Where people actually look, and how often
Before spending anything it is worth seeing the search demand for “getting found” as Google records it, because it shows what business owners themselves are searching for and how much advertisers will pay to reach them.
Business owners ask Google every month how to get their website on Google, how to get their business found, how to advertise and how to get more customers, and on Google Ads the click prices on those phrases run from around ten pounds to over seventy. That price range is the useful fact.
The click prices are the useful fact. Nobody pays over seventy pounds for a click unless the person typing it goes on to spend real money. These are small numbers of searches by people who are about to buy help — which is why almost every result for them is an agency selling something, and why this page tries to be the exception by telling you the order to do it in yourself.
The seven things, in the order they pay back
- Google Business Profile. Free. On every Manchester search we checked for a local service, the map pack sat above the websites, showing three businesses with 20–70 reviews each. A profile with ten genuine reviews gets found for “near me” searches before your website ranks for anything.
- A website that loads fast and says what you do, where, and for how much. Not a brochure: five to eight pages, each answering one thing a customer wants to know.
- Those pages written in the customer’s words. A paving firm is searched as “driveway cost”, “block paving near me” and “patio installers”, not “hard landscaping solutions”.
- Answers to the questions people ask before they buy. “How much does a driveway cost?” has searchers every month, and the business that answers it plainly gets the enquiry when they are ready.
- Mentions and links from other real websites: suppliers, trade bodies, the local paper, directories that actually rank. This is what makes Google trust the pages above.
- Adverts, last. Google Ads and Meta Ads work, but they pour water into whatever bucket you have. If the website leaks, the money leaks with it.
- Measurement from day one: Search Console, analytics and a record of every enquiry with where it came from. Without it you will keep paying for the channel that feels busiest rather than the one that converts.
What each one costs, and how long before it works
| Thing | Doing it yourself | With help | Time to first result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Business Profile | Free, an afternoon plus asking for reviews | Inside a growth block | 2–6 weeks |
| Fast, plain website | A builder subscription, many evenings | From £500 build, £50 a month hosting (our published prices) | Live in 2–4 weeks; ranking in 3–6 months |
| Pages in the customer’s words | Free with keyword research (see the DIY SEO guide) | Inside a growth block | 1–3 months after publishing |
| Answering buyer questions | Your time, one page a fortnight | Inside a growth block | 2–4 months |
| Mentions and links | Asking suppliers, joining trade bodies, local press | Inside a growth block | 3–6 months |
| Adverts | Your budget plus your time learning the platform | Managed inside a growth block, never a percentage of spend | Days |
| Measurement | Free: Search Console and analytics | Set up inside a growth block | Immediate |
Source: Cybrial published pricing (pricing.js, correct at 5 September 2026) and the time ranges observed on client sites. “Time to first result” is what we have seen on live sites, not a guarantee.
Adverts are the only line that works in days, which is exactly why they get bought first. They are also the only line where the result stops the moment you stop paying. Everything above them compounds: a review, a page, a link keeps working next year.
What it looks like when it works
Beds.ie sells around 17,000 products across Ireland. When the growth work started, search engines were indexing a fraction of them and organic clicks were 672 a month. The work was steps three, four and five above applied to a large catalogue: structure the pages so Google could reach them, get the product data right so Merchant Centre would accept it, and describe products the way people search for them.
Between April and August 2026, full calendar months, organic clicks went from 672 to 7,781 and the number of distinct search queries the site appeared for went from 5,189 to 24,054, read from Google Search Console. No adverts were involved in that figure. It is the clearest example we can show of “getting found” being a structural job rather than a spending job.
At the other end of the scale, a Rochdale sweet shop we built gets roughly nine in ten of its search clicks from people typing its own name, read from its Search Console. That is normal for a new local site and it is the signal that steps three and four have not started yet: the business is found by people who already know it, not by people who need it.
What to do this week
- Search your own trade plus your town on your phone. Note who is in the map pack and how many reviews they have. That is the bar.
- Claim or create your Google Business Profile, choose the most specific category, and add ten real photos of the work.
- Ask your last five happy customers for a Google review, with the direct link. Specific reviews that describe the job rank better and read as real.
- Type the six things you sell into Google and read the top results. If they are in different words to yours, change your page titles to the customer’s words.
- Set up Google Search Console for your site. It is free and it is the only place that tells you what you are already found for.
That is a week of evenings, and it is more than most competitors have done. The rest of this section of the site covers each step in depth, written from the sites we run rather than from theory.
