How Can Romford Businesses Get Local Links to Improve Their SEO?
January 14, 2026
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If you run a business in Romford or elsewhere in Essex, getting your website onto Google is only the beginning.
The real challenge is getting it to appear when potential customers search for the products or services you actually provide.
You might already have a professional-looking website but still struggle to appear for searches such as:
“Electrician in Romford”
“Accountant near me”
“Beauty clinic Romford”
“Website developer Essex”
So, what can you actually do to improve your position?
There isn’t one switch that suddenly puts a website at the top of Google. SEO is a combination of making your website technically sound, creating genuinely useful content, clearly explaining what your business offers and giving Google enough information to understand where and when your pages are relevant.
Here are some of the areas worth concentrating on.
Before worrying about complicated SEO strategies, make sure the basics of your website are working properly.
Google needs to be able to find, understand and index your pages.
Your website should have:
Google’s own SEO guidance recommends organising websites logically, using descriptive URLs and creating page titles that clearly describe the content.
You don’t necessarily need a brand-new website to improve your SEO.
Sometimes an existing WordPress website simply needs its structure, content and technical setup improving.
One of the most common problems we see with small business websites is trying to fit everything onto one page.
Imagine a company provides:
But the website only has a homepage and a generic Services page.
That gives both customers and search engines very little detailed information about each individual service.
Creating dedicated pages allows you to properly explain what each service involves.
For example:
/boiler-servicing/
/boiler-installation/
/emergency-plumbing/
Each page can answer questions specifically related to that service.
This also means somebody searching for boiler servicing doesn’t have to land on a generic page and hunt around for the information they need.
A good website structure helps both people and search engines understand what your business actually does. Google recommends logically organising related content and using clear, descriptive URLs.
If you want to attract customers around Romford, your website should make that clear.
That doesn’t mean adding “Romford, Essex” to every paragraph.
It means naturally explaining where you work throughout relevant parts of your site.
For example:
Providing commercial cleaning services to businesses throughout Romford, Hornchurch, Upminster and the surrounding areas of Essex.
That’s useful information for an actual customer.
Compare that with:
Romford cleaner Essex cleaning company cleaners Romford Essex.
That’s written for a search engine rather than a human being — and it makes your website look terrible.
Google recommends using the words people are likely to use when searching for your content while creating content primarily to help people rather than manipulate search rankings.
Local information should therefore be natural, accurate and genuinely useful.
Location pages can be valuable when they’re genuinely useful.
If you serve Romford, Hornchurch, Brentwood and other areas of Essex, there may be situations where dedicated pages make sense.
But simply copying the same page 30 times and replacing the town name isn’t a particularly strong strategy.
A useful local page should contain information relevant to that area.
That could include:
Think about whether the page provides something useful that your main service page doesn’t.
If not, you may not need it.
Your page title is one of the clearest opportunities to explain what a page is about.
Rather than something vague such as:
Services | Company Name
you could use:
Commercial Cleaning Services in Romford | Company Name
Or instead of:
Websites | HelloScotty
something such as:
WordPress Website Development in Romford | HelloScotty
The title should accurately describe the page rather than simply stuffing it with keywords.
Google recommends titles that are clear, concise, unique to the page and descriptive of its contents.
Meta descriptions are the short descriptions that may be used underneath your page title in Google search results.
Google can also generate its own search snippet from the content of your page, so your supplied description won’t necessarily appear every time.
However, writing a useful description is still worthwhile.
Instead of:
Welcome to our website. Click here to find out more about our services.
try something specific:
Need a professionally built WordPress website? HelloScotty designs and manages websites for businesses in Romford, Essex and across the UK.
Think of it as a short sales pitch explaining why somebody should choose your result.
SEO content doesn’t need to mean publishing articles every day.
In fact, I’d rather see a small business with five genuinely useful articles than 100 pages created simply because somebody was told blogging improves SEO.
Think about the questions customers regularly ask you.
For a web developer, those might be:
For a builder:
Those questions can become genuinely useful content.
Google says its ranking systems are designed to prioritise helpful, reliable, people-first content rather than content produced primarily to manipulate rankings.
So write for your potential customer first.
SEO comes afterwards.
You might not need more pages.
You may simply need better pages.
Look through your existing website and ask:
Does this page properly answer what somebody searching for this service would want to know?
A good service page might explain:
A page containing three sentences and a stock photo doesn’t give Google—or your customer—very much to work with.
Don’t add filler simply to make pages longer.
Add information because it’s useful.
For businesses serving local customers, your Google Business Profile is an important part of your overall online presence.
Make sure the information is complete and accurate, including:
Google says local search results are primarily based on relevance, distance and prominence, and recommends keeping Business Profile information complete and accurate.
Your website and Google Business Profile should also tell a consistent story.
If your website says you’re based in Romford but your profile says something completely different, that’s hardly ideal for customers.
Reviews can play an important role in local search and, just as importantly, can influence whether somebody actually chooses your business.
Google says that more reviews and positive ratings can help a business’s local ranking.
Don’t make the process complicated.
After successfully completing work, simply ask your customer whether they’d be happy to leave a Google review.
You can then showcase genuine customer feedback on your website too.
Testimonials work particularly well on:
Reviews aren’t just about SEO.
They’re about giving somebody who has never worked with you before a reason to trust you.
If you want potential customers—and Google—to better understand what you do, show your actual work.
Case studies give you an opportunity to explain:
They’re also naturally unique.
No competitor can write about your projects, your experience and your customers in exactly the same way you can.
That makes case studies particularly valuable content for a business website.
Links from other websites can also help Google discover and understand content.
But quality is far more important than simply trying to collect hundreds of links.
Good opportunities might come from:
Focus on links that make genuine sense for your business.
We’ve covered this in more detail in our guide to how Romford businesses can get local links to improve their SEO.
A beautifully optimised page isn’t much use if Google can’t access it.
Google Search Console is useful for checking how Google sees your website and whether pages are being indexed.
It can help you identify issues including:
Google itself recommends Search Console as one of the resources website owners can use when optimising for organic search.
SEO shouldn’t be separated from the experience somebody has once they actually arrive.
A potential customer isn’t going to care that you’ve perfectly optimised your title tags if your website is frustrating to use.
Check your site on a phone.
Look at things such as:
Technical improvements aren’t just about chasing an SEO score.
They’re about making your website better for actual visitors.
Internal links connect pages within your own website.
For example, an article about improving website enquiries might naturally link to:
These links help visitors discover related information and help search engines understand how pages on your site relate to one another.
Don’t force them.
Link when it makes sense.
SEO isn’t necessarily about changing something every week.
But websites shouldn’t be abandoned either.
Periodically review:
Your business changes over time.
Your website should change with it.
SEO usually isn’t something where you change three headings on Monday and wake up number one on Tuesday.
Google doesn’t guarantee rankings, and nobody offering SEO services can legitimately guarantee you the number-one position. Google’s own guidance specifically warns businesses to be cautious of anyone making guaranteed ranking claims.
How quickly you see improvement will vary depending on factors such as:
The important thing is to concentrate on making steady, useful improvements rather than looking for shortcuts.
Not necessarily.
An older website may still have a perfectly good foundation.
You might simply need to improve:
However, if the website is extremely slow, difficult to update, poorly structured or no longer represents the business properly, rebuilding it may be the more sensible long-term solution.
A good web developer should be able to explain why a rebuild is necessary rather than automatically trying to sell you one.
If you want somewhere practical to begin, check these first:
You don’t need to fix everything at once.
Start with the areas most likely to make your website clearer and more useful.
Ranking higher on Google isn’t about finding one secret SEO trick.
It’s about building a website that clearly communicates:
Who you are.
What you provide.
Where you provide it.
Why somebody should trust you.
Then making sure Google can properly access and understand that information.
At HelloScotty, we design, develop and manage WordPress websites for businesses in Romford, Essex and across the UK.
Whether you need an affordable starter website, a larger growth-focused build, improvements to an existing WordPress site or ongoing hosting and website management, we build strong SEO foundations into the way your website is structured.
No promises of overnight number-one rankings.
No unnecessary SEO jargon.
Just practical website improvements designed to help your business build stronger visibility online.
Start by making sure your website clearly explains your services and location, has useful individual service pages, is technically accessible to Google and is supported by an accurate Google Business Profile. Reviews, useful content and relevant local links can also support your wider local SEO strategy.
There is no guaranteed timeframe. Results depend on your current website, competition, search terms, location and the changes being made. Be cautious of anyone guaranteeing a specific ranking or promising instant results.
Only where it’s relevant. Your location should be clear, but repeatedly inserting “Romford” into sentences purely for SEO can make your content unnatural. Write primarily for your customers and include local information where it genuinely helps them.
No. There is no requirement to publish an article every week. Concentrate on producing genuinely useful content that answers questions relevant to your customers rather than publishing content simply to hit a schedule. Google’s guidance focuses on helpful, reliable, people-first content.
Google states that reviews and positive ratings can help local ranking, alongside other factors. Reviews are also valuable because they give prospective customers evidence that other people have successfully used your business.
Yes. You don’t automatically need a new website. HelloScotty can help improve existing WordPress websites through better page structure, content, performance, technical setup and SEO foundations, as well as ongoing website management and hosting.
Scott Hardy-Bachan is the founder of HelloScotty, a Romford-based WordPress website development studio helping businesses build, improve and manage websites that are clear, reliable and designed to generate results. With a practical, straight-talking approach, Scott specialises in WordPress development, Elementor websites, hosting, website management and ongoing support.
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