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Vertana

Small business SEO

Monthly SEO that gets you found on Google and ChatGPT.

SEO is the part of marketing that compounds. It is slow, then it is the reason the phone rings without you paying for every call. Vertana runs it every month for owner-operators: on-page, local, and the new one that matters, being the business the AI assistants actually recommend.

Talk to Jon

Why it is monthly, and why that is the honest answer.

SEO is not a project you finish. Google reindexes, competitors publish, your services change, and the assistants rewrite their answers every few weeks. A one-time optimization decays. Work that happens every month compounds.

That is why Vertana sells a monthly engagement instead of a one-and-done package. We build or fix the foundation first, then we keep publishing, keep tightening, and keep measuring until the search traffic is doing real work for the business.

If you need leads before that compounding arrives, we say so, and we use paid search as the bridge. Ads give you control and speed. SEO gives you the asset. Most owner-operators need both, in that order.

Start here if you are invisible

Why your business isn’t showing up on Google

Nine causes, in the order worth checking them. Most of the time it is one of the first three.

Start here if the listing exists

Google Business Profile optimization

The field-by-field checklist, plus the shortcuts that get profiles suspended.

Why the second search engine now matters as much as the first.

Search stopped being one box. In two years the share of US adults using AI chatbots went from 33% to 49%, and 42% of all adults now use one to look things up. Being the business an assistant names is a channel, not a novelty. We know, because that is how one of our own clients found us.

49%
of US adults now use AI chatbots, up from 33% two years earlier. Four in ten use them to search for information.
Pew Research Center, Jun 2026
68%
of Google searches in the first four months of 2026 ended without a click to any website, up from 60% in 2024.
SparkToro, Jun 2026
8%
of Google visits that showed an AI summary produced a click to any result, against 15% of visits without one. Only 1% produced a click on a source cited inside the summary.
Pew Research Center, Jul 2025

The click is shrinking. Being the answer is not.

Two things are true at once and most SEO advice only admits one of them. Google sends fewer clicks every year: in the first four months of 2026, 68% of searches ended without a click to any website, against roughly 60% in 2024, on SparkToro’s clickstream panels. And when Google shows an AI summary, the clicks roughly halve: Pew’s browsing panel recorded a click on a result in 8% of those visits, against 15% of visits with no summary.

What that data does not say is that search stopped mattering. It says the prize moved, and further than most SEO pitches admit. In that same panel only 1% of visits to a page with an AI summary produced a click on a source cited inside it. Chasing the citation click is not the play. Being the business the answer namesis. The assistants half of US adults now use draw on the same clean, quotable facts. The work is the same work: pages that state plainly what you do and where, structured data that matches, and a reputation the machines can corroborate. That is what “found on Google and ChatGPT” means in practice, and why we treat it as one job rather than two. People sell that second half as AEO or GEO. In plain English it is the same offer: make the facts easy to quote. The acronyms are unpacked in SEO vs AEO vs GEO.

One honesty note, since the hype runs the other way: Google’s own AI Mode was 0.34% of searches in that same period. The shift is real and it is early. We build for where it is going without pretending it has already arrived.

Bar chart: 33% of US adults had used an AI chatbot in 2024, rising to 49% in 2026.
Pew Research Center, Americans and AI 2026, fielded February 2026, n=5,119 US adults. Share of US adults who have ever used an AI chatbot.
Bar chart: a Google visit produced a click on a result 8% of the time when an AI summary was shown, against 15% when it was not.
Pew Research Center, March 2025 browsing data published July 2025, n=900 US adults. Share of Google visits producing a click on any result, with and without an AI summary.

What compounding looks like on a real site.

Jon founded Conduit Law, a Denver personal injury firm, and runs its marketing and operations. Treat it as a worked example rather than a testimonial. It is also the site we have the most complete data for, over the longest period, which is why it is here.

The shape is the point. Organic clicks in July 2026 were about nine times December’s, from the same kind of work carried on every month. Jon founded and owns Conduit Law, PLLC, and runs its marketing and operations. Jon ran this work in-house for his own firm, so your results on a Vertana plan will depend on your market and your plan. Nothing about December predicted July. Search is one of several channels feeding the firm, and the one that compounds.

Bar chart of Conduit Law organic clicks per month relative to December 2025: about 4.8 times in June 2026 and 9.2 times in July 2026.
Conduit Law, Google Search Console. Organic clicks per month relative to December 2025.

Now the unflattering half, because it is the more useful half. Most of the site’s impressions sit on page three, and page three earns almost nothing. Anyone quoting you an impression count as a result is quoting the part that does not pay.

What pays is the slice that converts: leads and signed clients. That is the number that matters, and it is the number we report to you. A signed injury case and a booked massage are worth very different amounts, which is the real argument for doing this properly in a high-value trade: the same compounding curve pays out at a different scale depending on what one new client is worth to you.

Two caveats we will not bury. This took the better part of a year, across a site with hundreds of pages, and Conduit had a head start most owner-operators do not: someone running its marketing full time. Your curve starts where your site and your profile are today.

What the first year actually looks like.

Nobody can promise you a position, because nobody controls Google’s results. What can be described honestly is the sequence, and roughly when each part tends to show up.

  1. Weeks 1–4

    Foundation and the things that move fast

    Audit, Google Business Profile, technical fixes, and the pages that should already exist. Local and profile work can show up in weeks, which is why it goes first.

  2. Months 2–3

    Long-tail and specific questions

    The searches with intent but low competition start landing. Low volume individually, real money collectively, and the first proof the rest is working.

  3. Months 4–6

    Service and location pages find their level

    The pages you actually sell from begin ranking for the terms people use when they are ready to hire. Assistants start having something to quote.

  4. Months 6–12+

    Competitive head terms

    The searches everyone wants. These take sustained work and prominence you have to earn. Anyone selling them faster is selling something else.

A newer domain sits at the slower end of every one of those ranges. That is not a caveat we bury; it is the reason we would rather run ads alongside for the first stretch than have you judge the whole thing at month three.

What is in the monthly work.

On-page SEO, every page

Titles, descriptions, headings, internal links, and the content itself, written for the searches your buyers actually run. This is the part most agencies skip and most site builders get wrong.

Local search and your Google Business Profile

Categories, services, photos, posts, reviews, and the map pack. For a business that serves a city, this is usually where the first calls come from.

Answer-engine visibility

Structured data, clean facts, and quotable pages so ChatGPT and other assistants can find you and recommend you. One of our own clients found us this way.

Content that earns the ranking

We write the pages that answer real questions in your trade, then link them so they hold each other up. No filler, no keyword stuffing.

Tracking that shows the money

Search Console, analytics, and call tracking wired up so you can see which searches turned into booked work, not just traffic.

A monthly report and a human

You get a plain-English report and you talk to Jon, not an account coordinator reading from a script.

The site and the SEO are the same job.

Most of what decides whether you rank is built into the website itself: how the pages are structured, how fast they load, what the headings say, whether a person or an assistant can actually read them. That is why Vertana builds the site too. The build is not a separate product we upsell. It is the foundation the SEO stands on.

And ranking is only half of it. Traffic that lands on a site with no way to book is traffic you paid for twice. Our sites are built to take the next step: book the appointment, run the intake, sign the agreement, take the payment.

See how we build websites to rank · how the front-desk website books and takes payment.

Choosing an SEO company when you are the owner and the operator.

Most SEO companies for small business are built for marketing managers. You get a portal, a coordinator, a deck, and a monthly call where someone reads you a number. That works if you have staff to receive it. You do not. You are on a roof, in a treatment room, or in court.

Vertana is built the other way around. Jon does the work and Jon takes the call. The reporting is short. The decisions get made in the conversation. Nothing waits on a handoff to a junior.

We are also honest about fit. If you need a national e-commerce program or a full in-house content team, you should hire an agency built for that, and we will say so on the first call.

Go deeper.

The local service, what it costs, how assistants pick businesses, an honest look at your alternatives, and the two diagnostic guides we send people to most often. Plenty of this you can do without us.

Common questions.

How much does SEO cost for a small business?
In the market ranges we see (not a survey, and not a Vertana quote), small business SEO retainers commonly run from a few hundred dollars a month at the low end to $2,000-$5,000 a month with an established agency, and one-time website builds commonly run $2,000-$8,000. Vertana's monthly plans are public: JB starts at $500 a month, more pages, links, and posts each month start at $1,500, and adding Google Ads starts at $2,500, with ad spend paid directly to Google. A new website is quoted after a call. The full band-by-band breakdown is in our SEO cost guide.
How long does SEO take to work?
Local and long-tail terms often move in the first 90 days. Competitive head terms usually take 6-12 months or longer, especially for a newer domain. Anyone promising page one in 30 days is selling something else.
Is SEO better than Google Ads?
They do different jobs. Ads give you control and immediate results, and you stop getting leads the day you stop paying. SEO compounds and keeps working, but it takes time to arrive. Most owner-operators are best served by running ads as a bridge while the SEO compounds.
Do I need a new website to do SEO?
Not always. If your current site is fast, crawlable, and editable, we optimize what you have. If it is a locked template, a page builder that outputs unreadable markup, or a site nobody can update, rebuilding it is usually cheaper than fighting it.
How do you get a business recommended by ChatGPT?
Assistants favor sources that state facts clearly, mark them up in structured data, and get corroborated elsewhere on the web. That means clean pages about what you do and where you do it, consistent business information across directories, and content worth quoting. We wrote the owner-operator version as a separate guide.

Full versions: how much SEO costs · how ChatGPT picks businesses to recommend.

Sources

Find out what you are missing.

Book a call and Jon will look at what you rank for now, what your competitors are taking, and whether the assistants know you exist. No pitch deck, no obligation.

Talk to Jon

Book a call. No pitch, just a look at your business.