The actual steps, not a lead magnet.
These are the real instructions for window tint shops and every local business, free, with no email required to read them. If you follow them yourself and never speak to us, that is a good outcome. Most of what makes a local business findable costs nothing but an afternoon and the discipline to keep at it.
Guides for window tint, PPF and ceramic coating shops
Real numbers from Tint Guy LLC, a tint shop we have worked with since September 2023. Free to read, no email required.
Gating this stuff would be silly.
The standard move is to put a checklist behind a form, capture the email, and start a sequence. We publish these openly for two reasons.
The first is that none of it is secret. Google documents most of it. Anyone charging for the knowledge is charging for the inconvenience of assembling it, and that is a weak position to defend.
The second is more honest: the hard part was never knowing what to do. It is doing it every month for a year while running a business. Reading a guide and acting on it consistently are different problems, and only one of them is why people hire us.
Research across 778 small business owners found 89% invest in local SEO and only 29% believe it has high impact. That gap is not ignorance. It is people paying for work they could not see and could not verify. Publishing the method is the opposite of that.
General local search guides, in the order they pay off.
Set up your Google Business Profile
The single highest-return thing most local businesses can do, and only about 35% have even claimed theirs. Categories, services, service area, photos, the lot.
Do this firstGet your business on Google
The full picture beyond the profile: what Google needs to understand about you, and the signals that decide whether you show up at all.
The foundationWhy you are not showing up
The diagnostic guide. Work through the usual causes in order rather than guessing, because it is almost always one of about six things.
TroubleshootingGet more Google reviews
Most businesses do not have a review problem, they have an asking problem. How to ask, when to ask, and what you must never do.
Compounds fastestGet your website showing up
The site side rather than the profile side: what has to be true of your pages before Google will rank them for the searches you care about.
Your websiteHow AI platforms choose sources
The mechanics underneath the guide above: what these systems read, what makes them trust a source, and what makes them skip you.
BackgroundThe short version of every guide on this page.
Claim and complete your Google Business Profile. Correct primary category, every service listed individually, a real description, accurate service area, and photos. Free, fast, and the biggest single lever there is.
Ask every happy customer for a review, and reply to all of them. Not a campaign. The habit of asking when the job is done and they are visibly pleased.
Write one real page per service you offer. In your own words, answering what customers actually ask. You know your trade better than any writer we could hire.
Make your business information identical everywhere. Name, address, phone, hours, services, matching across your site, your profile and every directory. Contradictions are why AI tools skip businesses.
Do those four consistently and you will be ahead of most of your competitors. That is not a pitch, it is just what the data shows, and it is available to you today at no cost.
When the guides are not enough.
If you have worked through these and still cannot see why competitors are above you, the answer is usually in the parts that are harder to self-diagnose: schema, technical signals, competitive gaps, or a market where everybody has already done the basics.
The free check shows where you stand on Google and the map in about 30 seconds. If you want a person to look properly and write you a plan, that is the $497 Blueprint, and it credits against a retainer if you become a client.
And if you would rather stop reading about this and get back to running your crew, that is what we do. Both are legitimate answers.
Find out which guide you need.
Free 30-second check across Google, the map pack and the AI tools. It tells you exactly which of the above to read first. No sales call.
Check My Shop Free →