There is no single "getting found"
Owners tend to talk about being found as one thing — usually "being on Google". In practice a customer reaches you by one of five routes, and they behave differently enough that a fix for one does nothing for another.
The five: someone searches for what you do and where ("emergency plumber Leeds"); someone searches for you by name because they were recommended; someone browses a map when they are already nearby; someone follows a link from a directory, a local Facebook group, or a supplier; and someone asks an AI assistant, which answers from pages it can read.
Each route has a different failure mode. You can be invisible in search but strong on recommendations, and never understand why a competitor with a worse service takes the phone calls.
Intent is the thing that matters
A person typing "boiler serviced or replaced?" is reading. A person typing "boiler replacement Sheffield price" is shopping. A person typing "no hot water plumber near me open now" is buying, this hour.
Most small businesses win by being unmissable for the buying searches and merely present for the reading ones. That ordering matters: a blog about boiler types will not rescue a business that no search engine can place in a city.
What you actually control
You do not control rankings. You control the inputs: whether your business details are consistent everywhere, whether your website says plainly what you do and where, whether the pages load, whether you have proof from past customers, and whether the places customers already look — maps, directories, local groups — have you listed correctly.
Every remaining module in this course is one of those inputs. None of them is a trick.