SEO
2026-10-02 · 10 min read
Sapun Lamichhane
Founder & CEO of Arcetis
Before touching content or links, make sure Google can properly crawl and understand your site. That means the site loads reasonably fast, works on mobile, runs on HTTPS, and does not have broken or duplicate pages confusing the crawler. Google Search Console, which is free, will tell you directly which pages are indexed and which have errors.
A lot of Nepali small business sites run on old shared hosting or were exported from page builders, and carry messy code, duplicate category pages, or missing meta tags nobody ever cleaned up. Fixing these basics often produces more movement than any amount of content written afterward, because Google cannot rank pages it cannot properly read.
Core Web Vitals, Google's specific speed and stability metrics, are worth checking directly in Search Console or PageSpeed Insights rather than guessing from how fast a site feels on a good connection, since many visitors in Nepal are on slower mobile data where a sluggish site loses visitors before it ever gets a chance to rank.
A simple first pass worth doing yourself is running your homepage and a couple of key service pages through Google's free tools and fixing whatever comes back as a clear error, broken links, missing alt text on images, or pages blocked from indexing by accident. None of this requires hiring anyone and often takes an afternoon, but it removes the most basic obstacles standing between your content and a ranking.
“Ranking on Google in Nepal is not about tricking an algorithm, it is about being the clearest, fastest, most trustworthy answer to a question someone is already typing.”
If you serve customers in a specific city or area, claiming and fully completing your Google Business Profile often matters more than your website for "near me" and local searches. That means correct categories, accurate service areas, real photos, and keeping hours and contact details current.
Reviews matter here too, both having a steady stream of real ones and actually responding to them. A fully built-out profile with genuine reviews regularly outranks a far more polished website that has an empty or neglected Business Profile, especially in Kathmandu and Pokhara's crowded local search results.
It also helps to post updates, offers, or photos to the profile regularly rather than setting it up once and forgetting it. Google tends to favor profiles that show ongoing activity, and an active profile also gives potential customers more reasons to trust the business before they even visit the website.
Photos specifically make an outsized difference, profiles with a healthy number of recent, genuine photos, the storefront, the team, finished work, tend to get more clicks from the map pack than ones relying only on a generic logo image.
Instead of guessing what to write, look at what people actually type. Google's autosuggest and "People also ask" boxes are free research tools, and in Nepal a lot of real queries mix English and Nepali phrasing, which generic templated content usually misses entirely.
Write pages that directly answer a specific question a real customer has, with real detail, instead of generic "About Us" or "Our Services" pages that say nothing concrete. A page that actually answers "how much does X cost in Kathmandu" will consistently outperform a vague service description page.
It also helps to look honestly at what already ranks for a given search and ask whether your planned page would be more useful than what is already there. If the answer is no, that topic probably is not worth prioritizing yet, it is better to pick questions where you can genuinely add more specific, more current, or more locally relevant information.
Local intent deserves special attention, searches that include a city or neighborhood name, like "electrician in Baneshwor," behave differently from generic searches and tend to reward pages that clearly state the service area and show real local signals, like a physical address or area-specific photos, rather than a page written to serve every city at once.
Each page needs a clear title tag and headers that describe what it is actually about, built around one primary topic rather than trying to rank for everything at once. Internal links between related pages help Google (and visitors) understand how your content connects.
Write for a human first. Keyword-stuffed text reads badly and Google's systems are specifically built to discount it, so the keyword should appear naturally, not be forced into every sentence.
Page speed and mobile layout count as on-page factors too, a page with perfect headings and keywords that takes eight seconds to load on a phone will still underperform. Compressing images and avoiding heavy, unnecessary scripts is often a bigger lever than people expect for a small business site.
Backlinks from genuinely relevant Nepali sites, whether directories, local news coverage, or industry partners, still matter as a trust signal. This part is slow by nature and cannot be rushed without risk.
Be cautious of cheap bulk link packages promising hundreds of backlinks for a small fee. These often come from low-quality or spammy networks that can get a site penalized rather than helped, undoing months of legitimate work.
Getting listed in legitimate local business directories, industry associations, or chambers of commerce is a reasonable, low-risk way to build a few early links, especially for a newer site that has not yet earned coverage or partnerships naturally.
A realistic timeline looks like technical fixes and Google Business Profile work in months one and two, content and site structure improvements in months three and four, and the first real movement in rankings from month five or six onward, with results compounding after that if the work continues.
Doing this properly, without shortcuts that risk penalties, takes patience that many businesses underestimate. Arcetis works with Nepali businesses that want this built correctly from the start rather than chasing quick fixes that collapse later.
It is worth tracking a small set of specific keywords and your Search Console impressions over this period rather than checking rankings obsessively every day, short-term fluctuation is normal and does not reflect the underlying trend.
Yes, in the sense that your content needs to match how your actual customers search. Many Nepali users search in a mix of English and Nepali, or type Nepali concepts in English script, so understanding the real phrasing your audience uses matters more than picking one language in isolation.
Not necessarily a blog specifically, but you do need content that answers real customer questions somewhere on your site. For many local businesses, well-built service pages and an active Google Business Profile matter more than a blog that nobody maintains.
Start narrow, a handful of specific, realistic phrases tied to your actual services and location rather than broad generic terms. Trying to rank for fifty keywords at once with a new or small site usually means making no real progress on any of them.