Local SEO notes from the field
Everything I have written about local search, drawn from audits and client work rather than theory.
How AI Search Decides Which Local Business to Recommend
AI local packs show fewer businesses and fewer call buttons. How AI systems actually choose which local business to recommend, and the mention building work that makes you retrievable.
Read the article →Local Landing Pages That Don't Read Like Doorway Pages
How to build city and service landing pages that actually rank. The rule for when a page deserves to exist, the uniqueness threshold, and what to write that a template cannot fake.
Read the article →Local Citations in 2026: What to Fix, What to Build, and What to Ignore
Citations stopped being a ranking lever years ago, then AI search gave them a new job. The tiering system I use, why I audit before building, and what a clean entity record looks like.
Read the article →Google Business Profile Categories: How to Pick a Primary That Actually Wins Searches
Your GBP primary category decides which searches you can appear in at all. How I choose it, how I reverse-engineer competitors, and the category mistakes that cost rankings.
Read the article →How Google Ranks the Local Pack (And How I Diagnose Why a Business Isn't In It)
A practitioner's guide to local pack ranking factors. The three gates every business has to clear, how to tell fixable problems from structural ones, and what changed in 2026.
Read the article →Local SEO Audit: The Diagnostic Sequence I Use to Find What Is Actually Broken
Most local SEO audits are checklists that bury the real problem. This is the ordered six layer sequence I use to find what is actually stopping a business from ranking.
Read the article →Google Reviews and Local SEO: The Parts That Actually Move Visibility
Star ratings are the least useful part of a review. Here is how review text, recency, and responses affect local visibility, plus the 2026 rules that changed how you can ask.
Read the article →Local Link Building: Earning Links That Actually Change Local Rankings
A practical local link building method built on scoring prospects, sourcing links from real business operations, and pointing them at the right pages.
Read the article →Service Area Business SEO: How to Rank When You Do Not Have a Storefront
How service area businesses actually earn local visibility, why your service area settings do not extend your ranking radius, and what to build instead.
Read the article →Google Business Profile Suspended? Here Is How I Diagnose and Reinstate One
A step-by-step triage process for a suspended Google Business Profile, including what to check first, what never to touch, and how to build an appeal that gets read.
Read the article →