Search4 min read
Nobody is searching for your business name. Good.
People don't search for you. They search for what they need: "office catering fitzroy", "emergency plumber open now", "kids haircut near me". That's the whole trick of local search, and it's good news, because it means you can be found by people who've never heard of you.
The page you haven't written yet
Most small-business websites describe the business: our story, our menu, our team. But Google matches pages to searches. If nobody has a page that says "office catering in Fitzroy, order by 4pm, delivered by 8:30", then whoever writes that page first wins that search. Your most valuable page is often one that answers a question you get asked every week but never wrote down.
How to find yours
Write down the five questions customers actually ask you, on the phone, at the counter, in DMs. Each one is a search somebody types. Then check: does any page on your site answer it directly, in the words the customer used? If not, that's the gap.
Why 'position 12' matters more than 'position 40'
If you rank 12th for something, you're on page two, one good page edit from page one. That's called striking distance, and it's the cheapest win in marketing. Ranking 40th means the battle is harder. 12th means you're almost there and probably don't know it.
The takeaway: stop asking "how do people find my site?" and start asking "what do my customers type when they need what I sell?" Then make sure one page answers each of those, plainly.