Getting found on Google without paying for ads
3 articles on getting found on Google, written for someone running a business rather than a marketing department. Local search comes down to a free listing filled in completely, a page for each thing you do, a steady trickle of reviews, and the patience to leave it alone for six weeks.
What getting found on Google takes
Nearly every small business that can’t be found is invisible for the same three reasons. The free listing is half filled in. The website says Home, Services and Contact instead of naming the trade and the town. And there are four reviews where the firm above has thirty. Fix them in that order, because the two searches that bring in work are the trade plus the town and the trade plus near me, and the listing decides most of both.
For the whole picture in one sitting, start with how to get your business on the first page of Google, then set the listing up right with the free listing most trades set up wrong. If you’d rather hand it over, our local SEO work does those same jobs every month, and every website we design and build goes live with the technical half already done: a title on every page, one heading in order, structured data and a sitemap submitted on the day.
Where to start
- How to rank for 'near me' searches What Google is doing with those two words, and why writing them on your site does nothing. 8 min read
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How to rank for 'near me' searches
How to rank for near me searches: what Google is doing when it reads those two words, why writing them on your site does nothing, and what does work.
Marta Sowińska · 8 min read
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Google Business Profile: the free listing trades get wrong
Google Business Profile setup done right: the one category that decides everything, the fields most trades leave blank, and how to get verified fast.
Nia Okonkwo · 8 min read
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How to get your business on the first page of Google
How to get on the first page of Google without paying an agency: which searches to chase, the free listing that does most of the work, and how long it takes.
Marta Sowińska · 7 min read
Questions
What people ask about getting found
Short answers, with the long version linked. Anything not here, ask us on live chat or by email and a person answers, usually the same business day.
How long does it take to get found on Google?
A listing that has just been verified can appear in the map results within two weeks. A page on your website takes longer: six to twelve weeks before it settles into a position it’ll hold, and longer again in a city. Anyone selling you the first page in thirty days is selling you an ad. How to get your business on the first page of Google gives the timings stage by stage.
Is the Google Business Profile more important than the website?
For a local trade the profile is the faster win and it costs nothing, so do it first. It isn’t a replacement. The profile is what puts you on the map; the website is where someone decides, and it’s the only one of the two you own. What we build into every website covers the half of this that lives on the site itself.
Do I have to pay for Google Ads to appear at all?
No. Ads take the slots at the very top and you can buy your way into them any week you like, but the map results and the ordinary results underneath cost nothing except the work. The difference is what happens when you stop: the free half keeps working, and the paid half goes dark the same afternoon.
What if nobody searches for my town?
Then you aim at the nearest place people do search for, set a realistic service area instead of a list of forty towns, and win on reviews. Getting found in a town nobody searches for works through it in detail.
Can I do this myself, or do I need an agency?
Most of it you can do yourself in a weekend, and local SEO for tradespeople is that weekend written down as a checklist. The parts worth paying for are the technical work on the site and the monthly grind of listings, posts and reporting, which is what the SEO service is.
Or skip the reading.
Everything on this page is something we do for people every week. We design the site, write it and put it online in seven days. Today you pay $1 for the website plus your first month of hosting. After that hosting is $8.99 a month, billed on the same date each month until you cancel, and you can cancel in any month. The same build is openly sold at $1,500, which is what a US agency charges for a small business site of this size. That hosting carries a mailbox, SSL and your domain run for you. The .com is included on the Complete plan at $18.99 a month. On Basic at $8.99 a month the name is registered in your own name and run for you, and the registry’s own annual fee for it, about $12 a year, is billed separately at cost. No contract, stop any month.
Prefer it delivered? There is an RSS feed, and the newsletter form at the bottom of this page sends one email a week. If you’d rather have someone do the work, the websites page is what we build, the SEO page is how we get it found, and the help center answers the practical questions.