Alan Smith

He is risen!

@theseoguy_ He is risen indeed!

Happy Easter to all those who celebrate. Jesus is King.

There's a massive difference between what a $500/month SEO agency does and what a $3,000/month one does. Most business owners don't know what they're actually paying for at either level so here's a transparent breakdown. At $500/month, you're usually getting one person managing 40-60 accounts. The math just doesn't work for anything hands-on at that price point. What that typically looks like: They'll submit your business to some directories. Probably automated through a tool. They might write a blog post or two per month, usually un-edited AI content that could apply to any business in any city. They'll "optimize" your GBP once during onboarding and then barely touch it again. Reporting is usually a templated PDF showing keyword rankings that may or may not drive actual calls. There's no custom strategy. There's no real link building. There's no conversion rate work on your website. There's no ongoing GBP management. Very rarely do they REALLY understand how to rank a GBP. There's no call tracking or lead attribution. It's a system built to service a high volume of clients at a low cost, and the results reflect that. It has it's place. I think for new businesses that can't run this themself (~1 hours per week max), it's not the worst investment. At $3,000/month, the scope changes completely. You're usually getting a dedicated strategist (or a small team) who actually knows your market, your competitors, and your numbers. Here's what that typically includes: Full GBP management: > Categories audited and optimized > Services filled out > Photos uploaded consistently > Posts published weekly > Review responses handled with keywords and locations worked in naturally > Good CTR (low volume) > Pending edits monitored so nobody messes with your listing. Website work: > Service pages built out for every major keyword > Location pages for every suburb in your service area with unique content, not copy and paste with city names swapped > CRO improvements so the traffic you're getting actually converts into calls > Page speed optimization for mobile > Site structure work > Elite internal linking so Google ACTUALLY wants to rank your pages Real link building: > 30-70 real citations indexed > Local backlinks from suppliers, trade partners, chambers of commerce, and industry directories > Press release distribution to get you on news sites > Listicle placements for AI search visibility. Not automated directory spam Content strategy: > Blog posts that target real search queries your customers are typing into Google > FAQ content that feeds into AI search and Google's "Know Before You Go" features > Content that builds topical authority over time > Intentional internal linking to your $$ pages Tracking and attribution: > Unique call tracking numbers for GBP and website so you know exactly where every lead comes from > Monthly reporting that shows actual leads generated, not just rankings > CRM integration when possible so you can tie a dollar amount to every call Ongoing strategy: > Monthly audits of what's working and what's not > Competitor monitoring > Adjusting based on algorithm changes, new Google features, and shifts in your market The $500 agency isn't necessarily scamming you. They're just giving you $500 worth of work. And for most home service businesses trying to grow in a competitive market, that's not enough to move the needle. The question isn't really "which is cheaper." It's "which one actually generates a higher return." If $500/month produces 2 extra leads and $3,000/month produces 30, the more expensive option is the better deal by a wide margin. Not every business needs the $3,000 package on day one. But if you're doing $1-5M in revenue and trying to grow, the difference in what you get at each level is the difference between SEO "not working" and SEO being your best lead source.

Local business owners: check your AI visibility before your competitors do. LocalAIGrader.com shows how visible your business is in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini, then gives you a score and report with what to improve so you can rank better in AI search and win!

Check how visible your business in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. This tool will give you a snapshot of how these models view your business. localaigrader.com

@Chuck_3559 Absolutely. SEO primes the pump, but AI has other indicators.

@thealansmith Most SMB owners don't realize this until they test it. Ask ChatGPT to recommend a plumber in your city — see who comes up. The businesses appearing aren't the best reviewed, they're the ones whose digital presence gives AI something concrete to work with.

Small Business owner, your data was not used to train LLM models, which means models must do a search to put your business in AI results. Which means optimization matters. On site, local factors, and AI citations. They all matter for local SMB

AI search is gaining market share over Google. More and more of your competitors are searching with ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini. If your business is not optimized for the AI search, they your business is invisible. Visit localaigrader.com and get your business graded.

@theseoguy_ Great idea! Yes!

thinking of dropping a standalone listicle building service listicles are a cheat code for getting ranked in LLMs recent study by AHRefs say 43% of sources in ChatGPT for “best” queries are listicles who would be interested?

SERVICE-AS-A-SOFTWARE. That is the real opportunity for 90% of us. I keep watching smart people pour months into building beautiful UI applications that Anthropic and OpenAI are going to absorb in a single product update. It will feel ARCHAIC in two years that we used to click through user interfaces to navigate databases and complete tasks. Agents just do it. One prompt. Done. 90% of the entire application layer is going to get eaten over the next decade. The dashboards. The forms. The CRUD. All of it. Where does that leave you? Exactly where the money is. Service-as-a-software. E.g. An ad agency that bakes its winning playbooks into AI systems and serves 1,000 clients with the quality they used to give 10. An IP law firm that encodes decades of expertise into AI skill files and sells legal services at infinite scale with near-zero marginal cost. A consulting firm. An accounting practice. A creative studio. Pick your vertical. The backend is AI. The frontend is your expertise packaged as a service. The moat is that YOU actually know what good looks like in your domain. You're not competing with OpenAI. You're competing with other service providers who are still doing everything manually. That's not a hard fight to win. Encode your knowledge. Automate your delivery. Sell the service. Scale infinitely. The technology gets commoditized. The person who knows how to USE it doesn't.

@irentdumpsters AI models also generate results from their training data. If your content is outside the training data for the model, it won’t be cited. Good SEO practices are the bulk of the work for AI SEO, but there are additional tactics and optimization that helps with AI citation.

"AI SEO" is not a real thing Every week I see someone selling a "ChatGPT ranking strategy" like it's some secret playbook Here's the truth: ChatGPT pulls from Google. From your website. From your reviews. From your content. If you rank on Google, you rank on ChatGPT. If your website has real content answering real questions, ChatGPT will recommend you. There is no separate algorithm to hack. There is no AI SEO secret. Do real SEO. Write real content. Get real reviews. That's it. That's the strategy. Anyone charging you extra for "AI optimization" is selling you something you already have if your SEO is done right. Stop falling for new labels on old tactics Nothing has changed just minor tweaks in existing strategies

Most business owners optimize their Google Business Profile in one sitting. Category. Address. Phone number. Description. Services. Products. All in one afternoon. They wake up the next morning to a suspended listing. Invisible on Google. Zero calls. Zero direction requests. Nothing. Here is what happened. Google has automated systems that monitor every change you make to your profile. When multiple core fields change in a short window, the system flags it as suspicious activity. It looks like someone hijacked your listing. The result is an automatic suspension. Getting reinstated means video verification, documentation, and up to two weeks of waiting while your competitors collect every lead that should have been yours. This is completely avoidable. One significant change per day. Ideally space them 48 hours apart. Category counts. Address counts. Phone number counts. Description counts. Services count. Those are identity fields. Google treats changes to them seriously. What you can do as much as you want: upload photos, respond to reviews, publish posts. Google wants you doing those things. They are engagement signals. But the moment you touch a core field, stop there for the day. Work through your optimizations over two weeks instead of two hours.

@Nick_Meagher Not going to be much of an issue moving forward. All data is directed in AI models and traffic, sales, leads, prospects, and business will be derived from LLM. It won’t matter if your site loads in 2 sec or 6 sec by the time they visit your website. AI is killing that issue.

Your website loads in 6 seconds on mobile. Your competitor's loads in 2. That's not just a user experience problem. It's a ranking problem. 🧵

@JohnMorabitoSEO @semrush Canceled mine last week.

Is it just me or has @semrush become pretty intolerable to work with. I’m very much thinking of canceling my account. What are you guys think?

@theseoguy_ 🤚

my team and I are considering launching a local SEO community inside you’ll find… - GBP verification without a video - click through rate manipulation - A to Z Guide on Local SEO - how we use Claude internally for SEO and a hell of a lot more who’s interested?

SEO agencies are DEAD. I fired my $50k/mo agency and asked Claude to do it. Instead of my agency executing on content, building links, and driving pipeline, I now get: • 40-page audits • 145 keyword clusters • 19 AI-generated slop roadmaps • Do all the work myself instead of running the actual business Revenue is down 87% but the charts look incredible.

AI can build anything you ask for. But the hard part was never the building. It was knowing what to ask for in the first place.

Tweet of the year?

10/10 speech by Secretary Rubio The fact that European leaders gave this a standing ovation at the end is truly a very encouraging sign

Dear Generalists, 70%+ of commercial SaaS code is free open source. Multi-billion $ moats have been built on top of free software for decades If your thesis is cheaper/faster dev cycles kills SaaS, you’re 15 years late. The product isn't the code