I had a quiet little smile to myself this morning. Google has just updated their official guidance on hiring an SEO company, and for the first time in nearly a decade, it reads like the old Google again. The Google I used to follow back when I first started.
If you've ever been tempted by a "guaranteed page one" cold call, an unsolicited email about "fixing your rankings," a £49-a-month "AI SEO" package, or one of those tools that claims to be "Google approved," this is the blog you need to read.
What's Actually Changed
Google's "Do you need an SEO?" document has been around for years. It's their official advice to business owners on what a good SEO company should look like, and what the warning signs are when someone's trying to take you for a ride.
They've trimmed it down considerably, modernised the language, and added two brand new sections. One is on so-called "AI search optimisation" (called AEO or GEO in some agency pitches). The other is on third-party SEO tools and audits. Combined with the warnings that were already in there, the document is essentially a checklist of every dodgy SEO practice I've spent twenty years telling tradespeople to avoid.
A Bit of History (Bear With Me, It Matters)
Back in the early days of my SEO journey, almost twenty years ago now, I used to follow a bloke called Matt Cutts religiously. I'd just come off the tools and was figuring this digital game out. Matt Cutts was the head of Google's web spam team, and effectively the public voice of how Google wanted you to do SEO.
His advice was refreshingly simple: build great websites for humans. Write proper content. Don't try to game us. Make yourself genuinely useful, and we'll reward that over time.
That advice has never steered me wrong. Not once. In nearly twenty years.
Matt Cutts stepped away from Google in 2014 and officially left in 2016. Since then, Google has had a different lineup of public faces. Danny Sullivan came in as their Search Liaison. John Mueller and Gary Illyes from the Search Relations team have been fielding questions from the SEO community for years. And, to be fair, John Mueller in particular gives some genuinely useful guidance when you can pin him down on a specific question.
But none of them are Matt Cutts. The clarity of that one voice, telling you exactly how Google wanted you to do SEO, has been replaced by a more scattered setup. Bits of advice on Twitter. Office hours videos. Reddit AMAs. Some of it's great, some of it contradicts itself, and a lot of it gets lost in the noise. It's all a bit hit and miss, in other words.
And in that gap, the public-facing SEO guidance from Google got muddled. More corporate. More hedged. Less direct. The era of "here's straight advice from someone who understands it" was replaced by "we can't really say what works."
And right on cue, the cowboys came back. "AI SEO" agencies. Link-package sellers. "Guaranteed page one" merchants. Tools claiming to be "Google approved." All the stuff Matt Cutts had spent a decade calling out, suddenly back in fashion because the public guidance had gone quiet and there was a vacuum to fill.
This week's update changes that. The directness is back. The plain English is back. The "find someone else if they guarantee page one" kind of language is back. Google has come round to the old way of thinking, which, in my view, was the correct way all along.
So let's go through what they've said.
Warning 1: The "AI SEO" Mob
There's been a wave of agencies popping up over the last 18 months promising they can "optimise your site for AI search" or "get you ranked in ChatGPT." A lot of them are charging eye-watering monthly fees.
Google's new guidance is clear: if your SEO is selling you AEO or GEO services, their advice needs to line up with Google's actual published guidance on how AI features in search work. In plain English, there are no special tricks, there's no secret AI keyword you can sprinkle on your website, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling smoke.
Glenn Gabe, one of the most respected names in SEO globally, reckons Google is gearing up for a spam update specifically aimed at sites trying to game AI Search, possibly with new manual penalties on the way for the worst offenders. If you're paying for AEO or GEO services right now, ask hard questions about what they're actually doing. If the answer is a lot of jargon and not much substance, you've got your answer.
Warning 2: SEO Tools and "Free" Audits
Google has added a whole new section warning about two things every tradesperson should pay attention to:
- SEO audits. If someone offers you a "free SEO audit," only ever grant them read access to your Google Search Console. Never write access. Read access lets them look at your data and tell you what's going on. Write access lets them change settings, submit URLs, and potentially do real damage to your site's visibility. You wouldn't hand a stranger the keys to your van just because they offered to give it a clean. Same principle.
- "Google approved" tools. Google has stated, in red highlighted text in the document, that they do not endorse, evaluate, or approve any third-party SEO tools. None of them. Zero. So if a tool or agency is telling you they're "Google approved," "Google recommended" or a "Google partner" for SEO, it's marketing fluff at best, dishonest at worst.
Warning 3: The Cold-Email Spam Epidemic
Every tradesperson reading this knows what I'm about to describe. You get the emails, sometimes daily.
"Dear Sir, I visited your website and noticed you're not appearing on most search engines..."
"We've identified 47 critical SEO errors on your site. Reply to get your free audit..."
"I work with Google and noticed your rankings have dropped..."
Google's own document has a wonderfully blunt take on these. They tell business owners to give unsolicited SEO emails the same skepticism you'd give to weight-loss pills that "burn fat while you sleep," or emails offering to help move money out of foreign bank accounts. That's not me being dramatic. That's Google's actual published advice.
The logic is simple. If a company is genuinely good at SEO, why are they spamming inboxes instead of being found by people searching? Real SEO companies come recommended, or you discover them when you go looking. They don't trawl Google Business Profiles for email addresses and send out 5,000 cold emails a day.
Warning 4: "You Should Never Have to Link to an SEO"
This is the one where a lot of trades businesses get burned without realising. Google explicitly warns against any SEO who talks about:
- "Submitting your site to thousands of search engines"
- "Premium directory placements"
- "High-authority backlink packages"
- "We'll build you 100 quality links a month"
- "Link popularity schemes"
It's all rubbish. Search engines find your site through links earned naturally, because you're a real business that other real businesses and customers want to reference. Buying or scheming for links is a quick way to get yourself penalised, and once Google notices, those rankings drop faster than they arrived.
This is one of the reasons I don't do off-site SEO at all. I never have. I don't believe in it, and Google has spent the last fifteen years proving me right.
The Bit That Tradespeople Really Need to Take In
Read this carefully, because this one matters more than all the others combined.
Google's document spells it out plainly. You are responsible for the actions of any company you hire to do SEO for you. If your agency uses deceptive tactics, fakes content, buys dodgy links, or breaks the rules, Google doesn't go after the agency. Google goes after your website. Your business. Your phone number.
The agency takes your money for six months, gets caught, and walks away to set up under a new name. You're left with a website that's been removed from Google's index entirely. The phone stops ringing. Leads dry up. And you start again from scratch, sometimes with a new domain because the old one is too damaged to recover.
I've seen this happen to good tradespeople more times than I want to remember. It's heartbreaking. And it's entirely avoidable if you ask the right questions before you sign anything.
The Plain-English Checklist for Tradespeople
Here's how I'd sense-check any SEO company you're talking to. Whether it's me, a competitor, or that bloke who keeps emailing you from a Gmail address, run them through this:
- Do they guarantee page one? Walk away. Nobody can guarantee a position on Google. Google's document literally says: if someone guarantees first place, find someone else.
- Are they asking for write access to your Search Console? Read access only. Always.
- Are they claiming to be "Google approved" or using "Google partner" tools? Not a thing. Google doesn't approve SEO tools or agencies.
- Are they selling you AEO, GEO or "AI optimisation"? Ask them to show you Google's official guidance and explain how their approach aligns with it. If they can't, they're winging it.
- Did they email you out of the blue? Treat it like the scam emails Google compares it to.
- Are they talking about link-building packages or directory submissions? Run.
- Have they asked about your business? Google specifically says a good SEO will want to understand who your customers are, what makes you different, and how people find you now. If they're more interested in selling you a package than understanding your trade, they're not the one.
The My Local Trades Approach (Same as It's Always Been)
I've been doing this for nearly twenty years, since I came off the tools and moved into digital back in 2008. From day one, my approach has been different to how a lot of the industry works. And deliberately so.
I don't sell SEO as a standalone service. I never have. SEO at My Local Trades is baked into every website I build. It's not an add-on, it's not a monthly upsell, it's not something you pay extra for. If we build your website, the SEO foundations are part of the build. That's the whole model.
And I don't do off-site SEO. No link building, no directory submission packages, no PBNs, no "boost your rankings" schemes. Not because I can't. Because I don't believe in it, and Google's update this week reinforces (yet again) that those tactics are at best ineffective and at worst dangerous.
What I do believe in is on-site SEO done properly:
- Websites built with clean, fast, mobile-first code
- Real, human-written content that answers the questions your customers are actually asking
- Proper local schema markup so Google understands you serve your local area
- A site structure that makes sense for the kind of work you do
- Google Business Profile management that reflects a real local business, not one stuffed with keywords designed to fool an algorithm
That's where the strength is. That's where the rankings come from. And because I build the website, I have full control over every SEO element. There's no battling a separate developer over what can and can't be changed.
The Single Most Important Thing I Can Tell You About SEO
If you take nothing else from this blog, take this.
SEO is a long game. It always has been, and it always will be.
If you're coming into SEO expecting instant results, you're already in the wrong mindset. And you're the exact customer the cowboys are looking for. They'll sell you a dream, take your money for six months, show you some made-up "improvements" in a dashboard, and disappear before the penalties land.
SEO isn't a quick win. It's how you build a business sustainably, for the long haul. The kind of business where the phone still rings in five years' time. The kind of business where you're not constantly chasing the next short-term tactic to plug a leaking bucket.
And the way you actually win at it isn't tricks or shortcuts. It's showing up as the expert in your trade. Writing genuinely useful, helpful content that answers the questions your customers are actually asking. Explaining tricky stuff in language that real people understand. What an EICR is. How to spot a failing extractor fan. What to look for in a roof inspection. Why your boiler keeps losing pressure.
That's what positions you as the expert. That's what makes Google want to rank your pages. That's what makes other people want to link to you, share your work, and recommend you.
Google's not silly. It can tell the difference between a website written by a tradesperson who genuinely knows their craft, and a website filled with thin, AI-spun nonsense designed to fool an algorithm. It knew the difference twenty years ago, and it definitely knows it now.
Be the expert. Write like the expert. Help your customers genuinely. The rankings follow.
A Few Things I Won't Do, Ever
- I won't promise you page one. Nobody can.
- I won't sell you a "free audit" then ask for write access to your Search Console.
- I won't use "Google approved" tools, because there's no such thing.
- And if a customer comes to me wanting to chase a manipulative SEO route, buying links, gaming the system, cutting corners, I'll advise them against it. If they really want to go down that path, I'll wish them well and step away. I'd rather lose a customer than build something I know is going to blow up in their face six months later.
The proof, as much as I dislike blowing my own trumpet, is the customer base. I've got electricians, plumbers and builders on my books who've been with me for over a decade. Their rankings hold. Their phones ring. Their websites still work. That doesn't happen by accident, and it doesn't happen by chasing shortcuts.
Google's update this week isn't telling me anything new. It's just Google catching up to what the honest end of the industry has been doing all along. This time, out loud and in writing. Welcome back, Google. We've missed you.
If You're Thinking About a New Website
Here's something Google said in their updated document that I want to highlight, because it sums up exactly how I work:
"A great time to hire is when you're considering a site redesign. The earlier the better. That way, your site is designed to be search engine friendly from the bottom up."
That's the whole game right there. SEO isn't something you bolt onto a finished website. It's something the website is built around from day one. The foundations matter. The structure matters. The content matters. And it all needs to be done together, by one team that has full control.
So if you're thinking about a new website, or your current one is creaking and overdue for a redesign, that's the conversation to have. SEO comes with the build. No separate packages, no monthly bolt-ons, no upsells.
And if you're not in the market for a new site, but a bit of this blog has hit a nerve and you've got a nagging feeling about what your current agency is actually doing for you, give me a shout anyway. I'll happily take a look and tell you straight whether it's worth the money you're spending.
No tricks, no jargon, no guarantees of page one. Just an honest conversation, like an electrician would give you when you ask whether your fuse board really needs replacing.
That's how it should be. And, according to Google this week, that's how it's always been meant to be.
Cheers,
Gary
Founder, My Local Trades
