Reporting on rankings instead of enquiries
Position 3 on a term with 20 searches a month is a chart that goes up and a phone that does not ring. We report calls, forms and booked jobs, and we track the terms that produce them.
SEO · Small business
A small business SEO company that reports in enquiries, not impressions
The reason small business SEO has a bad reputation is that most of it is sold as a monthly retainer with no defined finish line and a report full of numbers that do not touch revenue. We work the other way round: fix what is measurably broken, prove the lift, then decide together whether ongoing work is worth it.
880US searches / month
90New York metro / month
—Cost per click
8Difficulty / 100
Small business SEO company — the market, measured
Small business SEO is one of the most searched — and most oversold — services in this market. 3,600 US searches a month for the bare term, another 5,400 for 'small business SEO services' at a striking $107.67 a click. When clicks cost that much, the agencies bidding on them need long retainers to make the maths work. That pressure shapes what gets sold.
For a business with one location and a handful of services, the honest scope of SEO is smaller than the industry likes to admit. The wins are concentrated: a Google Business Profile that is actually complete, a site Google can crawl and understand, pages that exist for the things people search, and enough consistency in your name-address-phone data that Google trusts which business you are.
That work is finite. It takes a few months, not a few years. After it, the honest question is whether there is enough remaining search demand in your market to justify a content programme — and for a lot of local businesses the answer is no, at which point the money belongs in paid or in the site itself. We would rather tell you that and keep the relationship.
What we will not do is bill you for rankings on terms nobody searches. Every engagement starts with the actual monthly demand in your category and market, pulled from live Google Ads data, so the ceiling is on the table before you spend anything.
What this market actually searches for
Live Google Ads search volumes and difficulty scores, pulled 10 August 2026. Not estimates, and not rounded to make a point.
| Search term | US / month | NY metro | Cost per click | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| small business website builder | 6,600 | 390 | $37.87 | 32 |
| small business seo services | 5,400 | 320 | $107.67 | 31 |
| small business web design services | 4,400 | 590 | $46.79 | 5 |
| small business seo | 3,600 | 210 | $39.16 | 15 |
| small business web design | 2,400 | 110 | $31.36 | 28 |
| small business website | 2,400 | 140 | $30.71 | 63 |
| small business marketing agency | 1,600 | 90 | $37.04 | 17 |
| small business seo agency | 880 | 90 | — | 22 |
| how to make a website for a small business | 720 | 50 | $26.07 | 49 |
| best small business websites | 590 | 50 | $33.68 | 34 |
| small business website development | 260 | 10 | $31.07 | 25 |
| small business web design company | 210 | 10 | $93.78 | 50 |
Combined monthly US demand across the terms we track in this category: 29,060 searches. Difficulty is scored 0–100 from the backlink profiles of the pages currently ranking — useful as a floor, not a promise, because it does not measure brand or budget. Where a cost per click shows “—”, there is no advertiser data for that term; that means unknown, not free.
What small business SEO retainers usually get wrong
Ignoring the Google Business Profile
For most local businesses the map pack drives more contact than the organic results below it, and it is the cheapest thing on the list to fix properly.
Publishing content nobody searches for
A blog written to hit a word count is a cost centre. We only recommend content where the search demand is documented and the intent is commercial.
No defined end state
If the scope never completes, the retainer never ends. Ours has a finish line, and we say when we have reached it.
What the engagement covers
Demand mapping first
Live Google Ads volumes for your category and market before any work is scoped, so you can see the size of the prize.
Technical foundation
Crawlability, indexation, canonicals, schema, sitemap, Core Web Vitals — the layer that caps everything above it.
Google Business Profile
Categories, services, hours, photos, Q&A and review flow — the highest-leverage local asset and the most commonly neglected.
Local consistency
Name, address and phone matched across the citations that matter, so Google stops hedging on who you are.
Pages for real intent
Service and location pages built only where documented demand exists, each with its own reason to exist.
Reporting you can act on
Monthly, in plain language: what changed, what it produced, what we recommend next, and what we recommend stopping.
Work you can open and inspect
We compete in local search ourselves and most of our client work is local service businesses. These are live builds, not case-study PDFs.
Everything under one team
Strategy, design, build, media and measurement in one place — so nothing gets handed between agencies and lost in the gap.
Other industries we build for
Questions, answered straight
How long before SEO shows results?
Technical fixes and Google Business Profile work can move local visibility inside 4–8 weeks. Competitive organic rankings take 4–9 months. Anyone promising page one in 30 days is either targeting terms nobody searches or is about to do something you will regret.
What does small business SEO cost?
Our audit-and-fix engagements run CAD $2,500–$6,000 as a defined project. Ongoing work, where it is justified, is typically $1,000–$3,000 a month. We will tell you when it is not justified.
Do you guarantee rankings?
No, and neither can anyone else — Google does not sell that and does not accept payment for it. What we guarantee is the work, the measurement, and an honest read on whether it is producing.
Is SEO worth it if my market is small?
Sometimes not, and we would rather establish that in week one. If your category has 70 searches a month locally, the win is a complete Google Business Profile and a fast site — not a content programme. We will point you at paid or referral instead.
Can you take over from another agency?
Yes. The first thing we do is audit what was actually delivered, including whether any of it poses a penalty risk. Occasionally the most valuable thing we do in month one is remove something.
What do I need to provide?
Access to your site, analytics, Search Console and Google Business Profile, and about an hour a month of your time. Content input where your expertise matters — we will not invent claims about your business.
Free online consultation
Build organic visibility that becomes an asset over time.
We can review the technical site, current search footprint and content structure, then identify the highest-value opportunities to improve discoverability.