How to reverse-engineer your competitor’s backlinks in local SEO: Most agencies overcomplicate this. Here’s the simple process: 1) Search your main keyword in Ahrefs 2) Pull the backlink profiles of the top 3-5 competitors 3) Filter for DR 20+, US traffic, and actual visitors

The SEO industry loves inventing acronyms. GEO. AEO. LLM optimization. Here’s the problem… Google can’t even track AI Overview impressions reliably yet. The data is incomplete. The triggers are inconsistent. But somehow we’ve got “GEO experts” everywhere. What’s actually

Your GBP links to your homepage. For service area businesses, that's a mistake. Here's why: Your homepage says "We serve the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex." Your GBP says you're located in Fort Worth. That's conflicting information. Google sees a business claiming to serve a

Your Google Business Profile has a services section. Most businesses leave it blank or half-finished. Big mistake. Add every service you offer. Not just the main ones. All of them. Then write a description for each. Here's what almost nobody does: Include your city in every

You're responding to your Google reviews. Good. But you're probably wasting the opportunity. Most businesses write this: "Thanks for the 5 stars! We appreciate your business and look forward to working with you again!" That does nothing for your SEO. Write this instead:

Most businesses have schema on their site. Almost none of it is actually helping them rank. Here's the thing about schema that nobody tells you: It's not about having it. It's about having the RIGHT types on the RIGHT pages. We run the same structure on every local site we

Most agencies are building 200+ pages to rank in multiple cities. One page for "roof repair Fort Worth." One for "roof repair Dallas." One for "roof repair Arlington." Multiply that by every service. It's a nightmare to build. And Google is actually punishing you for it.

Your blog is sabotaging your service pages. That post you wrote about "5 signs you need a roof replacement in Fort Worth"? It's competing with your actual roof replacement page. Google sees two pages on your site targeting the same thing. It doesn't know which one to rank.

Your website has schema. Google is probably ignoring most of it. Here's what nobody tells you about schema markup: A syntax error invalidates the entire block. Not just the broken part. The whole thing. Even semantic errors (wrong values, missing fields) can cause Google to

You built 100 citations for your client. Most of them aren't indexed. Which means they're not working as hard as they should. Here's the problem: Google's bots are scouring trillions of URLs. Your Yelp listing is a needle in that haystack. Just because it exists doesn't

Need to change your business name, address, or primary category on GBP? Don't touch it yet. These specific edits have the highest risk of triggering reverification. Name change? Reverification. Address update? Reverification. Primary category swap? Often reverification. And

Your competitor has 400 reviews. You have 40. You can still compete with them. Here's what most businesses don't understand about reviews: Google doesn't just count them. It measures how fast you're getting them. Review velocity especially in the trailing 90 days is a major

Not every business is ready for SEO. Which I know sounds weird coming from an SEO guy. But the truth is SEO takes time. Usually 6 to 12 months before it really does anything meaningful. Most businesses can’t wait that long for their next lead. They need cash coming in now. So

Most backlink strategies fail because they start with guessing. Instead of guessing, we let the SERPs do the work. Your competitors already show you which links move rankings in your market. The job is simply to reverse-engineer that. Here’s how we run a backlink gap analysis.

🚨 Crucial update for local businesses 🚨 Google has started using AI to call local businesses and request pricing on behalf of searchers. In some map pack results, there’s now an option that lets users have Google check prices for them instead of calling themselves. So far,

Most local businesses overlook one of the easiest Map Pack wins there is. Their business name. It’s the #2 local ranking factor. And unlike reviews or proximity, this is something you actually have control over. If you’re a kitchen remodeler in Scottsdale, don’t just go with

Don’t hire an SEO company unless you have a physical address. If you don’t, your odds of ranking drop fast. And there’s a hard ceiling on what any SEO can actually do. A lot of the local playbook depends on having a real location. Without one, you’re limited. You can’t build