SEO Services for Small Business

SEO, local SEO and AI search, in plain English

Most business owners who call me say some version of the same thing: "We need more leads." That's a symptom, not a diagnosis. Somewhere between a customer having a problem and that customer calling you, something is broken. My job is to find out where.

Nearly every time, the break is in one of three places people search, or in the message underneath all three.

• Traditional SEO (search engine optimization) is the work that gets your website pages to show up when someone types a question into Google or Bing. It's about your website.
• Local SEO is the work that gets you into the map results, the "local stack" of nearby businesses Google shows for searches like "roofer near me." It's about your Google Business Profile and your footprint across the internet.
• AI search is what happens when someone asks ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity or Google's AI answer who to hire. The AI reads the web and recommends a few businesses by name. It's about whether AI understands you and trusts you enough to say your name.

These aren't three separate projects. They stack. Traditional SEO makes your website worth finding. Local SEO builds a footprint across the internet that confirms you're real and nearby. AI search reads both before it decides whether to recommend you. And all three rest on the same thing: a clear message about who you help and how.

Why we build from the bottom up

It's tempting to start at the top. AI search is new, everyone is talking about it, and it feels like the thing to fix. But each layer depends on the one beneath it:

• Traffic from SEO is wasted if the page people land on doesn't tell them clearly what you do and why it matters to them.
• A Google Business Profile ranks better when the website behind it is already optimized for the same words.
• AI search reads your website, then checks your profiles, directories and reviews to decide whether to trust what you said. If those lower layers are thin or don't match, AI has nothing to confirm.

Traditional SEO: the difference between being seen and being invisible

When I first became a Certified StoryBrand Guide, I believed that if I helped a client get clear and put that message on a great-looking website, that was all they needed.

Early on, I built a site for Kevin Anthofer at Route 69 Customs, a custom motorcycle builder in the Des Moines area. A few months after launch I checked in to see how it was doing. He said he loved the website and thought it looked great, and then:

He was right. A clear website that nobody finds doesn't help anyone. That conversation is when I set out to learn what it takes to make sure a client's website is actually seen. What follows is the process I built from it.

Branded and unbranded traffic: where small business growth comes from

When I do keyword research, I split searches into two kinds.

Branded searches use your name. If your site doesn't get much traffic, most of what it does get is probably branded: people who already know you, maybe because someone handed them your card or they met you at a networking event.

Unbranded searches describe the thing you do, like "custom motorcycle builder" or "home inspector near me." These people don't know you exist. They have a problem and they're looking for someone to solve it. For a small business, ranking for unbranded keywords is where the money is. Those terms are how people who don't know you yet find your website and your business, and your clear message takes it from there.

Over time it comes back around. Once you've made a name for yourself, people start searching for you directly again, only now in much larger numbers. That's why the biggest brands get so much branded traffic: people search for them by name.

How I do traditional SEO

1. Clarify first. If we haven't defined your ideal customer, that comes first. The BrandScript is where keyword research starts.
2. Keyword research. From the BrandScript, I find the words your ideal clients are searching right now to find someone like you, with the focus on unbranded terms.
3. Competitor research. I search those keywords and look at who Google ranks today. For three to five of those competitors, I run a report on the keywords they attract, which pages bring them the most visitors, and what their content does. They're already winning in Google's eyes. Applying what's working for them to your site is where the best results come from.
4. A keyword map and on-page SEO. Each page of your site gets its own keyword, a title built around it, and a meta description that includes it. Images get alt text, because Google can only understand what it can read, and alt text tells it what an image shows. Pages link to related pages on your site and to relevant sources elsewhere. Think of it like a spider web: the links help Google understand and categorize what each page is about.
5. Off-page SEO. Most of the businesses I work with are struggling to get seen at all, so the first goal is simply making sure Google knows you exist. I do that by building signals: activity across the web that points back to your business, like your Google Business Profile, videos and mentions. When it helps, I run a boost project: one of your content pages becomes a press release distributed to many outlets, carrying your website, your Business Profile, a map and a video. Links from press releases pass little direct ranking value, but the visibility and mentions do the work. Backlinks grow on their own as your presence grows. If you're already an established brand, earning quality backlinks becomes the priority. At the start, it's the foundation.
6. A technical audit. Once the pages are optimized, I audit the whole site: speed, broken links, the sitemap. I connect Google Analytics and Google Search Console, submit your sitemap so Google knows the site exists, and do the same with Bing, which also powers DuckDuckGo and Yahoo results. I also check how fast the first thing a visitor sees appears. Google measures this as part of its page experience scores, and it needs to be quick.

AI search: the same, but different

The best way I can explain AI search is that it's the same as SEO, but different.

It's the same because it starts with clarity, maybe even more than anything else on this page. AI runs on content: relevant content that helps the person asking find an answer or a solution. So you need to define who you are, what you do and how you help your customers at a very detailed level. Think through the whole process: what your ideal clients are searching for, and what specific details they need. Then that content needs to be on your site.

It's different because of what AI does with the words. In traditional SEO, you write content, assign it to a keyword, and tell Google, "If people search this, this page is about that." AI search looks past the keyword to what you're actually saying. The words people type still decide whether you're considered. What changes is how AI decides who to name.

This page is an example of that. I've tried to answer every question you might have, so nothing is left open. And the goal is the same as any good AI answer: that when you're done, you pick up the phone or schedule a call so I can get to know you and your business.

How an AI answer gets built

When someone types a long question into an AI tool, it searches the internet for sites that talk about that topic. Say it gets back a hundred. It then has to decide which of those hundred it can trust most. To do that, it looks for the same things Google has long described as E-E-A-T: experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness.

1. Proof on your own site. You say you do something. AI wants you to back it up with examples of who you've actually helped: case studies, stories, specifics.
2. What the rest of the internet says about you. This is where local SEO comes back in. AI checks your overall footprint: the directories, your reviews on Google, Yelp and the Better Business Bureau, and the sites that list businesses like yours. It wants all of it to agree. When it doesn't, such as one address on one site and a different one on another, that can knock you down.
3. A website that's easy to read. The technical side matters here too: schema (code that labels what your pages are about), a robots.txt file that lets AI crawlers in, and an llms.txt file, an emerging standard we add. All of it builds on the technical SEO work from layer 2.

That's why traditional and local SEO need to be in place first. You need a healthy website that gives visitors a good experience when AI sends them there, and a footprint across the internet that confirms what your website says.

Show AI that you're one business

It used to be fine to have a website in one place and a Google Business Profile in another. Today they need to be tied together so AI can see they're the same business. So I link your Google Business Profile from your website's footer, put your address on the site, and embed a Google map. We do the same with Yelp and the Better Business Bureau.

For years, everyone focused on Google. But each AI engine leans on different sources. Perplexity, for example, has built Yelp data directly into its local results, and in our work it also draws heavily on BBB profiles. So I now go back to clients and reinforce their Yelp and BBB accounts, reviews included. The BBB profile is the new set-it-and-forget-it: most owners never think to ask for reviews there, and it matters more as AI grows.

A warning: AI fills gaps skeptically

Here's something I've seen again and again. If you describe a service but leave gaps in the details, AI fills the gap, and it tends to fill it the way a skeptical customer who's been burned before would.

Advantage Roofing's Forever Roof Guarantee covers interior damage if one of their roofs ever leaks. They fix it and make it right. But AI read the description and warned readers there might be a dollar cap on that coverage. There isn't. The site just didn't say so.

A business broker I work with gives honest valuations to owners looking to sell. Often the owner is offended by the number, tries to sell on their own for six months to a year, and then comes back and says, "All right, you were right." AI warned users that the broker's valuation would probably be inflated to win their business, the exact opposite of the truth.

The fix is to spell out the details a skeptic would ask about, such as caps, exclusions and how you handle the hard conversations, so AI doesn't have to guess. I wrote more about this in Your Website Is a Mirror: AI Can't Recommend What It Can't See.