We’ll talk about how to find and hire freelance SEOs for your Coventry business.
But first, a story:
This is a story about one of the first SEO campaigns I ever ran for a Coventry-based client.
Let’s turn back the clock a few years. I was 20, fresh out of a machining apprentice job, and stepping into my first marketing agency role.
I was wide-eyed, completely out of my element, and full of the kind of naïve confidence that only comes with not knowing how much you don’t know.
My first SEO campaign? An external wall insulation contractor based in Coventry.
They wanted more leads.
Simple enough, right? I dove in headfirst, armed with nothing but ambition and a shaky grasp of SEO.
My brilliant plan? Go big. Target the high-volume keywords like external wall insulation.
Bigger search volume meant bigger results — at least, that’s what I thought.
It wasn’t until a few weeks in — when I peeked at the conversion data — that my rookie mistake became glaringly obvious.
Traffic? Sure, we had some.
But conversions? Barely a trickle.
The client wasn’t happy, and I didn’t have a clue what to do.
Then came the moment that changed everything.
I rolled up my sleeves and took a deeper look.
Most of the traffic we were getting came from places the client couldn’t even serve — cities hundreds of miles away, well beyond their 50-mile service area.
Meanwhile, the people in Coventry and Nuneaton, the ones who actually needed what they offered, couldn’t find them.
So, I pivoted.
Instead of chasing those flashy, high-volume keywords, we zeroed in on the searches their customers were actually typing in: external wall insulation coventry or external wall insulation nuneaton.
The result? Quotes tripled.
Just like that, my first campaign went from a cautionary tale to a success story — and it shaped the way I approached SEO forever.
What I learned that day has stuck with me:
Local SEO isn’t about casting the widest net.
It’s about casting the right one.
It’s about strategy — understanding the customer, the market, and the nuances that turn clicks into conversions.
And sure, the SEO pulling the strings doesn’t have to be from Coventry.
They can be from Timbuktu for all it matters.
But they do need the experience and insight to build a strategy that works.
If you’re on the hunt for a freelance SEO to help your Coventry business, there are a few key things you need to think about.
Let’s dig in:
Questions to ask your Coventry freelance SEO
A good SEO freelancer needs to know the area — or at least understand it well enough to help your business stand out in local searches.
Here’s a few questions to help you separate the pros from the pretenders:
1. Can you show me examples of SEO work you've done for local businesses?
Anyone can say they’re an expert in SEO, but the proof? That’s where it counts.
If you want to hire an SEO for you local business, pick one experienced in local SEO.
There’s a massive difference between local SEO and national SEO.
Let me explain:
National SEO is like fishing in the Atlantic Ocean.
You’re tossing out a big net, trying to snag anyone and everyone who’s looking for your product/service — wherever they are in the country.
It’s broad. It’s ambitious. It’s saying, “I want to rank for plumbing services uk” and it doesn’t matter if the person Googling from Plymouth or London.
This type of SEO is big-budget.
Local SEO, on the other hand, is more about shouting across the street. Not across the country.
The goal is to tap into your local market.
What you need to know from your freelance SEO:
- Case studies: they should be able to show you case studies or examples of businesses in Coventry they’ve helped. If they’ve worked with a coffee shop or a local gym, they should point you to how they bumped up local rankings. Refer to this Ignite SEO case study for a good example of one.
- Results: these case studies should mention the results they helped clients get. Traffic increase, rankings improvement, conversion rates, etc.
Bonus points if they can show results in your industry.
If you run a service-based business (say, a law firm or a plumbing business), ask for results in similar industries — because local SEO can look very different depending on what kind of business you have.
2. How do you handle reporting and communication?
SEO is an ongoing process.
The freelancer you hire should have a clear plan for keeping you informed and involved.
What to expect in reports:
- Localised keyword data: reports should include insights into how your website is performing for Coventry-specific terms. So if you run a coffee shop, these could be terms like coffee shop coventry.
- Creative keyword suggestions: look for freelancers who can think outside the box when choosing target keywords. Yes, if you ran a coffee shop in Earlsdon, coffee shop coventry would be a great keyword to start with. But nothing is stopping you from getting more granular and targeting hyper-local search terms like coffee shop earlsdon.
- Traffic patterns: Reports should highlight whether your organic traffic is growing from local searches and identify new opportunities to target underserved neighbourhoods or niches.
3. How do you measure success and what SEO metrics do you focus on?
SEO is a marathon, not a sprint.
So you need someone who can show you measurable progress — no waffling.
Just clear, actionable data.
The last thing you want is to throw money into a black hole with no way of knowing if anything’s working.
What you need to know:
- Traffic growth should be a given. But not just any traffic. They should track organic traffic specifically — people coming from search results (not paid ads).
- Keyword rankings need to be tracked, but not just generic keywords — ask about local keywords. Keep a tab on how the rankings of your target keywords are moving.
- Conversions are where the rubber meets the road. You want to know if people are actually taking action after visiting your site—whether that’s calling you, buying, or filling out a contact form. Ask about how they’ll set up conversion tracking to show you ROI.
- If they don’t bring up Google My Business (GMB), quiz them on it. GMB is the bread and butter of local SEO.
4. How do you handle technical SEO issues?
If your site isn’t technically sound, none of the SEO work matters.
You want someone who knows how to tackle technical SEO and can clean up your site from the inside out.
What you need to know:
- Site speed should be at the top of their list. Ask what they would do to improve it. It could be optimising images, reducing server response time, or removing unnecessary scripts.
- Mobile-friendliness is key—ask them to explain how they will ensure your site works flawlessly across all devices.
- Structured data (Schema markup) is critical for helping Google understand your site’s content. They should be familiar with adding schema markup to pages for things like business details, products, or reviews.
- They should be familiar with Google Search Console to help identify issues like crawl errors, 404 pages, or broken links.
That’s all he wrote, folks.
Thanks for reading.
