Questions about websites, prices and SEO.

Pokwala packages start at $1,495 for a 5-page site with SEO built in, $2,495 for a 10-page site in one language ($2,995 in English and French) and $4,495 for a full trades website. In the US, freelancers usually charge $1,500 to $5,000 for a 5-page site and agencies $8,000 or more.

Yes. The all-in website plan is $249 a month with nothing upfront. It includes a custom-built 5-page website, hosting, security, backups and up to an hour of small edits a month, with a 12-month minimum. After that it continues month to month, and the site stays yours.

Yes. Your domain, your content and your site are always yours, whether it is built on Wix or custom-coded. Your domain and any Wix plan are registered in your name.

Yes, and you will know them before you sign. Every website needs hosting and a domain. Hosting is $17 to $29 a month on Wix, billed by Wix, or $20 a month for a custom-built site, included if you are on a care plan or the all-in plan. A domain costs about $20 a year. Both are in your name. If you want extra tools such as booking software, their subscriptions are yours too. Every running cost is listed in your quote.

The build price is the same. After launch, Wix costs $17 to $29 a month, billed by Wix, and a custom-built site costs $20 a month for hosting, or nothing extra on a care plan. Choose Wix if you want to edit text and photos yourself. Choose custom-built if you want a faster site and features Wix cannot do well, with updates handled for you.

Pokwala is based in Ottawa, Canada, and works with small businesses across the US and Canada, in English or French. Everything runs by video call, phone and email.

Local SEO with Pokwala is $599 a month and covers Google Business Profile management, on-page fixes, one article a month and local citations. In the US, local SEO retainers for small businesses usually run from about $500 to $2,000 a month. Before you commit to anything, I offer a free website review so you know exactly what needs to be done.

Yes, more than ever. Every day, millions of people search Google to find a plumber, a roofer, a web designer, a dentist near them. SEO is how you show up when they search. What has changed is that AI tools like ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews now also recommend businesses, and the businesses they recommend are the ones with strong SEO. If you rank well on Google, you tend to show up in AI answers too.

Local SEO is a set of practices that help your business show up when people nearby search for what you offer. It includes: optimizing your Google Business Profile so you appear on the map, making sure your website mentions the right locations and services, building citations (listings on directories like Yelp, Yellow Pages, and industry sites), and earning reviews that signal trust to Google. For a tradesperson, local SEO is often more valuable than broad SEO because your customers are always nearby; they are not searching from Tokyo.

It depends on your situation. A consultant typically works independently and gives you a strategy and recommendations; you or your team execute the work. An agency handles execution for you. For most small businesses and tradespeople, an agency model makes more sense because you are already running a business; you do not have time to implement SEO yourself. At Pokwala, I handle both: the strategy and the doing.

Start by looking for agencies that are transparent about their process and honest about timelines. Good SEO takes time; anyone promising page one rankings in two weeks is not being straight with you. Look for an agency that shows you exactly what they will do, reports on real metrics (rankings, traffic, and leads, not vanity numbers), and can explain their work in plain language without hiding behind jargon. For local SEO, you want someone who takes the time to understand your market: the neighborhoods you serve, your industry and how your customers search.

The fundamentals are the same everywhere, but big metro areas like Dallas, Phoenix or Atlanta are more competitive than smaller cities and towns. That means the bar for ranking is higher and doing SEO properly matters more. In a mid-size city or a suburb, there is often real opportunity for a well-optimized local business to rank on page one without a massive budget.

A professional SEO service does not make guarantees it cannot keep. Google's algorithm is not something any agency controls; no one can guarantee a specific ranking. What a trustworthy agency can guarantee is the quality of the work: proper technical setup, well-researched content, clean backlink practices, and honest monthly reporting. Red flags to watch for: agencies that will not explain what they do, lock you into long contracts without results, or focus on metrics that do not translate to actual business (like raw traffic numbers with no leads).

Honest answer: most businesses start seeing meaningful movement in 3 to 6 months. In a mid-size city or a less competitive niche, you can sometimes see early wins, including small ranking improvements and more traffic from long-tail searches, within 4 to 8 weeks. Full competitive rankings for high-volume keywords take longer, sometimes 6 to 12 months of consistent work. SEO is not a switch you flip; it is a foundation you build. The businesses that win long-term are the ones that start early and stay consistent.

Digital marketing is the umbrella term for all online marketing activities: paid ads, social media, email campaigns, content marketing, and SEO. SEO is one channel within digital marketing, but it is unique because it generates organic (unpaid) traffic. You do not pay per click. For most small businesses and tradespeople, SEO is the highest-ROI digital marketing channel because it builds lasting visibility rather than renting attention. Pokwala specializes in SEO and GEO; I do not run ads or manage social media, so you get focused expertise rather than a generalist doing everything average.

Yes, but e-commerce SEO is a different challenge from local SEO. Local SEO targets people searching nearby, while e-commerce SEO targets product searches across the country. Pokwala does not build online stores or Shopify sites. It builds websites for service businesses. If you already run a store, I can help with its SEO.

Five questions worth asking: (1) What exactly will you do in the first month, and what will I get? (2) How do you measure success, and what metrics will you report on? (3) What does your process look like in the first 90 days? (4) Do you do the work yourself or outsource it? (5) What happens to my rankings if I stop working with you? A good consultant answers all five without hesitation. Pokwala is a new studio, so I don't have a long client list to show yet. Instead, I offer a free website review so you can judge my work before you spend anything, and founding-client pricing for my first clients.

Google reads your website the same way a person would, looking for clear, useful information. If your site says "We do plumbing" and nothing else, Google has no idea what kind of plumbing, where, or for whom. But if your site explains your services in detail, mentions the neighborhoods and towns you serve, and answers common questions your customers have, Google understands it and ranks it higher. Content is how you tell Google (and your customers) exactly what you do. A site with no content is invisible, no matter how good the underlying code is.