Your Website Is Open for Business — But Is Anyone Finding It?

Written By Chris Sheehy
Listen to the deep-dive on Spotify

  • A new website without Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and AI Search Optimization (AIO) is like opening a storefront with no sign on the door. Research shows that organic search traffic decays by as much as 10–20% in the first year of inactivity — and continues declining each year after that. For local businesses, the stakes are even higher now that AI-powered search tools are drawing from the same well as traditional search engines. The good news? Like a well-managed investment account, the earlier you start — and the more consistently you contribute — the better your long-term return.

Why Under-Investing in SEO & AI Search Optimization Is Quietly Costing Rhode Island Businesses More Than They Realize

You Built or Updated Your Website. Now What?

SEO for new Rhode Island websites

Congratulations — you have a website. Maybe it's brand new. Maybe you just went through a redesign. Either way, the team that built it did something important for your business, and you should feel good about that investment.

But here's the honest truth that doesn't always come up in those final project meetings: a website, by itself, does not bring you visitors.

Search engines don't automatically know your site exists, understand what you do, or know why they should show your pages to someone searching for your products or services. That work — the ongoing, strategic work of making your business visible online — is what Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and AI Search Optimization (AIO) are all about.

And in my 29 years’ experience have met too many businesses that skipped that entirely or assumed the jumpstart SEO that their web company did - was all that was needed.

"Didn't My Web Developer Take Care of That?"

This is one of the most common — and most understandable — assumptions we hear. Web developers and designers are talented professionals who care deeply about their clients. They work hard to deliver beautiful, functional websites, and many of them include what's often called "SEO-friendly" setup as part of their service. That typically includes things like writing page titles, crafting meta descriptions, making the site mobile-friendly, and ensuring it loads quickly.

That's not nothing. Those are real and necessary foundations.

But here's the distinction worth understanding: there's a significant difference between an SEO-friendly website and an actively optimized one. One is a starting line. The other is the race itself.

Meaningful SEO and AIO requires ongoing strategy — competitive keyword research, local search authority building, content planning, technical audits, structured data implementation, and increasingly, optimization for how AI platforms surface and recommend local businesses. It's a discipline, not a checklist. And it requires the kind of deep, specialized experience that most web developers — through absolutely no fault of their own — simply aren't positioned to provide alongside everything else they do.

A fair question to ask any vendor who offers SEO as part of a web project: "What does your ongoing SEO strategy look like after launch, and how will we measure progress over time?" And “Should I hire a specialist for this part of my business objectives?” The answer will tell you a great deal.

To our knowledge, Omni Search Labs is the only firm in Rhode Island exclusively dedicated to Search Engine and AI visibility — not as a line item in a broader agency menu, or an add-on option, but as a focused, standalone practice. That distinction matters. Search optimization has been my sole professional focus since 1997 — before Google existed, before Bing, and long before anyone was having conversations with AI. My work with AI specifically began in 2018, through early platforms like IBM Watson and OpenAI's first generation (GPT1) models. That depth of experience — across nearly three decades of search evolution — is what shapes how OSL approaches every client engagement, regardless of budget size.

The Research Is Clear: Not Doing SEO Has a Cost

In late 2024, the respected SEO research firm SearchPilot published a study that should be required reading for any business owner with a website. Titled "SEO Depreciation — What Would Happen If You Did Nothing?", the research modeled what happens to a business's organic search traffic when SEO investment stops — like after a new site is launched, or updated. That initial boost of newness nodoubt gets recognixed by search engines - but if site optimiation is treated as a once-and-done event and not ongoing, it’s fame shortly falls off a cliff. [searchpilot.com]

Their findings note: businesses that pause or neglect SEO can expect organic traffic to decline by as much as 10–20% in the first year alone, with continued erosion compounding in every year that follows.

Think about that for a moment in financial terms. Imagine you have a retirement account — a 401(k) or an IRA. You make one lump-sum contribution at the start, then stop adding to it. No new contributions, no rebalancing, no attention. The market doesn't freeze to honor your initial investment. It keeps moving. And over time, without active management, your position weakens relative to everyone else who kept contributing consistently.

SEO works the same way. Your competitors who are actively investing in search visibility are continuously improving their position in search results. Meanwhile, a site that's left untouched doesn't hold its ground — it falls behind with the technology improvements of the website platform the site is on (think WordPress or Squarespace) as well as the hundreds of changes to search engines and AI platforms each month. SearchPilot describes this as "SEO depreciation": the gradual but measurable loss of visibility and traffic that accumulates when optimization is treated as a one-time event rather than an ongoing practice.

This isn't a fringe opinion. SearchPilot's own modeling — built around real business websites, not publishing giants — found that organic traffic losses of 10–20% in year one are realistic when SEO investment stops or never starts. And organic search still accounts for 53% of all trackable website traffic, more than paid advertising, social media, and direct traffic combined — making it the single most important channel most businesses aren't actively managing. [searchpilot.com, searchenginejournal.com]

What About AI Search? The Stakes Just Got Higher.

Here's where things get especially important for local businesses in 2026 — and where the SearchPilot research, while focused exclusively on traditional SEO, points to something even bigger.

When someone asks ChatGPT, Google's AI Overview, Perplexity, or another AI-powered tool "Who's the best plumber near me in Cranston?" or "Where can I find a reliable estate attorney in East Providence?" — those AI tools don't have magical knowledge of every business in your area. They draw their answers from the same pool of web content, reviews, and signals that traditional search engines use.

This process is called query fan-out: when an AI receives a local search query, it expands that single question into a series of related sub-queries — checking your hours, your services, your reviews, your location data, your expertise signals — and assembles a recommended answer from the most visible, well-documented sources it can find. [omnisearchlabs.com]

The implication is direct and worth sitting with: if your business isn't visible in traditional search, it is effectively invisible to AI search as well — especially for local discovery.

SearchPilot's depreciation study did not address AI optimization directly — that wasn't its scope. But the connection is hard to ignore. The same decay in search visibility that erodes your Google rankings also erodes your chances of being surfaced and recommended by AI tools when someone in your community is looking for exactly what you offer. Businesses that are well-optimized for search — with clear service pages, consistent location information, authoritative content, and strong local signals — are the businesses that AI platforms find and recommend.

This is why AIO isn't a futuristic consideration. For local businesses in Rhode Island and Southeastern Massachusetts, it is already the present.

The ROI Argument: SEO and AIO Pay for Themselves

If you're weighing the cost of SEO and AIO services against other line items in your budget, the research on return on investment is worth knowing:

None of this means SEO or AIO is free or instantaneous. It's an investment with a timeline — one that rewards patience and consistency. But the compounding nature of that investment — where well-optimized content and earned authority continue generating returns long after the initial work is done — is exactly what makes starting early so valuable.

"We Just Don't Have the Budget Right Now."

This is the most human response to any new line item in a business budget, and it deserves an honest answer rather than a sales pitch.

The truth is that most reputable SEO and AIO firms — and, being a business owner/operator, this is something I've built into how Omni Search Labs operates, drawing on nearly 30 years of working with businesses of every size — understand that every client has a real budget reality. A rigid, one-size-fits-all approach serves no one well. A good specialist will work with you to build a phased strategy: identifying the highest-impact priorities first, structuring the work over time, and delivering meaningful value at a pace and investment level that actually fits your business.

One honest caveat: phased work means phased ROI. It's not the fastest path to your goals — but forward progress is still progress, and every step builds on the last.

The better question isn't "Can I afford SEO and AIO?" — it's "Am I working with someone who understands my budget reality and knows how to deliver value within it?" Those are very different conversations, and the right firm will always be the one that offers the least friction between where you are today and where you want to be.

And here's what the research makes clear: the longer visibility declines go unaddressed, the more expensive and time-consuming they become to reverse. Like an underfunded retirement account, the cost of catching up eventually exceeds what consistent, early contribution would have cost.

Even a modest monthly investment in ongoing SEO and AIO is almost always less expensive — and far less stressful — than an emergency recovery effort after years of gradual, invisible decline.

Where to Start: Honest Steps for Any Business

If you're not sure where you stand, here are some grounded, no-pressure starting points:

  • Ask your current web vendor specific questions. The specificity of the answer matters.

    • Not "Do you do SEO?" but "Is SEO a concentration of your company — or an add-on package?" (It's okay if it's an add-on, but you should know the difference.)

    • "What search intent research did you conduct for our site?

    • How are you reporting on performance, and are we tracking my website's results month over month?

    • What's the content strategy going forward?"

  • Verify experience claims — kindly, but directly. If a vendor's website says they have decades of experience in search engine or AI optimization, it's fair to ask who on the team carries that experience and how it's reflected in the work they'll do for you. Don't assume the worst — sometimes a number is outdated, reflects someone who has since left the firm (as I have), or is simply a typo. Give them the opportunity to explain. What you want to understand is individual, hands-on experience — not a firm's combined years across all employees. A team of two people each with five years of experience does not equal ten years of expertise. It equals five.

  • Connect your site to Google Search Console. If you aren't already using this free tool, you have no visibility into how your site is actually performing in search. It's foundational, it's free, and it's the first thing any serious SEO professional will look at.

  • Audit your Google Business Profile. For local businesses, this is one of the highest-impact, lowest-cost actions available — and it directly feeds the local signals that AI search tools rely on when making recommendations.

  • Think in terms of a timeline, not a transaction. SEO and AIO aren't campaigns with finish lines. They're more like an investment strategy — most effective when started early, contributed to consistently, and measured with patience. And as with all investments, working with someone with real experience pays dividends.

Visibility isn't guaranteed by having a website. It's earned through consistent, strategic investment in being found — on search engines today, and through AI tomorrow.

Rhode Island is a small state, and its business community is close-knit. The competition for local search visibility is real, and it doesn't pause while you're deciding. Every comparable business that shows up before you in search — or in an AI recommendation — is a conversation your potential customer had without you.

The best time to start thinking of being visible on search and AI platforms was before your site launched. The second-best time is now. If you're not sure which path makes sense — building fresh or retrofitting what you already have — that's exactly the conversation we're built for - let’s have a chat.

Chris Sheehy https://omnisearchlabs.com/
Next

January 2026 Rhode Island SEO News