Seven things we do. In this order.
The order matters more than the list. Fix the website, claim the listing, earn the free traffic, then buy the rest. Do it backwards and you pay Google to send people somewhere that loses them.
Start here
Three common situations
“I’ve got no website, or a bad one.”
Start with the build
Everything else sends people to your website. Until that page converts, spending on traffic is pouring money through it.
“My site’s fine. Nobody finds it.”
Start with search
Google Business Profile first because it’s free and fast, then SEO and AEO so you show up in both the results and the AI answers above them.
“I need the phone to ring this week.”
Start with ads
Google Ads is the only thing here that works immediately, because you’re buying attention rather than earning it. It’s also the only one that stops when you stop paying.
Website build
A website has one job: turn a stranger into a phone call or a form. Most small business sites fail at it for the same few reasons — they load slowly, they bury the phone number, and they talk about the business instead of the customer’s problem. We build the opposite of that.
What you get
- Copy written from a conversation with you, not filled into a template
- A page for every service you sell, and for the suburbs you work in
- Tap-to-call in the header on every screen, and a form short enough to finish
- Loads in about a second on a phone on mobile data
- Hosting and domain set up in your name, with the logins handed to you
- A walkthrough recording so you can change text, prices and hours yourself
How we build it
Hand-built HTML for brochure sites, because nothing a page builder produces comes close on speed. WordPress when you genuinely need to publish new pages yourself every week. We recommend one and explain the trade-off before anything starts — we don’t have a platform to sell you.
If you already have a site that’s structurally sound, we’ll fix and optimise it instead. That’s a cheaper job and we’ll say so.
SEO
Search engine optimisation is the work of being the result Google picks when someone types what you sell. It’s slow, it compounds, and unlike ads it doesn’t switch off when you stop paying. For a local business most of it is unglamorous: fixing what’s broken, writing the pages you’re missing, and being clearer than your competitors.
Technical
- Speed, Core Web Vitals and mobile rendering
- Crawl errors, redirects and broken links
- Sitemap, robots.txt and index coverage
- Schema markup across the site
On-page
- Keyword and question research from real search data
- Titles and meta descriptions that earn the click
- Heading structure and internal linking
- A page per service, not one page listing all of them
Local
- Suburb and service-area pages that aren’t duplicates
- Name, address and phone consistent everywhere
- Directory and citation clean-up
- Reviews feeding back into the listing
What to actually expect
Nothing in month one. Movement on long, specific searches around month two or three. Competitive terms take longer than that, and anyone promising you page one by a particular date is guessing. This is why we usually run ads alongside SEO rather than instead of it — ads pay the bills while the slow work compounds.
AEO
Answer engine optimisation
A growing share of searches never produce a click. Someone asks ChatGPT for a plumber, or reads Google’s AI summary and calls the business it names. There’s no list of ten blue links to rank in — there’s one answer, and either you’re in it or you aren’t.
AEO is the work of making your site easy for those systems to read, trust and quote. It overlaps with good SEO but it isn’t the same job: SEO optimises for ranking, AEO optimises for being extracted.
What it involves
- Questions answered in plain language, in one or two sentences, where the answer is the first thing on the page
- Schema markup — FAQPage, LocalBusiness, Service — so facts are machine-readable rather than inferred
- An llms.txt file summarising the business for AI crawlers
- robots.txt that explicitly welcomes GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and the rest instead of blocking them by accident
- Prices, service areas and hours stated as text, not buried in an image
- Consistent facts across the site, your listing and your directory entries, because contradictions get you dropped
Being straight about it
Nobody can guarantee an AI assistant will recommend you. There’s no ranking dashboard, no bid, and the systems change every few months. What we can do is make sure that when one of them reads your site, it finds clear, consistent, quotable answers instead of a slideshow and a contact form.
It’s cheap to do properly while it’s still early, and most of your competitors haven’t touched it. That’s the whole argument.
Google Ads
The fastest way to make the phone ring, and the fastest way to waste money. The difference is almost entirely in the setup: which searches you bid on, which ones you block, and whether you can tell afterwards which clicks turned into work.
The build
- Account structure built around the jobs you want, not the ones you don’t
- Negative keyword lists from day one, so you stop paying for “free”, “jobs” and “DIY”
- Ad copy and extensions written for each service
- Landing pages that match the ad, instead of dumping everyone on the home page
- Location targeting tight enough to exclude the next state
- Conversion actions configured before a cent is spent
The ongoing work
- Search term review — what people actually typed, not what you bid on
- New negatives added every month
- Bid and budget adjustments based on cost per lead, not clicks
- New ad variants tested against the ones that work
- A monthly call and a one-page read on what changed and why
The account is yours. Ad spend goes on your card, directly to Google, never marked up. If we part ways you keep the account and its history.
Google Business Profile
The listing that puts you on Google Maps and in the map pack above the normal results. For a lot of local businesses it gets more views than the website does, and it’s free. It’s also the single most neglected asset we see — half-filled, wrong hours, no services listed, reviews nobody has replied to since 2023.
The build-out
- Primary and secondary categories chosen deliberately — this decides which searches you appear in at all
- Every service listed individually, with descriptions
- Service area set properly for a business without a shopfront
- Hours, holiday hours and attributes
- Photos that look like your work, geotagged and named
- The Q&A section seeded with the questions customers actually ask
- Verification sorted, including the postcard or video process if needed
Keeping it alive
- Posts each month, so the listing looks active to Google and to people
- New photos added as you finish jobs
- Review responses written for you — including the bad ones, which matter more
- A simple system for asking customers for reviews without nagging
- Watching for competitors editing your listing, which happens more than you’d think
Still called Google My Business by most people. Google renamed it in 2022; it’s the same listing.
Tracking & reporting
The least exciting thing on this page and the one that changes the most. Without it you’re guessing which half of the budget works. With it, every decision afterwards gets easier, because you’re arguing about a number instead of a feeling.
What gets set up
- Call tracking, so a phone call counts as a conversion like a form does
- Form submissions tracked and tested end to end
- GA4 and Google Tag Manager configured, not just pasted in
- Conversions imported into Google Ads so bidding optimises for leads
- Consent handling, so you’re not collecting what you shouldn’t
What you get back
One number, every month: what a lead cost you. Underneath it, where leads came from and which pages produced them. Not a 40-tab dashboard you’ll never open — one page you can read in two minutes, and a call to talk about what we’re changing.
Some of it will be uncomfortable. If a channel isn’t working you’ll see it, and we’ll tell you to stop spending on it.
Landing pages & conversion
Everything above this point is about getting someone onto your site. This is about what happens in the thirty seconds after they land. Doubling the share of visitors who call you is usually cheaper than doubling the visitors — and you’ve already paid for the ones you have.
Campaign landing pages
A page built for one service and one ad, instead of dropping everyone on the home page to find their own way. Someone who searched “emergency electrician Bondi” should land on a page about emergency electrical work in Bondi, with the phone number at the top.
- Headline that repeats the words they searched for
- One job per page, one obvious next step
- Phone, form and proof above the fold on a phone
- Loads fast enough that nobody leaves waiting
- Conversions firing correctly before any spend starts
Conversion work on pages you already have
You don’t need a new website to fix this. Most sites leak enquiries in the same handful of places, and the fixes are usually small, specific and testable.
- A review of where people drop off, with a fix list in priority order
- Forms shortened to the fields you actually use
- Tap-to-call and a sticky contact bar on mobile
- Headline and call-to-action testing, one change at a time
- A 30-day check after launch, when there’s real data to look at
Why this one is last on the list
Conversion work needs traffic to work on. Testing a headline against four visitors a week tells you nothing. We’ll usually get the site, the listing and the ads running first, then come back to this once there’s enough data for the answers to mean something. Anyone offering to A/B test a brand new site with no traffic is selling you a coin toss.
How they fit together
Each one makes the next one cheaper
This isn’t a menu of unrelated products. The work compounds, which is why the bundles cost less than buying the pieces separately.
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01
A site that converts
Lifts the return on every visitor from every other channel, paid or free. Do it first and everything after it costs less per lead.
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02
A complete listing
Free, fast, and feeds the map pack. It also gives Google consistent facts about you, which helps the SEO and the AI answers.
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03
SEO and AEO
The keyword research done here is the same research that builds the ad campaign. One job, used twice.
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04
Ads and tracking
Buys traffic now while the free traffic builds, and the tracking tells you which of the three above is actually paying for itself.
Services FAQ
Reasonable questions
Money questions are on the pricing page. General ones are on the home page.
Which service should I start with?
Almost always the website and the Google Business Profile, in that order. Sending paid traffic to a page that does not convert is the most expensive mistake in this whole list, and the listing is free to fix.
Can you work with the website I already have?
Usually yes. If the site is reasonably built we will fix and optimise it rather than sell you a new one. If it is slow, broken on phones or built on something we cannot work with, we will say so and tell you what rebuilding costs.
What platform do you build websites on?
Hand-built HTML for brochure sites, because it loads faster than anything a page builder produces, and WordPress when you need to add pages or posts yourself regularly. We will recommend one and explain why before we start.
Who writes the words on the website?
We do. Copywriting is part of every website build, not an extra. We interview you about the work, then write it and send it to you to correct before anything gets built.
Will I be able to update the site myself?
Yes. You get the logins and a short walkthrough recording of how to change text, prices, hours and photos. If you would rather not touch it, a care plan covers small changes for you.
Do you offer social media management?
No. We do not do social media at all, in any package. It is not where small local businesses get their leads, and doing it properly takes daily attention we would rather spend on the things that make your phone ring. If you want it, we will point you at someone who specialises in it.
What do you need from me to get started?
A 30-minute conversation, access to your domain, hosting, Google Business Profile and ad account if they exist, and any photos of your work. We write everything else.
Do you do SEO for online stores?
We focus on businesses that make money from phone calls and enquiries rather than online checkouts. If you run a store, we are probably not the right fit and we will tell you early rather than take the job anyway.
Free audit
Start with the audit
Before you buy any of the above, let us look. We’ll review your website, Google Business Profile and any ads you’re running, then tell you which of these six things would move the needle first — and which would be a waste of money right now.