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AI Isn’t Killing SEO—It’s Killing Bad Traffic (What Actually Works in 2026)
00:41:38
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- [00:00]
A
Is AI killing SEO?
- [00:02]
B
I personally don't know anyone that uses an AI platform as a search engine.
- [00:07]
A
I mean, the results are always terrible.
- [00:08]
B
I don't think that Google should be quaking in its boots as a search engine that's going to be replaced with AI.
- [00:14]
A
I think what people get freaked out about is like, traffic has gone down.
- [00:18]
B
Yeah. Low intent traffic that would often like, inflate numbers like it, make us SEOs look way better than we actually are. So in 2026, SEO is building for a user experience. The keywords are not enough.
- [00:31]
A
What's your closing thoughts on AI and SEO? Welcome back to Owned and Operated. I'm your host, John Wilson. I'm the CEO of Wilson Plumbing, Heating, Cooling and Electric in Ohio and Indiana. For fun, I run a podcast where we talk about the home service industry, how to grow, how to get leads, how to hire people. It's a great time bringing my friends on and I get to learn every time. Today we have Lisa from Service Scalers and we're talking about AI and SEO and the impact that it's having. So stay tuned and make sure you like and sub. Welcome. Welcome to the show.
- [01:12]
B
Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
- [01:14]
A
Yeah, this will be great. Today's an interesting one because I feel like it's been talked about, you know, for two, three years. I don't know when ChatGPT came out, like 2022 or whatever, but is AI killing SEO?
- [01:31]
B
Short answer, no. So I've been working in SEO for the last 10 years and this question has existed in different forms since then and probably since before then.
- [01:42]
A
What are some other forms?
- [01:44]
B
So basically, is SEO dead? Has been a question that has been kicked around the digital sphere for a long time and this is just like the modern day AI era of that question. Yeah, personally, is what I feel. So in 2026, the key to local success in SEO is being the most trustworthy, reliable, accurate answer. Exactly. When somebody needs it, when they're searching. That has pretty much remained the same forever. But what has changed now is the fact that AI has not killed it, but probably changed it beyond recognition. Like, for me personally, if I think back to when I first started working in SEO, I would probably never have imagined this, but I don't think it's a bad thing at all. So before to be able to rank, you would just need Google to crawl your website or crawl your page and index it?
- [02:41]
A
Yeah. I mean, even just two years ago. Yeah, you used to be able to, you know, we were doing like a programmatic project and it was like inputting for indexing every day or so. It was kind of ridiculous. But you used to be able to like submit for indexing or something like that.
- [02:56]
B
Yeah.
- [02:57]
A
And yeah, it wasn't complicated.
- [02:59]
B
No.
- [03:00]
A
But honestly I don't feel like because of the rapid state of change, I haven't really been paying attention at all to how SEO works now in the last 18 months. I just, I have no idea. Yeah, but I used to know, I used to know how it worked.
- [03:12]
B
Yeah, for sure. So like I said, I think previously, like you say, even like two or three years ago, what was important is your page would get indexed and that's all that Google cared about was indexing the page and going, okay, yeah, that can go on position three, page one. Wherever AI now needs context, it needs to understand those pages in order to be able to rank them within like AI overviews, AI queries on the platforms themselves. And it's so much more than just Google scanning a page. It's about AI going in, reading that page, understanding the context, understanding, understanding the what, the why, the where. Specifically for local SEO, the where is very important. And what that has given us, I think personally is a much more meaningful set of data in 2026. So previously obviously we report and we still do and any SEO will tell you that you report on traffic figures for your clients. You report on like conversions. So traffic figures, I think in the past have been a bit of a false sun. So you can say, hey, actually we sent 20,000 visitors to your website, but a lot of the time 15,000 of those are going looking at blogs and they never take an action.
- [04:20]
A
Yeah, yeah. So we bought a company in 2021.
- [04:24]
B
Yeah.
- [04:25]
A
And they had 30,000 monthly hits.
- [04:27]
B
Yeah.
- [04:28]
A
And it was like, wow, like you know what's going on. And honestly the, they should, what they should have done with it is sold air filters or something like they should have actually made use of that because like traffic was coming from all over. But it was, yeah, blogs, because they're backlink strategy.
- [04:43]
B
Yeah.
- [04:43]
A
But like their actual intent visitors was very low.
- [04:47]
B
Yeah, exactly. And it's, you know, it's like it's always looks great on paper and it's a great number. But when it comes down to the crux of it, if you're only sending people to a blog post and they're only getting information and diying the service that you're selling and taking it away while those numbers look good on paper for like figures, actually you're not getting people that are there specifically to convert.
- [05:10]
A
Yeah.
- [05:10]
B
So if we're talking about like AI overviews and like how to's and Google keeping people on the results page, then what you're doing is getting a set of data where you can, you know, like quite confidently say the people that are actually coming to your site and clicking through are a potential true like lead or customer and not just some Joe blogs looking for how to fix a dripping faucet, for example.
- [05:32]
A
Mm. I think what people get freaked out about just from like what I see from Reddit or just talking to people is like traffic has gone down and your, your thought is yes, bad traffic went down.
- [05:49]
B
Yeah. Not that it was necessarily bad traffic, but I think it was low intent. Yeah, low intent traffic that would often like inflate numbers like it make us SEOs look way better than we actually are because again, those aren't like converting pages. Those aren't.
- [06:04]
A
Yeah.
- [06:04]
B
Ever going to convert.
- [06:06]
A
Most businesses don't lose jobs because they're bad. They lose jobs because they're busy and a customer could not get a quick answer. One missed call, one forgotten follow up and the job goes somewhere else. Quo helps solve that by putting every customer conversation, calls, texts, voicemails into one shared thread that your whole team can see. So whoever picks up next already knows what's going on. There's no scrambling for context, no more botched communication and nothing gets dropped. Quo helps keep your team aligned, helps you respond faster, and makes the customer experience feel way more consistent. If you want cleaner communication and fewer lost leads, check out quo@quo.com own. You'll get a free seven day trial plus 20% off your first six months. Yeah, that's interesting. I haven't paid much attention. I don't know how our like we should look it up but like I'm sure our marketing manager does, but I don't know how our monthly. I'm, I'm assuming it dropped over the past few years because like I think everybody's dropped. What has I. Does DA matter anymore? Like domain authority?
- [07:16]
B
I'm gonna say something maybe controversial here.
- [07:18]
A
Okay.
- [07:20]
B
I don't buy into DA. So DA or like Dr. Depending on which tool is unique to like each tool that you go.
- [07:30]
A
So Ahrefs. It's not Google, it's Ahrefs.
- [07:32]
B
Ahrefs or like Semrush or Search Atlas. And it is like their formula or their algorithm to come up with that figure. If you put the same website into three different ones, you'll get a different figure.
- [07:44]
A
Yeah.
- [07:44]
B
And like your site can have domain authority, but domain authority isn't a measurable metric that you could say, oh yeah, you're a 10 out of 100. And I think it's super easy for people to get hung up on that. When in reality, what you want to look at a bottom line if there's just one thing is the conversions. Right. I. I could ignore every single other metric if conversions going in the right direction.
- [08:07]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. We are my, my like commentary on domain authority. We're a Ahrefs house here. So. So my commentary on that is like over the past couple years, our domain authority keeps going up and we're just like, we're not doing anything different. So like what we're assuming is happening is we've ranked well in the past and like our blogs that were low intent, like did whatever they're going to do and got more backlinks because we have not been working that hard on it. And I think that we're just showing up in more search because of the amount of volume and that's giving us like more credibility or something. But we're up like 10 points. Like we're in the 40s and like we were in the 20s.
- [08:49]
B
Yeah.
- [08:50]
A
And it's like we didn't do anything. Yeah. I mean, we'll keep it, but it is, it is a bit interesting.
- [08:56]
B
Yeah. An age domain does add into that like domain authority score as well, but that it kind of contradicts itself because you could get a new website spun up that gets a ton of great backlinks straight off the bat that isn't or doesn't have that sort of like historical footprint.
- [09:12]
A
Yeah.
- [09:13]
B
And performs really well. But their DA may still say seven.
- [09:16]
A
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. All right, so. So you're thinking that searches are down. God, I wish I had my laptop. And we could like dive into this a little bit. But searches are down. But it's bad search or not bad, but like low intent, which again totally tracks because I'm sure that I'm thinking of my friends websites, like we've talked about it like six months ago maybe. And the blog, like their traffic went down, but it was all like, how to fix your navi and water heater. And it's like, yeah, okay, nobody really gives a shit about that. Like, I don't give a shit about that. Okay. And like, have we seen. I had someone on the show. It was Zach from Mantle and he, he's not like an SEO expert, but it was just like data what he was finding that it was like 60% of people found their contractors still on Google, 20% from like referrals but it was only like 3 from chat GPD. Has that like changed or like any.
- [10:13]
B
This is another one that I've got a bit of a hot take on because it's a conversation I have with my clients a ton.
- [10:18]
A
Yeah.
- [10:19]
B
And I personally don't know anyone that uses an AI platform as a search engine. I don't know about you.
- [10:26]
A
I mean the results are always terrible.
- [10:28]
B
Yeah, exactly. And they all pull their data from Google. Google's got the biggest knowledge base, the most data.
- [10:36]
A
Yeah.
- [10:36]
B
I guess the intention is that one day that won't be the case. But yeah, I don't think that Google should be quaking in its boots as a search engine that's going to be replaced with AI for at least the immediate future and probably the next five, 10 years.
- [10:54]
A
Yeah. So with like sort of low intent searches down, your take is that high intent searches are still happening on Google.
- [11:03]
B
Absolutely, yeah. So if you think of things like looking for the best Thai food in best Thai food in Stowe, Ohio for example, you're not going to read an AI overview. You may get a few suggestions from there, but then you're going to go click through the profiles, take a look at the review counts, look at the paper.
- [11:20]
A
So that's what I've heard is like Discovery happens on ChatGPT or Perplexity or whatever. But then like authentication or like verification happens on Google. So hey, I was served up like give me some tie options for this event or whatever the fuck and then we're going to go over to Google and like are their reviews terrible or are they good? And I feel like that's how like I'll occasionally do that.
- [11:46]
B
Yeah, for sure. There's still a lot of distrust with the general public with AI.
- [11:50]
A
Well, it's, it's because the results are terrible. Like I tried to do, I tried to do this yesterday and it was sort of funny because I was, I logged. I like opened up my laptop this morning and my search was still up and I was looking for like something weird. And like I never use Chad GPT to like look for places to go, but I was like, hey, give me the vibiest coffee shop in Cleveland. And. And in my mind I couldn't think of another way to word it. And because that's how I was wording it, I was like, I don't think Google is going to do much with this search because I think I said fib. And so I went over to ChatGPT. It was terrible. Like the results were still, were still terrible.
- [12:31]
B
Yeah, absolutely. But yeah, yeah. That level of distrust, like I think it's there with like the general Joe blogs, member of the public, people who are spending money on digital services. So our clients specifically, ton of them don't, don't buy into it, don't want it. Obviously it's a case of, you know, we have conversations about the benefits and how we.
- [12:52]
A
Yeah.
- [12:52]
B
Um, you know, how we don't just spit out AI generated content as is and we humanize and edit content. Um, so that, that tracks with that as well. Um, another thing that's still always going to get clicks is emergency queries. Um, so if I'm like emergency plumber in Stowe and I'm looking for that at 9pm at night, I need to take an immediate action.
- [13:12]
A
Yeah.
- [13:13]
B
I'm not even looking at the AIO view, I'm scrolling straight down, finding that call button, picking up the phone, booking a job. Absolutely. Will never, ever go away from, will never be sort of like taken over by AI and then brand searches. So somebody that already knows you is typing in owned and operated is typing in Wilson. Companies either they may not be a new client, but they may be like a repeat customer or somebody that's had a word of mouth recommendation. They know what they're looking for. They don't need the options.
- [13:43]
A
Yeah.
- [13:44]
B
So that, type in, that in. They're seeing the profile, clicking the button, picking up a phone.
- [13:48]
A
Yeah, yeah. People, what we found, which in some ways it's good, in some ways it's like kind of annoying. But we'll look at our monthly reporting for our GBP and some of that, like most of our traffic, like north of 80%.
- [14:05]
B
Yeah.
- [14:06]
A
Comes from someone searching Wilson. So like the good is like, hey, we've been effective at branding and do you know, hey, great job. You know, all that money went somewhere. The bad is like, okay, not that many people are like, we're not showing up in the plumber near me's and I don't know if there's just not that many plumber near me's but it was kind of, it was really shocking when I first saw that because I really thought that, hey, all of our traffic is coming from, you know, emergency plumber, hot water tank broken, you know, sort of pick a problem and really the vast majority was like someone just looking for us.
- [14:46]
B
Yeah.
- [14:47]
A
Which I don't know if that's good or bad. Like it was good and bad there.
- [14:50]
B
Yeah. I think if you're operating on a large Scale like you are, then it's never a bad thing. And it doesn't really matter if you are a smaller company who can't rank for those key terms. But your brand search is like 50amonth, so you're getting not much. Then you're like, hey, actually we need to look at how we target brand versus brand, how we direct people straight to service pages rather than just to the homepage.
- [15:15]
A
Yeah.
- [15:16]
B
Supporting like contextual content. Like build that network of content around the topics of the services. But yeah, for like a larger company, like, it doesn't really matter.
- [15:27]
A
Yeah. Okay, well, like, how can people drive SEO today? Like, what does SEO look like? How do you do it successfully?
- [15:34]
B
Okay. So in 2026, SEO is building for a user experience. The keywords are not enough. The sort of like index and spit out a page into the serps is not enough. You need to be able to demonstrate authority and expertise. So when these LLMs are crawling your site and taking this information, they're like, actually, this guy's. No, this guy knows what he's talking about. And we want to put this or serve this as a result within the LLM. Um, but again, it comes back to that contextual information and the, the AI model, understanding what is on your site rather than just going, oh, keyword. Cool. Position three.
- [16:12]
A
Yeah. How do you think it's just like
- [16:17]
B
a
- [16:21]
A
issue that we're having. I'm curious, like, your take on this.
- [16:23]
B
Yeah.
- [16:23]
A
We're using webflow.
- [16:25]
B
Yep.
- [16:26]
A
And like, we. We did a programmatic project with service scalers, like three, four years. I don't even remember.
- [16:32]
B
I remember it.
- [16:34]
A
And we got on webflow and Sam Thompson, like pushed that programmatic project out, and I don't even know how many freaking pages. It's like 20,000. Yeah. Something ridiculous. And one of the problems that we had is we ran out of like pages or categories or something. Like, what do you. What do you do?
- [16:55]
B
So if you like, run out.
- [16:56]
A
Because it feels like one of the strengths of. I'm sorry, to my point, bringing it back to this topic.
- [17:00]
B
Yeah.
- [17:00]
A
One of the strengths of AI is that we can mass produce SEO.
- [17:04]
B
Yeah.
- [17:04]
A
And like, you can take on a project like Programmatic that, you know, 10 years ago was probably like a million dollar project. And Angie's List invested tens of millions of dollars into their website. And you can do it now for like not a million dollars. Right. Like, you can do it somewhat affordably. And we did that project in 2023, and I think that was a huge part of our growth over the Ne like next couple of years, where was we hit AI hard and fast when it first came out and covered everything in the world. And now it's like, okay, we did that. Now what should we be working on?
- [17:38]
B
Yeah, sure. So I think like in a case like that where you're like, actually we've exhausted every service, we've exhausted every arm of every service, we've exhausted every location,
- [17:47]
A
we put 20,000 or 17 somewhere in that range. It was crazy.
- [17:51]
B
Yeah. If you've genuinely reached the limit of what you can produce in terms of like topic, obviously like time goes on, there will be developments and all sorts of things. But if you are genuinely pointing like I've reached the absolute limit of this, then you just refresh the content. You add more expertise in there. You can add quotes from somebody that carries clout in the industry. Again, just building that trust, that authority, like expanding on the content, adding like mixing up the FAQs, like researching what has changed since 2023 when those went up. Maybe there has been a massive shift in searches for a specific keyword that relates to something that wasn't a thing in 2023. So think of for example if there was like a big weather event somewhere that might have, I don't know, changed
- [18:41]
A
a hurricane or something.
- [18:42]
B
Yeah. That's changed like the landscape of like a city or a town. So there is always an opportunity to refresh content and it is always, it's never a bad thing. Obviously if you have like a really well written thousand word page and you're just going to be an offer like 10 words and a picture of like a local landmark, then yeah, but there is always room to improve. The key thing about SEO is and this is like said to death, but it's obviously never done, it's never ever finished. You can never get to a point where like, oh my SEO is finished. I can sit back now because there is always someone waiting on the wings to come come and knock you off the top spot. And once that happens, if you don't keep on top of that, then it's a domino effect and you just fall further and further and further down the soap results. So yeah, even if you think you're done, you're definitely not.
- [19:25]
A
Yeah, there's a company and this still freaking cracks me up. So there's two companies, but one of them specifically is like they're not, they're not a good like local place plumbing company. Like they're not great marketers. They're not, I don't know, I don't think They've actually grown in like 15 years. Like I think they've been at $2 million for literally 15 years. Like, which you know, is kind of impressive in its own right. They own page one of Google and I do not understand how for the fucking life of me because we have put so much work into SEO and they still show up like top five searches for Plumber Akron. And I'm just like, that's crazy. So like what do you think I can do to kick them off?
- [20:18]
B
So my first like first stop on that journey would be to do like a, obviously like a third party audit of their site, figure out what they're doing in the background. Yeah, so look at the backlinks that they've got. Look at how long their site has been established, look at how often they're publishing content.
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A
I don't think they touched their website. Like they couldn't have. The business has gone nowhere. 15 years.
- [20:39]
B
Yeah, sure. Then in that case then I would say that strong brand recognition. Is it well known in the area? Do people like, if you say it to someone in the street but they know who you're talking about, maybe then
- [20:52]
A
backlinks, like, it's crazy. Like I bet I could look right now and they're still like, it's wild.
- [20:58]
B
Yeah, that is wild. I'd like to have a look at it.
- [20:59]
A
I'll show you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll show you. So there's two of them. So one of them like earned it. Like they, they did good. The business is good. And like I'm like, okay, like you know, pop off. But yeah, the other one is just like, what, how, how are you doing this? It's, it's really like genuinely wild to me. Okay, so authority now was back. Probably still has backlinks, but like, you know, you're talking about like quoting influencers or quoting like big people in the space to drive more authority. Can you give us some examples that are like home service?
- [21:35]
B
Yeah, for sure. So if we were, for example, someone was going to write an article about loft insulation, for example. Okay, so in the article you would want to have direct quotes from somebody. They don't have to be well known, but as long as Google can recognize that this person is knowledgeable and is an authority on this subject. So I'm sure there's some big players in the loft insulation world that aren't well known by anyone outside of it. But adding expert insights from those kind of people and marking those things up in the back end with structured data and just feeding into that this is useful, helpful content delivered by an expert, not just some random guy who's thrown a page up on a website.
- [22:23]
A
Yeah, okay. Here's an uncomfortable truth. Growth breaks the moment that your team can't keep up. I know that finding good people fast is really hard. Especially in home services positions like hr, accounting, marketing, call center, it is hard to keep up. Quick Staffers helps home service companies build reliable virtual teams that actually understand the trades. Quick Staffers provides vetted remote staff who are pre trained on service titan and use best in industry sops. These are team members ready to integrate into your business on day one, handling roles like customer service lead, follow up, scheduling support and more. We're actively hiring an offshore assistant controller right now through Quick Staffers. I can't recommend Quick Staffers enough. They've helped us scale our business without a headache. Head over to quickstaffers.com for more. There are services out there that we've seen that like I guess when like I've dug deeper, they don't, I don't know if they work but it's like tying the GBP to the website and like the where part of SEO and like what they'll do is they'll geotag a photo to like the website and to your GBP and like somehow it connects or something like that. But every time I've looked deeper at it it seems like it just makes a mess.
- [23:42]
B
Yeah, so like any photo that gets posted, like if it's been taken on an iPhone, nine times out of 10 will have the geo data is host to anyway so they, they have them regardless of whether you think they do or not 90% of the time. So pretty much anything that goes on a GBV not but like job photos for example that would go to home service gbp most of the time those are taken on the text phone, uploaded to a CRM pulled from there. They have that geodata already where it seems to be a bit more impactful on the website because obviously those photos on the GBP are tied to a very specific set of locations and it's a part of a map setup. So geotagging photos and adding them to the website. A lot of the time people will have professional photos on their website so they don't come with that data. It's very easy to add it, it's very easy to check if it already has it. But it's something we're doing with some of our clients, just adding that extra. It's a set of so it does work. Coordinates. Yeah, I wouldn't say if you, you're going to chuck 50 photos on your website with coordinates in your service area and you're going to go straight up the, straight up the search results. But it definitely is impactful. It's more of a sort of like drip feed background thing that helps sort of like support it rather than something is like a core ranking signal.
- [25:02]
A
I'm saying, what do you think the fast move for SEO is like? Is there a fast move?
- [25:10]
B
There isn't a fast move for SEO. It's a conversation I have all the time and you know, it's a conversation we have in the early doors of talking about working with the client on SEO is that it's not a quick fix, it's not a PPC or an lsa. That's a money tap and you can turn it on, turn it off. Yeah, you get in sort of what you put out. One of an analogy that I like to use with my clients is that SEO is a long term relationship, not a one night stand. You've got to work at it to get something out of it. So like months, one month, one is like a big research phase for us. We do a shit ton of research to make sure that we have all the data we need to make effective strategic decisions for the next four, five, six months, for example.
- [25:52]
A
Yeah.
- [25:52]
B
And like I'm completely comfortable with saying, hey, listen, don't expect to see much until three to six months. And that is the tricky part with SEO because you have to invest for such a long time before you get anything back, it makes it hard to sell, like from an agency point of view, it makes it harder to form client relationships off the bat because you've got the PPC guys and like, oh, they made me 10 grand and I'm like, I got you two extra phone calls, but just wait. One important thing as well, I repeat to anyone that will listen, is that your website is the bottom of the funnel for any digital channel that you are working on. So like ppc, gbp, SEO. And it's a very, very integral part of that journey whether or not you're using the Moneytap ads to bring leads and like your page quality score, the speed, the load speed of the website, super duper important for other channels, paid channels and obviously now we're looking at AI as well as a separate thing that we need to optimize for. But again, the bottom line is the website.
- [26:53]
A
How else? Like how I'm trying to like the photos, I guess matter. Like what else does the GBP do for My local SEO.
- [27:04]
B
So GBP is an interesting one and I like talk to people as well. Imagine think of your GBP as a website. A lot of people don't even have a website, they just have a gbp. But you need to think of it as a website. So you need the information on there to be accurate for it to be served accurately. You need to update it with fresh content. You need to reply to reviews quickly as if that's someone dropping a feedback on your website that you're going to reply to once that hits the office inbox. The other interesting thing about GBP is that there are a ton of optimization opportunities that people don't talk.
- [27:38]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [27:39]
B
So there are optional information in the back end but you can tick a box that says Hispanic owned and then when somebody is typing in Hispanic owned H Vac company, you will only be served, you'll be served in that result and you'll be super relevant. So somebody wants to send someone around to look at their grandma's ac, but the grandma only speaks Spanish so they don't want an English speaking hvac company.
- [28:03]
A
Yeah.
- [28:04]
B
And it just allows you. Those search groups are so, so small as well. It may just be like 10, 20, 30 searches a month, but you'll guarantee that those people are going to book a job. So any opportunity you get to give Google more information contextually, take it. Even if it's a no, even though you're saying no, not Hispanic owned. Because then you, you won't appear in that search and it won't be a wasted phone call.
- [28:27]
A
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I feel like Google like LSA gbp, anything we've touched with Google, the game seems to be like if Google wants you to do something you should do, you should do it. So like if you get the email of like, hey, are you open on Thanksgiving? Like you should just tell them yeah, 100% even if you are, because then it's like interacting with the platform and they like that and.
- [28:49]
B
Exactly. You're feeding back data back to them and they love that. And yeah, anything, anything they ask of you, even if it is a no, just let them know for sure.
- [28:59]
A
Over the past like two, three years it feels like, and this is like a feeling, not a fact. So I'm curious what the fact is. It feels like the GBP and like I would, I would classify GBP as like local SEO.
- [29:13]
B
Yeah.
- [29:14]
A
Is more important than the website SEO.
- [29:19]
B
Again, I think just going back to my point about the website being the bottom line of everything.
- [29:23]
A
Yeah.
- [29:23]
B
I don't Know if like more important is the right term, I think it may be more effective in terms of how people search these days as well. And we're also used to typing in and then having something immediately in front of us that we can click.
- [29:37]
A
Yeah.
- [29:37]
B
So that map pack result or that top result is always ideal because you're like okay, Bing. Especially if it's something that doesn't have like a ton of like the emergency queries for example. I'm not looking through the and comparing these guys. I'm just like results straight there in the palm of my hand. Convenience. Bam. Pressing the call button. Picking up. Booking a job.
- [29:59]
A
Yeah. Our website is produced like I think honestly because of the programmatic thing. Like it was a huge push at the right moment. Like it was like the best timing of all time. But I think that that helped a lot. But, but the. Yeah. GBPS is so measurable and over the past even like 6 to 12 months GBP important feels. It feels like it's becoming like the channel and like everything ties now to gbps. Like LSA is gbp. I feel like PPC is like really tied in GBP now.
- [30:28]
B
Yeah.
- [30:30]
A
Yes. It's kind of an. I like a good and bad. Good if you have a great GBP bad if you don't. We we looked at a company for sale last week and they had like a like a mid three star rating and I'm like, I literally can do nothing with this. Like it's like the company is essentially worthless because your reviews are not good. So I can't run lsa. I like nobody wants PVC to a three star.
- [30:55]
B
Yeah.
- [30:55]
A
Like would you eat at a three star sushi restaurant?
- [30:58]
B
Absolutely not.
- [30:59]
A
I would not as well. Yeah.
- [31:01]
B
Yeah. Reviews are definitely the backbone of any well performing GBP profile.
- [31:08]
A
Yeah.
- [31:08]
B
And review consistency and review freshness are so important. Your review responses are so important as well. So you could see a GBP profile for example, that had like 200 reviews ranking above a GBP profile that had a thousand reviews. But the one with the less reviews, they're getting consistent reviews. The reviews are fresh. They're applying to the reviews. This guy with the 600 reviews hasn't replied to review in 2 years. Last review was 5 months ago. It was a 1 star. So Google really cares about the sort of experience.
- [31:47]
A
Yeah.
- [31:48]
B
And that is another reason why GBP seems to be more important than ever. Because you have that sort of like trust factor attached to it right off the bat. You don't even have to look for it. You can see it Right there. One click and you can see. Okay. Yeah. Last review is two days ago. Consistently very good. They replied they're pleasant. The amount of people that kick off at their. Yeah, kick off of people and reviews when they get a review they don't like is.
- [32:12]
A
Yeah.
- [32:13]
B
Some of the review replies I've seen over the years are absolutely unbelievably like aggressive at some points. So just like thinking about your tone and how you want your brand to come across is really important there as well. But it's kind of like a one stop shop. Like I say it's. It's almost like a website for your business. You've got that proof right there. You can call straight from the profile. You literally don't need to go anywhere else. It's all there on the screen ready for you.
- [32:35]
A
Well, and I feel like chat GPD sends you there now too. So like back to the. Is AI killing SEO? It's like. No, it's feeding it. It's, you know that in that vibey coffee shop query I had, I sent me the GBPs for like 5 coffee places. None of them were the vibe that I was seeking but it was interesting how it was sending me to the. Yeah, this now hypervaluable asset, like hyper valuable. How are you feeling about like written content video? I remember back in like 2020 video was like a whole thing. Like get videos on your website. Like does that still matter?
- [33:09]
B
Yeah, Videos I think are great. It's, you know, people don't want to read a ton of words when they're looking for something on a website. Visually it looks nice. A lot of people would just bang a video on the website with absolutely no consideration at all. But you can like the way you serve it on the website. Like you can compress it. There are a ton of things you can do. So it doesn't like your website and it's like, it's a bit of like it's not a myth because there is some truth behind it. But like it's not a, it's definitely not a no go in terms of content. So I think AI has like killed low quality content. So in terms of how it's going to rank your site, like volume is out, quality is in looping back to a point on authority and expertise, the depth of the content and then being able to understand the context and the what, the why, the who where, it's just so important.
- [34:07]
A
Yeah, yeah. I've noticed in my own behavior, like I don't know if this is normal or not, but I'm almost never on the Internet the way that I feel like I used to be on the Internet, like reading blogs or like researching the same way. I think, like, and maybe this is just me, but I feel like research has just changed so much. And when I think about SEO, like r. SEO still performs and we drive traffic and we drive sales through our website. So clearly someone out there is still, you know, browsing. Like, it's 2005. But I noticed that I don't. Like, have you noticed big changes in behavior?
- [34:50]
B
Yeah, for sure. I'm exactly the same. I'm probably like, I'm AI's dream. I will. Whatever's on that first scroll of my screen, I'm gonna check out that first. And that will. So obviously you have the AI overviews. I will click on an AI overview. I'll usually click the links that are in there, but I don't think that's typical. I think it's probably because of my job that I do that. I think typically people read that AI overview and they don't go any further when they're looking for that sort of like, informational stuff.
- [35:23]
A
Yeah, I think that's probably what I do. Yeah. I don't even know. Maybe YouTube. I don't. I don't know.
- [35:32]
B
I watch YouTube if I need like a. A tutorial because I'm not going to read 20 steps of how to put this wheelbarrow together, for example.
- [35:40]
A
Yeah.
- [35:41]
B
If I can sit there, watch a video, do it, pause it, if I need to stop and do something, then. Yeah. YouTube, I think as well, obviously, because people use it as a medium for just like entertainment and absorbing content. It's very easy to go there for that kind of thing.
- [35:57]
A
Yeah. Yeah.
- [35:57]
B
So it kind of seems like a natural progression into using it for that kind of purpose rather than just entertainment.
- [36:03]
A
Yeah. All right, so for winning, for what we should be focusing on in 2026, local and local sort of on page which, like maybe the geotagged photo. A lot of like. I mean, does the classic service location, like, still work for SEO, like toilet repair? Akron, Ohio. Like, is that still, like, we should be producing pages with that?
- [36:30]
B
Yeah. Still super duper relevant. Probably more so because you have this, like, second level of. It's not just for Google, it's now for an LLM as well. So those pages need to be structured and again, explain all of those things. What, what you do, where you do it, who you serve, and like, not the just that we fix your toilet, but like, how and why do we fix your toilet?
- [36:54]
A
Yeah.
- [36:54]
B
And again, just that depth of content. The LLM needs to be able to go, okay, actually, yeah, this is an actual expert on this subject matter. In terms of like crushing it, like holistically local. Those pages are super important. But again, the completeness and the freshness of your GBP having links directly from your GBP to those service pages for those areas and services, super duper important. And just creating that connection, um, that again, when the LLMs come in, they're going to see that connection. They're going to see that network of, okay, this is business. X, Y, Z. This is our website. Oh, they have this huge network of content on their website that goes really in depth on these subjects and these topics and these services that they offer. Oh, wow. They've got this expert guy who works there who's got like a bunch of qualifications and is like licensed in his industry. And they're like that. At that point the LLM will be like, okay, this is a really good result for us to serve in a. Yeah, okay.
- [37:51]
A
And then like, how are we thinking about brand? Because I think like I said with our GBP analytics, a lot of it is brand at this point, which I, again, I think is good. It's also just a little annoying because I want to show up for like people that weren't looking for me in the first place. Like, I want to be like, yeah, I'm ranking number three in map pack. And like, basically what that tells me is maybe I'm not ranking well. Because if all the people that are coming just from direct search, like, why aren't they coming from like plumber near me's like, what's your take? Am I not ranking well?
- [38:31]
B
Again, I would love to have a look because I want to. Yeah, we should do it. So in terms of like, brand, brand is super important again. And this is probably more pertinent to a smaller business, um, which is obviously the kind of businesses that we work with on the home service side of things. Um, brand is super important. And AI models throw a lot of clout behind companies and brands that people are actually actively searching for. So AI models will obviously take a lot of their information from Google, but they're trying to learn and build their own knowledge base as well. So if there are a ton of people typing in Wilson Companies, they're just like, right, cool. This Wilson Companies guy is super relevant to what we want to produce in our search results and like the relevancy that goes along with that. And then they will look at your GBP as well and be like oh yeah, this guy's got tons of like great reviews. So like, like you for example, kind of become a victim of your own brand in that sense. But for like smaller businesses probably looking at like 5 mil or less then building your brand is super important for like recognition and trust within AI models.
- [39:38]
A
Yeah, that makes sense. What's your closing thoughts on AI and SEO? So yeah, your Google business profiles are either printing money or they're losing it. And that's where Big Reputation comes in. Big Reputation turns your GBP into a true lead machine without adding more work to your plate. It runs in the background with automated posting, review generation and fast responses so that your reputation compounds over time. And this is huge. If you're multi location, they make it dead simple to manage and scale your reputation across every branch so every location shows up and wins in the map pack. I'm actually using Big Reputation right now as I grow and scale my newest acquisitions. Plus you get real insight into what's actually happening. You get to spot gaps with location, health monitoring, track reviews and sentiment and see which zip codes you're winning and which ones you're losing. Better insights, stronger trust, more calls from an asset you already own. Go check it out at bigreputation. AI/oao.
- [40:40]
B
SEO in 2026 is about building that user experience and it's just not possible to do it with without AI now. And as much as some people may want that or may want not want that, it's just that that's just the game these days.
- [40:53]
A
Yeah.
- [40:53]
B
All of the things that we've spoken about are perfectly leverageable for any business and things that if you don't do now that you're going to be left in the dust in two or three years time.
- [41:04]
A
Yeah, yeah, I feel like that resonates.
- [41:07]
B
Yeah.
- [41:07]
A
Except for this one guy who still 15 years later is holding on to page one. We're going to do a deep dive because I do not understand how this guy still has like, I'll talk to competitors, like friendly competitors that also run big businesses and they're also like, dude, what the fuck? How does this guy still on page one? And I'm like, I don't know. I actually don't know.
- [41:29]
B
We'll find out.
- [41:30]
A
Yeah, we'll find out. Thanks for coming on today. This was a good conversation.
- [41:33]
B
Thanks for having me. It was fun.
- [41:35]
A
If you like what you heard, make sure you like and submit.