E1128: Local SEO is changing as Google, ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and other AI systems influence how people find and evaluate local businesses.
I’m joined by Joy Hawkins and Caleb Ulku for a detailed discussion about what is working in local SEO now, which common tactics are becoming less effective, and how businesses should prepare for AI-powered local search.
Joy and Caleb compare what they are seeing across client accounts, ranking tests, Google Business Profiles, local packs, AI-generated recommendations, website content, reviews, links, and conversion rates.
Topics covered:
– How large language models evaluate local businesses and decide which companies to cite
– Why local businesses need content that clearly explains pricing, processes, outcomes, and service details
– How awards and industry-specific directories influence AI recommendations
– Why winning an award is not enough unless the business also promotes it clearly on its website
– How AI-powered local packs reduce the importance of Google review volume and frequency
– Why Yelp, Facebook, Reddit, and other third-party platforms are becoming more important for local visibility
– Why businesses should encourage customers to describe their experience and outcome in their reviews
– Why fake listings, fake reviews, rank-and-rent listings, and other forms of Google Business Profile spam continue to create problems for legitimate businesses
– How business hours can affect local rankings and why Google’s written guidelines do not always match what works in practice
– Whether keyword-stuffed Google Business Profile names will continue working
– Why improving a local business website’s design can increase leads without rebuilding the entire website
– How AI tools can help businesses improve landing pages, buttons, coupons, images, page layouts, and conversion rates
– How Joy and Caleb use AI to produce content
– Why original interviews, customer stories, project details, pricing information, measurements, timelines, and outcomes make content more useful
– Why publishing dozens or hundreds of similar AI-generated pages is a liability
– How to approach location pages, service-area pages, and multi-location business websites
– When separate location pages compete against each other
– Why press releases appear to have lost much of their previous influence on rankings and AI citations
– Why exact-match anchor text, scaled link building, and guest posting are increasingly risky
– Which local link-building methods still work, including sponsorships, community organizations, youth sports, and relevant award sites
– How excessive informational content, weak search intent, and expansion beyond a site’s authority can damage performance
– How local rank maps and Google Search Console data can reveal missing topical and geographic relevance
– How Google Business Profile categories and services can guide website structure and internal linking
– Where Joy and Caleb disagree about URLs, internal links, location pages, and duplicate content
– Why CTR manipulation and driving-direction manipulation may work temporarily but can create serious long-term risks
– Why tactics that stop working as soon as you stop paying for them are difficult to build a reliable business around
This conversation is for local business owners, SEO consultants, agency owners, marketers, lawyers, home-service companies, and anyone trying to understand how local search is changing.
⭐️ Joy Hawkin’s Agency – Sterling Sky: https://www.sterlingsky.ca/
⭐️ Joy Hawkin’s YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/c/SterlingSkyInc
⭐️ Joy Hawkin’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/joyhawkins/
⭐️ Local Search Forum – https://localsearchforum.com/
⭐️ Caleb Ulku on YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@calebulku
⭐️ Caleb Ulku – https://calebulku.com/
💎 Compact Keywords – My SEO Course – Get paying customers through SEO – Clear step-by-step video breakdowns – SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/
00:00 Meet the Local SEO Pros
00:34 Getting Recognized IRL
02:02 Local SEO in the LLM Era
04:31 Awards as AI Signals
07:52 Paying for Credibility
12:34 Reviews Beyond Google
15:47 Yelp and Reddit Trust
18:50 Spam and Fake Listings
23:40 Loopholes That May Die
25:50 Big Missed Opportunities
31:35 AI Content That Ranks
36:38 AI Content Scaling Trap
37:12 Unique Content vs Relevance
38:24 Citygate Pages Risk
39:53 Multiple Locations Strategy
41:14 Press Releases Decline
43:08 Anchor Text Crackdown
43:55 Local Link Building Wins
48:46 Traffic Drops and Audits
55:22 GBP Landing Page Fixes
58:03 Citations and CTR Hype
01:02:27 Fake Reviews and Takedowns
01:05:44 Site Structure and URLs
01:10:00 30 Day Action Plan
01:11:25 Wrap Up and Thanks
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/
#localseo #localsearchengineoptimization #localmarketing
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Just loved this podcast.
For someone from complete beginner as small business owner in home service hvac wants to learn seo with claude or any ai. Can you recommend any guidance courses please. Thank you in advance 🙏
2 people i have learned a ton from. Norzer thanks you greatly 😉
I was finding this interesting until you spoke about using claude for websites that's when I realized how unprofessional that is and how unclean the code is it writes.
Calebs channel is ok. But he's course is rubbish tbh. Following it exactly will get you nowhere.
Love Jasper.
i was interested in asking the girl about her seo services until she said "i'm a mod on a few subreddits". rip
Edward shares the most stupid, misleading crap on social media I don't listen to a word you say anymore
Also, ads are now rolling out in AI overviews. I just saw a few today. Ugh.
The sad reality is that search is becoming less and less about helping people discover the best businesses and more about which businesses can afford to pay the most to be seen. This is going to drive smaller companies out of business because we live in a pay to play online world now.
You putting this up for free is actually clutch – praise to you
45:30 as Joy mentioned, it doesn't matter. What SEOs are going to have to wrap their head around is nofollow/follow doesn't really hold the weight it previously had. A brand mention (even unlinked) can have the same effect as a high power link.
And your badge gives that lawyer site backlinks. Clever.
I call internally listing reciprocal. You always want to link back. Good content
Awesome collab! Very cool to see three of the best local SEO experts in the same video discussing FAQs.
I’ve never experienced this many awkward pauses since my first date with Ashley in the 9th grade. Needless to say it didn’t end well…
But great content thank you
Everyone here is great. Edward created opportunity by getting them together, which is so cool and value-adding. Joy rattles off results of testing left and right with gold dropping. Caleb's concept of mapping Google Maps to the web pages is cool.
Ed+Joy+Called
As a new website creator using cursor, and I'm not a web designer, I'm an engineer. I find your talk fascinating and very helpful and always give me something to take away and try out.
I built a complete backend thought process and hosted my first site, it took me 9 months to get it to do what I wanted to do. However, ranking I noticed would not work with traditional SEO as we knew it doesn't work. People are asking the ai agents the question and the agent is serving the food, not a list on Google which was what we used to want to rank for. Soni then set about building a fork version of firecrawl to study competing websites and strip out their ads and create the .MD file of their sites and make their information accessible to a scoring tool, I then scored them and compare mine to theirs. The tool then has the option to report on my site with recommendations..I have the option to switch different agents, i.e. Claude, Grok, sonnet5, cursor2.5, fable, you name it they're all in there so I can ask the different LLM'S, what they think too and they all create their own report, then I can compare in the table listing.
My site is carmotiq.co.uk
Thank you once again for some great content.
#brilliantseo #localseotoday #edjoycalebJasper #carmotiq
Great show.
From North Wales,.United Kingdom.
I've watched Joy dozens of times. Great to meet you Caleb and Ed.
Thank you guys! Very inspiring and informative.