Think back to the last time someone sold you SEO or a website. They probably asked three things: your web address, your service area, and your budget. Maybe they asked for your logo. Then they went away and came back with pages.
Those pages probably looked fine. They also probably read like every other company in your trade within fifty miles, because they were built from the same three answers everyone else gives.
The problem is not that the agency was lazy. The problem is where they started. They started from outside your business, looking in. Google and the AI search tools now reward the opposite: what can only be known from inside.
What Google is actually looking for
Google's quality guidelines use a shorthand called E-E-A-T: experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust. You do not need to memorize it. What it means for a trade business is simple. Google wants evidence that a real company with real people did real work, in real places, and that customers were happy with it.
A page that says "we offer professional garage door repair with fast, reliable service" proves none of that. Every garage door company in America can publish that sentence. A page that says your two techs, Mike and Luis, replaced 140 torsion springs in Pasadena last year, that you carry a C-61 license, and that most calls come in on Monday mornings after a weekend of a door stuck half open, proves all of it.
The second page did not need better writing. It needed better questions.
The questions that matter
Here are the kinds of questions that should come before a single word gets written about your business. You can use them whether or not you ever work with Lola.
What are you actually licensed and insured for? Not "fully licensed and insured." The license numbers, the classifications, the states. Specifics are checkable, and checkable facts build trust with people and search engines alike.
Who works for you, and what do they do? Real names and roles turn a faceless company into one people can picture. Customers mention techs by name in reviews. When your pages use the same names, the pieces start to reinforce each other.
What equipment and brands do you work on? Homeowners search for the brand on the unit in their garage or basement. If you service LiftMaster openers or Carrier systems every week, say so, on the page for that service.
What do customers ask you on the phone, in their own words? This is the most underused question in local marketing. The way customers phrase their problem is almost exactly the way they type it into Google or ask it to ChatGPT. "Why is my AC running but not cooling" is a page. "Do you charge extra on weekends" is an FAQ answer.
Which jobs do you want more of? Not every call is worth the same to you. If replacements pay the bills and small repairs clog the schedule, your pages should be built toward replacements. Traffic is not the goal. Profitable calls are.
Where have you actually worked? A list of cities you "serve" is weak. Jobs you have done in those cities, with details, are strong. That difference is also what keeps city pages from looking like copies of each other.
What is true about your business that no competitor can say? Third generation. Twenty years at the same address. The only company in town that stocks a certain part. The owner still answers the phone. Whatever it is, it belongs on the site.
When is your busy season, and why? Roofers live and die by storm season. HVAC has heat waves and the first cold snap. Timing your content to the weeks your phone rings is one of the cheapest advantages there is.
Why these answers matter even more for AI search
When someone asks ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews or Perplexity for "a good plumber near me," the tool has to decide which businesses it knows enough about to recommend. It leans on concrete, consistent facts found across your website, your Google Business Profile, your reviews and other listings.
Vague businesses are hard for AI to describe, so they tend not to get named. Businesses with clear, specific, repeated facts are easy to describe, so they do. The answers to the questions above are exactly those facts.
Why agencies skip this step
Honestly, because it takes time. Interviewing an owner properly is slower than scraping a URL and running a keyword tool. Templates scale and interviews do not, so most of the industry skipped the interview.
That shortcut used to work well enough. It works less every year. Google has been clear that it targets content produced at scale that adds nothing original, and pages built from a template are, by construction, not original.
How Lola handles it
Lola starts every business with an interview of more than 50 questions, covering everything above and more. Not one of them is about your budget. You answer on your phone between jobs, with no call to book. Every page, profile post and review reply she writes afterwards is built from those answers, which is what keeps it from reading like everyone else.
Do this even if you never sign up
Take the questions in this guide and answer them in a notes app this week. Then open your website and your Google Business Profile and check how many of those answers actually appear. For most businesses, the honest number is close to zero. Every answer you add is something your competitors cannot copy.
