Websites and Google listings for local businesses
They don't see your website. They see the listing they land on, the number they tap, the hours they trust, the button that goes nowhere.
When you check, you type your address straight into the bar and it loads fine. Your customers never come through that door. They search your name, and they land on your Google listing first.
Search yourself the way a stranger would, and check three things. If all three are right, you don't need me, and I'd rather say that up front than waste your time.
The three things
Is the phone number right?
Are the hours right?
Does the website button actually go anywhere?
Text is fine, and often faster. It rings on my phone, not at an answering service.
The blind spot
This is the part that catches everybody, and it has nothing to do with how carefully you run your business.
When you check on your own website, you type your address straight into the bar. It loads. It looks fine. So you close the phone and get back to work.
Your customers never come through that door. They search your name, or they search what you do, and they land on your Google listing first. That listing has its own phone number, its own hours, and its own website button, and none of it has to match what you think it says. Somebody can be sending your customers to a page that died two years ago while your site sits there working perfectly.
"Not having a problem if I go to site directly."
An owner wrote that on Google's own help forum, and it's the most honest sentence I've read on the subject. He was right. He also had a real problem.
Real findings
Every one of these is something I've actually found on a real business's listing, not a list of things that could theoretically go wrong. Not one of them was the owner's fault, and not one of them had ever been mentioned to him.
Who you'd be dealing with
I'm not an agency. I build these myself, one at a time.
Most people building small-business websites learned the tools first and then went looking for businesses to use them on. I came the other way round. Almost two decades at a service counter, for franchise and global companies, is a long time watching what it costs a business when somebody can't find you, can't reach you, or gets told the wrong thing. People give up faster than owners think, and they never call to tell you they gave up.
I'm in Oregon. If you're not, it changes almost nothing. Your Google listing, your site and your reviews are worked on the same way from anywhere, and you get the same cell number either way. The only thing distance really costs you is the handshake, and plenty of people would rather skip that anyway.
I take on a couple of these a month, because I'd rather do a few properly than a lot badly. That means I can't always start the week you ask.
How it goes
Four steps. You can stop after any of them, and a fair bit of what I find you could fix yourself.
Step one · no charge
Ten minutes, on the phone or at your counter. You tell me where it's costing you, and I tell you whether it's something I can fix. If it isn't, I'll say so and that's the end of it.
Step two
I look at your listing and your site the way a customer would, and I write down exactly what's wrong and what it's costing you. It's yours either way — hire me or don't, and a fair bit of it you could fix yourself in an afternoon.
$150Step three · one price, said before I start
Between $500 and $1,500, fixed, and you hear the number before any work begins. No hourly clock, no change orders, and no bill at the end you didn't see coming.
The domain goes in your name, not mine. So does everything on the site. If you ever want to leave you take it with you, and that's written down rather than promised.
Step four · optional, and yours to cancel
A listing goes stale on its own. Hours change, reviews land unanswered, Google moves things around. Run it yourself if you'd rather — or I keep the Google side right every month, answer every review, and send you a short report.
Any change you want on the site, you text me and it's done. There's no form to fill in.
No quote to wait for
All three, in full, so you can see exactly what you're choosing between. Same numbers for everybody.
Presence
$150
a month
Presence Plus
$175
a month
Growth
$200
a month
What "five pages" actually means. A home page, a page for what you do, a page about you, a page for your work or your menu, and a page for how people reach you. That covers almost every business I build for. If you need a sixth, it's $250 and it's yours.
Nothing on it is a template with your name dropped in. The pages you get are the ones your business actually needs, and if one of the five above is useless to you we swap it for something that isn't.
These are for a single-location business, which is most of who I work with. If you need more than that, the numbers are just as fixed. A second location is another $75 a month, and so is a third. Online booking or ordering starts at $500, because it's a build of its own. There's no quote to wait for at any size.
The build is between $500 and $1,500, whichever tier you pick, and you hear your number before any work starts. That covers building the site and your first month, and the month doesn't start until the site is actually up. After that the monthly begins.
The $150 for what I find comes off the build if you go ahead. If you don't, you keep the findings and owe nothing.
Or pay for the year up front and I don't charge for the build at all. $1,650 on Presence, $1,925 on Presence Plus, $2,200 on Growth. Year one the normal way runs $2,150 on Presence, so that's $500 back in your pocket.
The monthly isn't hosting. Hosting costs almost nothing and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. It's the Google side, done every month, by a person who actually checks.
Month to month, thirty days' notice, no contract. If it isn't earning its keep you send me one line and we stop. Whatever you sign at stays your price for as long as you stay, and I've never raised anyone's rate.
Ready when you are
If you looked up your own business and all three were right, close this and get on with your day. No hard feelings and no follow-up.
Call or text (541) 780-7037Text me the name of your business and I'll tell you what I find.
— Ken