The five things every local business website needs

Most advice about websites drowns you in features you do not need. Here is the short version for a local business. Five things. Get them right and the site pulls its weight. Miss them and it is decoration.

First, it has to load fast on a phone. Nearly everyone who finds you is on their phone, often standing somewhere with a problem to solve. If your site takes more than a couple of seconds to open, a big share of people are gone before they see a word. Speed is not a nice-to-have, it is the front door.

Second, your phone number has to be one tap away. On a local business site, the single most valuable thing on the screen is a button that calls you. Not a number they have to copy. A button. If someone has to hunt for it, you have added friction at the exact moment they were ready to reach you.

Third, it has to say where you work. Google cannot rank you for your area if your area is not on the page. Name your city and the places you serve, in plain words. This one line is the difference between showing up when someone nearby searches and being invisible.

Fourth, it has to build trust in about ten seconds. Real photos of you and your work, not stock images. Reviews where people can actually see them. A clear, plain description of what you do. People decide fast, and a dated or generic site quietly tells them to keep looking.

Fifth, it has to make the next step obvious. One clear thing to do on every screen: call, book, or send a quick request. No dead ends, no long forms, no clutter. A visitor who has to figure out what to do next usually does nothing.

That is the whole list. Not twenty things, five. If you want to see how your current site does on them, run the free SEO check on our websites page. It scores exactly this in seconds, and if you want it fixed, we reply within a day.