New To Seo And Trying To Save My Local Business

Hi Everyone!

I run a local companion care service for seniors and I’m staring down what feels like an impossible mountain with SEO. I’ve watched countless YouTube tutorials, learned a bit about on-site tweaks and blogging, and even know that backlinks matter but as a small senior care business I have no idea how to actually get them.

Basically, I’m looking for:

• Where to focus first: Which keywords should I target, and how do I find them without blowing my budget on fancy tools?
• Real-world backlink ideas: Any creative ways a service like mine can earn links?
• Actionable resources: Free or low-cost courses, blogs, podcasts, templates—anything that helped you nail down the basics.

I get that SEO is a long game and compounds over time, but what are the foundational moves I can start doing today that will actually move the needle? My budget is tight, so if you have tips on leveraging AI or simple workflows to stay consistent, I’m all ears.

Thanks in advance for any guidance, you’ll be saving my business!

EDIT:

Thank you all for the responses. I guess to add some more information: I do have some surface-level understanding of ranking and SEO; we do have a Google My Business set up and we have a website. We target senior care locally, as in we will do some of the tasks that seniors can’t do or may find too difficult, like taking them to appointments or grocery shopping or light housekeeping or just spending time with them. This means most of the time we’re targeting the family members of seniors but potentially sometimes targeting seniors themselves who may need that assistance or someone to take them. I guess where my concern really is is finding out how to rank higher for certain things and finding out what keywords are most important to target. Should I be doing things like blog posts, which should be my point of focus, as in changing the keywords on my site? I’m not really sure in its entirety; I just would like to try to figure out how to get more traffic to the site and show up higher for keywords. I believe the main thing is just really trying to get more calls.