Small business SEO is the work of making a business with a small budget and no marketing staff show up when a nearby customer searches for what it sells. For most small businesses that means three things: a complete Google Business Profile, a website with a real page for each thing sold, and a steady supply of honest reviews. Everything else is second.
Advernation is a small business itself. It was started in Queens in 2007 by Christopher Maddaloni, a former electrician, and works from 1115 Broadway in Manhattan. We do local business SEO and small business marketing without contracts, starting with a free audit, so an owner can see what is wrong before paying for anything.
Tell us what you sell and where your customers come from. We will check what a customer sees when they search for it today.
Who small business SEO is for
It is for a business where the owner is also the marketing department: a shop, an office, a studio, a clinic, a service company with a few trucks. If customers find you by searching for a thing and a place, or by looking up your name after someone mentioned you, search is already deciding part of your sales. The question is only whether you have a hand in it.
It is not for every business at every moment. If you cannot take on more customers this season, wait. If your customers never search for what you do, because they do not know it exists, SEO is the wrong first tool and ads or outreach are better ones. We say so in the audit.
How customers search for a small business
Customers search for a small business in two ways, and they call for different work. The first is a search for the thing: “shoe repair near me”, “accountant in Astoria”, “birthday cakes Park Slope”. Google answers those with a map and three businesses, then a list of websites. Many of these searches happen on a phone, and one can end with a call or a walk to the door without any website being opened.
The second is a search for you. Someone was given your name, saw your sign or got your card, and looks you up before coming in. What they see is your Business Profile: hours, photos, the star rating, the latest reviews. A wrong phone number or a closed-on-Monday surprise loses that customer, and they were already yours. Fixing this costs the least of anything on this page and is where we start.
Local business SEO and the map
The Business Profile is the base of local business SEO. Google says a business qualifies for one if it makes in-person contact with customers during its stated hours. It ranks the three map results mainly by relevance, distance and prominence: how well the profile matches the search, how far the business is from the person searching, and how well known it is, counting reviews and links from other sites. It adds that businesses with complete and accurate information are more likely to show up, and that a better local ranking cannot be requested or paid for.
So the work is unglamorous. The name on the profile is the name on your sign, because Google does not permit unnecessary information in a business name. The categories are few and specific, as Google asks. Hours are right, including holidays. Every service or product line is listed in the words customers use. Photos are of the real place.
If you also go to your customers, as a caterer or a repair business does, we keep your address on the profile and add the places you travel to as service areas. Google allows up to 20 and expects the whole area to be within about two hours’ drive of the business. Distance is the one factor nobody can change, which is why a small business usually wins its own neighborhood first and widens from there.
The website and its pages
A small business site needs fewer pages than most owners are sold and better ones than most have. The rule is one page for each thing a customer might search for. A page that lists eight services in eight lines ranks for none of them. A page about one service that says what it is, who it is for, what affects the price and how to get it can rank for that service.
Google’s own starter guide is a good checklist for the rest. Each page gets a title that is unique, clear and accurate, and a short description of its own. Google says it finds pages mainly through links from pages it has already crawled, so every page must be linked from your own menu or another page, and a few links from real local sources, such as a supplier, a neighborhood association or the local paper, help it find and trust the site. The guide also says something agencies seldom repeat: among the most effective and lasting ways to promote a site is word of mouth.
We write the pages from what you tell us, in plain words, and you approve them. If the site itself is the problem, slow on a phone or impossible to edit, we rebuild it under web design. We do not pad a small site with a page for every nearby town. Google’s spam policies call pages made to rank for similar searches and funnel visitors to one place doorway abuse.
Reviews: the rules a small business should know
Reviews help a small business twice: Google says more reviews and positive ratings can help a local ranking, and customers read them before they call. Two sets of rules apply. Google requires that reviews reflect a genuine experience and prohibits offering free or discounted goods in exchange for them. Federal law goes further. A Federal Trade Commission rule makes it an unfair or deceptive practice for a business to write or buy fake reviews, or to give compensation or other incentives conditioned on a review expressing a particular sentiment.
What is left is the honest way, which works. Ask every customer, at the moment the job is done or the purchase is made, with a link or a QR code that Google provides for the purpose. Reply to the reviews you get. Google’s advice for a bad one is a constructive reply and a follow-up, and never sharing the reviewer’s private information. We set up the request and draft the replies.
Small business marketing beyond SEO
Small business marketing is wider than search, and a small business marketing agency should help you choose, not sell you all of it. There are four other parts. Each has a page of its own.
- Ads. Search ads put you above the results the day they start, which matters while SEO is still building. Our Google Ads management is from $500 per cycle. A cycle is one test of a campaign and you set its length: a day, a week or a month. That lets a small business test one service in one area before spending more.
- Social media. Useful where the product is something people like to look at or talk about, such as food, a shop or a studio, and of little use for an emergency service. See social media marketing.
- The website. If it does not load quickly on a phone and show the phone number and hours at once, fix it before paying to send people there.
- AI search. People now ask an assistant for a recommendation. Google says no special optimization is needed to appear in its AI features, only pages that are indexed and a Business Profile that is up to date. More on our AI search optimization page.
Small business digital marketing goes wrong when the parts are bought separately from different sellers and nobody counts the calls. We set up one count, calls and form requests by source, before anything else.
What we do, month by month
| When | What we do | What you see |
|---|---|---|
| Month one | Free audit of the site and the profile. The searches your customers make, by service and neighborhood, and who shows for them now. Profile corrected. Call and form tracking. | Where you stand, a short plan, and a profile that is right. |
| Months two and three | A page for each service or product line, written and approved. Titles and descriptions. Listings on other sites made to match. A review request added to the end of each sale. | New pages live, reviews arriving, calls counted by source. |
| Months four to six | Links from real local sources. Answers to the questions customers ask you most. An ads test for the service you most want, if you want one. | Map and search positions moving for the services you chose. |
| Every month after | New pages as you add services, review replies, repairs to whatever slipped. | One short report: calls, requests, positions, visits. |
What it costs and how to judge a quote
Judge any quote by customers, not by rankings. Work out what a new customer is worth to you in a year, after your costs. Divide the monthly fee by that figure. The answer is the number of new customers a month the work must bring to pay for itself. If the number is small next to what you could handle, it is worth testing. If it is more than the neighborhood could ever send you, no agency can make it work.
We quote monthly SEO plans for small businesses after the free audit, with no contract. Get a quote.
The prices that exist are on the pricing page: the SEO audit is free, Google Ads management is from $500 per cycle and re-targeting is from $400. Google’s advice on hiring an SEO is worth reading before you sign with anyone. It says no one can guarantee a first place ranking, tells owners to be wary of firms that email out of the blue, and suggests asking what results to expect and in what timeframe. It also says a good time to hire is when you are considering a site redesign.
What we need from you
We need access to your website and your Business Profile, or the details to claim the profile if nobody has. We need a list of what you sell, what you make the most on and what you would rather not be called about. We need photos of the real place and the real work. And we need some of your time in the first week, then a little each month to approve pages and replies.
What we can and cannot show
We have published five case studies, and two of them are local businesses of the kind this page is about. Silver Gold Refinery, in the Diamond District, reached first place on Google for the search Gold Refinery NYC and has been a client from 2008. Corpus Christi Concrete Guys, a concrete contractor, had keywords on the second to fifth pages of Google, and within two months they had moved into the top five positions. The rest are on the case studies page. We have not published a result for every kind of small business, and we will not borrow one field’s numbers to sell another. For yours we show the audit first.
Related pages: local SEO services covers the map in full, and the New York SEO company page covers the city. Many kinds of small business have a page under industries, among them restaurant marketing, ecommerce SEO for shops that sell online, auto repair marketing and SEO for contractors.
Ask for the free audit. It shows what a customer sees when they search for you, and what to fix first.
Questions people ask
What is small business SEO?
It is SEO sized to a business with a small budget and a local customer base: a complete Google Business Profile, a page on the website for each thing sold, consistent listings, a few real local links and a steady flow of honest reviews.
What does a small business marketing agency do?
It finds out how your customers look for you and fixes the weakest part first. That may be the Business Profile, the website, reviews, search ads or social media. For most small businesses the profile and the website come before anything paid.
Is small business marketing worth paying for?
It is when a new customer is worth clearly more than it costs to win one, and when you can serve more customers than you have. Work out both figures before you buy anything. If they do not add up, spend the money on the business instead.
How long does SEO take for a small business?
Corrections to a Business Profile can show within days. Ordinary rankings usually take three to six months. Google’s guidance is that some changes take effect in a few hours and others take several months.
Can I do my own SEO?
Much of it, yes. Claiming and completing your Business Profile, keeping hours right, asking for reviews and replying to them need no agency. Google publishes a starter guide for the website. Owners usually hire help for the writing, the technical repairs and the time.
Is a Google Business Profile enough without a website?
For being found by name, often yes. For being found by service it rarely is, because the profile has little room to explain what you do. A small site with one good page per service gives Google and the customer something to read.
Should a small business run ads or do SEO first?
Fix the Business Profile first. Then, if you need customers now, test ads on your best service while the SEO work builds. If you can wait, start with SEO alone and add ads only if the count of calls says you need them.
Can I offer a discount for a review?
No. Google prohibits offering free or discounted goods or services in exchange for reviews, and a Federal Trade Commission rule bars incentives conditioned on a review being positive or negative. Ask every customer, plainly, with a link.
Do you work with small businesses outside New York City?
Yes. We are in Manhattan, we began in Queens, and we work with businesses in other cities by phone and screen. The method is the same anywhere: the profile, the pages, the reviews, then ads if they earn their place.