Most people picture a website like a building. You put it up, decorate it, get everything in place, and once it’s live you tell the builder goodbye. Now you’re official. You’re on the web.
That part is true. The part that isn’t true is what comes next in their minds: that the site will now sit there for everybody to find, with no more work.
A box to check in a bigger list
A site that’s built right for search can get found, depending on how competitive your line of work is. But the days when a site could stay the same year after year and still show up on the first page of Google are long gone. More than ten years gone, unless you got lucky in a small niche. A site that ranks takes steady work: updates, upgrades and more content over time.
That last part surprises people. Most owners ask for a seven or nine page site where all their stuff can live. What they don’t know to ask for is more pages, and then more again: one for each service, one for each town, so the site can go after the searches people actually type.
So a website is still a box to check. It just becomes a smaller box in a larger list. Making it competitive takes time and know-how, either someone else’s or yours, if you want to spend even more time learning it. And more and more, it depends on your other pieces online, starting with your Google Business Profile.
Skip all that, and you end up with what I call a business card site. You can send people there to read up on you, but it won’t catch fish: the free leads that come in from people searching Google. Those free visits are what a website is really for, and the reason to build it to be found from the start.
Why a good-looking site can still sit quiet
When an owner has a decent website that isn’t bringing calls, the thing missing is usually content. Google reads the same words your customers read, and it often needs a lot more of them than a nice design leaves room for before it gives the page enough weight to rank. The site can look great to your customers and still not show up when they search.
The code isn’t usually the problem. Website builders with easy editors can rank fine. What hurts is the information that never got filled in. A lot of decent sites were built at the owner’s direction by a tech person who didn’t know the business, filling in gaps that matter for marketing as best they could.
What works better is someone who covers all the tech bases and also makes it their job to understand your business, even if they’re new to it. Then the gaps get filled with who you really are, what people are searching for, and how the competition on Google stacks up.
The build and the look are important. But if no one’s going there, they can’t be important enough alone.
What actually makes the phone ring
There isn’t one piece. Several have to work side by side.
Your Google Business Profile, set up right. That’s the listing with the map, the hours and the stars. Many people click on those results before they ever look at a website. It goes side by side with a complete website that covers the most important bases first, then gets more specific, town by town.
Reviews, and plenty of them. You can’t change how far you are from the person searching. You can’t change what they searched for, either. You set your profile up so it says clearly what you do and where you do it, and that part is done. After that, getting in front of similar businesses near you comes down mostly to reviews. From everything I’ve seen, and what I keep hearing over and over, how often new five-star reviews come in and your average rating count the most. After that: a complete profile that agrees with your website, photos, and replies to your reviews.
Pages for each service and each town. When someone wants to know if you work in their area and do the one thing they need, a long scrolling page makes them dig for it. Then they still have to hunt for your hours. A page for that service, or that town, answers them right away. Being complete and directly relevant to the search doesn’t just help you rank. It helps the phone ring, because the person is sure they found the right kind of company.
Easy ways to reach you. Hours they can find. A phone number they can tap. A form that’s quick to fill out. A mistake I see a lot: the owner wants the contact form to ask for everything, so every lead comes in sorted. Then people don’t fill it out, or they quit halfway. Keep the first contact short and do the sorting on your end. And pick up the phone.
Branding and social media that match. When someone checks your social pages, they want to see that you post often enough to be a steadily run business. It’s as simple as that, and it goes all the way up to showing off what you do well. When everything looks organized and works together, people trust you more.
When every piece has a different company
A different company for each piece is a recipe for disaster.
Start with who those companies are. A lot of them are big, far away, with tons of clients, each doing one piece. They have their own way of doing things, and they can’t pay much attention to you. It’s one size fits all, especially when they don’t work in your industry. Meanwhile, the posts one of them makes and the website you run yourself are supposed to work together.
Say every one of them follows best practices. Somebody still has to keep them all on the same page, and that somebody is usually you. You’re doing part of what I’d consider my job, and paying several companies to do the rest.
The best answer would be someone in-house who cares about the business, knows it, and knows how to run every one of these pieces well. Most small businesses don’t have that person. The employee who could do it already has a full plate. Hiring someone who can would cost too much. Or the one willing to do it cheap, say your kid for your auto repair shop, has none of the expertise. Whichever way you go, you run into pitfalls.
You can get by with a couple of services, but they have to play nice with each other. Otherwise something gets lost in translation, like a game of telephone. And with the big companies, I see the same thing every time: a short intake, then you’re treated like every other flooring company out there. You do business differently from the other guys in town, but you get shoehorned into the way every flooring business gets marketed.
Someone local is always better, as long as they understand what you want and you turn them loose to take command of the whole picture so it fits together. That’s what MO-mentum Marketing brings: one partner for all of it. It’s a lot to handle, but so many of the pieces can be reused, shared and connected that it adds up to one continuous presence.
The first couple of months
Handing it all over is a big step, because you’re trusting someone with a lot at once. So it starts with the website.
We work out a site that fits what you expect and the look you already have. For a newer business, or one that’s really changing, that can mean a refreshed logo or a new one. We go through your features and benefits, possible taglines, and who you’d like to have as customers. I also take an early look for soft spots in Google search, where you could show up sooner.
Building the site is the intake. There are meetings before it starts and meetings while you critique it and we adjust it. By the time it’s live and approved, I understand the business as a whole, and I’ve become a sort of appendage of it.
Social media, your Google Business Profile and the rest start early, sometimes before the site launches. Your brand voice, the one that fits what your business really is and where it’s headed, takes shape through the first posts, and I check back with you on them. The Google Business Profile gets realigned. Other profiles, like Yelp, get brought in line. A Google Ads campaign gets started, or an old one gets revamped. The things nobody had time for, like profile details and replies to reviews, get caught up and brought up to standard.
New ideas get tried early, tested and reported back. And I keep looking for soft spots, including which kinds of customers would be easier to get. Then I ask whether you’d adjust to go after them, or whether that’s a deal breaker.
That’s how you find the streams of fish worth casting into. “Auto repair” in your main town is the dead center, and it’s competitive. You may not climb up from page three overnight. But narrower searches, like “brake repair,” can be quick hitters that bring early wins, and early wins are how you know those first months are leading to something great.
If you’ve been burned before
Sometimes it was a misunderstanding. One company offers some things and not others. One tracks you for a few search terms; I track as many as it takes, sometimes 70 or 100. Some bought Google Ads for you and never explained how the calls came in, or how much of your money they spent. I make sure you understand what’s happening and tell you as much as you want to know, so a win is a real win I can back up, not just something to brag about.
Sometimes a company came in, showed you a lot of great things, then collected a check every month while it all just sat there. I’m easy to reach, and the point is steady progress: fresh social images, new photos or video when you add a service, research into the words people search for. You don’t have to hesitate to ask.
If it was the billing that burned you: one monthly fee covers the work, so you aren’t charged for every single thing you ask for. And if I recommend spending more on Google Ads, that money goes to Google, not to me. It’s a recommendation for your benefit, not mine.
There’s no contract. It’s a handshake on the first few months and some general understandings about what’s expected, billed month to month, with nothing that locks you in. You’re handing me a lot of control, so this isn’t hiring a service by the piece. It’s closer to adding someone to your team. Early on that can feel like a probation period, and that’s understood. Trust is a feel thing, and it gets proven over time.
I don’t try to look like a big company with stale processes. I fit around whatever is easiest for your business, and bring you up to speed wherever you need it, in good time. If the last marketing company didn’t work out, going without one isn’t really an option. Tell me plainly what wasn’t working.
I’m not after one sale. The hope is a relationship that lasts a decade or more, where your business is part of a roster I’m proud to work with, and I’m a team member more than a service.
