Getting found locally

The two-hour Google Business Profile refresh

Your Google Business Profile is the little box that pops up when people search for you. A short, focused session here is the single best use of two hours all year. The steps:

• Add real photos. Swap the stock photo of strangers for real, warm shots: you, the Niwot room with chairs in a circle, graduates laughing at a gathering (with permission). Aim for 15 to 20 photos. A short local photo shoot (a few hundred dollars) is the best photo money you'll spend this year.
• Write the "from the business" description. A short paragraph leading with "Boulder's original divorce recovery program, since 1993," your 10-week seminar, the price, your credential, your rating, and a "book a call" nudge.
• Fill in the services list. List the 10-week seminar, the free 15-minute call, the intro workshop, and individual counseling, each with a price (or "free") and one sentence.
• Seed the common questions. You can pre-load the questions people always ask: how much, how long, do I need to have filed, is this group therapy, are you religious, is there a men's group. Each answer is a free trust signal.
• Post once a week. A quick two-minute post (an upcoming workshop, a graduate quote) keeps the listing active, and Google rewards active listings.
• Reply to every review, warmly, including older ones. Google counts your responsiveness.

The likely payoff: moving from "page-one, third result" toward "page-one, first result" for "divorce support Boulder" within about 60 days.

Make your address read identically everywhere

Here's a small thing with a real effect. Across the web, your name, address, and phone number should match exactly everywhere they appear. Right now a few listings disagree in tiny ways, like "195 Second Ave" in one place and "195 2nd Ave" in another. Google cross-checks these, and when they disagree, it quietly trusts you a little less. Tidying up about 14 directories is roughly three hours of admin work and helps your ranking within about 45 days. We've already mapped exactly which ones to fix.

Write a few pages for the towns you serve

Your blog has lots of posts on general feelings, but very few aimed at the specific places you serve. People search "divorce support Longmont" or "divorce recovery Denver," and pages built for those exact searches tend to convert well. Over the next year, a handful of focused pages does the trick:

• A page each for the key areas: Boulder, Denver, Longmont, Niwot, Louisville, and so on. Each one warm, real, and pointing to the free call.
• A few helpful "what to do right now" pages, like "support group vs. therapy in Colorado" or "what to do the week after you file in Boulder County."
• One graduate story a month. These become the most-read, most-trusted pages on the whole site.

Make it easy for people to refer you

Your highest-quality newcomers often don't come from Google at all. They come from a therapist, a mediator, a family-law attorney, or a graduate who told a friend. Today there's no simple system to make those referrals easy or to say thank you. A few light touches fix that:

• A simple one-page handout, with your photo, the price, a few talking points, and a QR code to the booking calendar, that local practitioners can hand to clients.
• A "send a client" page so a referring professional's name comes along with the booking, and you can thank them.
• A gentle "bring a friend" thank-you for graduates who refer someone, since they already do this for free.

A couple of bonus angles

Two more low-key opportunities the audit flags: your 30-plus-year history is a lovely local-news story (a "serving the community since 1993" angle), and if you ever want to add a little paid Google search later, it can be done narrowly and profitably. But to be clear, none of the growth plan needs paid ads. They're an optional accelerator, nothing more.