SEO that starts with the part nobody wants to bill you for.
On a local search, three map listings sit above every web page on the results. If yours isn't one of them, on-page work is the second problem. I fix the first one first. Search work for Orlando, Tampa and Sarasota, technical work for anyone.
I've been doing search work since before the map pack existed. I'll tell you which of it will move your number this quarter and which of it is somebody else's retainer padding.
Organic position one is really position four.
Search "seo orlando" from an Orlando address and the page opens with three map listings. The first web result is the fourth thing on the screen. Same story on "web design orlando", on "dentist near me", on almost any local service query worth having. That block is decided by your Google Business Profile, your review volume and recency, your category accuracy, and how consistently your name, address and phone number appear across the rest of the web.
None of that lives on your website. Which is why most SEO proposals skip it, and why yours shouldn't. The businesses currently holding those three slots for "seo orlando" carry 10, 36 and 134 reviews. Ten is a reachable number for a working business inside a quarter, and it's worth more than any month of on-page work.
Then we do the rest, because the map pack is only one of the three places a search can end. Organic still carries every non-local query, every research query, and the directory and roundup listings that outrank most small businesses on their own terms.
What the work covers:
Google Business Profile
Categories, services, hours, Q&A, photos, posts, and a review workflow your team will keep up.
Local Search & Citations
Consistent name, address and phone data across directories, local schema, and city-level pages that are useful rather than thin.
Keyword Research
Priced at metro scope, not national. The difference is usually an order of magnitude and it changes what is worth targeting.
Technical SEO
Crawl errors, indexation gaps, duplicate content, canonical issues and site architecture.
Core Web Vitals
LCP, INP and CLS. Google measures them and visitors feel them.
Structured Data
JSON-LD for rich snippets, FAQ results, service listings and local business info.
Analytics & Search Console
GA4, conversion tracking and monitoring that reports business impact instead of sessions.
National volume will talk you into the wrong page.
"Law firm website design" gets 2,400 searches a month in the United States. In Orlando it gets about ten. Build a page on the national number and you've written for an audience that isn't in your market and can't hire you anyway.
Price it locally
Every term gets run at metro scope before it earns a page. Orlando and Tampa are separate markets with different numbers, and a term that looks strong in one is often invisible in the other.
Read the results page
Volume without buyer intent is worthless. Plenty of "[industry] website design" searches are owned by Reddit, Dribbble and Pinterest, which means the people searching are designers looking for inspiration, not clients looking for you.
Compare difficulty within a cluster
One idea usually has a dozen phrasings at the same volume and wildly different competition. "Orlando web design" and "web design agency orlando" mean the same thing to a buyer; one is three times harder to rank for. Picking the right phrasing is free.
This is the least glamorous part of the job and the one that decides whether the rest of it was worth doing. I'd rather spend a week on research and find out a page isn't worth writing than spend a month writing it.
The whole search stack, in priority order.
From your map listing down to server response times. Every layer that decides whether somebody finds you.
Local SEO & Map Pack
Google Business Profile optimization, review generation workflows, local schema, citation consistency, and city-specific pages built for people rather than crawlers. The first thing I look at on any local business.
Keyword & SERP Research
Metro-level volume, difficulty compared across every phrasing of an idea, and a look at what ranks today before anything gets written. Half of this work is deciding what not to build.
Technical SEO Audits
Crawlability, indexation, site architecture, internal linking, canonical tags, robots directives, redirect chains, and everything else that affects how a search engine reads your site.
Structured Data (Schema)
JSON-LD markup for rich snippets, FAQ results, service listings, local business info and breadcrumbs. It also happens to be the single most useful thing you can do for AI search visibility.
Core Web Vitals & Speed
Image compression and modern formats, JavaScript and CSS optimization, lazy loading, resource hints, CDN configuration and caching. Rankings aside, a slow site loses people before they read a word.
Directories & Roundups
Clutch, Yelp, industry directories and the "10 best in [city]" listicles that show up on page one for local terms. Getting listed on those is often faster than outranking them.
What good technical health looks like.
Core Web Vitals are the published standard, so there's no arguing about the target. These are the numbers I hit across every site I build and optimize.
Largest Contentful Paint
Under 2.5s
How fast your main content loads. Past 2.5 seconds you lose both visitors and rankings, and most template sites clock in over four on mobile.
Interaction to Next Paint
Under 200ms
How responsive the site feels when somebody taps a button or fills a form. Slow interactions make a site feel broken even when it looks fine.
Cumulative Layout Shift
Under 0.1
How stable the layout is while it loads. When content jumps around, visitors misclick and get frustrated, and Google takes notice.
Beyond Core Web Vitals
AI can build you a website in minutes. It can't make Google care about it.
AI website builders are genuinely impressive. They produce clean layouts, decent mobile performance and a passable first draft. That isn't the problem. The problem is that your competitors have the same tools you do, and everybody's site now ships with the same generic meta tags, the same missing schema and no internal linking strategy at all.
What ships by default
- Meta tags written from the page content, with no keyword research behind them
- No internal linking strategy and no topical authority
- Missing or generic structured data
- The same copy patterns as everyone else using the same tool
- No idea what your competitors rank for
What has to be decided by a person
- Which terms are worth targeting in your market, and which are a trap
- An internal linking structure that builds authority where you need it
- Schema that earns rich results instead of just validating
- What the results page for your money term really looks like
- Which fix to do first when the budget only covers three
Everyone has access to AI now, so the tool stopped being the advantage. Knowing what to build, why, and in what order is what's left.
How an SEO engagement runs.
A systematic process that finds what's holding you back and fixes it in the order that pays.
Audit & Diagnose
Full technical audit, Google Business Profile review, Search Console data, ranking baseline and competitive benchmarking. You get a clear picture of where you stand and what it is costing you.
Prioritize & Plan
Not all fixes are equal, and on a local business the profile work usually outranks the page work. Everything gets ranked by revenue impact against effort, then built into a roadmap.
Fix & Build
Profile and citation work, code optimization, structured data, meta tags, internal linking and the pages the research says are worth writing. Each change is tested before it goes live.
Monitor & Refine
Search is not a one-time project because the results page keeps changing. I set up monitoring, track ranking and profile movement, and keep adjusting against real data.
Audit & Diagnose
Full technical audit, Google Business Profile review, Search Console data, ranking baseline and competitive benchmarking. You get a clear picture of where you stand and what it is costing you.
Prioritize & Plan
Not all fixes are equal, and on a local business the profile work usually outranks the page work. Everything gets ranked by revenue impact against effort, then built into a roadmap.
Fix & Build
Profile and citation work, code optimization, structured data, meta tags, internal linking and the pages the research says are worth writing. Each change is tested before it goes live.
Monitor & Refine
Search is not a one-time project because the results page keeps changing. I set up monitoring, track ranking and profile movement, and keep adjusting against real data.
Related services
AI Search Visibility
Getting recommended by ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews, where there is no results page to rank on.
Custom Web Presences
Sites built fast and built correctly, so the search work has something to stand on.
Conversion & Growth
Traffic you already have, converting better. Usually cheaper than earning more of it.
Search visibility matters most where the customer is comparing three options at once, which is usually legal, home services and dental.
Frequently asked questions.
Why does my Google Business Profile matter more than my website?
How many reviews do I need?
How long does SEO take to show results?
What are Core Web Vitals?
Do you work with existing sites or only new builds?
Can an AI-built website rank well?
Is SEO still worth it now that people ask AI instead?
Want to know why you aren't showing up?
I'll audit your profile, your site and your market, tell you which of the three is the actual problem, and put the fixes in the order that pays. Real analysis on your business, not a generic checklist.
An honest conversation about your goals, and a straight answer either way.