Independent web developer based in Annemasse. I build and look after the websites of the tradespeople, shops, restaurants and small businesses of Thonon, Évian and the lakeside — with local search work that, here, is still there to be won.
Thonon-les-Bains is the hub of a basin running from Douvaine to Évian by way of Sciez, Publier and Anthy. The economic fabric here is concrete: building trades, neighbourhood retail, lakeside restaurants and hotels, healthcare, and services for the cross-border workers who commute to Geneva or across to Lausanne.
Unlike Annecy, online competition here remains moderate. A great many Thonon businesses have no website at all, or one built eight years ago that does not display properly on a phone. That is an uncomfortable position for them and a clear opening for anyone who takes the subject seriously: in a number of trades, a decent site and a well-kept Google listing are enough to move ahead.
The other local reality is the cross-border commuter. A significant share of the working population is employed in Switzerland, leaves early, comes home late, and settles everything from a phone on the train or in the queue at the border. A site that is not immediately readable on mobile, or whose appointment booking assumes a phone call during office hours, loses those customers without ever knowing they came by.
Who for
Three families of project come up regularly in the Chablais, each with constraints of its own.
The job is won on photographs of work done, not on adjectives. One page per service, a genuinely up-to-date before-and-after gallery, the area covered named town by town, and a tappable phone number at the top of every page. It is simple, and it is what works.
Exact opening hours, an up-to-date menu, directions, booking. On the lakeside the tourist season changes everything: the site has to absorb a summer peak and stay useful in February, when the clientele is local and looking for something else.
Practices, practitioners, home services, garages, driving schools. What they share is a clientele that decides on a phone, outside working hours. Online appointment booking is not a gadget: it is the difference between a contact and a missed appointment.
Local search in the Chablais is still open ground in many trades. Here is the order in which I work through it, from the most profitable to the least urgent.
It is free, it can be filled in over an afternoon, and on a local search it appears above every website. Exact primary category, service area declared, real opening hours, a dozen photographs taken by you rather than bought, and the “products and services” section filled in line by line. Most local listings are half empty: that is an advantage to take.
Thonon, Évian, Douvaine, Sciez, Publier, Anthy, Margencel. A word of warning: a page per town is only worth having if it says something specific to that town. Six identical pages with only the name changed are detected as doorway pages and drag down the whole site. Three substantial pages beat seven hollow ones.
Frequently asked
With the Google Business Profile, before we even talk about the site. It is free, it makes you visible on local searches within a few weeks, and it keeps working while the site is being built. Only then comes the site, which gives you depth, credibility and somewhere to send people. I do both, and in that order.
Allow two to four months on local searches of the “your trade + Thonon” kind. It is faster than in a highly competitive area because there is less competition, but it is still several months: Google does not rank a brand-new site overnight. Anyone promising you first place in three weeks is selling you something other than search work.
Yes, on two concrete points. First mobile: those customers browse on the move and at odd hours, so everything has to be readable and fast on a small screen, without exception. Then the ways of getting in touch: a form and online appointment booking are worth far more than a number answered from nine to five, which is precisely when they are at work.
Elsewhere in the region
Annemasse sits at the centre of the basin. I cover the French Genevois, the Chablais, the Arve valley, Annecy and the canton of Geneva.
