When a small business asks me to look at their SEO, I almost never start with keywords. I start with whether Google can find them at all. Most of the businesses I work with aren't ranking badly. They're ranking nowhere, because Google doesn't have enough to go on. The fix is almost always the same five things, in the same order, and you can do four of them yourself on a Saturday afternoon.
None of this is clever. That's the point. SEO advice gets fancy because nobody wants to admit the basics still aren't done.
1. Finish your Google Business Profile properly
This is the single thing most small businesses get wrong, and it's also free. If you haven't claimed your Google Business Profile, do that today. If you have but it's three fields deep, go back and actually fill in the rest.
I mean all of it. Category, secondary categories, hours including holiday hours, full description, every service you offer as its own service entry, every attribute that applies, the website, the booking link, the address even if you don't take walk-ins. Profiles that are 90% complete outrank profiles that are 60% complete, more or less every time.
Upload at least ten real photos. Not stock, not your logo. The inside of your shop, your team, your product on the table, the back of the menu, a tray coming out of the oven. Google notices, and so do humans.
2. Match your name, address, and phone everywhere
Your business name, address, and phone number live in a lot of places: Yelp, Apple Maps, Bing, Facebook, TripAdvisor, your own footer. Google quietly cross-checks these. If half of them say "Suite 200" and the other half say "Ste 200," Google trusts your listing a little less.
Pull up the top ten places your business is listed and make sure every field reads identically. Same punctuation, same suite number, same phone format. Boring, mechanical, surprisingly effective.
3. Ask for reviews like a normal human
Google reviews are one of the strongest local ranking signals, and almost every small business is leaving them on the table because nobody wants to feel pushy. You don't have to.
After a job goes well, send a one-line text or email with a direct link to your review form. That's it. Most happy customers will leave you a review if you make it take less than thirty seconds. And reply to every one, the good and the bad. Google reads your replies the way a hiring manager reads a cover letter.
4. Write a page for every place you actually work
If you serve three cities, you need three pages. A generic "Services" page will not rank for "plumber in Austin." A page literally titled "Plumber in Austin, TX" with three paragraphs about working in Austin will. Each location page should be its own thing, not a template with the city name swapped in.
- The city or neighborhood in the title tag and H1, written like a human said it
- A few paragraphs that could only have been written about that area
- An embedded map of where you actually go
- One or two testimonials from customers in that city, if you have them
5. Stop ignoring the basics on your own site
Most small business sites I open are missing things a six-year-old WordPress theme would have filled in by default. The checklist isn't long.
If you do these five things and nothing else, you'll outrank most of the small businesses in your category within a quarter or two. The ones who actually win at local SEO aren't the cleverest. They're the ones who finished the boring list while everyone else was still researching tools.
If you'd rather just hand it over and have it done, email me. The first 30-minute call is free, and you'll leave with the list either way.
