The Method
Most businesses that "need SEO" don't. They have one specific leak, and the other three fixes are wasted money. This is how we find which one is yours, fix it in the order that pays back fastest, and prove it moved — against a number we wrote down before we started.
Four questions, no email required. This is a self-assessment based on what you tell us — not a measurement of your site. The free Checkup measures the real thing.
1. In the last three months, how many enquiries has your website actually produced?
2. Search your main service plus your town on Google. Where do you show up?
3. On Google, how does your business look next to the competitors listed around you?
4. When an enquiry does come in, how quickly does a human respond?
Answer all four and we'll name the leak, tell you what it costs to fix, and point you at the one thing worth doing first.
The diagnosis
Every business that says "my website isn't working" has at least one of these. The reason generic SEO retainers disappoint is that they only ever fix the first one — and for most businesses the money is leaking somewhere else.
Nobody sees you in the first place. Few impressions in search, no presence in the local map pack, and AI assistants don't mention you when someone asks for a recommendation.
The fix: indexing and technical repair, a real page per service and per area, local presence, and GEO so AI engines can quote you.
You appear in results and get ignored. High impressions, low click-through. Usually your listing looks less trustworthy than the three around it — thin reviews, weak titles, no rich result.
The fix: titles and descriptions on the money pages, schema markup, and a real review engine — volume, recency, and replies.
Traffic is fine. Enquiries aren't. People land, don't find what they came for fast enough, and leave. Slow mobile pages and a hidden phone number do more damage here than any ranking factor.
The fix: mobile speed, one clear offer per page, contact visible without scrolling, and page copy graded against what actually ranks.
The website is doing its job. Enquiries arrive and die in an inbox. This is the most expensive leak and the cheapest to fix — and no amount of SEO will touch it.
The fix: response-time discipline and lead tracking. If this is your leak, we'll tell you not to buy SEO from us.
How we work
Four phases. The second one is the part most agencies skip — and it's the one that decides whether the other three were worth paying for.
Technical site health, what you rank for versus what you should, local presence, competitor ad research, and whether AI engines recommend you. Machine-run against your live domain.
An audit produces two hundred findings. You're not paying for findings. We sort them into which of the four leaks is actually losing you money, and say so plainly.
Sorted by revenue impact times confidence, divided by effort — not by audit severity. A critical-red finding that earns nothing waits behind an amber one that pays this month.
We record the baseline before touching anything: rankings, impressions, clicks, enquiries, Google Profile calls, AI-visibility. Then we report against that same baseline. Every month.
Phase 03, in detail
This is the whole argument. Two agencies can find identical problems and deliver completely different results, purely because of what they did first. Cheapest wins go first — not because they're easy, but because they fund the patience the slow work needs.
| Tier | What gets fixed | Why it's here | When |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 Money first |
|
Highest revenue per hour of work. For a local service business the Google Profile alone often outperforms every on-site change combined. And until tracking is right, every decision after this is guesswork. | Week 1–2 |
| Tier 2 Structure |
|
Most struggling sites have one "Services" page trying to rank for twelve things. Splitting it is usually the single biggest organic gain available, and it costs content, not budget. | Week 2–6 |
| Tier 3 GEO layer |
|
When someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity for a recommendation instead of searching, this decides whether you're in the answer. Most of your competitors aren't doing it yet. | Week 4–10 |
| Tier 4 Compounding |
|
Paid search is the bridge: it buys you customers in week one for the keywords organic will take six months to earn. Then you taper it as the free traffic arrives. | Ongoing |
Honest timelines
An agency that promises page one in thirty days loses you in month four, because month four is when you find out. Here's the real shape of it.
Days
Paid search
Live traffic on high-intent keywords almost immediately. Costs money per click, works while the rest matures.
2–6 weeks
Conversion & local
Google Profile, speed, contact visibility, review flow. Same traffic, more enquiries from it.
2–4 months
AI visibility (GEO)
Faster than organic search, because far fewer businesses are competing for it yet.
3–6 months
Organic rankings
The slowest and the most durable. Anyone quoting you less than this is guessing or lying.
What it's worth
A ranking is not a result. Before we propose anything we ask for two numbers — your average job value and roughly how often you close a quote — so the whole plan can be argued in rands instead of positions.
Illustrative, using worked example numbers — not a forecast for your business, and not a promise. The point is the shape of the argument: we run this with your job value, your close rate, and the keyword list your Checkup actually returns, then show you the same maths across every keyword we're targeting. If it doesn't add up to more than our fee, we'll say so.
Before you buy
The second list is the more useful one. Anyone who won't give you a version of it is asking you to trust them on the parts they can't control.
Where each product fits
Start free. Move up only when the free one has shown you something worth paying to fix.
Live Website Health on any domain, plus a plain-English read on visibility. The honest entry point — no card, no login.
Phase 01–03 — Audit + diagnosis Growth ReportR7 500Hand-run: ranking checks, keyword gaps, competitor ad research, local presence, and the prioritized fix list in tier order.
Phase 04 — Prove MonitorR1 450/moYour baseline, tracked. AI-visibility and Website Health over time at the cadence you choose — weekly, monthly, quarterly.
Phase 03–04 — Fix + prove GrowthR3 950/moMonitor plus competitor tracking and the content-gap opportunities that feed Tier 2 and Tier 3 work.
All four phases, run for you ManagedR18 500/moA human analyst working the tier list every month and reporting against your day-one baseline. Reports and email, not live sessions.
The Method, for your clients AgencyR24 500/moRun this process across 10 client businesses — API key plus a point-and-click portal, so the diagnosis is yours to deliver.
One thing we should be straight about
Not every number on this platform is live yet. Checkup's Website Health check runs live against any domain, today. AI Visibility, Competitor Intelligence and the other pillars run on sample data until Continuous Intelligence is connected to your account.
We label which is which on every report rather than letting a demo number look like a measurement — because the entire value of Phase 04 is that you can trust the baseline. An agency that blurs that line can't prove anything to you later, including its own worth.
Run the Checkup against your domain. If it finds nothing worth fixing, you've lost five minutes and we've lost a sale — which is the correct outcome. If it finds something, the fix list is the next R7 500.