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Ways to grow

You work in Maplewood every week. You don’t show up there.

Google shows home buyers the inspector closest to where they’re searching. If you don’t have a presence in a town, Google doesn’t show you in that town.

Not because your work is bad. Not because your reviews are weak. Because you don’t have an address there, and Google is drawing from a map.

Every job that came from that town went to somebody with a local foothold. You were never in the running, and you never knew there was a job to get.

Why Google is confusing and it’s not your fault

Google has renamed its local listing tool so many times that most inspectors don’t know what to call it — let alone how it decides who to show.

It was Google Places. Then Google+ Local. Then Google My Business. Now it’s Google Business Profile. Every rename shuffled the rules alongside it, and nobody sent a memo.

The result is that most inspectors have a profile they set up years ago and a rough sense that Google is supposed to help them. But the specific rule — the one that determines whether you show up in the local three-pack for any given search — was never explained anywhere in plain language.

Here’s the rule: Google shows the inspectors physically closest to the searcher’s location at the moment she searches.

Not closest to where she’s buying a house. Closest to where she’s sitting when she types. If she’s sitting in Maplewood and searching for an inspector, Google serves up inspectors with a presence in Maplewood. Your main office in the next county isn’t close enough.

And here’s what that means in a market like today’s, where every inspection matters: those buyers in those towns are calling somebody else. Not because that inspector is better. Because they showed up and you didn’t.

In a slow market, every town you’re invisible in is a town that isn’t working for you.

When the market was running hot, an inspector could afford to be invisible in half his towns. The volume made up for it. That market is over. What’s left requires finding work in places you weren’t looking before — or making sure every town you already serve is actually sending you its work.

Most inspectors won’t do this. That’s fine. Every town where your competitor doesn’t show up is a town you can own.

What a local microsite actually is

A five-page website built for one town, on its own address, showing up where your main site can’t.

Not a page on your existing site. Not a directory listing. A standalone website on its own domain, written specifically for that town and the buyers searching there.

Google treats it as a local presence because it is one. Every page is written for that market. Every call to action goes to Josh. When a buyer in Maplewood searches for a home inspector, she finds a site that speaks her town — and Josh answers when she calls.

What’s on each microsite

Five pages: homepage, services, about, service area, and contact. Written for the specific town. No duplicated content between sites — each one is its own original piece of work.

Every call to action on every page routes to Josh. She finds the site, she taps the button, Josh answers. Day or night.

What it runs on

Its own domain — not a folder on your main site. We register it, build it, write it, and keep it updated and ranking while your lease is active.

Your main site is untouched. The microsite adds a presence where you had none. One town per site. You choose which ones.

What we handle

Domain registered and hosted. We pick a name that works for the town and the search terms. You don’t buy it, we do. It’s part of the lease.

Five pages written for that market. Not copy-pasted from your main site with the town name swapped. Original content written for that town’s buyers, in the language they’re actually searching.

Built to be found. Structure, headings, and copy written for the searches home buyers in that town are actually making. Not generic.

Josh on every page. Every contact button, every booking link, every call to action goes to Josh. She doesn’t land on a contact form with a one-business-day reply window. → Meet Josh

Kept current while you lease it. We maintain it. If something changes — your service area, a new service you offer — we update it. It isn’t something you have to remember to tend.

How the lease works

You pay to show up there. We own what it takes to make that happen.

Microsites are leased, not sold. Here is what that means in plain language, and why it’s the right arrangement for most inspectors.

Why a lease and not a purchase

Getting a five-page site to rank in a town takes a lot of work and ongoing maintenance after that. The domain, the hosting, the writing, the technical upkeep — those costs don’t stop when the site goes live. They’re what keep it ranking.

Under a lease, you never pay for any of that separately. The monthly fee covers everything: build, hosting, maintenance, and updates. You get the calls while it’s working for you, without the upfront cost of a site you’d then have to maintain yourself.

If you decide to stop leasing, the site stays with us. That’s what makes the economics work for both sides — we can invest in building something that ranks because we retain the asset. You get a working local presence at a fraction of what a purchased site would cost to build and run.

You choose the towns

Tell us where you want to show up. We’ll tell you whether a microsite is likely to move the needle there, and you decide which ones to add.

Add them one at a time

One town, one microsite, one monthly fee. There’s no minimum. Start with the town where you work most and have no local presence.

Stop whenever

Month to month. Thirty days’ notice. No penalty. The site stays with us when you leave, but everything else — your own website, your reviews, your client and agent lists — was always yours and goes with you.

Your main site is untouched

Microsites are separate. Adding one doesn’t change anything about your main website or your base subscription. The four engines keep running exactly as they were.

What we won’t promise you

A presence isn’t a guarantee

A microsite puts you on the map in a town where you had no presence at all. It doesn’t promise you the top result or a specific number of bookings. Some towns are competitive and will take longer. Some are not and will move faster. We’ll give you an honest read on both before you add a town.

Organic search takes time. The towns where microsites pay off fastest are the ones you already serve but where nobody has staked a strong local claim yet. That’s the first question we ask before you add a town: is there room to rank here, or is the ground already taken? We steer you toward the towns you can win, not the ones you’d be fighting uphill for. We won’t tell you six months and we won’t promise you a number — but we will tell you honestly which towns are worth your money.

Google also changes how it ranks local results. It has done it before and will do it again. We keep the sites maintained and adapt when it happens, but nobody controls the algorithm and no honest company claims otherwise.

What we do control: the build, the writing, the maintenance, and making sure Josh is there when the site brings someone in. The rest is the ground we work with as it is. → Your Google Business Profile works alongside microsites and strengthens both.