Being good at your job is not a marketing plan.
A local customer can find you in three separate places now, and all three work differently. Most small businesses turn up in one of them. Some turn up in none.
The map pack
Those three businesses in a box at the top of a local search, next to the little map. That box generates most local phone calls, and it runs on your Google Business Profile, your reviews, and whether your details match everywhere online.
- Google Business Profile set up properly
- Categories, services, and hours done properly
- Your name, address and phone identical everywhere
- Review prompts that actually get used
The blue links
Ordinary search results. You rank by having a real page about the specific thing somebody typed, which is exactly why one page called Services loses to a competitor running a page per service and a page per town.
- A page per service you offer
- A page per town you genuinely serve
- Titles and headings written for humans first
- Fast loading, because slow pages get buried
When people ask an AI instead
More people every month skip Google and ask ChatGPT or Siri who does good dental work in Garland. Landing in that answer is a different job from ranking, and almost nobody in local business is working on it yet.
- Plain, quotable facts an AI can lift
- Real questions answered in real sentences
- Published prices where it makes sense
- Structured data so machines read you correctly
Getting recommended when somebody asks an AI.
People ask now instead of searching. Where should I take my truck for a brake job near Greenville? Whatever comes back names two or three businesses, and getting into that list is something you can actually work on.
Answer the question in a sentence, not a brochure
An assistant recommending a business needs a sentence it can lift. Website plans start at X a month and include hosting? That drops straight into an answer. We offer flexible solutions tailored to your needs? Nothing to quote, so nothing gets quoted.
Publishing prices is a visibility strategy
Nothing can recommend you for affordable window tint near Rockwall while your prices are a secret. It’s the most underrated reason to publish real numbers, and most of your competitors never will.
Be the same business everywhere
Same name, same address, same phone number. On your site, your Google profile, Facebook, Yelp and every directory that has ever listed you. Google and the AI models both build confidence from consistency, and the inconsistency costs you quietly.
Say the specific true thing
Family dentist in Garland, open Saturdays, accepting new patients. That’s answerable. Your smile is our passion answers nothing, and no assistant has ever repeated it to anybody.
What I won’t do
I won’t build you fifty near-identical pages for fifty towns you’ve never worked in. That trick stopped working years ago, it gets penalized now, and it makes your business look like spam to Google and to actual human beings.
I won’t promise you a number one ranking, buy links, or mail you a monthly PDF of charts that never connect to whether the phone rang. Slow month? You’ll hear that it was slow and why.
Want to know where you actually stand?
Send me your website and your town. I’ll check what you rank for, what your Google profile looks like, whether an AI assistant knows you exist, and what I’d fix first. Free, and there is no obligation attached to it.
Questions about getting found
It means that when somebody asks ChatGPT who to call for a burst pipe in Rockwall, your business is in the answer. It overlaps heavily with ordinary SEO, but the tactics differ. These models want clear, specific, quotable facts, not keyword-stuffed marketing copy. Almost no small businesses are doing it yet, which is precisely why it is worth doing now.
The technical foundation and your Google Business Profile can move in weeks. Ranking for competitive terms takes months. Anybody promising page one in thirty days is either lying or about to do something that gets you penalized, and I’d rather say that now than collect three months of fees before you work it out.
Maybe not, and I’ll say so. Fully booked from referrals and happy with that? Search isn’t urgent. It gets worth paying for when you want to grow, when a second location opens, or when a competitor starts taking calls that used to come to you.
The foundation is. Every site I build has proper structure, speed, local markup and a connected Google Business Profile. Ongoing campaigns, new pages and new towns sit in the higher tier. The base level was never an upsell, because building a site without it is just doing the job badly.
No, and neither can anybody else. Nobody controls Google. What you’ll get from me is what’s currently holding you back, a realistic ceiling for your market, roughly how long it should take, and then the actual numbers as they move.