⌕Being found in practice

Until the site is indexed at all: days to a few weeks. Until it ranks near the top for something competitive: months to years — or never.

What that means in practice:

• For your company name you usually rank near the top quickly. Nobody competes for it.
• For “electrician Sampletown” it can take months, and it depends on how many there are in that town.
• For “electrician” on its own you will not be found. That is not a question of settings but of size.

The reason: search engines prefer sites that have existed for longer, that are linked to and on which something happens. All three take time.

What you should conclude from this: start early and think in quarters. Anyone who is disappointed after four weeks has the wrong expectation, not the wrong site.

Five things, in this order, and all five are unspectacular.

1. Clear page titles. Every page has its own, saying what it is about. “Services — Muster Electrical, Sampletown” instead of “Services”.
2. Text that answers the question. Anyone searching has a problem. The page that names it and solves it wins.
3. Location and service in the text. Not as a keyword list, but in normal sentences.
4. Fast loading and usability on mobile phones. Both are taken into account.
5. Links from other sites — business directories, associations, partners, local portals.

What you do not need: keyword lists in the footer, hidden text, thirty subpages with the same content in local variants. That worked fifteen years ago and does harm today.

And the point with the best effect per effort: a good entry in the big map services.

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For people who decide in a list of results — not for the machine.

The title:

• Contains what it is about and where you are.
• Is short enough not to be cut off — about 55 to 60 characters.
• Is different for every page.
• Starts with the most important thing.

The description:

• Two sentences that give a reason to click.
• About 150 characters.
• Not a slogan, but a statement.

What you should bear in mind: search engines do not always stick to it. Sometimes a different text from the page is shown. That is normal and not an error.

The most common shortcoming: all pages have the same title — usually the company name. Then every page looks the same in the list of results, and none says what it is.

Through three things that work together:

1. A complete entry in the map services. With address, opening hours, phone, services and photos. For local businesses this is often more effective than the website itself.
2. Address and town on the website, clearly visible — not only in the legal notice (Impressum).
3. Entries in local directories — chamber of crafts, trade guild, local business association, city portal.

What matters here: that name, address and phone number are written the same everywhere. “St.” here and “Street” there, an old number in a directory — that weakens the matching.

What you should do once: search for your company name and look at which entries exist. Usually you find two or three you knew nothing about, and one of them is out of date.

And reviews count — not only for people.

The free ones and those that fit your trade: yes. Bought mass lists: no.

What is worth it:

• Chambers and guilds.
• Associations of your industry.
• Local business associations and city portals.
• One or two large business directories.
• Portals where your customers actually search.

What is not worth it:

• Directories nobody uses and which only exist to sell links.
• Packages with “300 entries”. They do more harm than good.

How to tell the difference: would you search for a service provider there yourself? If not, it is not a directory but a link farm.

What matters: some entries are paid contracts with a minimum term, initiated by phone. Read what you sign.

It helps — but less than is often claimed, and only if it is any good.

What actually works:

• Pages that answer a real question. A page “What does a wallbox cost?” with an honest answer gets found and read.
• References with substance — what the task had been, what the solution was.
• Updates to existing pages when something has changed.

What does not work:

• Posts written just so that something has been written.
• Texts from a generator without your own knowledge.
• Weekly news that concerns nobody.

The honest advice for small businesses: better eight really good pages revised every two years than a blog that stops after three months. A blog whose last post is two years old makes a worse impression than none at all.

It certainly does not help — and in one particular form it does harm.

Not a problem: a sentence that appears on two pages. A service description that overlaps with the home page text.

A problem:

• Twenty location pages with the same text, with only the place name swapped. That is a well-known pattern and is treated accordingly.
• The same text on several of your own addresses. Then your pages compete with each other.
• Text taken from someone else’s site. That is also a copyright problem.

What you do instead: one page per service, done well. If you serve several places, name them in one sentence on the service page — instead of spelling out every combination.

And if a page exists twice because it has moved: set up a redirect, do not leave both standing.

Seven things, all of which have circulated as advice at some point:

1. Hidden text — white on white, behind images, off screen.
2. Keyword lists in the footer or in image descriptions.
3. Bought links from unrelated sites.
4. Masses of thin pages that say nothing.
5. Redirects to content other than what the title promises.
6. A consent window that covers the whole content and cannot be closed.
7. A page that is unusable on a mobile phone.

What the first three have in common: they try to deceive the machine. That gets detected, and the consequences are hard to undo.

What the last four have in common: they annoy people. And what annoys people gets measured — through bounce rates and time on page.

The rule behind it: anything you would not explain to a visitor, you should not do.

No. Nobody can guarantee a ranking, because nobody except the search engine decides the order.

How to recognise dubious offers:

• Guarantees of rankings.
• Calls claiming your site has been “deregistered” or that there is an “urgent need for action”.
• Reference to alleged partnerships with a search engine. There are none that affect rankings.
• Contracts with a long term and blanket services.
• Reports with figures that have no source — for example invented search volumes.
• Pressure on the phone.

What makes a reputable offer: it says what specifically will be done, what it costs and what can realistically be expected. And it also says what it cannot achieve.

The best protection: confirm nothing on the phone and sign nothing you have not read calmly in writing.

If you cannot manage it yourself and the need is there: yes — with clear questions up front.

What you should ask:

1. What exactly will be done? A list of activities, not buzzwords.
2. What is the goal, and how do we measure it? Enquiries, not rankings.
3. How long does the contract bind me?
4. What stays with me if we stop? Accounts, texts and entries should belong to you.
5. Who writes the texts? If it is an AI without expert knowledge, you know what you are getting.

What you should keep yourself: the access to your own accounts — domain, map service, website. Anyone who gives them away can be held to ransom.

And the honest alternative: for many small businesses, a well-maintained map listing and a decent website bring more than a monthly package.

By enquiries — not by visitor numbers and certainly not by rankings.

The chain that matters:

Visibility → visits → enquiries → orders.

Every stage can get stuck, and only the last one counts.

What you should measure:

• How many enquiries come in via the website? Count them, on a slip of paper if need be.
• Where do they come from? Ask: “How did you find us?”
• How many turn into orders?

What you should not overrate:

• Visitor numbers. Many visits without enquiries mean that the wrong people are coming — or that the page does not answer the question.
• Rankings. They fluctuate, are personalised and differ by location.

And the simplest test: search yourself for what your customers would search for. Do you find yourself? And if so: would you click on your own entry?

Without preparation: you lose what you have built up. With preparation: almost nothing.

What you do beforehand:

1. List all existing addresses. Every page there is.
2. Decide for each where it will lead in future.
3. Set up redirects — permanent, not temporary.
4. Keep the domain. A new domain means starting from scratch.

What you do afterwards:

• Check whether the old addresses actually redirect. A spot check is not enough — use the list.
• Check directory entries and the map listing, in case subpages had been linked there.
• Inform the search engine about the new structure.

What you must expect: a few weeks of fluctuation, even with a clean move. It settles down.

That leaves the most expensive mistake: switching off the old site before the redirects are in place.

Work through it in order — the first two points explain most cases:

1. Is the site published? A draft is not found.
2. Is it released for search engines? There is a setting that excludes a site. It is useful during construction and easily forgotten.
3. Search for your company name. If you do not appear for it, the site is not indexed. If you do, it is indexed — then it is only about the order for other terms.
4. How old is the site? Under four weeks, patience is the answer.
5. Is there any text on the page at all? A page consisting only of images has nothing that could be found.

Your options for speeding it up: submit the site to the search engine and create a map listing.

And what does not help: checking every day.

Yes, in two respects, and both are usually neglected.

First: the image description. Every image should have a text saying what can be seen. It is meant for people who cannot see the image, and search engines read it too.

What belongs in it: a factual description. “Workshop with two vehicle lifts” instead of “Image1” and instead of a keyword list.

Second: the file size. Large images make the page slow, and loading time is part of the assessment. A photo straight from the camera is usually many times too large.

How to do it:

• Reduce images before uploading.
• Use meaningful file names — “workshop-vehicle-lift.jpg” instead of “IMG_4821.jpg”.
• Give every image a description.

And the side effect: all three are at the same time what is needed for accessibility.