Who it's for

SEO for small businesses

You have a website, a bit of traffic, and nobody whose job is SEO. Every guide you open assumes a content calendar and a budget. This is the version for a business where SEO is something the owner looks at when the quotes are done. Our algorithm reads what your own search data already says, then AI writes up the handful of changes worth making because of it.

Why you rank for your business name and nothing else

Open Search Console on most small business sites and the top of the query list is the business name, some misspellings of the business name, and the name plus a town, which isn't a ranking achievement, because nobody else is competing for your name, so you win it by default and it comes almost entirely from people who already knew about you.

The queries that would bring you someone new sit further down, with a lot of impressions and very few clicks, because you're on page two for the thing you actually sell. That gap is the whole opportunity, and it's invisible unless someone sorts the list the right way, since the brand queries drown it out on every default view Google gives you.

Sorting for it is a mechanical job, and it's the one our algorithm was built to do. It works through the whole list and picks out the queries worth your time, which is what the report does before it says a word about what to change.

What a monthly retainer actually buys

Agencies earn their fee on work that genuinely needs a specialist: earning links, producing content to a schedule, fixing technical problems that took years to accumulate. If you want to compete in a crowded market you'll probably need some of that eventually.

But the first month of almost any engagement is an audit, and a large part of that audit is someone exporting your Search Console data and reading it. That's a real skill and it takes them an afternoon, and it's also the single highest-value thing that happens in the engagement, so you're paying a monthly fee for the eleven months afterwards to keep the relationship alive.

If you already know you want an agency, run the free report first anyway. Walking into that conversation knowing which queries you're close on makes you a much harder client to give a generic proposal to.

The queries a small business is usually closest to

Across small business exports the same four patterns keep showing up, and all four are cheap to act on because you're already ranking for them by accident.

Service wording you don't use
Customers search for the job, not your job title. A tradesperson who calls it "bathroom fitting" picks up impressions on "bathroom installation cost" and never uses the phrase on the page.
Place names beyond your own
You will usually be showing up for towns and neighborhoods you never listed, because Google is guessing at your service area. Those are cheap to claim properly.
Questions before the buying decision
How much does it cost, how long does it take, do I need a permit. Plenty of people search these before they ever search for a business by name, and the answers usually live nowhere on the site.
Your own name, spelled wrong
Brand queries are the ones you already win, and they're worth defending, so the report lists them separately and you don't accidentally optimize away the page that's working.

None of these need a new page. They need the right phrasing in a title, a heading, and usually one section that answers the question directly.

What you get back

  • The keywords worth targeting, each with a Pinpoint Score from 0 to 100 so you know which to start on.
  • Your traffic trend by week, so you can see whether the last change moved anything.
  • Your queries grouped by shared wording, which is where the phrases your customers use and your pages don't show up.
  • The keywords you already own and should not break.
  • An ordered action plan: what to change, in what order, with the copy written for you.

The trend chart and the duplicate-URL check need dates and page addresses, which only the Excel export from Search Console carries. A CSV or a Bing export gets you everything else. See exactly what is in a report.

Start here

  1. 1. Export your queries

    In Search Console, open Performance and hit Export. Choose Excel if you want the traffic trend. The click-by-click steps are here.

  2. 2. Upload it

    No signup, no API keys, no verification to sit through. The analysis takes about a minute.

  3. 3. Do the first step only

    The plan is ordered for a reason, so doing step one properly beats skimming all of them, and you'll know within a few weeks whether it moved.

Common questions

Do I still need an SEO agency?

That depends on what you want doing. A good agency will build links, produce content on a schedule, and handle technical work that genuinely needs a specialist. None of that is what this replaces, which is the first month of an engagement, where someone reads your Search Console data and tells you which pages to fix. If you want to know whether an agency is worth it before you commit to a retainer, running the free report first gives you a much better brief to hand them.

I only get a few hundred visits a month. Is there enough data?

Usually yes, because impressions matter more than visits here and a site with a few hundred clicks a month typically has tens of thousands of impressions behind them. The SEO Pinpoint algorithm works through the queries you already appear for and picks out the ones worth acting on. Those exist on small sites. If your export comes back with almost nothing, that's worth knowing too, and it points at a different problem than keyword choice.

Does this work for a local business with one location?

Yes, and the location wording is often where the easiest wins are, since Search Console will show you the places people are actually finding you from rather than the ones you assumed. What it won't do is manage your Google Business Profile, chase citations, or handle reviews. Local SEO has a component that lives outside your website entirely, and this only works on the website half.

What does it cost?

One report every 24 hours is free, with no signup and no card. Pro is $4.99 USD a month for unlimited reports, every keyword worth targeting rather than a sample, and the full action plan, and your first 30 days are free.

Running something other than a small business? We have written this up for SaaS startups and for side projects too.

See what your own customers are searching for.

One free report every 24 hours, no signup. When you want the rest, Pro is free for 30 days.

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