Plain-English web tips for local business owners
Short, honest notes on the small things that decide whether people find your business online — and pick it. No jargon, no upsell. Each one is a single afternoon-sized job you can do yourself, in order, whenever you have a spare half hour.
We manage this for the businesses on our plan, but none of it is secret. If you would rather do it yourself, here is exactly how — the same checklist we work from, written plainly.
-
Claim the profile you already have
Search your business name on Google, look for "Own this business?", and claim it today.
Local search -
Your name, address, and phone should match everywhere
Write your name, address, and phone exactly once. Paste that everywhere from now on.
Consistency -
Write your title tag for a person, not a robot
Rewrite your homepage title as "[What you do] in [your town] — [Business name]."
Titles -
One page, one job
List your services. Any page covering more than one? That's tomorrow's project.
Site structure -
The meta description is your handbill
Write a 150-character description for your homepage that says what you do and why someone should pick you.
Meta description -
Speed is a feature
Check your slowest page at pagespeed.web.dev. If images are the culprit, compress them.
Speed -
Assume they're on a phone
Pull up your site on your phone right now. Can you book, call, or read without pinching to zoom?
Mobile -
Describe your own photos
Add alt text to your three most important images. "Wood-fired sourdough on a cooling rack," not "IMG_4032."
Images -
Link your own pages to each other
Find one place on your homepage where you mention a service, and link the words to that service's page.
Internal links