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SEO Guide · 30 chapters
The SEO guide for local businesses
Thirty chapters on getting your pages into Google's results, written for the owner of an RV park, a clinic, a builder or a shop, not for another marketer. Every chapter shows the broken version, the fixed version with real numbers, and how to check your own site.
In one paragraph
Search engine optimization is the work of making every page on your site describe itself correctly to Google, so it shows up when someone in your town types what you sell. This guide covers that work chapter by chapter: how Google reads a site, what each page needs to say, how pages link to each other, what local businesses need that national brands do not, and how to read the reports. Read it in order and you will know what a search agency should be doing for you and how to tell whether it is.
What this SEO guide covers
Getting into search results. That is the whole scope. Every chapter is about one thing Google looks at when it decides whether your page belongs in the results for a search, and what that thing should look like on a site like yours. Being the exact answer in the box at the top of the results is a different discipline, covered in the AEO guide. Being named inside a ChatGPT or Gemini answer is covered in the GEO guide.
Each chapter has the same seven parts, in the same order. A one-paragraph summary that answers the chapter on its own. What the thing is, in plain words. What it looks like when it is broken on a real site in your kind of business. A worked example with real numbers, or the before and after copy side by side. How to check your own site, with the exact place to look. What we do about it. And five questions people ask, answered so you can act on them.
Who the SEO guide is written for
The owner or manager of a business that lives on local search: an RV park near Yellowstone, a physical therapy practice with two clinics, a med spa, a home builder with a new community, a lender, a cabinet shop, a dentist. The examples use businesses like these, with the figures those trades actually see. If you run one of them, the examples will read like your own site.
You will not need any tool you do not already have. Every check in the guide uses Google itself, Google Search Console, or a page on your own site.
Thirty chapters, one topic each
- How Google finds and reads a local business websiteCrawling, indexing, and ranking in plain words, shown on an RV park site that Google had mostly missed.
- What an SEO audit of a small business site actually checksThe checklist behind an audit, with the findings sheet from a two-clinic physical therapy practice.
- What a title tag should say for a local businessThe blue headline Google shows for your page, and what it should say for your trade.
- How to write a meta description that gets the clickThe two lines under your headline in Google, and how to write them so the searcher chooses you.
- How to structure headings on a service pageOne H1, H2s that carry the questions people search, and nothing chosen for its font size.
- Why every page needs one topic and one searchA page that covers five services ranks for none of them. Here is how to tell and what to split.
- How duplicate content quietly hides your pagesWhen two pages say the same thing, Google keeps one and drops the other. Here is how to find which.
- What a canonical tag does and when a local site needs oneOne line of HTML that tells Google which of several matching addresses is the real page.
- How internal links tell Google which pages matterThe links between your own pages, and how they decide which page Google trusts most.
- How to find and fix broken links and set redirectsLinks that land on a dead page, and the redirect that sends the visitor and Google to the right one.
- What your XML sitemap should and should not containThe list of pages you hand to Google, and why most local business sitemaps list the wrong ones.
- When to use noindex and what robots.txt should sayThe two ways to keep a page out of Google, and the one mistake that keeps your whole site out.
- How page speed affects a local business in searchWhat slow really means to Google, the numbers it measures, and which one to fix first.
- What Google's mobile-first indexing means for your siteGoogle reads the phone version of your site, not the desktop one. Here is what that changes.
- How to write alt text for the photos on your siteThe one-line description behind every photo, what it should say, and how to find the blank ones.
- How to name the URLs on a local business websiteWhat the address of each page should say, how short it should be, and how to change the ones you have.
- How to build a service page that ranksOne page per service, written so Google and a customer both know exactly what it is for.
- When a business needs a page for each locationA second office needs its own page. A town you drive to does not. Here is the line between them.
- How your Google Business Profile and website work togetherThe profile gets you on the map. The website proves the profile is telling the truth.
- Why your name, address and phone must match everywhereEvery listing of your business is a vote, and mismatched listings cancel each other out.
- How reviews affect where you show in searchCount, rating, recency, and the words customers use each move your map ranking in a different way.
- What kind of blog post brings customers to a local businessPosts that answer the question a buyer asks before they call, not news about the company.
- How to find the searches your customers actually typeThe phrases people type are shorter and plainer than the ones on your site. Here is how to find them.
- How to match a page to what the searcher wantsWhy a page that ranks can still bring nobody, and how to give the searcher what they came for.
- What to do with thin pages and out-of-date pagesThe pages nobody visits are still shaping how Google sees the rest of your site.
- What LocalBusiness schema tells Google about youThe block of code that tells Google your name, address, hours and type without guessing.
- How to read Google Search Console for a small businessGoogle's own free report on your site, and the five numbers in it worth an owner's time.
- How to track the calls and forms that search sendsHow to know which of last month's calls came from Google, without breaking your phone number everywhere else.
- How to plan pages around a seasonal businessWhy the page for your busy season has to be live months before it, and how to build the calendar.
- What a monthly SEO report should show an ownerThe six numbers an owner should see each month, and the ones that are there to look busy.
Read it front to back, or jump to the chapter you need. This guide covers getting into search results. The AEO Guide and GEO Guide guides cover the rest.
Search questions, answered.
Plain answers to what business owners ask about how SEO, the answer box, and AI search fit together.
Have us do this on your site
Send the address of your site. We fetch every page from outside, the way Google does, and send back the list: every page, every flag, and what we would fix first. Then we fix it, verify each change from outside, and report it in plain language every month.
