What SEO work actually consists of
Search visibility comes from three things done consistently: a site search engines can crawl and render quickly, pages that answer a question better than the ones currently ranking, and enough external evidence that your business is real and reputable. Anyone selling you a fourth thing on a monthly retainer is selling you activity. We run all three as one programme because they fail together: a fast site with nothing worth reading does not rank, and excellent writing on a site that cannot be crawled is never seen.
- Technical audit: crawlability, indexation, Core Web Vitals, structured data, duplication.
- Keyword and intent research grounded in what your buyers actually type.
- On-page work: titles, headings, internal linking and content depth.
- Local SEO: Google Business Profile, citations, and location-specific pages.
- Content strategy and production on a schedule you can sustain.
- Digital PR and link acquisition that would survive a manual review.
Crawled, currently not indexed, and other quiet refusals
The most common problem we are called in for is not a ranking that slipped, it is pages Google has visited and declined to keep. That status is a judgement about value, not a bug. It usually means the page is thin, near-identical to eleven others built from the same template, or sitting in a section with no internal links pointing at it and nothing linking out. The fix is unglamorous: consolidate what should never have been separate pages, rewrite what deserves to exist so it is genuinely specific, link it properly from pages that already have standing, and stop publishing pages whose only differentiator is a swapped noun. Our technical SEO audit checklist is the list we run, and we run it on our own site too.
Local SEO for Kathmandu and Lalitpur businesses
For a business serving Kathmandu Valley, the map pack is often worth more than the classic results, and it is a distinct discipline. It needs a complete and correct Google Business Profile with the right primary category, consistent name, address and phone data across directories, and genuine reviews collected in a way that complies with the rules. Nepali addressing makes the consistency part harder than it sounds, because the same office is written as a tole, a ward number, a landmark or a chowk depending on who typed it, and search engines treat those as different businesses. The local SEO playbook for Nepal covers the ordering, and the Kathmandu Valley page shows how we structure location content that is not just a city name swapped into a template.
Content that answers a question better than the page ranking now
Before writing anything, we read what currently ranks for the query and ask what it fails to answer. If we cannot name that gap, we do not commission the piece, because publishing something equivalent to the incumbent is a cost with no return. That constraint kills most content calendars, and it should. It also tends to move the work towards the pages that carry commercial intent: the service page, the pricing explanation, the comparison a buyer makes in their head before they enquire. Those are harder to write than a listicle and they are what actually produce enquiries.
AI answers are changing what a ranking is worth
A growing share of queries are answered inside a search results page or by an assistant, without a click. The work that makes you quotable in those answers overlaps heavily with ordinary good SEO, clear structure, specific claims, real entities and accurate structured data, but it changes what success looks like, because a mention with no visit still moves a buyer. We track that separately rather than pretending organic sessions are still the whole picture. How to stay in the answer when AI search replies for you sets out what we do differently for it.
How we report, and what we will not do
Monthly, in plain language, against organic sessions, ranked queries with commercial value, and enquiries attributed to search. We show what was done, what moved, and what did not, including the months where the answer is that nothing changed yet. Rankings are a diagnostic rather than the deliverable, since first position on a term nobody searches is not a result. What we will not do: buy links from a network, publish spun or scraped content, place fake reviews, or hide text. Those tactics still work briefly and then remove a business from search at the worst possible moment, and if a competitor's numbers look inexplicable, that is frequently why.
What goes wrong in seo, and how we avoid it
- Twelve service pages built from one template with a noun swapped.
- Each page has to be answerable only about its own subject: its own failure modes, its own pricing drivers, its own questions. If a paragraph would read correctly on another page, it is not earning its place on this one.
- A redesign that dropped the redirects.
- We map old URLs to new ones before launch and monitor coverage afterwards. Recovering from a bungled migration takes months and sometimes never fully happens, which is why migration planning belongs before the build, not after the drop.
- A blog that targets keywords instead of buyers.
- We start from the questions asked in sales conversations and check whether anyone searches for them, in that order. Volume with no purchase intent fills a report and empties a budget.
- Reporting that celebrates a ranking nobody buys from.
- Every monthly report ties back to enquiries. If a term ranks and produces nothing, we say so and move the effort, rather than leaving it in the screenshot because it looks good.
How we run seo work
- 01
Audit
A full crawl, index coverage review, log-level look at what search engines actually fetch, Core Web Vitals on real devices, and a read of what currently ranks for the queries that matter. Output is a prioritised list with an estimated cost against each item.
- 02
Plan
A keyword and intent map tied to real pages, so every commercial query has one page that owns it. This is where duplicate and near-duplicate pages get merged rather than multiplied.
- 03
Fix
We implement rather than recommend: titles, structure, internal links, schema, redirects, page speed and the pages that need rewriting. Where your own developers implement, we brief them and verify the result.
- 04
Publish
Content produced against briefs that name the gap in the current top results, on a cadence you can actually sustain. Local profiles and citations cleaned up in parallel.
- 05
Measure
Monthly reporting against enquiries and commercially meaningful queries, with a plain statement of what moved, what did not, and what we are changing as a result.
What seo costs
SEO is not sold on the build tiers, because you are buying a programme of work rather than a delivered artefact. It is quoted in two parts. The audit and fix phase is a fixed price against a defined site, and you are free to take the fix list and implement it yourself or hand it to your own developers. Ongoing work is a monthly figure against a written programme with named deliverables, not a vague allocation of hours. Where the programme needs pages the site does not have, that build work is quoted separately on the tiers shown on the web development page.
What pushes the price up
- Site size, because a crawl of twenty thousand URLs is a different audit from one of eighty.
- A site on a platform that resists change, where every fix is a development ticket.
- Competitive categories such as education consultancy or travel in Kathmandu, where the incumbents are already doing the work.
- Content production done by us rather than by your team.
- Multiple locations or languages, each of which needs its own pages and its own profile.
What brings it down
- A site we can edit directly, which removes an entire negotiation from every fix.
- Subject-matter experts on your side who will sit for an hour and be interviewed.
- Starting with local and commercial pages rather than a broad content programme.
- Implementing the audit yourself and retaining us only for the ongoing work.
- Every figure here is a starting point, not a quote. You get a fixed price against a written scope before anything is built.
- Nepali clients are quoted in NPR at local rates, with a VAT invoice against our PAN. International clients are quoted in USD, AUD, EUR or GBP.
- You own the code, the domain and the hosting from day one, on every tier.
Who this is for, and who it is not
Worth a conversation if
- Businesses where buyers actively search for the service, which covers most professional and local services.
- Sites with existing traffic that has plateaued or slipped after a rebuild.
- Companies with real expertise to write from, since that is what makes a page better than the incumbent.
- Local businesses in Kathmandu Valley and the highway cities competing for the map pack.
Probably not us if
- Anyone needing enquiries this month. Paid search buys that; SEO does not. Read the digital marketing page instead.
- Products nobody searches for yet, where demand has to be created rather than captured.
- Businesses unwilling to change the website. If we cannot fix the pages, we are being paid to describe a problem.
- Anyone shopping for a guaranteed first position. That is not a thing anybody can sell.
Frequently asked questions
How long does SEO take to show results in Nepal?
Technical fixes can move indexation within weeks. Competitive commercial terms usually take three to six months of consistent work and longer in crowded categories such as study abroad or trekking. Anyone promising first position in a month is either targeting terms with no demand or planning something that will eventually get the site penalised.
Google says our pages are crawled but not indexed. What does that mean?
It means Google fetched the page, evaluated it and decided it was not worth keeping in the index. Usually the page is thin, too similar to other pages on the same site, or effectively orphaned with no meaningful internal links. It is a quality judgement, so the fix is to consolidate, deepen and link properly rather than to resubmit the URL and hope.
How much do SEO services cost in Nepal?
We price the audit and fix phase separately from ongoing work, so you can stop after the audit and implement it yourself if you would rather. Retainers are quoted against a specific monthly programme with named deliverables, because an hours allocation is impossible for either side to hold anyone to.
Can you guarantee a number one ranking?
No, and neither can anyone else. Search engines do not sell placement in organic results and their ranking systems change constantly. What we commit to is the work, the measurement and honest reporting on what it produced, including the months when the honest answer is that it has not moved yet.
Is local SEO different from regular SEO?
It overlaps but has its own levers: the Google Business Profile and its primary category, consistent business data across directories, reviews, and pages that speak to one service in one place. For a business serving Kathmandu Valley it is usually the highest-return place to start, and inconsistent Nepali addressing is the most common thing holding it back.
Do you do SEO for websites you did not build?
Yes, and most of our SEO clients came that way. We start with an audit so both sides know the condition of the site before committing to a programme. If the platform makes the necessary fixes impossible, we will say so rather than take a retainer to work around it.
Do we still need SEO if AI assistants answer the question directly?
Yes, and the work is largely the same work. Assistants are drawing on indexed pages, so being crawlable, specific and accurately marked up is what gets you quoted. What changes is measurement, because a mention without a click still influences a buyer and will not appear in your session count.
Will you buy links for us?
No. Link networks are detectable, and the penalty arrives at an unpredictable moment, typically long after the agency that bought them has moved on. We earn links through work that is genuinely worth citing, which is slower and does not have to be undone later.
