Small Business SEO Strategy: How I Generated €80k Revenue in 6 Months (With Just 1 Hour’s Work)

Picture this: You spend an hour on your small business SEO strategy and it turns into €80k in revenue.

This happened with a client of mine.

And before you start thinking “This won’t work for me…“

Let me tell you the 3 elements you need to get the same small business SEO strategy in place:

You’ll need a legitimate company with a business address

You’ll need a handful of past clients

You’ll need to serve clients looking for a localised service

Not too difficult right?

Of course, your results will vary depending on the price of your service and your ability to close deals.

In my client’s case, we got 15 leads and closed 11 over a 6-month period.

With that out the way…

Let’s get into this small business SEO strategy!

The #1 Small Business SEO Strategy: Google Business Profile

Chances are you have already a Google Business Profile.

But if not…

Let me explain why it’s the #1 SEO strategy for small businesses (and will give you maximum ROI).

First, you need to understand the concept of ‘local intent’.

According to WordStream an estimated 46% of all searches on Google have a local intent. It means almost half of Google searches are for information related to a specific location.

Here’s why it’s important…

I first learned about ‘local intent’ doing SEO work for a real estate agency in Barcelona.

As you can see above, the top Google result for the search term ‘property for sale in Barcelona’ gets 2,799 clicks a month.

My client was getting 300 clicks a month across their entire website…

So obviously, it seemed a logical ‘local intent’ keyword to rank for.

But here’s the thing.

According to Backlinko, the first 3 links on a Google Search results page get 75% of all the clicks.

Idealista’s Head of Online Marketing has been working on ranking his website pages in 1st place on Google for the past 15 years (I checked his LinkedIN)…

Other real estate companies (like RightMove) have spent a similar amount of time taking up the 2nd and 3rd spots…

Which explains why I failed to get any traffic.

And then I realised the one ‘local intent’ SEO advantage I had that Idealista could never rank above me on: Google Business Profile.

Let me explain.

In the above screenshot I typed into Google ‘real estate agency in Barcelona’.

And guess what?

Idealista pages are nowhere to be found.

This is because Idealista doesn’t have a business address in Barcelona.

When you search on Google with local intent and you’re specifically looking for a business…

You see what’s called the ‘Google 3-Pack’.

The Google 3-Pack result gives every business with a physical address an opportunity to get clicks using SEO – even if you haven’t spent any time working on the SEO of your website.

But here’s the thing.

Only 3 businesses appear in the Google 3-Pack results.

So the only way to get leads from this small business SEO strategy is to optimise your Google Business Profile as best you can.

Thankfully, this takes a fraction of the time it would take to outrank the likes of Idealista!

How I Helped a Small Business Get 198 Clicks From Their Google Business Profile in a 6-Month Period

Back in April 2023 I began working with a solar installer based in a small town in Spain.

I instantly got to work on their Google Business Profile.

You can guess I wanted the business to appear in 1st place in the Google 3-Pack for anyone searching solar panel installer in [insert location].

And that’s exactly what happened.

On some days there was only 1 single Google search for solar panel installer in [insert location].

But if you look at the pop-up window showing for Sunday 8 Oct, the business appeared in 1st place and got the click.

See how powerful a fully optimised Google Business Profile can be?

Interested to know how to do the same?

The State of Local SEO report from Moz surveyed over 150 top SEO experts to find out the nine most important ranking factors in a Google Business Profile.

The #1 most important ranking factor is this: Google Business Profile elements.

It may surprise you that a single error in your business’ name, address or phone number (called the ‘NAP’) can destroy your ranking potential.

This installer had a different phone number on their website and on their Google Business Profile, so I changed that immediately.

The rest of these ‘elements’ includes having high-value keywords in the description, your business categories, photographs, updates and a fully completed profile.

According to ConstantContact at least 49% of small businesses never update or correct their information online.

This puts you at a huge advantage.

Here are the full top 9 Google Business Profile ranking factors:

1. Google Business Profile elements (keywords, categories, etc.)
2. Google reviews (number, sentiment, owner responses, etc.)
3. Proximity of searcher to the business address
4. Physical address in the area of search
5. Consistency of citations (your business’ name and contact details in directories, aggregators and other platforms)
6. On-page SEO elements (aka your website)
7. Local listing engagement (clicks, phone calls, online bookings using GBP, etc.)
8. Organic user behaviour (time on your website, clicks, bounce rate, etc.)
9. Quality/ authority of inbound links to the domain

How I Helped a Small Business Get 15 Leads From Their Google Business Profile in a 6-Month Period

You might be wondering…

How can I be so sure we generated 15 leads from my client’s Google Business Profile listing?

The answer is in the screenshot below.

Let me explain.

Each Google Business Profile listing has a space for your website address.

In order to record all the clicks, I used Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) parameters to create a custom link.

I was then able to use the free software tool Google Analytics (GA4) to record a unique ‘conversion’ event anytime a user arrived from Google Business Profile and filled out an online quote form.

We had 59 quote requests between mid-May to Mid-November.

A total of 15 came directly from Google Business Profile and 44 came from SEO work I did on the website itself.

But read on.

It took me two weeks to rewrite my client’s website pages. And it took me a further 2 months to rank these pages in 1st place on Google for the terms we wanted.

And the Google Business Profile?

Because I knew what I was doing it took me half an hour.

I spent another half hour in total checking in once a month to write a business update and create a report of our progress.

That’s 1 hour’s time spent to get 15 leads.

If you’re looking for a small business SEO strategy that’s worth the effort… you really can’t go wrong with Google Business Profile!

How I Helped a Small Business Get 11 Sales and €80k From Their Google Business Profile in a 6-Month Period

I can only take part of the credit for the 11 sales we closed and over €80k in revenue generated.

The truth is…

My client has a high-quality service and an exceptional sales manager.

He closed 70% of all the quote requests that came in via the website in this 6-month period. The average solar panel installation can cost between €6,000-15,000 and this is where the revenue came from.

But there’s one thing you should know.

Many businesses make the mistake of investing time, money and energy into SEO without figuring out a way to actually get leads using SEO.

So there are 3 more things you should know about this case study:

SEO takes time to work. Google Business Profile results will be quicker than standard SEO, but in this example I used a Google Ad to generate a few initial quote requests while our website pages climbed up the rankings (about 2-8 weeks).

You have to make your service irresistible to readers. The words you use to describe your service are life-and-death for your business’ bottom line. According to HubSpot, the average person spends just 54 seconds on a website before getting bored or choosing to stay. You have little time to win them over.

Not every reader is ready to ‘Get a Quote’. Instead of asking readers to request a quote from us, we actually created an irresistible lead magnet. This helped us in the first month to get 11 formal quote requests from just 56 users who clicked on our website pages on Google.

Small Business SEO Strategy: What You Should Do Now

Businesses across the world rely on SEO to generate an average 40% of their revenue, according to WebFX.

This is probably why you’re interested in small business SEO strategy.

But SEO can be complex.

I have spoken to small businesses in Spain who spent €30,000 on SEO and blogging strategies – and never broke even on their marketing spend.

As a small business owner myself, I know that you can’t afford to take that kind of a risk.

This is why I created the High-Converting Lead Magnet Blueprint.

Google Business Profile (as you’ve seen) can provide an incredible ROI for the time invested into it – but you need to turn as many people who click on your website link from your GBP profile into leads.

The best way to do this is with a high-converting lead magnet.

You might only get only mean a couple leads a month…

But this trickle of business could end up freeing up more of your time, bringing in revenue to spend on more marketing or even carrying your small business through a tough month.

You have very little to lose with Google Business Profile and a high-converting lead magnet on your website.

Grab my free eBook today and start putting your lead generation on autopilot.