The three questions that matter
Most owners don’t need dozens of charts. You need three answers: are people finding the website on Google, are they looking at the pages that sell your services, and are they getting in touch? If any one of those is “no”, you know where to look first.
You can answer all three with two free Google tools: Google Search Console (how you appear in Google search) and Google Analytics (what people do once they arrive). Many websites already have one or both set up, even if nobody looks at them.
Step 1: are people finding you on Google?
Open Google Search Console and look at the Performance report for the last three months. Two numbers matter most.
- Impressions: how many times your website appeared in someone’s Google results. If this is near zero, Google isn’t showing you yet.
- Clicks: how many of those people clicked through to your website.
- Average position: where you usually appear. Positions 1 to 10 are the first page. If you’re mostly beyond position 20, very few people will scroll that far.
- Queries: the actual words people searched. Check they match what you do and where you work.
Step 2: are they looking at the right pages?
In Google Analytics, check which pages get visits. Your service pages and contact page should be among them. If almost everyone lands on the home page and leaves, the website may not be making the next step obvious: what you do, where you work, and how to contact you.
Step 3: are they getting in touch?
This is the step most small business websites can’t answer, because enquiries are not counted by default. Google Analytics only knows someone sent your contact form if the website tells it. Phone calls from people who tap your number need the same setup.
Once enquiries are counted, you can see how many came from Google search, from Facebook, or from people typing your address directly. That is the number that tells you whether the website earns its keep.
What good looks like for a small local business
There is no universal target, but a healthy small service website usually shows steady impressions for the services and suburbs it works in, some clicks every week, and a handful of enquiries each month that you can trace back to search. If you see impressions but almost no clicks, you’re probably appearing too far down the results. If you see clicks but no enquiries, the pages or the contact form need attention.
Let AAA Signal do this check for you every week
AAA Signal connects to your Search Console and Analytics and sends a short weekly email: how many people found you, what changed, where enquiries came from and the next three things to do. Free for 7 days, no card needed.
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Keep reading
- Why isn’t my business showing up on Google? Common reasons and what to do
- How to track enquiries from your website (forms and phone calls)
- Google Business Profile for local service businesses: a plain-English setup checklist
- A weekly website check for small business owners (10 minutes)
- A weekly SEO report checklist for small-business owners
- How to read average keyword position without being misled
- What to include in a small-business SEO report
- Discovered – currently not indexed: what to check next
- Sitemap returns 200 but no page URLs were found: a troubleshooting guide
- Search Console clicks vs Analytics sessions: why the numbers differ
Google’s Page indexing report documentation · Google Analytics reporting documentation