Basics and strategy

There are six channels: search, maps, advertising, AI answers, referrals and direct visits. Search and maps bring the cheapest clients but take three to six months to pay back; advertising brings requests on day two and stops working the day you switch it off. For a local business, maps are almost always the place to start — the cheapest channel and the fastest.

Month one is measurement and maps: analytics, directory listings, site speed. Month two is queries and service pages, with advertising switched on alongside for the first requests. Month three is content and links. That order matters: first what pays off in weeks, then what accumulates over months.

Advertising is for when you need money now: requests start on day two and stop with the budget. SEO is for when you need an asset: silence for the first months, then traffic that arrives without monthly payments. Combining them at the start is sensible — advertising feeds the business while SEO builds up.

The arithmetic is simple: divide everything you spent on a channel in a month by the number of clients, not requests. The difference is decisive — if one in ten requests buys, a client costs ten times what a request does. Include not just the budget but the contractor's fee and your staff's time handling enquiries.

The plan is built from the number of clients, not from a budget figure: how many clients you need, your conversion from request, what a request costs — the budget follows. Then it is spread across quarters with seasonality in mind and split between channels. Revise it quarterly against actual numbers, not once a year on instinct.

Watch three things: whether they talk about your money or their own work, whether they give you access to your own accounts, and whether they name timelines without promising guarantees. A guarantee of first place means they either do not understand how search works or are counting on you not to. A sound contractor shows a three-month plan and states what they will count as a result.

What can be guaranteed: the volume of work, the timelines for doing it, transparency of access, and reporting. What cannot: positions, the number of requests, and a date for reaching the top — those depend on competitors and algorithms the contractor does not control. An honest contract describes the work and how to part ways, not a place in the results.

The three most expensive misconceptions: promotion can be done once and forgotten, first place can be guaranteed, and a new site will bring requests by itself. The first costs you lost positions within six months, the second costs money for an impossible promise, the third costs the price of development with no change in results. Test any promise with one question: what numbers will show it happened.