You built something worth finding. And SEO for a small business is simpler than the industry makes it sound. Your site has to load fast and be readable by Google. Then it has to answer the questions your customers actually type. We do that work for small businesses in Indianapolis, plus the newer piece: making it more likely your business gets named when someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity who to call.
Search engine optimization means making your website easy for Google to find and trust, so it shows up when someone types a question you can answer. That’s it. Honestly... most of the job is housekeeping and honest writing. What’s changed is where people ask. Some of your customers now type the question into ChatGPT instead of Google, and those tools read the web much the way Google does. They look for a page that answers the question directly.
Here at CPC, we aren’t afraid of a hot take. Most small-business websites don’t need more pages. They need the pages they have to answer the question.
Foundations first. Then writing. Then the steady upkeep. You see every piece of it in a plain monthly report.
Before anyone writes a word, we check the plumbing. How fast the site loads on a phone. Broken links. Pages accidentally hidden from search. A clean sitemap. Redirects left over from your last redesign. Then we add structured data, a bit of code that hands search engines your business name, services, hours, and service area in a format they read without guessing. It isn’t glamorous. It’s often the reason a decent site never shows up.
We start with the questions you hear on the phone. What does it cost? How long does it take? Do you come out to Fishers? Each one gets a page or a section that answers in the first 2 sentences and then shows the detail. People read that way, and it’s the shape Google and the AI tools tend to quote. No keyword stuffing. No 2,000-word filler written for robots.
Your pages should point to each other the way a good employee points a customer: from the service to the price, from one question to the next one they’ll have. Visitors find what they need, and Google learns which pages matter most.
We set up Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools in your name and submit your sitemap to both. Bing is worth the 10 minutes, because its index feeds Microsoft Copilot and is one of the sources behind ChatGPT’s search. Each month you get a short report in plain English: the searches that brought people in, the pages that led to calls or form fills, and what we’re changing next.
Nobody can guarantee that ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google’s AI Overviews will cite your business. Anyone who promises it is guessing. What we can tell you is what these tools tend to pull from. When we ran a set of Indianapolis questions through Perplexity this fall, the “who should I hire” answers leaned almost entirely on directories and review sites like Clutch, BBB, and Thumbtack. The “how much does it cost” answers quoted small firms’ own pages, the ones written to answer one question with a number up top.
So the work is down-to-earth. Answer-first pages on your own site. The same business name, address, and phone everywhere you’re listed. Schema markup, so machines read your details correctly. An llms.txt file, a short plain-text guide to your site for AI crawlers. (It’s cheap to add, and honestly, nobody knows yet how much it helps.) And listings on the directories those answers draw from. Then every month we run a fixed set of real prompts your customers might type and report what changed: whether you showed up, who did instead, and which page got quoted.
Local SEO covers your Google Business Profile, your reviews, and the handful of businesses Google pins on the map when someone searches nearby. This page covers the site itself: whether it loads, gets read, and answers questions well enough to rank and be quoted. Most local businesses need both. Local usually comes first, because it moves faster.
Not sure which half needs work? Run Can Indy Find You?, our free check. It grades you as you go and never asks for your email.
We run whichever half you need, or both, inside one retainer.
We’d rather tell you now than in month 2. Technical fixes can show up in Search Console within a few weeks. New pages usually take a few months to settle into rankings, and longer in a crowded category. AI answers move on their own schedule, since each tool re-reads the web when it decides to. If you need booked work this quarter, Google Ads is faster, and we’ll tell you so.
Don’t get us wrong, the payoff for waiting is real. A page that earns its spot keeps bringing people in for years, with no charge per click. And if you suspect Google can’t see you at all, start with why businesses vanish from Google.
Including us. If you hear any of these on a sales call, it’s okay to walk away.
Google’s own guidance says no one can guarantee a top spot in its results. A firm that promises page one is guessing, or planning to rank you for a phrase nobody searches. Ask which search, and how many people actually type it.
Real SEO is explainable. If someone can’t tell you what they’ll change on your site this month, in words you understand, assume it’s nothing. Or worse, something that gets your site penalized.
Long lock-ins protect the agency. We ask for 3 months, because that’s the shortest stretch in which this work can show anything, and after that it’s month to month.
Your Search Console, your analytics, your domain, and your website should belong to you, with the agency added as a user. If they own the accounts, leaving means starting over. We set everything up in your name from day one. Here’s everything you keep if you leave.
SEO doesn’t have its own price tag here. It runs inside our published monthly retainers: $1,200, $2,400, or $4,800 a month. At $1,200 we run one channel properly, and SEO can be that channel. The higher tiers add more alongside it, like local SEO, content, or ads. 3 months minimum, then month to month.
If you’re still working out what you should spend on marketing at all, our article on small business marketing budgets walks through the math.
Expect months, not weeks. Technical fixes can show up in Search Console within a few weeks, and new pages usually need a few months to settle into rankings. Crowded categories take longer. We report every month, so you’ll see the early signs, like more pages indexed and more searches showing your site, before the calls pick up.
No. Google itself says nobody can guarantee a top ranking, and we agree. What we stand behind is the work: what we changed and what moved, in a plain report every month. If someone promises you page one, ask them which search, and how many people actually type it.
It’s making your business easy for tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews to find and quote. In practice that means answer-first pages, the same business details everywhere, schema markup, and listings on the directories those tools cite. Does it work? It makes a citation more likely. Nobody can promise one. We test a fixed set of real prompts each month and show you what changed, including when nothing did.
Local SEO is your Google Business Profile, your reviews, and the map results. This is your website: speed, structure, and pages that answer real questions. They feed each other, and most local businesses need both. If you’re not sure where you stand, run Can Indy Find You?, our free visibility check, first.
Probably not the way you’re picturing it. You don’t need a post every week. You need pages that answer what customers ask before they buy, and those can live as service pages, an FAQ, or a few solid articles. If writing them turns into a regular job, that’s content marketing, and we do that too.
Let’s hop on a discovery call. We’ll look at your site the way Google does, then ask ChatGPT a few of your customers’ questions together. You’ll leave with straight answers on what’s broken and what to fix first, whether or not you hire us.
