A clear plan for local search

SEO Services in London That Win Profitable Search

Control Shift helps London businesses build organic visibility in the UK's toughest market by targeting the searches they can actually win.

1Audit first
3 areasCore work
1 planReporting
Trusted by Local & Global Brands

Technical SEO • Local SEO • Content Strategy

Local Search Leaders — SEO app built by Control Shift
Growth Partners — SEO app built by Control Shift

Connect London SEO to the services your customers buy

Distinguish London service-area demand from national searches and genuinely separate branch offers. A useful search programme ties commercial queries to clear offers and tracks the enquiries your sales team accepts.

Prioritise buying intent

Map service, pricing and comparison queries to existing pages. Review query-to-page data before creating competing location pages.

Agree execution ownership

Assign technical fixes, content review and deployment to named owners. Use approved service and project evidence when improving the pages.

Measure accepted enquiries

Track source, landing page and lead quality in the sales process. Distinguish relevant calls and forms from spam, recruitment and general-information traffic.

What to include in your project brief

Send your website, services, customer locations and qualification rules. Identify who can approve content and implement site changes.

Request a London SEO plan
Trusted Performance

Proven Results. Trusted by Clients.

Data-backed performance and industry recognition you can rely on.

4.9

Google Rating

45+ verified reviews

Clutch
5.0

Top SEO Agency 2026

Rated on Clutch

Verified SEO Partner

White-hat certified

Ethical SEO Practices

100% White-hat SEO

Proven Track Record

Results that speak for themselves

Client Satisfaction

Long-term partnerships built on trust

Brands we've helped grow in London

Davidson Tech Recruiter
Miami Sliding Door
Cleaning Services QA
Ultratec 4D
Ultratec 3D
OMEGA Doors & Windows
Davidson Tech Recruiter
Miami Sliding Door
Cleaning Services QA
Ultratec 4D
Ultratec 3D
OMEGA Doors & Windows
Davidson Tech Recruiter
Miami Sliding Door
Cleaning Services QA
Ultratec 4D
Ultratec 3D
OMEGA Doors & Windows

Control Shift is a UAE-based digital agency serving businesses in London and across England through remote SEO strategy, development and content delivery — with UK-hours communication and GBP pricing.

SEARCHING IN London

A search plan built for London

London's SERPs are contested by agencies, national brands and firms with decade-old domains, so realistic strategy starts with precision rather than ambition. Customers search by borough, by area and by specific service far more often than they search 'London'. Financial, legal and property verticals are the most expensive to compete in; hospitality, trades and specialist B2B still have genuine content gaps. Technical performance matters unusually much here because so many competitors are already technically sound.

London SEO Strategy

A useful plan.
Clear reporting.

Work tied to the searches and enquiries that matter.

Local search intent

What customers in London need from search

A useful England search programme should reflect how London businesses are found, compared and contacted. For the Financial Services & Fintech, Legal Services and Property & Real Estate sectors represented in this market, we map the service, location and problem searches that lead to a real enquiry, then prioritise the pages and technical work that support those decisions.

  • Create clear service pages for Financial Services & Fintech, Legal Services and Property & Real Estate searches in London
  • Build useful local signals across City of London, Shoreditch, Canary Wharf
  • Measure calls, forms and qualified enquiries rather than rankings alone
Market Reality Check

Why London SEO Is a Different Market

"SEO services London" is one of the most contested searches in the UK, and it is almost never the search that produces a customer. London buyers search by borough, by service and by problem. Understanding that split is the difference between a campaign that ranks and a campaign that bills.

01

Head terms are effectively closed

Placements for "SEO agency London" and "SEO company London" sit with established London agencies and directories that have been on the domain for a decade or more. Budget aimed at that single term is budget aimed at the most expensive auction in the country.

02

Borough intent is where the volume actually is

Searches like "SEO company Canary Wharf", "SEO services Camden" or "local SEO Westminster" carry genuine commercial intent, far lower competition, and a customer who is already inside the catchment they serve. These are the terms a London business can win in months rather than years.

03

Financial, legal and property carry YMYL scrutiny

Google holds financial, legal and health content to its strictest trust standard. Thin or promotional content in these sectors is demoted rather than promoted, so the content budget has to be genuine and the authority has to be earned from credible sources.

04

Technical baselines are already high

Most London competitors are already fast, mobile-friendly and technically tidy. Technical SEO is still worth doing, but on its own it will not differentiate you — it is table stakes, not an edge.

05

AI answers are eating the top of the funnel

An increasing share of informational London searches is answered inside AI overviews and assistants before a website is visited. That moves value toward the depth, structure and citability of your content rather than a single ranking position.

Diagnostic

Why London Websites Fail to Rank

These are the reasons we see most often on London audits. Each one is fixable, and each one is worth more than a new logo.

One page trying to rank for all of London

A single page cannot satisfy a Canary Wharf search and a Hammersmith search at once. Splitting demand across borough pages is usually the single largest available win.

Duplicated location pages

Pages that differ only by the location name get filtered out. Google is explicit about this, and it is still the most common mistake we find.

Thin content in a YMYL vertical

Legal, financial and health content is reviewed for demonstrated experience. Generic blog posts written to hit a keyword volume will not pass, and can actively hurt the whole domain.

No Google Business Profile discipline

An incomplete or unmaintained profile is the fastest route to losing map-pack visibility in a borough you already rank in organically.

Reporting on rankings, not revenue

If nobody has connected rankings to calls and form submissions, the campaign cannot be improved — you do not know which keywords produce customers.

Changing direction every quarter

SEO compounds. Switching priorities faster than a quarter resets the work and restarts the clock on every page you touched.

Not sure which of these applies to you? The audit tells you which ones you have, in priority order, with the fix for each.

Find My Issues FreeOr ask on WhatsApp
OUR SEO SERVICES

SEO Services for London Companies

01

Technical SEO

Crawling, indexing, Core Web Vitals, speed and site architecture fixed so your London pages can actually rank.

Explore Technical SEO
02

Local SEO

Location pages, consistent business data and Google Business Profile optimisation built around how London customers search.

Explore Local SEO
03

On-Page SEO

Titles, headings, content and internal links optimised around the terms your London customers actually use.

Explore On-Page SEO
04

Content Strategy

Service pages, guides and local resources that build topical authority in London and convert visitors into enquiries.

Explore Content Strategy
05

Ecommerce SEO

Category, product and transactional keyword visibility for online stores competing with marketplaces.

Explore Ecommerce SEO
06

Authority Building

Genuine digital PR, industry mentions and locally relevant citations around London — no spam links, ever.

Explore Authority Building

Not sure which SEO service your London business needs?

Send us your website on WhatsApp. A strategist will tell you where the quickest wins are — usually the same day.

Methodology

Our Proven SEO Process for London

We don't guess. We follow a strict, data-led methodology to engineer organic growth, step by step.

Technical Audit & Foundation

Phase 1

We analyze your website's architecture, crawlability, and speed to ensure search engines can easily index your pages.

Technical AuditSite Speed FixesArchitecture Plan

Keyword & Competitor Research

Phase 2

We map high-intent commercial keywords and identify content gaps where your competitors are currently winning.

Keyword MapCompetitor GapContent Strategy

On-Page & Content Strategy

Phase 3

We optimize existing pages for target keywords and deploy new, expert-led content designed to capture search intent.

On-Page EditsNew Landing PagesSchema Markup

Authority & Link Building

Ongoing

We secure high-quality backlinks from relevant, authoritative domains to build massive trust with search algorithms.

Guest PostsDigital PRCitation Building

Local SEO & GBP Optimization

Ongoing

For local targeting, we optimize your Google Business Profile and build citations to dominate the local map pack.

GBP OptimizationLocal CitationsReview Strategy

Want a clearer search plan for London?

Get a free audit showing what is holding the site back and what to do first.

SEO Solutions for Leading London Industries

Financial Services & Fintech SEO

Authority-led content meeting the elevated quality standard Google applies to financial topics.

Legal Services SEO

Practice-area depth and credibility signals for firms competing on the UK's most expensive keywords.

Property & Real Estate SEO

Area and development-level content for a market where portals dominate generic searches.

Private Healthcare & Clinics SEO

Treatment-level pages and practitioner credibility signals for Harley Street and borough clinics alike.

Is your industry competitive in London?

Tell us what you sell and we'll share how hard your main keywords are to win — before you spend anything.

Areas We Target Around London

A Canary Wharf financial firm and a Camden studio compete in effectively different SERPs — area pages routinely outperform a single London page.

Want to show up in the map pack for your area?

Share your Google Business Profile or website and we'll check how you rank nearby.

Client Stories

Trusted by Visionary Founders

Verified via Google

"Control Shift delivered a fast, well-architected site for our London recruitment business."

Client

Client

Founder Davidson Tech Recruiter

Verified via Clutch

"Control Shift built us a powerful lead generation system. Since launching, our inbound inquiries have scaled dramatically. The technical foundation they laid gives us a massive edge over our competitors."

Yasir Arafeh

Yasir Arafeh

CEO Ultratec 4D

Verified via Google

"An incredible technical partner. They completely transformed our digital presence and optimized our 3D printing services for maximum online visibility. Highly recommended."

Hasan Dweik

Hasan Dweik

CEO Ultratec 3D

Verified via Google

"Control Shift delivered a fast, well-architected site for our London recruitment business."

Client

Client

Founder Davidson Tech Recruiter

Verified via Clutch

"Control Shift built us a powerful lead generation system. Since launching, our inbound inquiries have scaled dramatically. The technical foundation they laid gives us a massive edge over our competitors."

Yasir Arafeh

Yasir Arafeh

CEO Ultratec 4D

Verified via Google

"An incredible technical partner. They completely transformed our digital presence and optimized our 3D printing services for maximum online visibility. Highly recommended."

Hasan Dweik

Hasan Dweik

CEO Ultratec 3D

Verified via Google

"Control Shift delivered a fast, well-architected site for our London recruitment business."

Client

Client

Founder Davidson Tech Recruiter

Verified via Clutch

"Control Shift built us a powerful lead generation system. Since launching, our inbound inquiries have scaled dramatically. The technical foundation they laid gives us a massive edge over our competitors."

Yasir Arafeh

Yasir Arafeh

CEO Ultratec 4D

Verified via Google

"An incredible technical partner. They completely transformed our digital presence and optimized our 3D printing services for maximum online visibility. Highly recommended."

Hasan Dweik

Hasan Dweik

CEO Ultratec 3D

Want the numbers behind these reviews? Every case study shows the starting position, the work shipped and the measured result.

See Before & After Results

Performance-Based SEO

Rank on Page 1 — or You Don't Pay

For eligible London websites, we offer performance-based SEO. You only pay when we deliver agreed ranking and traffic results. Eligibility depends on your site's condition, competition and target keywords — confirmed during your free audit.

Simple. Focused. Built for London.

One SEO Package for London Businesses

No tiers. No confusion. Just a single, comprehensive SEO plan designed for real business growth. EveryLondon client gets the same full scope of work, starting at From £199/mo. Your exact scope and pricing are confirmed after a free audit of your website.

Everything included

Everything Included, Every Month

A complete, done-for-you SEO package to help your business rank, get traffic and grow in London.

Full technical SEO audit

Fix indexing, speed, crawl issues and on-site SEO health.

Google Business Profile & map-pack optimization

Improve local visibility and get found in searches for your target market.

Keyword & competitor research

Local and industry-focused keyword strategy.

Content strategy & high-intent pages

Create and optimize the pages that search for when they are ready to buy.

On-page optimization

Optimize key pages for higher rankings and better conversions.

Schema and local SEO

Implement structured data, local signals and location pages.

Competitor gap analysis

Find untapped opportunities and identify where competitors are winning.

Monthly reporting

Get clear, easy-to-understand ranking, traffic and lead reports.

Conversion tracking

Set up GA4 and Search Console to measure real results.

No lock-in — 30-day notice

Stay because you see value, not because you're locked in.

Pricing is customized

Pricing is based on your website's scope, industry, competition and target keywords. The final plan and cost will be shared after a free audit of your website.

We take on a limited number of SEO clients in London each month so every account gets focused attention.

Check your eligibility and get a tailored plan in your free audit.

Get a Free London SEO Audit.

Tell us your website and goals. We'll review your technical, content and local SEO opportunities, check whether you qualify for the rank-or-don't-pay plan, and send back a practical growth plan — no obligation.

  • Technical, local & content SEO review
  • Keyword and competitor opportunities
  • Performance-based eligibility check
  • Clear, GBP-priced proposal
  • Delivery and communication in UK working hours
FAQ

London SEO — Frequently Asked Questions

The most competitive in the UK. Head terms in finance, law and property are held by long-established domains, so we build from borough and service-specific terms that convert while authority accumulates.

Yes, for boroughs you genuinely serve and can write uniquely about. Google filters templated location pages aggressively, so each one needs real local substance.

Long-tail and borough terms typically move in three to four months, with meaningful enquiry growth from months six onward. Head terms take considerably longer.

One package, from £199/month in GBP, covering technical fixes, local optimisation, monthly content and authority building. London legal, financial and property searches are among the hardest in Europe, so those campaigns are scoped up after the audit — you see the exact monthly figure before you commit to anything.

Question not answered here?

Ask it on WhatsApp and get a straight answer from the person who'd run your SEO.

Transparent Pricing

How Much Does SEO Cost in London?

There is one package, and the entry price is published rather than hidden behind "from". What changes the number is scope — how many boroughs you need to be found in, how competitive the terms are, and how much content the sector demands. Below is what actually moves the figure.

01

How many boroughs you need to rank in

One central-London area is a focused campaign. Five boroughs means five sets of map-pack signals, area pages and citations. This is the single biggest driver of the monthly figure.

02

How contested the terms are

Legal, finance and property in London are the most expensive auctions in the UK. The same scope costs more to win because the competition for each placement is stronger.

03

What the sector demands as content

Google holds finance, legal and health content to a trust standard that generic blog posts cannot meet. Meeting it means more research, more review and more pages — which is priced honestly rather than hidden.

04

The state of your site today

A site with indexation problems, a slow template or a broken mobile experience needs fixing before any content work pays off. That remediation is scoped separately and shown as a one-off, not rolled into a monthly figure.

05

How far down the page one you are

Borough and long-tail terms typically move in months three to four. Head terms such as "SEO agency London" realistically need six months or more of authority behind them before they are worth pushing.

Indicative starting scopes, not quotations. Rank-or-don't-pay plans are priced separately and only offered where eligibility is confirmed in writing after the audit.

What Happens Next

What Happens After You Start

No black box. Here is the sequence a London campaign follows and roughly what you should expect to see at each stage.

  1. Week 1

    Audit and access

    Full technical crawl, competitor gap analysis and a review of every page already ranking for a term you want. You get the findings before you commit to anything.

  2. Weeks 2–4

    Fix the blockers

    Indexation, Core Web Vitals, internal linking, schema and Google Business Profile corrections. These go in first because nothing else ranks reliably until they are clean.

  3. Month 2

    Borough and service pages

    The pages that win the terms you can actually get go live first, prioritised by commercial intent rather than by how easy they look.

  4. Months 3–4

    First movement

    Long-tail and borough terms typically move here. Expect small traffic shifts before any lead shift — this is the point most agencies lose clients.

  5. Months 4–6

    Enquiry growth

    Meaningful lead volume starts to move here for most London businesses, which is why we tie the report to enquiries rather than to rankings.

  6. Month 6+

    Head terms

    Only now does it make sense to push the expensive national and head keywords, because the foundation and authority are already in place.

Why Us

Control Shift vs. a Typical London SEO Agency

Most London agencies sell a retainer and a keyword report. We are set up differently: one flat package, published pricing, and work tied to enquiries rather than to a dashboard. Here is the honest comparison.

Pricing
Control ShiftOne flat package from £199/mo, published openly. No tiers, nothing held back for a higher spend.
Typical alternativeTier ladders with a cheap entry column that excludes the work you actually need.
Reporting
Control ShiftRankings, traffic and qualified enquiries, with GA4 and Search Console set up so leads are attributable.
Typical alternativeA keyword rank screenshot. Traffic and leads are rarely connected to the work.
Office and hours
Control ShiftUAE-based agency working to UK hours, and we say so plainly rather than implying a London office.
Typical alternativeOften an office address that is really a registered address.
Local targeting
Control ShiftBorough and neighbourhood pages written from real local detail, not the same paragraph with the name swapped.
Typical alternativeOne page per location, duplicated. Google filters these.
Contract
Control Shift30-day notice. You stay because it is working.
Typical alternative12-month terms with exit penalties.
Link building
Control ShiftDigital PR, trade media and genuine local citations. No link networks, no PBNs.
Typical alternativeOften a volume number, regardless of where the links come from.
Account capacity
Control ShiftThree new clients a month, so a strategist can hold the detail.
Typical alternativeAn account manager juggling dozens of accounts.
The People On Your Account

Who You Actually Work With

There is no junior handover after the pitch. The people below run the audit, make the decisions and write the monthly report.

YL

Your Lead Strategist

Owns the account and the roadmap

Runs the technical audit, sets the keyword and borough priorities, and is the person who decides what gets built each month. You speak to them directly, not through a coordinator.

  • Technical and on-page direction
  • Borough and keyword prioritisation
  • Monthly performance review
O&

On-Page & Content Lead

Builds the pages that win the searches

Writes and structures the service, borough and sector pages, including the YMYL-grade review that financial, legal and healthcare content needs before it can compete.

  • Briefs and page production
  • Internal linking architecture
  • YMYL content review
A&

Authority & Local Specialist

Earned links, citations and reviews

Handles digital PR, local citation consistency and the review-generation workflow, with the rule that every link has to be one a real customer would have reason to click.

  • Digital PR and trade media
  • Citation consistency and cleanup
  • Review generation workflow

You work with the same three people from the audit through the monthly reporting cycle — no handover to a junior after the contract is signed.

Meet Them on Your AuditMessage the Team
Free Self-Serve Audit

The London Local SEO Checklist

The checks we run on every London audit, published in full. Use it on your own site, or send it to whoever handles your website and ask them to work through it.

  1. 1

    Google Business Profile is complete

    Services, products, opening hours, photos, Q&A and a real description — not a bare name and address.

  2. 2

    Name, address and phone match everywhere

    Every directory, citation and social profile agrees exactly. Inconsistency is the fastest way to lose local rankings.

  3. 3

    One page per service, per borough

    Not one page per location trying to cover every service. Separate the two axes.

  4. 4

    Each borough page has unique content

    Real local detail: projects, landmarks, regulations, transport. Nothing a template could produce.

  5. 5

    Reviews are requested systematically

    A repeatable ask after every completed job, with replies on every review.

  6. 6

    Core Web Vitals pass on mobile

    Most London traffic is mobile. Check LCP, INP and CLS in Search Console, not on a desktop.

  7. 7

    Conversions are actually tracked

    Calls, form submissions and booked consultations recorded against the landing page that produced them.

  8. 8

    Internal links point at money pages

    Every blog post and borough page links to the service page it should be selling. Orphan pages earn nothing.

  9. 9

    Structured data is valid

    LocalBusiness, Service and FAQ markup passing Google's Rich Results Test, with no errors.

  10. 10

    Content shows real experience

    Named authors, credentials, dates and sources. This is what Google weighs most heavily in legal, financial and health topics.

Worked through the list and not sure what to fix first?

Send us the URL. We will tell you which items apply, what order to fix them in, and what each one is realistically worth.

Plain English

London SEO Terms, Explained

The vocabulary you will hear in any London SEO conversation, defined plainly. Worth reading before you speak to any agency — including us.

Borough-level SEO
Optimising for searches that name a London borough, such as "SEO company Croydon", rather than for the single undifferentiated word "London".
Map pack / local pack
The map-and-listings block at the top of local results, driven mainly by your Google Business Profile, proximity, reviews and relevance.
YMYL
Your Money or Your Life — Google's label for topics where wrong information could hurt someone. Finance, law and health all qualify, which is why content standards there are far stricter.
E-E-A-T
Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust. Google's human-judgement criteria for whether a site deserves to rank, strongest in YMYL topics.
Core Web Vitals
LCP, INP and CLS — Google's three user-experience metrics. They are a ranking input and the most common technical fault we find on London sites.
Domain authority (DR)
A third-party score for how likely a domain is to rank, based on its link profile. Useful for comparison, not something to optimise directly.
Internal link
A link between two pages on the same site. It is how authority and relevance flow to the pages you want to sell from.
Cannibalisation
Two pages competing for the same query, so Google picks one — usually the wrong one. Common when a borough page and a service page target the same term.
Rank-or-don't-pay
Performance-based SEO: you only pay a performance fee when agreed ranking and traffic milestones are actually met. Eligibility is confirmed in writing after an audit.
Search intent
Why someone typed a query — to research, to compare or to buy. Optimising for the wrong intent is why pages rank and still generate no leads.
People Also Search For

Choosing an SEO Company in London — Straight Answers

These are the questions people search alongside "SEO services in London". We've answered them properly — including the ones where the honest answer is that you may not need to hire anyone at all.

How do I choose an SEO company in London?

Run every shortlist through four checks: can they show live client sites and Search Console data, do they explain why your site underperforms before quoting, do you own the content and accounts they build, and is the contract month-to-month. Get the answers in writing. Any London agency that resists the ownership question is protecting a dependency rather than a methodology.

See documented client results
What should an SEO agency deliver every month?

Fixes actually shipped rather than listed, on-page work against a keyword-to-URL plan, published content, earned links you can inspect, and a report that ties all of it to sessions and enquiries. Ask any London provider for last month's deliverables with the client name redacted. A genuine agency has this ready; a "50 backlinks" proposal is volume theatre.

Before & after results
How much does SEO cost in London?

Our England package starts at From £199/mo with no setup fee and no annual lock-in. What moves the figure is scope, not tier: how many areas need visibility, how contested the terms are, and how much content the sector needs. Below roughly GBP 150/month nobody is doing real work — that budget buys automated reports and spun content.

Get a fixed-scope quote
Is there a reliable "top 10 SEO companies in London" list?

No. Almost every such article is a pay-to-list directory or an agency's own blog with itself at number one. A better shortlist takes ten minutes: search your own money keyword, note which agencies rank their own site on page one in Greater London, then check those agencies' client sites for URLs you can verify yourself.

Should I hire an SEO expert or an agency?

An individual expert is the better choice when you already have developers and writers and need diagnosis and strategy. An agency wins when the work must actually be executed: technical fixes, content production, digital PR and reporting are four different skills. A common middle path is an expert-led audit and roadmap, then an agency to execute it.

Is an SEO freelancer cheaper than an agency?

Usually yes, and the gap is real — freelancers carry no office, sales or account-management overhead. The trade-off is capacity and continuity: someone in London running six clients cannot absorb a core update and a migration in the same week. Freelancers suit bounded work — an audit, a migration plan, a content batch.

Do I need an SEO company or a digital marketing agency?

An SEO company moves organic rankings and traffic. A full agency also runs paid search, paid social and email — broader, usually shallower on technical SEO. Pick SEO specialists when organic is your main channel and your site has technical or content problems; pick a full agency when several channels need coordinating under one plan.

What are local SEO services, and who needs them?

Local SEO targets the map pack and "near me" results: Google Business Profile optimisation, consistent name/address/phone data across directories, location pages and review generation. If customers visit you or you serve a defined radius around London, this is where most of the budget belongs — the map pack takes the bulk of local clicks.

Local SEO services in England
What does "SEO company" actually mean?

A firm that improves how a site ranks in unpaid search. The work splits four ways: technical (crawlable, fast, indexable), on-page (content matched to real queries), off-page (links and mentions that signal authority), and local (map-pack visibility). Unlike advertising you pay for the work, not the click — and the traffic keeps arriving after the invoice stops.

How we work

Still unsure which type of provider London actually needs? Send us the URL and we will tell you honestly whether the answer is an agency, a freelancer, or nothing at all yet.

Get a Free Audit
Sourced & Verified

How Search Drives the Web

Grounding the basics of search rankings in authoritative, sourced terms.

Search engine optimization is the practice of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic from search engines by optimizing relevance and technical quality.[1]

Search engines weigh factors such as content relevance, keywords, inbound links and page performance when deciding how to rank results.[1]

Sources & References

  1. [1]Search engine optimization — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization

Explore More

The offer, the method and the proof behind the SEO work we deliver in England — plus the services that most often run alongside it.

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London Businesses on Page 1

0%

Average Traffic Increase

££2.4M

Revenue Generated

4.9★

Average Rating

Win the London Searches That Actually Convert

Get a free London SEO audit with borough-level opportunity mapping, technical findings and a realistic ranking roadmap.

*Performance-based (rank-or-don't-pay) plans are subject to eligibility and written terms confirmed after a free audit. Rankings depend on competition, content and website quality; no specific position is guaranteed for every keyword. Read the full terms.