Why You Should Do SEO

If you own a business, sooner or later you have to answer one question: how do I get customers?

And there are so many options. SMM. PPC. SEO. GBP. Suddenly you're being sold four acronyms that meant nothing to you last month, all of them by people who happen to sell that particular one.

So let me narrow this down before I recommend anything.

This is aimed at businesses that do something in the real world. HVAC. Plumbers. Shops with a door and an address, like the ski shop you'll keep meeting in this guide. If that's you, read on. If you're a SaaS, some of this applies and some of it really doesn't, and I'll say so at the end.

Here's why physical businesses have it easier.

Google wants to show you. That's the whole purpose of Maps. Somebody types "plumber near me" and Google's entire job is to find them a plumber, near them. You're not competing for that slot, you're supplying it.

And the competition is small. There aren't ten plumbers on your street. Compare that to "best VPN" or "top marketing agency," where you're up against a thousand pages, half of them written by people whose only business is ranking for that phrase. For a new SaaS, expecting to rank organically any time soon isn't realistic.

For a local business, first page is genuinely achievable. Sometimes embarrassingly so.

I recently looked at a business whose website was a mess. No meta titles. No keyword targeting of any kind. No positioning to speak of. It sent just about every bad signal a site can send.

Top 10 anyway.

Old domain, strong GBP, a lot of reviews, and enough clicks coming through Maps to bring in thousands of visits a month. The website was dragging, and the trust signals carried it regardless.

Which is the point. Google has every reason to surface a local business that people actually visit and review. It has almost no reason to surface one more VPN app in a market that's already full.

So if you're local, GBP plus SEO is your number one strategy. Not a maybe. Get the fundamentals in place and you can bring in sales on close to zero monthly spend, which is not something anyone can say about ads.

And some of it is absurdly cheap.

I once added every zip code in a ski shop's service area to their Google Business Profile. Not a campaign. Not a redesign. A few clicks while reviewing the profile. Their discoverability went up 73%.

That's the kind of win that's still sitting there, unclaimed, in most local profiles.

A note if you're SaaS

I said I'd tell you which parts apply.

The mechanics all do — titles, keyword targeting and site structure work the same everywhere, and the on-page guide applies to you word for word. What doesn't transfer is the math: there's no Maps slot waiting for you, and the crowded phrases are owned by sites whose only business is ranking for them.

Your version of the local advantage is being the source of something nobody else has — your own data, your own numbers. Slower, but it compounds.

Everyone else: claim your GBP, fix the fundamentals, and keep reading — next up is how Google actually decides who to show.