My uncle runs a small plumbing business, three trucks, decent reputation, been around for almost fifteen years. Good at his job, terrible at anything involving a computer.
One Sunday lunch, he mentioned that his nephew’s friend had built him a “really nice website” a couple years back. I asked how many calls it brought in.
He thought about it and said, “honestly, I don’t think it’s ever gotten us a single customer.”
That stuck with me, so I offered to take a look. What I found wasn’t shocking, exactly, but it was a pretty clear example of everything small business owners get wrong without realizing it — not because they’re careless, but because nobody ever explains this stuff in plain language.
Over the next few weekends, I went through his site and his online presence, fixed what I could, and watched what happened. Some of it worked fast. Some of it took months. All of it taught me things I now apply to every small local business I help.
Here’s the actual list, in the order I’d tackle it if I were starting from scratch today.
1. Claim and Actually Fill Out Your Google Business Profile
My uncle’s Google Business Profile existed, technically. Someone had claimed it years ago and left it almost completely empty. No photos, wrong phone number, hours listed as “unknown.”
This is the single biggest thing I fixed first, and honestly, probably the highest-impact item on this whole list for a local business.
What I Actually Did
- Verified ownership through Google Business Profile Manager (took about five days by mail for the verification postcard)
- Fixed the phone number and hours
- Added real photos — his actual trucks, his actual team, not stock images
- Wrote a proper business description mentioning the specific services and the towns he actually serves
- Picked accurate categories (Plumber as primary, with Drain cleaning service as a secondary category)
Within about three weeks, he started showing up in the local map results for “plumber near me” searches in his area, where before he was essentially invisible.
2. Get Reviews, But Don’t Fake Them
Zero reviews on a business that’s operated for fifteen years is a red flag to anyone searching, and Google seems to treat it the same way.
I set up a simple system: after every completed job, my uncle’s team sends a text with a direct link to leave a Google review (Google Business Profile gives you a shareable review link in the dashboard).
We never offered discounts for reviews, and I’d genuinely advise against it — a lot of platforms consider that against their guidelines, and fake or incentivized reviews tend to read as fake anyway.
What worked instead was just asking at the right moment, right after a job well done, when the customer was actually happy.
Went from zero reviews to over 40 in about four months, all real, all from actual customers.
3. Fix the “NAP” Consistency Mess
NAP stands for Name, Address, Phone number. Sounds small. It isn’t.
I found my uncle’s business listed under three slightly different names across different directories — “Mike’s Plumbing,” “Mike’s Plumbing LLC,” and “Mike’s Plumbing & Drain.” Different phone numbers too, since one was an old landline he’d stopped using years ago.
I went through and checked:
- Google Business Profile
- Yelp
- Facebook Page
- Local Chamber of Commerce directory
- Bing Places
…and made every single listing match, exactly, down to how the address was formatted.
This isn’t glamorous work. It’s genuinely just an afternoon of tedious clicking. But inconsistent business info confuses both customers and search engines about whether these are even the same business.
4. Build a Website That Loads Fast on a Phone
His old site looked fine on a laptop. On an actual phone, it took nearly nine seconds to load, based on a quick check using Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool.
Most people searching “emergency plumber” at 11pm are doing it from their phone, panicking about a burst pipe, not patiently waiting for a slow page to load.
We ended up moving him to a simple WordPress setup with a lightweight theme (GeneratePress, in this case) instead of the bloated template his original site used. Load time dropped to around two seconds.
Quick Way to Check Your Own Site
- Go to Google PageSpeed Insights
- Paste in your homepage URL
- Check the mobile score specifically, not just desktop
- Anything consistently in the red is worth addressing before anything else on this list
5. Write Actual Location-Specific Pages, Not One Generic “Services” Page
The original site had one page listing every service, for every area, all mixed together. No mention of specific towns.
We split it into focused pages: one for general plumbing repair, one for drain cleaning, one for water heater installation — each one naturally mentioning the specific towns and neighborhoods he actually services, since that’s realistically how people search.
Nothing forced or stuffed. Just written the way you’d naturally describe your own service area to a customer on the phone.
6. Add an FAQ Section Based on Real Customer Questions
I asked my uncle what people actually ask him on service calls. Turns out there’s a pretty consistent list:
- “Why is my water heater making a banging noise?”
- “How often should I have my drains professionally cleaned?”
- “Is a slow drain actually an emergency?”
We built a simple FAQ section using his actual answers, in his actual voice, not some generic rewritten version. Genuinely useful for customers, and it gave the site more real content beyond the basic service pages.
7. Get Listed on Directories That Actually Matter for Your Trade
Not every directory is worth the effort. I skipped a bunch of random, low-quality ones and focused on:
- Yelp
- Angi (formerly Angie’s List)
- The local Chamber of Commerce site
- Nextdoor business profile
- Better Business Bureau
Each one needed the exact same NAP details from step 3, kept perfectly consistent.
8. Use Schema Markup for Local Business Info
This one’s more technical, and I’ll admit I used the free version of Rank Math (a WordPress SEO plugin) to handle it rather than writing code by hand.
Local Business schema tells search engines specific structured details — address, hours, service area, phone number — in a format machines can read cleanly, separate from however the text is written on the page.
It’s not something a customer will ever notice directly. It’s more of a behind-the-scenes trust signal.
9. Take Your Own Photos, Even If They’re Not Perfect
The original site used stock photos of generic plumbers who very obviously weren’t my uncle.
We replaced every single one with real photos: his actual trucks, jobs in progress (with customer permission), his actual team in uniform.
I used my phone camera and basic editing in Canva, nothing fancy. It’s not about professional photography. It’s about looking like a real, specific business instead of a template anyone could have.
Customers mentioned this more than I expected. A few said seeing real trucks and a real face made them trust the business more before ever calling.
10. Track What’s Actually Working, Not Just What Feels Like It’s Working
For the first month, we were basically guessing whether anything was helping. So I set up:
- Google Search Console (free) to see which searches were bringing people to the site
- Google Business Profile Insights to track calls, direction requests, and profile views
- A simple habit of asking every new customer “how’d you find us?” and jotting it down
That last one sounds low-tech, but it caught something the analytics didn’t: several customers mentioned finding him through a review a friend had left, not directly through search. That told us the review push in step 2 was working in ways that didn’t show up cleanly in any dashboard.
What Actually Happened, Timeline-Wise
I want to be honest about pacing here, because I’ve seen too many “SEO tips” articles imply instant results.
- Weeks 1–3: Google Business Profile fixes, mostly invisible progress
- Week 4: Started appearing in local map results for a few searches
- Months 2–3: Reviews building up, site speed fixed, location pages live
- Month 4: Noticeable increase in actual phone calls, confirmed through the “how’d you find us” tracking
It wasn’t overnight, and nothing here involved paying for ads or fake shortcuts. It was mostly fixing things that were quietly broken or missing, one at a time.
A Simple Checklist If You Want to Start Today
- Google Business Profile claimed, verified, and fully filled out
- A system in place to naturally request reviews after good jobs
- Business name, address, and phone number identical across every directory
- Mobile page speed checked and reasonably fast
- Location-specific pages instead of one generic services page
- Real FAQ content based on actual customer questions
- Listed on the directories that matter for your specific trade
- Local business schema added, ideally through a plugin if you’re not technical
- Real photos instead of stock images
- Some basic way to track where new customers are actually coming from
Where My Uncle’s Business Stands Now
He’s not ranking #1 for every search in a hundred-mile radius, and that was never realistic anyway with bigger plumbing franchises in the mix. But he’s consistently showing up in the local map pack for the searches that actually matter to his business, and the phone rings from people who found him online instead of just word of mouth from existing customers.
He still doesn’t fully understand what schema markup is, and honestly, he doesn’t need to. He just knows the phone rings more than it used to, and that’s really the only metric he ever cared about in the first place.