How to Write About Your Business So Customers (and Google) Can Find Your Expertise

Your skills matter to the customers who already know you. They matter to nobody else until the internet knows about them. Twenty years on the tools counts for nothing if Google can't find a single page that says so, in words a customer would type. This is how to write about your business so the expertise you actually have becomes visible to the people looking for it, and to the search engine deciding whether to show you.

It's not a writing course, and you don't need to be a writer. It's a handful of swaps: fluff for specifics, regions for suburb names, credentials for the things you do on every job. Google's own content guidance backs each one, and we quote it as we go.

The expertise trap

Most small business owners are fantastic at their trade and awful at writing about it. Their website says "quality service, competitive pricing, 20 years of experience." So does every other tradie's website in the country. The customer's brain reads those words and files them under noise. They've seen them ten thousand times; they don't see yours any more.

Google's guidance on content asks a direct question: does it "clearly demonstrate first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge (for example, expertise that comes from having actually used a product or service, or visiting a place)?"^[1] "Twenty years of experience" doesn't demonstrate anything. It asserts. The demonstration is in the detail, and the detail is exactly what most owners leave out because it feels too obvious to write down.

Why customers scroll past you

The person searching Google doesn't want your credentials. They want their problem fixed. They type "hot water system leaking Geelong." They're standing in a wet laundry; the kids need showers in an hour; they want someone who can be there by 3pm. And they're doing it on a phone: 97% of Australian adults go online on a mobile, most of them multiple times a day.^[9]

Your website says "over two decades of plumbing excellence." The other one says "same-day emergency hot water repairs in Geelong. Call before 2pm and we'll be there today." Guess which one gets the call. That isn't about skill. It's about what's on the page when they're looking, and Google's ranking explainer says the most basic relevance signal is when a page "contains the same keywords as your search query."^[2] "Plumbing excellence" matches nothing anyone types.

The three things that must be visible

Three things have to show up inside the first screen of your site and on your Google Business Profile. What you actually do: the specific jobs, not vague service categories. Where you do it: suburbs, not "greater Melbourne." How you're different: one concrete thing your competitors don't do. If any of the three is missing, the customer taps the next result.

Replace fluff with specifics

Don't say "excellent customer service." Say "we answer the phone inside three rings and send a written quote by email the same day." Don't say "quality workmanship." Say "we photograph every stage of the job and you get the photos when we're done." Don't say "experienced arborists." Say "every job is run by a Certificate III arborist; no apprentices working unsupervised."

Three swaps that work in any trade. Time: not "prompt" but "we're there within the hour for emergencies, same day otherwise". Proof: not "trusted" but "here's the last five jobs, with photos and the suburb". Guarantee: not "satisfaction guaranteed" but "if the drain blocks again inside 30 days, we come back free". Each one is a promise you can be held to, which is exactly why it's believed.

Detail is credibility. Vague is invisible. And the detail does double duty: it's what the customer trusts, and it's the words Google can match. Google's starter guide says to "think about the words that a user might search for," and notes that people who know a topic well search differently from people who don't.^[3] Your customer is the second kind. They don't type "arboricultural services"; they type "tree removal".

A useful test for every sentence on the site: could a competitor put it on theirs without lying? "Quality workmanship" passes; anyone can claim it. "We photograph every stage and email you the photos" only works if you do it, which is exactly why it's worth writing. The sentences that could only be true of you are the ones that sell, and they're usually the ones you'd never think to mention because they're just how you work.

The other place fluff hides is the About page. Most read like a eulogy: founded in 2004, family owned, committed to excellence. Rewrite it as a page about what a customer gets. Who turns up, in what vehicle, with what qualifications. What happens on day one. What you won't do, and why. An About page that says "we don't quote over the phone because we've been wrong too many times; we come out and look, free" tells a customer more about your standards than any number of years.

Where to find the specifics

The specifics are in your head, and the reason they never make it to the page is that they feel too ordinary to mention. So we get them out with an interview. Forty minutes on the phone, recorded. What do you do, and what are all the variations of it? Which jobs do you get asked for most? What does a customer worry about before they ring, and what do you say to settle them? What goes wrong on this kind of job when a cheaper operator does it, and what do you do so it doesn't? What kit do you own that the bloke down the road hires in?

Every answer is a paragraph. "We chip on site and leave the mulch if you want it" is a sentence a customer can picture and a competitor can't copy without doing it. If you're writing it yourself, do the same: talk it out loud to your phone, then tidy it. Google is clear that how the words get onto the page doesn't matter as long as the substance is real: it rewards content "that demonstrates qualities of what we call E-E-A-T: expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, however it is produced," and "appropriate use of AI or automation is not against our guidelines."^[7] The tool can type. It can't know your jobs.

A short example of what the interview produces. Asked what goes wrong with retaining walls, a landscaper said: "Blokes skip the drainage behind the wall because the customer can't see it. Two winters later the wall's leaning. We put ag pipe and scoria behind every wall, and we photograph it before we backfill so you can see it's there." That's four sentences, and it's the best paragraph his website has ever had. It tells the customer what to worry about, what he does about it, and how they can check. No adjectives in it.

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Location must be obvious

"We service the greater Melbourne area" tells Google nothing useful. "We service Werribee, Point Cook, Hoppers Crossing, Wyndham Vale and Tarneit" tells Google five different things: five suburb searches you can now show up for. Google recognises that "many queries have a local intent,"^[2] and it matches a local query to a page that names the place. Set the same suburbs as service areas on your profile, up to 20 within about two hours' drive,^[5] so the profile and the site agree.

The suburb list also decides how many pages you need. One page that mentions thirty suburbs is one page, and it ranks for the town it's mostly about. A page for each of the six suburbs where most of the work is, each with something true about working there, is six pages Google can match to six searches. Start with the nearest and the busiest; the rest can wait until the first six are earning.

Then, when you can, add a line about why location matters to the work. "We know which Wyndham Vale streets have restricted truck access, so we bring the smaller truck." That sentence is worth more than a whole About page, because it's a thing only someone who works there would know. More in list your service areas and get found on Google.

Reviews are the proof

Your own words about yourself count for less than one line from a customer. 82% of adults read reviews before a first-time purchase,^[8] and Google says "more reviews and positive ratings can help your business's local ranking."^[4] But generic reviews don't help much. "Great job, highly recommend" tells the next customer nothing and gives Google no words to match.

So prompt your happy customers. Don't script them; give them a hint. When you send the review link (Google's suggestion: "ask customers to visit a Google link or scan a QR code"^[6]), ask what made the biggest difference, how quickly you showed up, what you did that they weren't expecting. One review that says "they arrived in 40 minutes and had the hot water back on in an hour" is worth fifty that say "great job." Future customers read it and trust it. Google reads it and matches it. What you can't do is pay for it; Google prohibits incentives for reviews.^[6]

What this does for AI search

The same specifics are what AI assistants read. When someone asks Google's AI or ChatGPT for a good plumber in Geelong who does same-day hot water, the answer is assembled from pages that say, in plain words, that this business does same-day hot water in Geelong. A page of adjectives gives an assistant nothing to quote. A page that says what you do, where, how you do it and what a customer said about it gives it everything. Nothing extra is needed for AI beyond writing the way this post describes; the businesses being recommended by assistants today are the ones whose pages actually say something.

Where to put the visible stuff

Every one of these places needs the three things, what, where and how well, in the customer's words.

And put your name on it. Google's guidance asks whether it's "self-evident to your visitors who authored your content" and "strongly encourage[s] adding accurate authorship information."^[1] A page about tree work signed by the arborist who does it is more believable than the same page signed by nobody, to a reader and to Google.

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Run this test today

Five minutes. Open your website on your phone. Time how long it takes before you can read what you do, where you work, and one thing that makes you different. If it takes more than ten seconds, your customers gave up already. Then open your Google Business Profile and do the same. Read the description as if you were a stranger: could you tell what this business does, where, and why you'd pick it? Most can't, and the fix takes an evening.

The quiet truth

You're not invisible because you lack skill. You're invisible because nobody's been told what you actually do in words a customer understands and Google can match. Fix that on the website, the profile and the reviews, and that's most of the game. The skill was never the problem. The writing was, and the writing is the easy part once you stop trying to sound like a brochure. If you'd like us to do the interview and the writing, that's what our local SEO service starts with, and the Fridges R Us story is what it looks like when the hidden bit gets made visible.