Will

First Tweet. Wish me luck. I joined Twitter in September, and since then I’ve been one of those weird silent lurkers (I guess most of the platform). Coincidentally, in that same time period, I have flipped just under a quarter of a million dollars worth of content sites. How?

Which would you rather have for your local business? Position 1 on Google Appearing in ChatGPT/AI search results In 2026 this is actually a real question. A year ago I'd have said Google without hesitating. But I now have clients getting serious enquiries directly from AI search. Real phone calls. Real bookings. My honest answer? You need both. But if you're only chasing one right now, you might be chasing the wrong one. Think about your industry. They are all different. Who is searching for you, and how? That answer should shape everything.

Go and Google "[your trade] + [your town]" right now. Look at the websites that come up. In most local industries, around 90% of them look like they were built in 2003. Or like someone's kid did them on a free trial. That's your competition. If your site looks even halfway professional, you're already in the top 10% before SEO has even entered the conversation. A good website won’t work by itself. But it is the best way to start.

@noahiglerSEO Fifth is the dreaded 'service area'. I always try to discourage this. Get a cheap office and get an address!

If you're not showing up in the Google Map Pack, one of these 4 things is wrong. I audit service businesses every single day and it's almost always one of these. First, your reviews aren't comparable to competitors. Reviews are one of the BIGGEST ways Google validates your reputation. Total count, average rating, velocity/recency, quality, etc. The businesses that get the most quality reviews consistently tend to rank at the top. Second, your GBP is half-optimized. Missing services, no business description, 3 photos from 2021, no posts, etc. Google looks at your GBP and sees a business that's either not active or doesn't care enough to fill out their profile. Your competitor who has all their services listed, posts weekly, and has 50+ photos is sending Google way more signals that they're a legitimate, active business. Third, you have no local backlinks or citations. Rankings don't happen in a vacuum. Google NEEDS to see other websites confirming that your business exists and operates in your area. Directory listings, local organization memberships, supplier websites linking to you, press mentions... if you have zero backlinks from local sources and your competitor has 30, they have an authority advantage you can't always overcome with reviews alone. Fourth, you're too far from the searcher. Proximity is a VERY significant ranking factor. If your GBP address is 15 miles from where someone is searching, you're at a disadvantage against the business that's 2 miles away. You can expand your ranking radius by being strong on the first three factors... but you can't completely override distance. If you're losing in a specific part of your market, this is probably why.

@HassaJohn Agree. What are your main strategies for developing AI visibility?

@Willo_IO Focusing on AI visibility can really enhance your organic rankings and map presence.

There are three goals in local SEO now. 1. Rank your site organically 2. Get in the map pack 3. Show up in AI tools like ChatGPT Nail one of these and you're in the game. Nail all three and you're basically untouchable in your local market. Most agencies are still only focused on the first two. That's the gap we're playing in.

@lr_jordan Fascinating!🙂Seems to be working

@Willo_IO literally no idea. don't even have Analytics! I regularly don't add Analytics to new projects to help me convince myself I really am doing it for the love of the game

Someone paid me money for my app! What an amazing feeling! An idea I had months (years?) ago, but would never have made if it wasn't for Claude Code

@noahiglerSEO Where are you posting videos? On youtube or on here?

Publishing a video on this pretty soon. I walk through all the other marketing channels (PPC, Meta, mailers, bandit/yard signs, d2d, etc. They all work (and some are S-tier DEPENDING on your industry). But they don't compound like SEO and referrals. The best home service businesses I work with get 50-70% of their leads from Google SEO and referrals combined.

There are only 2 S-tier marketing channels for home service businesses. Everything else is a tier or more below. Google SEO and referrals. Here's why I think these two sit alone at the top:

@bree_sharp Couldn't agree more. 👍

Here's what I'd add — #3 is also a cheat code for #1 and #2. Structured data, consistent NAP, quality content that answers real questions? That's exactly what AI tools pull from when they recommend a business. The businesses winning AI citations aren't doing anything mysterious. They just have clean technical foundations and content that actually says something specific. Most agencies skip #3 because they don't know how to bill for it yet.

@noahiglerSEO I think it depends on the niche as well. Some niches just don't need PPC. Some are really competitive, and even Google Maps is half-way down the page

Talked to a roofing company last month that was spending $8-12K/month on Google Ads for the past 3 years. Their cost per lead was around $180-250. They were getting 40-50 leads a month pretty consistently. Then they paused ads for one month to see what would happen. Leads dropped to almost zero (as expected). 3 years of spending, totaling to over $300K total. And the moment they stopped paying, they had nothing except referrals. That's the difference between renting leads and owning them. Google Ads aren't bad. For a lot of home service businesses they're the right move to fill the schedule short-term. But if ads are your ONLY lead source after years of running them... you've built your business on rented ground. SEO is slower. Months 1-3 feel like nothing is happening. But once it compounds, those leads come in every single day whether you're paying or not. The best setup I've seen is running both at the same time. Ads keep the phone ringing today. SEO builds the foundation so you can scale back the ads without your business falling off a cliff. The issue with Ads isn't having to pay for leads. That's the case for almost every lead channel. The issue is when you're 100% at the mercy of paying whatever Google or Meta wants to charge you per lead. As ad costs rise, your margins will shrink. If you've been running ads for 2+ years and still can't turn them off... that should tell you something...

@dotsokt Runway is a good alternative we have tried

OPENAI IS SHUTTING DOWN SORA APP AFTER JUST MONTHS OF LAUNCHING IT.

@hridoyreh What would be the thing to giveaway? A relevant series of books?

@Willo_IO You can use the above way...

I got 9,700+ email subscribers. Even so, this happened in just 90 days. How you can also get:

@ThebilalSEO What niches would you recommend for this strategy?

another Pinterest blog hits 30k pagviews. and made $752/m from Mediavine Journey. I bet you are missing biggest opportunity of 2026

@theseoguy_ For most local businesses, what priority order would you give to the three buckets? 1. Google Maps. 2. Website. 3. AI Visibility?

80/20 of local SEO broken into three buckets WEBSITE SEO keyword in your meta title keyword in your H1 keyword in your H2 500 words of solid copy on your main service page keyword in your URL location pages for every city you serve high quality backlinks pointing to your site your address in the footer of every page internal links between your service pages and location pages make sure google has indexed every important page on your site GOOGLE BUSINESS PROFILE pick the right primary category get more reviews than your competitors at a steady pace make sure your business name, address, and phone number are consistent everywhere upload fresh photos regularly write keyword and location rich responses to every single review post updates a couple times a month with your keyword and city in every one fill out every single section of your GBP completely add your services with detailed descriptions keep your hours accurate and updated LLM SEO get mentioned in listicles and roundup articles about your industry and city accumulate brand mentions on outside websites even without a link build citations across every legitimate directory on the internet local chamber of commerce listing niche specific directory listings for your industry consistent name address and phone number across every platform reviews across multiple platforms not just google schema markup on your website a clearly written about page with your full business details get your business mentioned in local news and local publications

@dotsokt What is the minimum number of images you think you need to get started? i.e. on a rolling 3 month content calendar?

Lock in There’s so much money to be made on facebook

@fba What tools would you recommend for the 'Free tools that generate leads on autopilot'?

4 blog posts a month isn't an SEO strategy. It's a hobby. A 3-month sprint should look something like this: - 100–200 pages of commercial + editorial content - Programmatic SEO setup - 18–25 backlinks - Free tools that generate leads on autopilot By end of summer you're winning the year. While our competitors are still "staying consistent."

@jakezward A website now is more of focal point that influences rankings in other areas. Not the destination it once was

We lost sleep over ChatGPT stealing SEO traffic, but what if Google is the real threat? Yesterday, I was reviewing Google results. Scrolled down looking for the organic pages. And kept scrolling… - 4 text ads (disguised as organic results) - AI Overview summarising the answer - 4 organic results (finally) - 2 MORE text ads Not every results page looks like this today. But if this is the direction, then it's pretty alarming. You spend years building backlinks, optimising your pages, creating supporting content and internal links. You finally crack position 1. And your CTR is ~5%. Buried under ads and an AI Overview that just answered the question for free. But there is a way to future-proof your organic traffic. You’ve got to build authority everywhere, not JUST Google. Search traffic is actually growing year-on-year, it's just fragmented across more places than ever. - Google (ads, AI Overviews, PAA) - AI platforms (ChatGPT, Claude) - Community platforms (Reddit, YouTube) - Social platforms (LinkedIn, X) This obvious shift is the warning… Winning today means showing up everywhere.

@keywordian What kind of niche would you recommend for a facebook page like this?

My Facebook page earned $184.94 in its first 30 days monetized. Not bad for being nearly 100% passive! Sharing my whole process, strategy, and even the general niche I chose below 👇

The 'SEO is dead' graph keeps on trending the same way