Search Engine Optimization
Be the answer, not the ad. Pages written for the questions customers in metro Detroit and across Michigan actually search, the technical faults fixed, links earned from places that know you, and a monthly report that names positions and calls.
Talk to usIn short
Four kinds of work, each of which moves a page a measurable distance: the page written for the question, the technical faults fixed, the click earned in the results, and the links earned locally. Reported by position and by call, for your Michigan business.
- One page per service per city you actually serve
- Technical faults fixed, speed measured on a phone
- Links earned from suppliers, associations and press
- Reported by position and by call, monthly
Why the first result is the only one
Page one is not the goal. The top three is.
Across four million search results, the first organic result takes 27.6% of the clicks and the first three take more than half. The tenth result, still on page one, gets a tenth of what the first does. Being on page one is not a position. Being third is.
We do the four kinds of work that move a page: write it for the question a customer typed, fix the faults that stop Google reading it, earn the click in the results, and earn links from the places that already know you. Then we report where you are, by query and by city, and what the position produced in calls.
Illustrative. The positions are not a promise; the four kinds of work, and the order they land in, are how every page we work on moves.
- 27.6%
- of clicks go to the first organic result; the first three together take 54.4%, across 4 million search results
- 10x
- the clicks the first result receives compared with the tenth, on the same page
Backlinko, Google Organic Click-Through Rate Study, updated 2025.
In the work
Pages, foundation, the click, the links
Pages written for the question
One page for each service in each place you actually work, answering the question in its first paragraph in the words a customer would use. Not a page per suburb generated from a template, which Google has treated as spam since 2011.
The technical faults, fixed
Crawling, indexing, canonicals, redirects, the sitemap, structured data and speed, measured on a phone over cellular rather than on the office wifi. Most Michigan small business sites have three or four of these wrong and have never been told.
Titles and descriptions that earn the click
The line in the results is the ad you did not pay for. Written to say what the page answers and where, tested against what the results around it say.
Links from places that know you
Your suppliers, your trade association, the chamber, the sponsorship page of the team you already sponsor, the local press when there is a story. Earned, one at a time. Never bought, because bought links are the fastest way to lose everything else.
The listing and the site, agreeing
Google ranks a business, not a page. The name, address, phone and services on the site match the Google listing and the directories exactly, and the local search work carries the rest.
A report that names positions and calls
Where you rank for each query in each city, what Search Console says you were shown and clicked for, and the calls and forms that came from organic search. One page a month, with what changed and why.
Getting there
Audit, map, fix, write and earn, run
- 01
Audit what is there
A crawl of the site, Search Console read properly, and the queries you already appear for. The audit usually finds the site is ranking for things nobody wants and invisible for the thing you sell.
- 02
Map the questions
From your call log, your inbox and your front desk first, then from search data. The vocabulary is Michigan's, not the keyword tool's.
- 03
Fix the foundation
The technical faults, in order of what they cost. A site that cannot be crawled cannot rank, whatever is written on it.
- 04
Write and earn
The pages, one at a time, each with a job. The links, one at a time, from places that already know you. This is the part that takes months and the part that lasts.
- 05
Run it
Ranking is not a project; it is a position that is held. Monthly measurement, the next pages, the next links, and a report that says what moved.
Fitted work
What comes up here, specifically
Farmington Hills is not Detroit
A search for a plumber in Farmington Hills and one in Detroit are different searches with different results. You get a page for each city you actually serve, written about that city, and none for the cities you do not, because a page for a place you do not go is a page that lies.
The seasons search
Furnaces in October, air conditioning in the first hot week of June, gutters after the November wind, sump pumps in the March thaw. The pages are written and refreshed to the Michigan calendar, ahead of the search rather than during it.
The trade vocabulary
Uncapping, no-fault, Realcomp, the 20-day notice, the Oakland County permit. The words Michigan customers actually search are the ones national content ignores, and the page that uses them correctly is the one that ranks for them.
Two languages, marked properly
Pages in Arabic and Spanish for customers in Dearborn, Hamtramck and southwest Detroit, written rather than machine-translated, and marked so Google serves each reader the right one.
Right time when
When this is worth doing
A good fit
- You rank for your name and for nothing else
- Competitors with worse work outrank you for the searches that matter
- The site has never been audited and nobody knows what Search Console says
- You serve several cities and have one page that mentions all of them
Not a fit
- Nobody searches for what you sell, in which case the answer is elsewhere
- You want a position by a date, which nobody can honestly sell
- The site cannot be edited, in which case that comes first
Scope
What we do not do
Buy links
No link networks, no paid placements dressed as articles, no directory packages. A bought link is a liability on your domain with your name on it, and Google finds them.
Promise a position
Nobody controls the results but Google. We report where you are, what moved you, and what is next. Anyone guaranteeing page one is describing your own name.
Write for the machine
No doorway pages, no hidden text, no five hundred city pages from a template, no bulk-generated articles. Every page is one a customer would be glad to have landed on.
Reasonable to ask
Before you commission it
How long does search engine optimization take?
Months, not weeks. Technical fixes show within a few weeks of Google recrawling; new pages and earned links compound over months. The plan names which month each piece is expected to land, and the report says whether it did.
Do we need a new website first?
Usually not. Most of the work is on the pages, the technical foundation and the links, and it can be done on the site you have. When the site itself is the fault, slow, unreadable on a phone, impossible to edit, we say so and the web page is the answer.
How is this different from local search optimization?
Local search is the map pack and the Google listing: the three businesses with pins that appear above the results. Search engine optimization is the results underneath, and the pages on your site that appear in them. Most Michigan businesses need both, and they share a foundation.
What about AI Overviews and ChatGPT?
They read the same pages and the same signals, with a stronger preference for a page that answers the question outright. The AI search page covers what is different; the foundation is this page.
Do you write the pages?
Yes, with you. The questions come from your desk, the facts are checked against their sources, and you read every page before it goes live under your name. Nothing is generated in bulk.
Tell us what you want to be found for.
Three searches, in the words a customer would use. We will tell you where you are for each of them today, in each city you serve, what is holding the page back, and what the four kinds of work would be for you.
Talk to us