Tier 2 — Findability + trust infrastructure (MODERATE GAP)

What it is: Technical SEO hygiene, local SEO / Google Business Profile optimization, review generation, and sustained structured content.

When to recommend it: Owner has a working site but is invisible in search, absent from the local pack, or under-reviewed relative to competitors.

Components:

• Technical SEO — indexability, mobile, HTTPS, reasonable speed. Fast (2-6 weeks) but rarely a competitive lever once basics are in place. See Technical SEO — Mueller: indexability is binary and decisive; most other factors are hygiene.
• Local SEO / GBP — Whitespark 2026 — GBP 32% of local-pack ranking weight; primary category strongest controllable factor. See Whitespark 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors — GBP 32%, Reviews 20%, On-page 15%.
• Reviews — strongest causal evidence in the whole domain (Luca; Spiegel). See sister brief Research brief: SMB widget market difficulty — six ranked factors (June 2026).
• Content — compounds but slowly (3-6 months meaningful, 6-12+ months significant). See Content/SEO realistic timelines — 3-6 months meaningful, 6-12+ months significant and the brutal Ahrefs 1.74% base rate (Ahrefs May 2025 — only 1.74% of newly published pages reach top 10 within a year (vendor)).
• Schema markup — table stakes for ELIGIBILITY (rich results, AI extraction), NOT a ranking lever. See Schema/structured data — NOT a ranking factor; eligibility for rich results.

This tier contains the strongest causal evidence in the entire domain (reviews → revenue, GBP → local-pack presence) but also the longest timelines and the most vendor over-claiming.