Almost every septic company owner we talk to says some version of the same thing: "I don't really need to be online, people find me through word of mouth." That's often true for existing customers. It's not true for the homeowner who just moved to town, the person whose regular guy retired, or the real estate agent trying to get a pre-sale inspection scheduled fast. All three of those people are searching on their phone right now, and if you're not visible, they're calling whoever is.
There are two separate systems at play, and most business owners don't realize they're different:
If you have neither, you're invisible in both places at once — which is the most common situation we see.
"NAP" stands for name, address, phone — and it needs to match exactly across your website, your Google Business Profile, and any other place your business is listed online (Yelp, Facebook, industry directories). A mismatch as small as "St." versus "Street," or an old phone number still listed somewhere, measurably confuses the systems that decide how trustworthy your business listing is.
Search for your main service plus your town, from a phone, in an incognito/private browser window (so your own search history doesn't skew the results). If you don't see your business in the map pack or on the first page, that's real search volume going somewhere else every single day — usually to whichever competitor bothered to claim and verify their listing first.
In order of impact for a business starting from zero: claim and fully verify your Google Business Profile with accurate categories and services, make sure your name/address/phone are identical everywhere they're listed, and build a website with a real page for each service you offer rather than one page trying to cover everything. None of this is fast — realistically 3–12 months to see solid movement, depending on how much competition already exists in your specific market — but it's the actual mechanism, not a mystery.