Websites and Google listings for local businesses

You have never seen your business the way a customer does.

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, your listing is in good shape — and I'd rather tell you that than sell you a fix you don't need. The next question is what your reviews say, and whether anybody's answering them.

The three things

Is your phone number right?

Are your hours right?

Does your website button actually go anywhere?

Email me Call or text Call (541) 780-7037 Text instead

Text is fine, and often faster. It rings on my phone, not at an answering service.

Two roads

Fixing it is the easy part. Finding it isn't.

Pick whichever one sounds like you.

My site’s fine. It’s Google I need help with. The site does its job. It’s the listing people actually land on that nobody’s minding. Take this road → I’m starting blind. There’s nothing out there yet, or nothing worth keeping. You want the whole thing built once, properly. Take this road →

Not sure which? Take either one — there’s a way across at the bottom of both, and the ten minute look is free on each.

The blind spot

Why it's invisible from where you're standing

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

What usually turns up

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.

The website button goes somewhere you don't own. Sometimes a page that no longer exists. Sometimes a directory that a stranger built using your name, your menu and a phone number that isn't yours, with a "claim this business" button sitting on it.
Your hours were written by somebody else. Google lets the public suggest them. When nobody sets them, it takes what it's given, and it will tell people you're open at times you're not.
Reviews sitting there with no reply. Including the unhappy ones. Google pulls a line out of those and prints it at the top of your listing as a summary, where it's the first thing anyone reads.
A phone number you can't tap. Printed as plain text instead of a link. On a phone that means copying it out by hand, and about half the local sites I've checked in this corridor do it.
A domain that quietly expired. Nobody renewed it, so your name is now available to anybody with ten dollars. I've found several around here, and one of them is currently serving an online casino to the owner's customers.

How it goes

It only stays foggy until somebody looks.

Four steps. You can stop after any of them.

Step one · no charge

A look

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

What I find

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. If you already have a site you're keeping and just need the Google side looked at, that one's $99.

$150, or $99 Google only

Step three · one price, said before I start

The build

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

Keeping it right

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

What it costs

All four, in full, so you can see exactly what you're choosing between. Same numbers for everybody.

Every plan includes

Your Google listing fully managed
Every review answered, in your voice
Unlimited content edits
A report every month

Swipe to compare →

What changesEverything else is in every plan	Presence $150 a month	Presence Plus $175 a monthMost people want this	Growth $200 a month	VIP $300 a monthLimited availability
Google Posts	when there is something worth posting	monthly	weekly	every 2 to 3 days
Photos kept current	—	quarterly	monthly	monthly
Edits turnaround	2 business days	2 business days	next business day	same day
Getting new reviews	—	—	Yes	Yes
Old reviews answered	—	last 90 days	last 180 days	last 12 months
Competitor tracking	—	—	Yes	Yes
Strategy call	—	—	quarterly	quarterly
Your place in line	standard	standard	standard	front of the queue
Start here	Email Call or textText	Email Call or textText	Email Call or textText	Email Call or textText

Need a website built? $500 to $1,500, one time, depending on what you need — and it includes your first month of Presence Plus. The month doesn’t start until the site is actually up.

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 depending on what you need, 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. If you prepay a year, that included month is the first of the twelve — a full year of cover from the day you launch.

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.

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.

Who you'd be dealing with

I didn't come to this from software.

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. I've been behind a service counter since 2009, for franchise and global companies. That is long enough to watch 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've written the estimate before the work since 2009. That's why your price is fixed and you hear it before I start. A bill nobody saw coming is how a business loses a customer permanently, and I've stood there while it happened.
I've answered the unhappy customer with him standing in front of me. A bad review is that same conversation with an audience. I won't leave one sitting there, and I won't argue with it either.
I handle customer records under federal safeguards rules every working day. Names, addresses, phone numbers, payment details, in a company big enough to be audited on it. Your customer list, your domain and your logins get treated the same way.
Since 2009 I've been on the phone with people trying to give a business money. So I know what a wrong number, a dead website button and the wrong hours actually cost. I've been on the other end of those calls.

I'm in Albany, and I come out and see the place. I’d rather sit down with you once than trade twenty emails. Further out still works, same attention and the same number either way.

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.

Ready when you are

If something was off, it's worth ten minutes

If you looked up your own business and all three were right, that's the answer, and I'm glad you checked. If you know somebody whose three aren't, or somebody just opening their doors, pass my number along.

Email me Call or text Call (541) 780-7037 Text instead

Text me the name of your business and I'll tell you what I find.
— Ken