industry uses.

We talk about experiences and product and offerings and visitor journeys. Nobody searches for any of that. They search for boat trip. Things to do with kids when it is raining. Falconry. Somewhere to walk with the dog. Whiskey tasting. A day out near Westport.

So the words that ought to be on your page are the words people actually say out loud, and the easiest way to find them is to stop guessing. Look at the questions coming into your inbox and notice the words they use. Listen to how people describe you on the phone. Read your own reviews, and I mean read them properly, because your guests describe what you do far better than your website does. Whatever words keep coming up, those are the words to put on the page.

And while you are at it, check the ordinary ones are there too. The name of your county. The name of the nearest town people will have heard of. The names of the places nearby that visitors are likely to be searching around. Plenty of lovely websites never once name the county they are in, and then wonder why nobody finds them.

Now, one thing I want to be blunt about, because there is a lot of noise in this space.

Anybody promising you page one within a week is selling something that does not exist. Good search visibility is a steady build. The gains compound as your site builds up credibility in its category, and it takes months, not days.

But here is the other side of that. Once you are climbing, you tend to stay up. It keeps working at three in the morning in the middle of January, without you paying for every click.

So what can you do this week? Three jobs.

The first one. Search for yourself. Open Google in a private browsing window and type your main activity plus your location, the way a stranger would. Kayaking Dingle. Guided tours Killarney. Glamping Wicklow. Where do you come up? Page one? Page three? Nowhere at all? Whatever you find, that is your starting point, and it is telling you exactly what Google currently believes about you.

The second. Look at the titles of your main pages. Our Tours is a poor title. Guided Sea Kayaking Tours in Dingle, County Kerry is a good one. The title of a page is one of the strongest signals you send about what that page is for, and if yours are generic, changing them is quick and it makes a real difference.

And the third. Ask whether each of your main offerings has a page of its own. One page covering three different tours is much harder for a librarian to file than three pages, each about one tour, each with its own location and route and reason for existing.

And here is what I want to leave you with.

You do not need to become an expert in any of this. What is needed is the thing only you have: the knowledge of your own patch, your own experience, and the people who come to you. The technical end can be handled by somebody else.

But nobody else can tell Google what it is actually like to walk that stretch of Connemara in October. Only you can do that, and that is the part that does the work.

Your first hello starts appearing exactly where people are already searching.

That is what good SEO is really for.