What to buy first
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Most local businesses have one page trying to win every town they serve. It wins none of them, because the person searching in Olathe and the person searching in Lee’s Summit are typing different things and Google is answering them with different results. The fix is unglamorous: a separate, real page for each town worth having, researched from what people there actually search, then published and indexed.
You pay $500 to start and $500 when the pages are live. After that a page costs you $100 a month, and only in the months it reached position 10 or better on at least one search term and earned at least 1 click, measured over 28 days in your own Google Search Console. A page that slips off page one comes off that month’s bill by itself. The rate steps down as more pages rank:
| Ranked pages | Rate per page, per month |
|---|---|
| 1–5 | $100 each |
| 6–15 | $60 each |
| 16–30 | $40 each |
| 31–75 | $25 each |
| 76+ | $15 each |
This is the step that changes whether strangers can find you at all, which is why it goes first. It is also the slower of the two: indexing takes days, ranking takes weeks to months. Nothing is billed while you wait.
Ranking brings you enquiries. What happens in the next ten minutes decides whether they become customers, and for most local businesses the honest answer is that it depends who is free. Somebody books; the confirmation goes out when whoever handles it gets to their desk; the reminder does not go out at all; nobody asks for the review.
The automation takes that off a person. Somebody books, and the messages that should follow — confirmation, reminders, follow-ups — send themselves from your domain over the following days. You get the booking alert and the day sheet, and separately a set of year-round automations chases reviews, payments, paperwork and last season’s customers.
$500 once per domain to install — that is the sending setup on your own domain, your branding and your copy — then $99 a month for the year-round set. Seasonal businesses can pay $299 per season instead of monthly.
Each of these works on its own. The reason to do them in this order is that they are not worth the same amount at the same time.
Automation multiplies enquiries you already get. If you get four a month, a perfect follow-up sequence is working on four. It cannot manufacture a fifth. So buying it first caps its own value at whatever your current traffic happens to be, and the improvement is real but small enough to be hard to see.
Pages do the opposite: they raise the number of people who find you at all, and they do it slowly. Every enquiry they add is one more thing for the follow-up to work on. Which means the automation you buy in month six is operating on more volume than the same automation bought in month one — same price, more work done.
There is a second reason, and it is about your money rather than your marketing. The page fee only applies in the months a page is actually on page one. So the first step bills you nothing until it works. Starting there means your first spend after the build is tied to a result you can check, which is a better place to be than paying two monthly fees while you wait to see whether any of it lands.
The exception is straightforward: if you already get plenty of enquiries and know you are losing them to slow replies, invert the order. The follow-up is the leak, so fix the leak.
Not a feeling, and not a date. Three things you can check:
If all three are true, the second step is worth more now than it was when you started. If none of them are, it is not — and nobody here benefits from you buying it early, since the page fee already only charges you when the pages work.
| What you pay | When it stops | |
|---|---|---|
| Pages, to build | $500 to start, $500 when they are live | One-time |
| Pages, per month | From $100 per ranked page, down to $15 at volume | Any month a page is off page one, that page is not billed |
| Automation, to install | $500 once per domain | One-time |
| Automation, per month | $99 a month, or $299 per season | Cancel whenever; no contract |
No bundle and no discount for taking both, because bundling would mean charging you for the second one before it is worth having.
Pages. Until somebody is finding you, there is nothing for the follow-up to follow up on. The automation makes each enquiry worth more; it does not create enquiries.
Yes. If you already get enquiries and lose them to slow replies, the follow-up is the thing worth fixing first and the pages can wait. The order set out above is the common case, not a requirement.
No. There is no bundle and no contract. Each is priced on its own and you can stop either one without touching the other.
Indexing is days; ranking is usually weeks to a few months, and it varies by town and trade. You are not billed for a page in any month it is not on page one, so the waiting costs you nothing beyond the build.
It comes off that month's bill. The fee is per window, not a subscription that latches once and keeps charging.
They are your own Google Search Console figures, not ours. Every page fee traces to a position and a click count you can check yourself.
It reads your site and tells you which towns you are missing and what a build would cover. Two minutes, no call booked, nothing installed.