For Houston-area service businesses Google search and Maps
Houston SEO company: be on the screen when Houston needs you
Every week, people from Katy to Kingwood search Google and Maps for the work you do, and they call a business near the top. We do the work that puts your business there, so more of those calls end up as your jobs.
Looking for a Houston SEO company? Here's the price first.
$1,500 to $5,000 a month
You read the plan and its monthly cost in writing before signing anything.
When the whole city needs help at once
The month the storm hit, Houston's searches jumped
When wind, ice or floodwater breaks things across Houston, people don't wait for a referral. They grab a phone, type what's broken, and call one of the names on the first screen. Here are the searches from three of the city's hardest months, each set against the month before.
Monthly Google searches for each phrase
- The month before
- The storm month
April vs May 2024
The windstorm
On May 16, a windstorm tore straight through the city.
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tree removal houston
Apr 2024 466May 2024 1,219 -
water damage restoration houston
Apr 2024 479May 2024 1,057
January vs February 2021
The freeze
Winter Storm Uri, mid-February: burst pipes and power cuts across the city.
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plumber houston
Jan 2021 1,096Feb 2021 2,082 -
generator installation houston
Jan 2021 42Feb 2021 324
July vs September 2017
Hurricane Harvey
Came ashore on August 25. The flooding ran on into September.
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roof repair houston
Jul 2017 507Sep 2017 882
Each bar is one exact phrase, a sample rather than the total. The same need also gets typed as “roofer near me”, “roof leak repair” or the name of a suburb, so the real wave ran across many more searches than the ones charted. Behind every one was someone with a tree through the fence, a pipe split in the attic or water across the floor, ready to call whoever Google showed first. The businesses already on that screen took those calls. Nobody gets onto it in the week it's needed.
A storm only makes it easy to see. An AC that quits in August, a cracked slab in Pearland, a slow leak under a kitchen sink: each of those starts with a search too.
The same thing happens every day, just quieter.
The money side of showing up
Ads run out on the busiest days. A page that ranks stays on the screen.
Plenty of Houston businesses run Google Ads, and some do well from them. The catch is the billing: every tap on an ad costs you, so the busier the day, the quicker your daily budget burns down. Once it's spent, the ad stops showing until tomorrow, while people are still out there searching.
One busy day of searches for your trade
Lit: your business is on the screen
An ad
You pay for each click. A daily budget buys a set number of them, and on a busy day they're used up early. For the rest of the day the searches keep coming and your ad sits switched off.
Budget spent: off the screen until tomorrow
A page of yours that Google ranks
It shows up for the first search of the day and the five-hundredth. The monthly fee pays for the work, not for each visitor, so a busy day with ten times the searches doesn't raise your bill or switch you off the screen. Storm week or slow week, it keeps showing. It's built on your website, so it stays yours.
Still on the screen
Keep running ads if they pay for themselves. This is the part that doesn't stop when the budget does.
SEO services, Houston
Where the monthly fee goes
The fee pays for three jobs, all of them done on your own website and your own Google listing. Here is each one in plain words, and what it looks like once it's done.
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Sort out what stops Google making sense of your site
Google can only point customers at pages it is able to open, load and understand. We find what's in the way and fix it, so the site you already paid for starts counting.
What usually gets in the way
- Pages that crawl along on a phone
- Pages Google has never found
- Pages that never say what you do, or where
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Write the pages your customers are typing in
One page for each service you sell, and one for each area you really work. Around Houston the second part matters: Katy, Sugar Land, Pearland, The Woodlands, Cypress and Pasadena are separate cities, and people living there put the town's name in the search. We only build pages for the towns you actually serve.
Area pages, if you work four of these six
- KatyPage
- Sugar LandPage
- PearlandNot yours
- The WoodlandsPage
- CypressPage
- PasadenaNot yours
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Complete your Google Business Profile
That's the official name for your listing in Google Maps, the card with your name, phone number and pin. We fill in every part a customer reads before calling, so it says plainly what you do and which parts of town you cover.
Your Maps listing, filled in
- Services
- Every job you take on
- Categories
- The trade Google files you under
- Hours
- When you pick up
- Service area
- The towns your trucks go to
- Photos
- Your crews and your finished work
Your written plan lists the fixes, the pages and the listing changes by name, so you can see what each month buys before you sign.
The wait, search by search
Build it between storms
Every owner wants to know when this starts paying off. That turns on which search you mean, because they don't all move at the same speed.
Weeks
Your name, and the narrow searches
When someone types your business name, or one service in one town, like “water heater replacement pearland”, far fewer businesses are in the running. A page made for exactly that search can start to climb within weeks.
Months
The big Houston searches
Searches like “plumber houston” or “roof repair houston” are the ones every company in your trade is after. Climbing those is months of steady work, not weeks.
Each search in the plan, marked
Example: a plumbing business
- Your business name Weeks
- water heater replacement pearland Weeks
- slab leak repair katy Weeks
- water heater replacement houston Months
- plumber houston Months
Your own plan lists your services and your towns, each one marked like this.
No Houston SEO company can promise where your business will land on Google, and we don't. What the plan tells you is which searches to look for first.
No safe month to wait for
By NOAA's dates, Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30. The storms in the chart above didn't all keep to it.
Harvey landed in August 2017, inside the season. The freeze hit in February 2021 and the windstorm in May 2024, both outside it. So there's no quiet stretch on the calendar to hold out for: the pages and listing work started now are what people find on their screens whenever the next one comes.
A Houston year
- Feb 2021 The freeze
- May 2024 The windstorm
- Aug 2017 Harvey
- Jan
- Feb
- Mar
- Apr
- May
- Jun
- Jul
- Aug
- Sep
- Oct
- Nov
- Dec
What you build in a calm month is what's on the screen in a busy one.
The monthly bill, out in the open
What it costs a Houston business each month
A monthly bill is easier to weigh when you know the figure and what sits behind it. So here are both, before you ever pick up the phone.
Houston SEO company pricing
$1,500 to $5,000 a month
$1,500 Less ground, a quieter trade
$5,000 More ground, a packed trade
Where your plan falls in that range comes down to the size of the job, and three things decide that.
Three things set your price
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Your services, and the suburbs you serve
Every service you sell and every town you really work needs a page built for it. One trade covering a handful of nearby suburbs is a small plan. A full menu of services across a metro this wide, Katy to Kingwood, adds up to a lot of area pages.
Lower Two or three services, nearby towns
Higher Every service, Katy to Kingwood
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How busy your trade is on Google
Some searches have only a few businesses chasing them. Houston's big trades, AC, roofing and plumbing among them, are packed, and holding a place in those takes more work every month.
Lower Few businesses competing
Higher One of the city's big trades
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What shape your website is in
If your site is already in good shape for Google, the fee goes straight into new pages and your listing. If the site is slow, thin or half-finished, the first stretch goes into fixing that.
Lower A site ready to build on
Higher A site to repair first
All of it on paper before you sign anything
- The searches we'd go after for you
- The work each month buys
- Your monthly price
A 30-minute call is enough to work out where your business sits in that range.
The people on your account
The whole team is two people: Kyle and Katie Rutten
That's all of Bullfinch. One works on your website and your Google listing, the other keeps your plan and your account on track, and there's nobody else between you and either of them.
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Works on your site and your Maps listing
Kyle Rutten
Kyle is the one working on your site: clearing whatever trips Google up, writing the pages for your services and towns, and filling in your Maps listing. He's made websites since the age of 14, and he's who you'll talk to on the first call.
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Runs the plan, the dates, your account
Katie Rutten
Katie runs the written plan you sign, keeps each month's work on its schedule, and is the one who handles your account. A question about what's been done or what comes next goes straight to her.
No one in the middle
There's no account manager in the chain, so nobody relays what you say. You talk straight to the person doing the job, and they hear what you need in your own words.
Face to face, on video
Every call is a video call on Google Meet, so you can join from the office, the shop floor or your truck between jobs.
The first call is with Kyle, and it takes 30 minutes.
Asked before the first call
Before you book: what Houston owners ask
Six doubts that are fair to have before handing anyone a monthly fee. Each gets a straight answer, then the reason behind it.
Got one that isn't on this list? Ask it on the call. It takes 30 minutes.
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My work doesn't follow the weather. Is this for me?
Yes. A storm just makes the pattern easy to see.
The storm months above are the loud version of an ordinary week. A dentist in Sugar Land, a garage door company in Spring, an accountant in League City: each one gets searched for, and the person searching calls a name near the top. Your phone may never notice a freeze, and the work is still the same.
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The big Houston companies run ads on every search for my trade. How does a smaller shop get seen?
The ads and the results under them are two separate things.
The paid spots sit at the top, marked Sponsored. The results underneath can't be bought: Google fills them with the pages that best answer the search, and a bigger ad budget doesn't change that order. The narrow searches, one job plus one suburb like “foundation repair katy”, are where a smaller business's own pages can win.
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I paid a Houston SEO company before and got reports, not calls. What's different?
You can check the work yourself, from your own phone.
Your written plan names the searches we're working on. Type any of them into Google whenever you like, between jobs or after dinner, and see where your business comes up. Nobody can promise you a number of calls. What you get is work you can look at with your own eyes instead of waiting for a summary.
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Do you need to be in Houston to do this?
No. We're not in Houston and we don't pretend to be. None of the work depends on where we sit.
Every fix, page and listing change is made on your own site and your Google Business Profile, and Google treats them the same whoever types them in. Our calls with you are on video, on Google Meet, so you always see who you're talking to. The searches we chase are the ones your customers make in the towns your trucks actually go to.
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Can you guarantee we'll be first on Google?
No. Nobody can, honestly.
Google sets the order and takes no requests from anyone. The thing we answer for is the work in your plan: the fixes, the pages and the listing changes, each one written down, with every search marked as weeks or months.
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If I stop paying, do I keep the pages?
Yes. They're on your site, so they're yours.
The pages are built on your own website, and the Maps listing is your own Google Business Profile. If you ever stop working with us, both stay right where they are, in your name.
Why start this month
Be there the next time Houston searches
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Today
The months a big Houston search needs are counted from the first week of work, not from the week you need the calls.
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June 1
The next hurricane season opens on schedule, whether your pages are up by then or not.
Hiring a Houston SEO company starts with one 30-minute call. On ours, we cover three things.
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The calls worth having
The work you'd most like your phone ringing for, so the plan chases those searches first.
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Your part of the map
Only the suburbs you really serve, whether that's the whole map or just Pasadena, Pearland and League City.
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The price for your plan
A rough monthly figure for your plan inside $1,500 to $5,000, and what's pushing it up or down.
It's a video call with Kyle Rutten, who'd be the one working on your site and listing.