SEO is not a part of a website. It is its heart.
Most websites are a picture on the internet with some text beside it. We build tools that bring enquiries on their own instead, and the lever for that is search. Which is why it comes at the start of a project here and not at the end. Whether the lever is the map around Ulm and Neu-Ulm or the national result list is decided by your market, not by our postcode.
Everything on a website hangs off it.
Search is not a discipline we bolt onto a finished site. It is the organ the rest is plugged into. Build it last and you build twice, and pay both times.
That sounds like a stance. It is a list. robots.txt decides whether Google may read at all. Load time decides whether the visitor is still there when the page finishes. The heading structure decides what the page is about as far as Google is concerned. And the type size decides whether anyone reads the one sentence that triggers the enquiry.
So design is not the opposite of optimisation here, it is what makes it work. Someone who bounces back to the results after two seconds found your page and still did not read it. Position one is worth nothing if the text underneath does not keep what the headline promised. Line length, contrast and where the first piece of evidence sits belong to the work as much as the sitemap does.
From the first file to the type size.
Eight layers sit between the crawler and the human. Each one can undo the work of every layer above it, and none of them is optional. Read top to bottom, this is the order in which a page gets found, understood and finally read.
- 01
robots.txt
The first file a crawler requests from your domain.
One wrong line takes the entire site out of the index. Four characters decide the fate of everything below them.
- 02
Sitemap & status codes
The index of every page and the answer your server gives for each.
Google follows no address it does not know, and counts none that answers with an error.
- 03
Load time & rendering
What the browser actually paints, and how long it takes.
Content that appears only after the script counts for less. Content that appears after three seconds is often not seen at all.
- 04
Site architecture
Which page owns which topic, and what links to it internally.
Two pages on the same term take the position away from each other. The most common fault on sites that grew over time.
- 05
Structured data
Schema.org, machine readable beneath the visible text.
Part of what decides whether an AI answer names you or your competitor. The share of those answers is growing; the room inside them is not.
- 06
Titles & headings
The hierarchy the text sits in.
The one place you tell Google in your own words what this is about. Most sites spend it on the word Home.
- 07
Language & length
How it is written, not how much of it there is.
A sentence that answers a question completely gets quoted. A paragraph that circles the question gets skipped.
- 08
Type, size, spacing
The last thing anyone associates with search engines.
Text that is not read triggers no enquiry. Which was the point of the whole exercise.
Seven of those eight layers can be measured. That is what we do before touching anything, and again afterwards.
Three cases where SEO actually changes something.
- 01
The site sits on page three
It exists, it is tidy, and it does not appear for your own services. Usually what is missing is not content but structure: Google finds no clear answer to what each page is about.
- 02
You are not in Google Maps
Search for a trade, a law firm or a studio in Ulm and the map comes first. Without a maintained business profile and matching listings you are not in it, however good the website is.
- 03
Visitors arrive, enquiries do not
The Search Console numbers look fine and the inbox stays empty. Then the search intent is off: you rank for terms nobody types with an intention to buy.
- 01Technical review: indexing, load time, Core Web Vitals
- 02 research with real search volumes for the region
- 03Search intent per page, so no two pages compete
- 04Titles, descriptions and heading structure
- 05Structured data to Schema.org
- 06Google Business Profile and local listings
- 07Internal linking and site architecture
- 08 and analytics set up properly
- 09A report using the same numbers as the starting point
Measure first, touch afterwards , never the reverse.
Every SEO project starts with a written assessment. What happens next follows from what that assessment finds, not from a package list.
What we deliberately do not do
- No bought backlinks and no link networks
- No promise of position one, which nobody can honestly give
- No copy written for Google instead of for people
Numbers you can check yourself.
SEO reports are where agencies like to praise themselves. So we work only from sources you have your own access to: your , your analytics account, your business profile. Anything we show you can be verified against them at any time.
Before we start we record the baseline: impressions, clicks, average position, visibility in the map. After three months the same numbers sit next to it. If nothing moved, the report says so.
- Impressions, clicks and position per query
- Loading behaviour as real visitors experience it, not lab data
- Visibility in the map and local search around Ulm
- So Google and AI answers attribute the content correctly
- Lighthouse
- Google's audit for engineering, accessibility and SEO, run before and after the work
SEO never appears as its own line item.
Basic, Premium and Scale differ in the size of the website, not in whether it gets found. The groundwork sits in all three: indexing, load time, site architecture, structured data, Search Console. There is no separate SEO line and no subscription running alongside the project. Bring an existing site and you get an analysis with a figure first, rather than an invoice with a surprise later.
What clients ask about SEO before committing.
What does SEO cost?
With a new website the technical groundwork is part of the project price. For an existing site the price follows the scope: an assessment with a prioritised list of actions costs considerably less than carrying all of them out. You get the figure in the offer before any work starts.
How long until SEO works?
Technical fixes often show within weeks, because Google re-reads the site. For rankings on contested terms plan for three to six months. Anyone telling you otherwise is selling an expectation they cannot keep.
Can you guarantee position one on Google?
No, and nobody can. Google weighs several hundred signals and keeps changing them. What we can commit to is the work that demonstrably feeds those signals, and a report that shows what it achieved.
What is local SEO and do I need it?
Local SEO means appearing in Google Maps and the local block when somebody in Ulm or Neu-Ulm searches for your service. For anyone serving customers in the region it is usually the faster lever than the classic result list, mostly because many competitors never maintained their profile.
Is SEO worth it if my website is old?
Only up to a point. If the site is slow, not built for phones, or not cleanly readable by a crawler, we are working against the substance. In that case we say so and put both numbers in front of you: repair and rebuild.
Do you work outside Ulm?
Yes. We are based in Ulm, which is how we know local search close up. Projects run across Germany, Austria and Switzerland without an on-site meeting being necessary.
Is SEO already included in the web design?
Yes, in every package. A page nobody can find is not a finished page as far as we are concerned, so the technical groundwork is not an add-on. What is commissioned separately is ongoing editorial work on an existing site: research, copy, looking after the business profile.
Does SEO help with AI answers like ChatGPT or Google AI Overviews?
The same work feeds both, though not equally. AI systems prefer to quote pages that answer a question completely in one place and whose content is unambiguously typed through structured data. Clean technology is the prerequisite; clearly answered questions are the difference.
What we work on
Web design
When the substance does not hold, a rebuild is the honest route. What it includes and what it costs.
Management & Hosting
Load time and uptime are ranking factors. Whoever runs the site has a say in how visible it is.
Agency
Who works here, how we decide, and why the prices look the way they do.
White Whale Score
Findability is one of the rating's ten categories. How it is measured, and what our own site scored on it.
We look at your site first .
Send us the link. You get an assessment of which terms you could realistically be found for and what would have to happen first.