Most small businesses I work with come to me with one of three requests. "We need a new website." "We need an app." "We need to rank on Google."
They almost always treat these as separate jobs, hired out to separate people, at separate times. And that's usually where the money gets wasted.
I run Canopus Web Agency, a small studio doing web development, mobile apps and SEO for SMBs, mostly in France and Belgium. After a few years of building sites for taxi companies, towing services, local shops and SaaS founders, here's what I've learned about why these three things belong in the same conversation.
1. The website is the foundation, not the brochure
A lot of sites are still built like printed flyers: nice homepage, an "about" page, a contact form, done.
The problem is that Google doesn't rank flyers. It ranks pages that answer specific questions. A taxi company in Bordeaux doesn't need one "Services" page, it needs a page for airport transfers, one for the train station, one for long distance trips, each one with real content and real prices.
So before anyone writes a line of CSS, the page structure should already be planned around what people search for. If you build the site first and "add SEO later", you end up rebuilding half of it.
What I check before starting a build:
- Which searches actually bring customers (not just traffic)
- One page per intent, no "everything" pages
- Clean URLs that won't need to change in a year
- A CMS the client can actually update without calling me
2. Performance is an SEO feature and a sales feature
On mobile, a slow site loses people before they see anything. Core Web Vitals are part of how Google judges a page, but honestly the bigger reason to care is conversion. Someone booking a ride at 6am from their phone will not wait 5 seconds for a slider to load.
A few things that make the biggest difference on the projects I do:
- Drop the heavy page builder effects nobody asked for
- Serve images in WebP/AVIF with proper sizes
- Load third-party scripts (chat widgets, trackers) late or not at all
- Cache properly, and test on a real cheap Android phone, not just your laptop
3. Do you actually need a mobile app?
Sometimes yes. Often no.
If your customers use your service once a year, a fast mobile website will do the job better than an app they have to install. If they use it every week (drivers, delivery staff, repeat clients, internal teams), an app starts to make sense: push notifications, offline mode, saved data, faster repeat actions.
When an app does make sense, I usually build it with React Native / Expo so it ships on Android and iOS from one codebase, and it talks to the same backend as the website. One source of truth for bookings, users and content. That way the site and the app never disagree with each other.
4. SEO is not a one-time task
The sites that rank well in my experience share a few boring habits:
- They publish useful content regularly, written for their actual customers
- Their Google Business Profile is complete and gets reviews
- Their name, address and phone are the same everywhere online
- They fix technical issues as they appear instead of once every 3 years
- They have structured data (LocalBusiness, FAQ, Service) set up properly
None of this is magic. It just needs someone to keep doing it.
5. Put it together
Here's how I'd plan it for a small business starting from scratch:
- Keyword and competitor research first, so you know what pages to build
- A fast, well-structured website built on that plan
- Local SEO setup (Google Business Profile, citations, schema)
- Content added month after month
- A mobile app only when usage data shows people would come back to it
Doing it in this order costs less than doing it backwards, and each step makes the next one easier.
If you're a developer, I'd be curious how you handle the SEO side with your own clients. Do you plan it before the build or bring someone in after?
And if you run a business and want help with any of this, you can find my work at canopuswebagency.com.
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