Being findable
How a small business becomes discoverable without tactics, tricks or a budget. This section is about whether a stranger can tell what you sell, not about ranking or gaming anything.
The problem this section addresses
Most small businesses that cannot be found have a legibility problem rather than a marketing problem. Someone lands on the site, cannot work out within a few seconds what is on offer or whether the business is still going, and leaves. No amount of anything else fixes that.
It is also the single most common reason a submission fails our entry bar, which means we see it constantly and can be specific about what it looks like.
Start here
The findability checklist is the diagnostic: ten things a stranger needs in the first ten seconds, each justified by an observable failure rather than by convention. Run it against your own site in a private window, on a phone, with a timer.
The free, ungated version is at templates. There is no email wall, and using it has no effect on whether we would list you.
The specific fixes
Your homepage doesn't say what you sell
The most common failure and the highest-leverage fix: one sentence, above the fold. Read it.
Mistakes that make a real business look abandoned
Stale copyright years, dead links, a blog that stops mid-year, a form that bounces. Eight signals with fixes. Read it.
An about page a stranger will believe
Specificity beats warmth. What a sceptical first-time visitor actually checks for. Read it.
Being findable with no marketing budget
What actually moves the needle with nothing to spend, honestly ordered — including the popular things that do very little. Read it.
The one-page business fact sheet
Everything anyone ever asks you for, on one page, with the things that should never go on it. Read it.
What 'being findable' doesn't mean
Where the honest work stops and the tactics start, and which of those would get you refused here. Read it.
What this section deliberately excludes
- No ranking advice, keyword guidance, link building or algorithm speculation. That is a whole other subject and this is not the site for it.
- No traffic, conversion or revenue promises. We publish no number we did not measure — see the Line.
- No bulk submission to hundreds of listing sites, which is low value even setting aside how we feel about it.
- No arranged reviews, no matter how they are framed.
- No suggestion that any of this improves your chances of being listed here. Nothing does except clearing the entry bar.
Where this connects to the rest of the site
- The minimum viable shopfront is the page-by-page version: seven things a stranger cannot proceed without.
- Real places, checked covers the physical side — shops, studios and workshops, including businesses with no website at all.
- How directories actually work helps you decide whether being listed anywhere is worth your time.
- The refusal file shows the patterns that fail our own bar, which is the same list from the other direction.
If you only do one thing
Open your site in a private window on a phone, show it to somebody who has never heard of your business, and ask them what you sell. Do not help them. Time it.
Whatever they say is what your site says. Everything in this section follows from that one uncomfortable experiment.
Questions from operators
Will any of this get me listed in your register?
No. Listing depends only on clearing the entry bar, and that rule is written into the bar itself so it cannot quietly erode. This section exists because it is useful, not as a funnel.
Why no SEO advice?
Because it is a different discipline done well by other people, and half-doing it here would be worse than not doing it. What we can speak to is what a stranger needs to see, which is the part most small sites get wrong first.
I have no budget at all. Is there anything here for me?
Most of it. Nearly every fix in this section costs nothing but attention, which is why being findable with no budget is written as a priority order rather than a wish list.
Should I be on lots of directories?
Probably not, and should you be on a directory at all is honest about the branches where the answer is no — including the one about us.
Do I need a website?
Not necessarily. A shop with no website sets out the genuine minimum without trying to argue you into building one.
Are the templates really free?
Yes, ungated, no email required. Gating them would sit badly on a site arguing that listings should not be transactional.
Nothing in this section affects register consideration. See the entry bar for what actually does.