The build got you a fast, clean site. This is the part that gets it found.
In plain English
Google ranks pages, not businesses. Your site has a handful of pages, so it has a handful of chances to show up for anything at all. That is the ceiling, and on a five page site it is a low one.
Everything I do each month raises it. More pages worth ranking, aimed at the questions your customers are actually typing, on a site that is already technically clean because I built it that way. After a year of this you are not a five page site any more.
This is Sobremesa Press, a site I started from nothing on 4 May and run myself. Go and look at it. Same job I would be doing on yours: research, articles, internal linking, on page work. No ads, no bought links, nobody else touching it.
Impressions a week
Times Google put the site in front of somebody
404 to 16,935
Google Search Console
Clicks a week
People who actually came through. Peaked at 46 in week fourteen. Still low because most impressions sit around position ten, where almost nobody clicks.
4 to 28
Google Search Console
Average position
Worldwide average, from week three. In the US on its own it is 15.2, so search from here and you will find it on page two, not page one.
28 to 10
Google Search Console
Top five articles
Impressions each. Five articles out of 117 are carrying most of the site, which is what the research is for.
57% of everything
Google Search Console
AI answers citing the site
How often assistants quote these articles when they answer somebody
897 from ChatGPT alone
Ahrefs
Where the traffic is
Monthly organic visits by country
80% United States
Ahrefs
No retainer vagueness. This is the list, and it's the same list whether you ask me about it or not.
I look at what your customers are typing, what your competitors already rank for, and where there's a gap you can realistically fill. That decides what gets written. You never have to think of a topic.
Researched, written, optimized and published on your site. Two is where it starts, not where it stops. Want more a month, tell me how many and I will price it before we begin.
Titles, descriptions, headings, internal links and schema, revisited as the site grows. Every new page gets it. Older pages get it again when something about your business changes.
Hours, services, categories, photos and posts, all kept current. For a local business this is often pulling more weight than the website, and it's the thing owners forget for two years at a time.
Every new article points back at the pages that actually earn you money, and the older articles get relinked as the library grows. This is quietly one of the highest leverage things on the list.
I set it up during your build, so the data is already there. I read it so you don't have to, and what it says is what decides the next month's articles instead of me guessing.
The writing is the easy part. This is the rest of it, and it's why two planned articles beat twenty that nobody thought about.
I look at what people actually search in your area and what your competitors already own. Most months this kills two or three ideas before anything gets written.
One article answers one question. The angle and the tone get decided here, before a word exists, because that is the decision everything else hangs off.
The fastest part of the job and the least important. A draft that answers the wrong question is worthless no matter how well it reads.
Every line goes through me before it goes anywhere. This is where it stops sounding like everything else on the results page.
Internal links pointed at the pages that actually make you money, plus the title, description, headings and schema. Almost nobody bothers with this part.
It goes live on your site and into Search Console. What it does over the next few weeks is what decides the following month's research.
| Topic | Target keyword | Vol | KD | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Writing these two | ||||
| What does lawn care actually cost in Brooklyn? | lawn care cost brooklyn | 320 | 4 | The question they ring you to ask before they book. |
| When should you aerate a lawn in the northeast? | when to aerate lawn | 190 | 2 | Seasonal, and nobody local has answered it properly. |
| Killed in research | ||||
| Top 10 landscaping tips | — | 9 | — | Nine searches a month. Nobody is looking for it. |
| Best lawn mowers 2026 | — | 2,400 | 71 | Volume is there, but you do not sell mowers. |
| Why choose our landscaping company | — | 0 | — | No demand. That is a services page, not an article. |
| Queued for later | ||||
| What does a retaining wall cost? | retaining wall cost | 1,900 | 38 | Worth having. Not yet, the site cannot hold it. |
| Sod or seed for a Brooklyn yard? | sod vs seed | 5,400 | 44 | Too competitive today. Revisit around month six. |
Both link back to your services page and your quote form.
Somebody searched for what you do today. They found somebody else.
Answer engines
A growing share of searches never reach a list of blue links. Someone asks an assistant, or Google answers at the top of the page, and that answer gets assembled out of pages it can read and trust.
That's a different job from ranking. An answer engine isn't picking a winner, it's quoting sources. So the work is making your pages quotable: the question answered directly in the first paragraph, in plain language, with the facts about your business marked up so a machine doesn't have to guess at them.
Every article is planned that way on purpose. Deciding which question is worth answering, and answering it so it holds up when something quotes it, is the actual job. The writing is the easy part.
Start monthly SEOThis is local search: the map pack, the three results with pins next to them, and everything tagged near me. For a trade or a shop it is where most of your customers actually find you. Google says it weighs three things there, and everything below is one of those three wearing a work shirt.
How close you are to the person searching. You cannot change it and it outweighs almost everything else, which is why ranking is a neighborhood fight and not a national one.
Whether your profile and your pages actually say you do the thing being searched for. Most businesses are vaguer about this than they think they are.
How well known you are across the web. Reviews, mentions, links, and how long you have been visible. This is the slow one.
Categories, services, attributes, hours, service area. Every empty field is a question Google answers by guessing, and it usually guesses in favour of somebody else.
Volume matters, recency matters more, and replying matters more than most owners believe. A profile with fresh reviews and real replies reads as a business that is still open.
Your business name, address and phone reading identically everywhere they appear. Two versions of your own phone number is a real and very common problem.
A page that says what you do and where you do it beats a homepage that mentions both in passing. This is the part the monthly articles are for.
Clicks, calls, direction requests and how quickly somebody comes back to the results. Google watches whether you were the right answer, and adjusts.
What to expect
Keyword research and the first two articles. Nothing moves in the rankings yet, and nothing should. Anyone showing you results in month one is showing you something they didn't cause.
Six articles live. Search Console starts showing impressions for terms you've never ranked for. Impressions come before clicks, every time, and that's the first real signal it's working.
The earliest articles settle into a position instead of bouncing around. This is usually where the first enquiry arrives from something I wrote rather than from your homepage.
It compounds. Old articles keep earning while new ones go up, and your site stops competing on the strength of one page. This is the part that makes the earlier months worth sitting through.
FAQ
Yes. I only do this on sites I built. That isn't me being precious about it, it's that half of what makes this work cheap and fast is knowing the site inside out and already having Search Console, Analytics and the Business Profile set up in your name.
Taking over somebody else's site means auditing a stack I didn't choose before I can write a word, and at $150 a month that maths doesn't work for either of us.
Whatever the research says is winnable. Usually that's the questions your customers ask you on the phone before they book: what something costs, how long it takes, what's included, what to do when a thing goes wrong, how to choose between two options.
Those articles rank because almost nobody in your trade writes them properly, and they convert because someone asking that question is already close to buying.
You get sent every article. If you want to read them before they publish, say so and I'll wait for your go ahead. Most people read the first two, decide the voice is right and then stop checking.
If something is factually wrong about your business, tell me and I'll fix it same day. That's the part I can't get right from the outside.
Only the SEO work. Titles, descriptions, headings, schema, internal links and the pages I publish. That is what you are paying for and I would rather be straight about where the line is.
General site changes, a new phone number, new hours, a redesign, a new page that is not an article, are a separate job at $95 an hour with a one hour minimum. Send it over and I will tell you what it costs before I touch anything, never after.
Any month, with a message. No notice period, no minimum term, no contract to get out of, no exit fee, and nothing gets switched off when you leave.
The articles stay on your site, the hosting stays free, and every login was always in your name. You just stop paying me and nothing else about the site changes.
They stay, they're yours, and they keep working. That's the honest reason SEO is worth more than ads: an article you paid for in March is still bringing people in two years later, whereas an ad stops the day you stop paying.
What stops is new work. Nothing new goes up, nothing gets refreshed, and the Business Profile goes back to whatever you do with it yourself.
Yes, and plenty of people do. Two a month is the floor, not the ceiling. Tell me how many you want and I will price it before we start, so the number never moves on you mid month.
More is genuinely better in a competitive market where somebody else is already publishing. In a quiet one it is just spending, and I will say so.
Yes, and for most trades and shops it's the half that matters more. Your Google Business Profile, the map pack, your categories and services, your photos, your posts and making sure your name, address and phone number read identically everywhere they appear.
Plenty of businesses get more from a properly maintained Business Profile than from their website. If yours is one of them I'll say so and weight the work that way.
I don't know, and neither does anybody who tells you they do. Where you land depends on your market, your competition and how long they've been at it.
What I can tell you is what gets done every month and that you'll see it done. If the numbers in Search Console aren't moving after ninety days, cancel. I'd rather lose the $150 than argue about it.
Tell me how the site's been doing since it went live and I'll tell you whether this is worth $150 a month to you.
Rather not use the form?
Message me on LinkedInUsually quicker than you'd think