Website, landing page or Google Business Profile: where to start when you want more enquiries

Most local businesses come to us asking for a website when what they need first is something cheaper. Here's the honest order of operations for getting found, and what each piece actually does.

Google Business Profile (free, do it today)

When someone searches "electrician Castle Hill", the map with three businesses at the top is the Google Business Profile listing. It's free, it takes an afternoon, and for local services it produces more phone calls than most websites.

What matters: accurate category, service area, hours, a phone number that gets answered, photos of real work, and reviews. Ask every happy customer for a review; the count and recency matter more than anything else you can do.

What it can't do: explain your services in depth, capture detailed enquiries, or rank you for searches that aren't local ("how much does a switchboard upgrade cost").

If you have no online presence at all, do this first. Then keep going.

A landing page (from about $1,000)

A landing page is a single, focused page: one service or one offer, one clear action (call, request a quote, book). It exists to convert — from Google Ads, from your Business Profile, from a social post.

When it's the right choice: you have one main service, you're about to run ads, or you want something live in a week that actually captures enquiries with the details you need (address, photos, description of the job).

What it can't do much of: rank organically for lots of different searches. One page ranks for one topic.

A full website (from about $1,000 to $4,200, more for larger businesses)

A website with a page for each service and each main location is what ranks for the long list of searches customers actually type — "tree removal Hills District", "arborist report Baulkham Hills", "stump grinding cost". Each page is a door into your business.

When it's the right choice: you offer several services, you serve several suburbs or you want organic search to become a reliable source of work over the next year rather than paying for ads forever.

What makes it work: fast loading, mobile-first, real content on each page (not the same paragraph with the suburb swapped), structured data so Google understands what you do, a form that captures useful enquiries, and a Business Profile that matches. Then a bit of ongoing content — a short article a month is plenty.

What doesn't work: a beautiful five-page brochure site with a "Services" page that lists everything in one paragraph. Google has nothing to rank.

The recommended order

1. Google Business Profile — this week. Free.
2. A landing page if you need enquiries fast or you're advertising — next week.
3. A proper multi-page website when you're ready for organic search to carry weight — next month. The landing page becomes one of its pages.
4. Ongoing: reviews every month, a short article or update every month, and check Search Console quarterly to see what people are finding you for.

What "SEO" should mean when someone sells it to you

Technical basics done right (speed, structure, metadata, sitemap), pages that match real searches, and local signals that agree with each other. That's it. Anyone promising "page one in 30 days" is selling something else.

The short version

Get the free listing right first. Build a page that converts. Then build the site that gets found. Each step pays for the next one.