SEO: getting the basics right

The handful of things that decide whether locals find you on Google.

Ask the questionCan AI tell me why locals aren't finding me on Google? Yes, once you hand it your Search Console data.

SEO has a reputation for being dark magic. For a local business it mostly isn't. Google wants to show people a business that is real, nearby, clearly does the thing they searched for, and that other people seem happy with. Your job is to make all four of those obvious.

1. Open a private browser window and search for your main service and your suburb, for example "electrician Gungahlin". Note where you show up, on the map and in the normal results.
2. Go to business.google.com and sign in with the account that owns your Business Profile. If you don't have one, choose "Add your business" and follow the verification steps.
3. Click "Edit profile". Check your primary category is the single best description of what you do. Add secondary categories only if they're true.
4. Fill in every empty field: hours, service area, phone, website, services and the description. Write the description for a customer, not for Google.
5. Open the Photos tab and add at least five real photos of your work.
6. Open search.google.com/search-console. Add your website as a property and follow the steps to verify it.
7. In the left menu choose Sitemaps, type "sitemap.xml" and click Submit. Most website builders create this file for you.
8. Finally, open your home page, right-click and choose "View page source". Search for "<title>". If it says "Home" or just your business name, that's your first fix.

1. Your Google Business Profile comes first

For "near me" searches, the map results usually sit above the normal website links. Those come from your Google Business Profile, and it's free. Claim it, verify it, and fill in every field: the right primary category, your real service area, opening hours, phone, website, services and a proper description. Add genuine photos of your work, your team and your premises. Post an update every few weeks so it doesn't look abandoned.

2. Titles and descriptions that say what you do and where

Every page on your site has a title and a meta description. They're what shows up as the blue link and the grey text under it in Google. Too many sites have "Home" as the title. Write something a person would click: the service, the place, and your name. For example, "Air conditioning repairs in Belconnen | Smith Cooling". Keep titles under about 60 characters and descriptions under about 155 so they don't get cut off.

3. One page per service, without the spam

If you do five things, have five pages, each one explaining that service properly: what it is, who it's for, what it costs roughly, how long it takes, and photos of real jobs. If you genuinely serve a few areas, it's fine to mention them and to have a page for a suburb where you have something real to say. What doesn't work any more is 40 near-identical pages with the suburb name swapped. Google treats that as spam, and customers can smell it too.

4. Reviews, asked for every time

Reviews are one of the strongest local signals and the easiest to neglect. Ask every happy customer, the same day, with a direct link. Reply to every review, good and bad, like a human. Never buy reviews or offer a discount in exchange for one: it's against Google's rules and against Australian consumer law.

Aim for 10 first. The number I tell clients is ten. In my experience, once a local business has ten genuine Google reviews, it starts getting real traction on Google. Under ten, you're easy to scroll past. That's not an official Google rule, it's what I've seen. Get to ten, then keep a steady trickle coming.

5. Speed and phones

Most of your visitors are on a phone. Run your site through PageSpeed Insights and look at the mobile score. You don't need 100. You do need the page to load quickly, text you can read without zooming, and buttons you can tap with a thumb. Huge uncompressed photos are the usual culprit.

6. Tell Google you exist

Set up Google Search Console and submit your sitemap. It's free and it tells you what people searched before they found you, which pages Google has indexed, and when something's broken. Check it once a month.

7. The same details everywhere

Your business name, address, phone, hours, services and description should match everywhere you appear: your website, Google Business Profile, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Apple Business Connect, Bing Places, and directories like Yellow Pages, True Local and Hotfrog. An old phone number or last year's hours on one of them confuses Google and annoys customers. Keep how you describe what you do consistent too: the same services, the same tone, the same key message. When anything changes, update them all on the same day.

8. Review it every month, and be patient

SEO isn't a job you finish. It takes months, not days, and it needs looking at again and again. Google has to find your changes, decide whether they're better, then slowly move you. Anyone promising page one by next week is selling something.

Once a month, export your results and get Claude to review them. In Search Console open Performance, set the date range to the last 3 months, click Export and choose Google Sheets or CSV. You get a Queries tab (what people searched) and a Pages tab (which of your pages showed up). Paste both into Claude with the prompt below. It's looking for four things:

• Lots of impressions, few clicks. People see you but don't click. Rewrite that page's title and description so they match the search.
• Positions around 8 to 20. You're nearly on page one. Strengthen that page with more detail, real photos and answers to common questions.
• Searches with no matching page. People want something you don't cover yet. That's a new page or a new section.
• Pages losing clicks month on month. Something changed. Find out what before it slides further.

Here's my Google Search Console export for the last 3 months. The first part is the Queries tab, the second is the Pages tab.

My business: [what you do]
Where: [suburbs or city you serve]
My main pages: [list them]

Please review it and tell me:
1. Queries with lots of impressions but few clicks, the page each one lands on, and a better title and description for that page.
2. Queries sitting around positions 8 to 20, and what I could add to that page to strengthen it.
3. Searches I don't seem to have a page or section for.
4. Any page that looks like it's losing clicks.

Then give me the three most useful things to do this month, in order. Only use the numbers in the data. If something isn't clear, say so.

Queries:
[paste]

Pages:
[paste]

Take a baseline first. Before you change anything, export Search Console and save it with the date. Every later check compares against that file, so you can see what your changes actually did.

1. Open Google Search Console and choose your website.
2. Click Performance, then set the date range to the last 3 months.
3. Turn on all four boxes: clicks, impressions, click rate and position.
4. Click Export at the top right and choose Download CSV. You get a zip of files with your searches, pages and dates.
5. Open claude.ai and start a new chat, or open your business project.
6. Attach the export and tell Claude what you changed on the site and when, for example "rewrote page titles in August, added a suburb page".
7. Ask Claude to review it: what's improving, what isn't, which changes seem to be working, and the one or two things to do next.
8. Read the answer, pick one or two changes, and note today's date in your decisions log.
9. Do it again next month and ask Claude to compare the two exports.

You are helping a small local business improve its Google search results.

Business: [business name]
What we do: [main services]
Where: [suburbs or city we serve]
Who our customers are: [e.g. homeowners, cafes, tradies]

For each page below, write:
1. A page title under 60 characters that includes the service and the location where it makes sense, and ends with the business name.
2. A meta description under 155 characters, written to make a real person want to click. No hype, no exclamation marks.

Don't stuff keywords. Don't invent services we didn't list. Put the results in a table.

Pages:
[page name: one sentence about what's on it]