Goal: sound like the most informed person on the call. Before you sell anything, you need to explain in plain English how a customer finds a plumber, a dentist or a roofer today: on Google, on the map, inside an AI answer, on social and through ads. Get this right and the demo on Day 6 lands on its own.
Every example on this page is fictional (a plumber in Columbus, a dental clinic in Austin, a roofer in Tampa). Use the same shape with your prospect's real trade and city. Nothing here is a client result.
Google does three jobs, in order. Know them, because most "why am I not showing up" problems live in the first two.
| Step | What happens | Plain-English version for the owner |
|---|---|---|
| Crawl | Google's bot follows links and sitemaps to discover pages and read them. | "Google has to find the page before anything else can happen." |
| Index | Google decides whether to store the page in its library. Plenty of pages get crawled and never make it in. | "If the page isn't in Google's library, it can't show up for anything." |
| Rank | For each search, Google orders the indexed pages it thinks best answer that person, right now, in that place. | "Then Google picks who answers the question best." |
A page going live on the website does not mean Google has it. Google decides when and whether to index a page. Nobody can force it: the site owner can ask Google to look again in Search Console, and that's it. That's why "instant indexing" is a banned phrase. If an owner says "we posted a blog last month and nothing happened," the first question is whether Google even indexed it.
Google ranks pages against the intent behind a search, not just the words. Four kinds come up on every call:
A Columbus plumber whose site has one "Services" page can't match all four. That's why SEO content means service pages, city pages and articles that each answer a real search.
| Bucket | What it means | Plain-English analogy |
|---|---|---|
| Technical | Can Google crawl and read the site? Speed, mobile, indexing, structured data, redirects, site structure. | The store's wiring and plumbing. Invisible when right, fatal when wrong. |
| Content | Does the site answer what people search for? Service pages, city pages, articles, FAQs. | The shelves. More relevant, well-organized shelves mean more reasons to be found. |
| Authority | Do other reputable sites and sources vouch for this one? Links, reviews, mentions. | Word of mouth. Google trusts businesses other sources vouch for. |
When a prospect asks "so what does SEO actually involve?", these three buckets are the honest, complete answer. What our team does in each bucket is on Day 3.
Search "emergency plumber" in Columbus and the first thing you see under any ads is a map with three businesses: the local pack. Tap through and you're in Google Maps with a longer list. For "near me" businesses (plumbers, dentists, HVAC, roofers, lawyers, clinics) this is where most of the calls come from, and it's driven by the business's Google Business Profile, not by the website alone.
| Factor | What it means | What a business can do about it |
|---|---|---|
| Relevance | How well the profile matches the search. The primary category is the strongest single signal, then services, description and the website. | Pick the most specific correct primary category. "Emergency plumber" beats a generic "Contractor". |
| Distance | How far the business is from the person searching, or from the place they typed. | Almost nothing. You can't move the office. This is the factor owners don't know about. |
| Prominence | How well known and trusted the business is: review count, rating, how recent the reviews are, owner replies, links and mentions around the web. | Ask every happy customer for a review, reply to every review, keep the profile active with posts and photos. |
Because distance is part of the formula, a business doesn't have one map ranking. It has a different ranking at every spot in town. Take a dental clinic in South Austin: a patient searching "dentist" two blocks away may see it at #1. The same search from Round Rock, 20 miles north, may not show it at all, because closer clinics win there.
Owners usually check their ranking from their own office, see themselves near the top, and think they're fine. The Map rank grid shows where the business ranks on the map in each neighborhood around it. The neighborhoods where it's invisible, and who wins there, are one of the strongest moments in the demo (Day 6).
"Searching from your own office is the one spot in town where you'll always look good. Let me show you what a customer three neighborhoods over sees."
Local (the map): "near me" searches, driven by the Google Business Profile. Organic (the classic blue links): research and comparison searches, driven by the website's content and authority. Most local businesses need both. A patient reads "how much does a crown cost in Austin" on a Tuesday and searches "dentist near me" on Friday.
More buyers now ask an AI instead of scrolling a results page: "who's the best emergency plumber in Columbus?" or "which dentist in Austin takes walk-ins?" The AI writes one short answer that names a few businesses. If the business isn't one of them, it's invisible in that conversation.
For a question like "best plumber in Columbus," the AI runs its own searches behind the scenes, often several versions of the question at once, reads the pages that come back, and writes an answer from them. The pages it tends to use:
These are two different things, and the difference is the core of our AI visibility story:
Our free AI visibility check asks real questions across 4 AI apps and shows both: how often AI names the business against its rivals, and where AI used its pages without naming it. You'll run it in the demo.
"When someone asks ChatGPT for the best plumber in Columbus, do you know if you come up? We actually check that, and in some answers AI is reading your own pages and then recommending somebody else."
AI companies send two kinds of bots to websites, and site owners (or their web host's security settings) sometimes block them without knowing.
| Type | What it does | Examples | If it's blocked |
|---|---|---|---|
| Retrieval (search) crawler | Fetches pages live so the AI can answer a question right now and cite the page. | OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User (ChatGPT), PerplexityBot | The page can't be used or cited in answers. This one costs visibility. |
| Training crawler | Collects pages to train future AI systems. | GPTBot, Google-Extended | Blocking it doesn't stop the page appearing in live answers. Owners who don't want their content used for training can block it. |
Our site audit checks whether ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity crawlers can reach the site. Details on Day 3.
Nobody controls what an AI says. We can make the business easier to find, read and trust, and we measure how often AI names it. We never promise an AI citation or a mention. And an ad never changes an AI answer: ads sit beside the answer, not inside it.
Be straight with owners about this: unpaid reach for a business page is low. Most of a Columbus plumber's followers will never see a given post. Organic social rarely brings leads directly, and anyone who promises followers or leads from posting is selling a fantasy.
So what is it for? When a customer finds the business on Google or the map, they check its Instagram or Facebook before they call. Social does three jobs:
Platform fit, in short: Facebook and Instagram for local consumer businesses, LinkedIn for B2B and professional services, YouTube for video. What our team posts and where is on Day 4.
Reels on Instagram and Facebook and Shorts on YouTube are where most social attention goes. The rules that make a short video work:
That's why our video work starts from the client's own footage and photos. If they ask "is the video AI?", the answer is no: it's their own footage, and the voice and music are generated.
SEO, the map and social are earned. Ads are rented: the business pays, and the visibility stops the day the spend stops. That's not a knock on ads. They're the fastest way to show up for a search the business doesn't rank for yet.
Break-even cost per lead = customer value × margin × close rate.
Illustrative only: a Tampa roofer whose average job is worth $8,000, at a 25% margin, closing 1 in 4 leads, breaks even at $8,000 × 0.25 × 0.25 = $500 per lead. Below that, ads make money. This is the owner's math, never our promise.
The platforms we sell: Google Search, YouTube (through Google Ads), Meta (Facebook and Instagram), TikTok and ChatGPT ads. Each one has its own status and start date, kept in one place: the platform status card on Day 5. Always check it before you name a date.
The client pays the ad platform directly, on their own ad account and card. We never touch their billing and never front the spend. What we charge to manage ads is on Day 2.
| Term | What it means (say it like this) |
|---|---|
| Keyword | The phrase someone types or asks. "emergency plumber columbus." |
| Search intent | What the searcher actually wants: an answer, a comparison, to buy, or a business nearby. |
| SERP | The search results page. |
| Crawling | A search or AI bot visiting and reading a page. |
| Indexing | Google adding a page to its library. Not indexed means it can't rank at all. Published is not indexed. |
| Google Search Console | Google's free dashboard of how a site performs in search: impressions, clicks, which pages are indexed. |
| Impressions | How many times the business appeared in results, clicked or not. The earliest sign of growth. |
| CTR | Click-through rate: of the people who saw the result, the share who clicked. |
| Title tag / meta description | The headline and blurb shown for a page in search results. |
| Schema / structured data | Code labels on a page telling Google and AI exactly what it is: a service, a business, an article. |
| Backlink | A link from another website to yours. A vote of confidence. |
| 301 redirect | A permanent forwarding address for a moved page. How a site keeps its search history when pages move in a rebuild. |
| City page | A page for one service in one place ("water heater repair in Westerville"). |
| YMYL | "Your Money or Your Life": medical, legal and financial topics Google holds to a higher standard. |
| Local pack / map pack | The three map results near the top of a local search. |
| Google Business Profile | The business's listing on Google Search and Maps: category, hours, photos, reviews, posts. |
| Primary category | The one main category on the Google profile. The strongest single relevance signal for the map. |
| Relevance / distance / prominence | The three things Google weighs for local results: match, how close, how well known. |
| Review gating | Only asking happy customers for public reviews. Banned by Google. We never do it. |
| Map rank grid | Our view of where the business ranks on the map in each neighborhood around it. |
| AI Overview / AI Mode | Google's AI-written summary on top of results / Google's chat-style AI search. |
| AEO / GEO | Answer engine / generative engine optimization: making a business easier for AI answers to find, use and name. |
| Named vs used as a source | Named: the AI recommends the business. Source: the AI read its page but may recommend someone else. |
| AI visibility check | Our free check: real questions across 4 AI apps, showing how often AI names the business against rivals. |
| Retrieval crawler | An AI bot that fetches pages live to answer questions. Blocking it costs visibility. |
| Training crawler | An AI bot that collects pages for training. Blocking it doesn't remove a page from live answers. |
| llms.txt | A proposed text file that summarizes a site for AI tools. Its effect is unproven, so never sell it as a way to get cited. |
| Hook | The first 1 to 3 seconds of a video, which decide whether people keep watching. |
| 9:16 | Vertical, full-phone-screen video. The format for Reels and Shorts. |
| Reels / Shorts | Short vertical videos on Instagram and Facebook / on YouTube. |
| CPC / CPM | Cost per click / cost per thousand impressions. |
| Pixel (conversion tracking) | A tag that tells the ad platform when a click became a call, form or sale. |
| Learning period | The time a platform needs after launch or a big change to learn who to show ads to. |
| Break-even cost per lead | Customer value × margin × close rate. The most a lead can cost before ads lose money. |
| Brand vs non-brand | Searches for the business's own name vs searches for the service. |
More terms: theStacc glossary ↗
The full rule set (what you can assert freely, what's directional, what you never promise) lives in one place: the Day 2 honesty gate. If this page and Day 2 ever disagree, Day 2 wins.