Hi everyone,
I’m not a full-time developer, but I’ve been working on building an online presence for my family’s driveway business in London. We run Safeway Driveways, a small team of skilled professionals doing everything from resin and tarmac driveways to patios, pathways, and car parks.
We’ve been operating for over 20 years, but until recently, we had barely any online visibility. No traffic, no leads, and barely any presence in local search results. So I decided to dig into SEO and see what I could do — all without paying for backlinks or hiring an agency.
Here’s how it went.
Building Location Pages for Relevance
Instead of having a generic service page, I created specific landing pages for different areas we serve — places like Teddington, North London, and other boroughs. I kept the content human, relevant, and useful for people actually searching for services in those areas.
It wasn’t about keyword stuffing — it was about giving real answers to real search queries.
Using Free, Trusted Platforms for Natural Mentions
I wanted to get a few mentions of our company on high-trust domains without spamming. So I created profiles and helpful posts on:
- Medium
- WordPress
- Blogger
- GitHub (added a company README)
- And now, Dev.to
Each post talks about something useful — SEO learnings, real-world tips, or our story — and links to our site only when it makes sense.
This post itself is an example.
Keeping Things White-Hat and Long-Term
No tricks. No link farms. No Fiverr gigs.
I used structured data (LocalBusiness schema), made sure our NAP details matched across directories, and posted genuine content without manipulating the system. It took a bit longer, but it’s stable — and traffic + leads are slowly increasing without spending a penny on ads.
What I’ve Learned
You don’t need to be a pro dev or marketer to improve a business’s online visibility. You just need:
- A clean, mobile-friendly site
- Honest content that answers real questions
- Natural backlinks from respected platforms
- Consistency over shortcuts
If anyone else here has worked on local SEO or helped a traditional business get online, I’d be keen to hear your thoughts.
Check out what we do at safewaydriveways.com
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