Showing In A.I For A Typical Local Service Business

[00:00:02] Intro & Outro: It's time for the SEO show, where a couple of nerds talk search engine optimization so you can learn to compete in Google and grow your business online. Now, here's your hosts, Michael and Arthur.

[00:00:24] Michael: Hello, and welcome to the SEO show for another episode. You like that? Yeah.

[00:00:29] Arthur: You open your mouth real wide. Hello. See, I do. I do.

[00:00:34] Michael: See, we do some of these in person. That was a good one, Riverside. But when we're in person, we sit. How far apart would we be right now?

[00:00:41] Arthur: About a meter.

[00:00:42] Michael: It's very personal, isn't it?

[00:00:43] Arthur: Yeah.

[00:00:44] Michael: You can see how wide I open, how excited I am to be talking SEO. I was like a. Hello. Anyway, well, the reason I open my mouth like a python is I'm excited yet again because we're talking SEO, but we're talking talking ranking in AI. Not just ranking in AI, like as a general concept or anything. We're going to talk about what we see works for a typical local service business in Australia or maybe any western country. But, like, all our testing has been in Australia. How are they showing up in AI? How's it working? That's what we're talking. You looked at me worried, like I was asking you a question.

[00:01:26] Arthur: Yeah, you put me on the spot there. You wanted me to run through the whole episode myself.

[00:01:29] Michael: How does AI work? Tell me. No. So let's reverse back in time a little bit. About six months or so when about when we stopped doing these episodes, I shifted my focus to publishing content, to Instagram. Feed your sales team, shout out little plug.

[00:01:47] Arthur: Very good.

[00:01:48] Michael: Shame free plug there. And not just SEO stuff on that page. It's all about conversion and generating leads and all the rest of it. And AI, of course, is a big thing that people care about. And at first I was trying to, like, reverse engineer what AI is looking at in its references and dig into the code and figure out ways that you could write articles around what it's searching for and trying to get way too technical about things. But over time, I noticed that largely AI is just searching the web when you ask it questions about a local service business. So we're talking the context of just a business that wants to generate leads or be found in AI by customers. Right. So then I started digging into, you know, Claude, Gemini and ChatGPT. What are they actually looking at when they dig into things? And let's use Gold coast masonry. So it's a business that I built a website for and shared all the content on the Instagram about, you know, the results that we got. If I go to Gemini and search in, you know, stone installation business on the Gold Coast. Gemini doesn't rely on its training data. So with AI, they're trained on data. And if you ask it questions around like a historical person or you're trying to get it to do coding, it uses its training data, internal data.

[00:03:06] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah.

[00:03:08] Michael: But if you ask it about like a great business in a certain geographical area, it doesn't use training data. It goes out and searches the web. But what it does is it doesn't just search one thing, it acts as like a real high speed researcher, like flying through pages, reading books really quick. Have you ever seen that meme video of the guy that says like, yeah, the guy.

[00:03:34] Arthur: I'm the world record hoarder for reading a book. And he's just like, yeah, he opens

[00:03:39] Michael: the book and goes. That is literally what AI is doing. Yeah, but it's using all sorts of different areas. So yes, you need to rank in Google because AI goes and searches Google, but it will go and look at your Google business profile and look at your address, your service hours, customer photos, your reviews. It reads keywords in reviews that you have from people. It will go and look at third party validation. So whether you're on like Reddit sites, business directories, whether you're in local Gold coast news sites, in the case of this stonemason, it will look for proof, like evidence, like social case studies, portfolios, that sort of stuff on your website. Then it like will look at local signals. So do you have suburb pages on your site? Love talking about suburb pages, but do the pages talk about specific local landmarks and things that might be only relevant to that suburb? Do you have reviews from people that mentioned, you know, got the best stone installation of all time in Robina, you know, like a suburb on the Gold Coast. And then it will even look at things like are you on the city of Gold coast at the council? Are you listed on their site? And then it uses finally a thing called query fan app. So SEO nerds, what's that love? Query Fan app. So instead of just searching, if I have typed in stone installation Gold coast or the best stone installer on the Gold coast, it won't just search stone installation Gold coast, but it starts with one key theme and then it fans out, it broadens its searches so it will search for best rated stone installers. Gold Coast Stonemasonry reviews, Gold Coast, Common complaints about stone installers on the Gold Coast. Okay, and then it reads all of that stuff so it can see if you're getting bad reviews and Then know not to recommend you interesting and understand all the nuances.

[00:05:29] Arthur: Yeah.

[00:05:29] Michael: So all of this is happening in like a matter of couple of seconds.

[00:05:34] Arthur: That's insane.

[00:05:35] Michael: It's bonkers.

[00:05:36] Speaker D: Yeah.

[00:05:37] Michael: And then it recommends what it says the best is or like the most relevant for that search term. So the general gist is you need to have a really strong digital footprint, so to speak across like your website and then strong third party websites. And most of it is stuff that is just good old fashioned SEO, but some of it is AI focused.

[00:06:01] Arthur: Wow, you've been busy.

[00:06:03] Michael: I have been busy and it's very interesting stuff. And we come back to like people talk about I need to show an AI and then they'll be like best stone mason Gold coast or whatever. I want to rank number one in AI for that. But that is not how it works because everything I just said there then there's a whole nother layer of it. You ready?

[00:06:27] Arthur: I'm ready for this.

[00:06:28] Michael: If we're all using ChatGPT or Claude or whatever, some people are on paid plans where I feel the paid version, you get better versions of the AI to the. Of course. And if you have like a logged in account, you have the history like the memory in Gemini. In Claude, you might have to turn on memory or like approve it to remember chats. So there's extra layers of personalization and stuff going on as well. So there's no such thing as ranking number one in AI. Get that out of your head. What you need to do is make sure that you are relevant for like a theme. So stonemasonry and Gold coast and all of the suburbs and the Gold coast through the content on your site and then all of that stuff so that you have an opportunity to be return in AI when people search all sorts of random different stuff or query all sorts of random different stuff. Okay, but there's no such thing as the number one ranking.

[00:07:21] Arthur: Yeah. So it starts with a good website is what you're saying?

[00:07:25] Michael: Yeah, starts with a good. Well, you know, before we go any further. Okay, what I was talking about then is Gemini and Claude. What I've noticed with ChatGPT is ChatGPT is obsessed with your essentially maps like your local SEO rankings. And I've asked ChatGPT, like why do you seem to favor like local. Cause like my Gold coast masonry, we got the Google, my business profile banned immediately when we created it for him, even though he's a legit business. Cause we created it, spun it up and then he asked a couple of people to leave Reviews on it and it just got reviews too quick and it got automated, shut down. We had to do the whole film, his car and all that. And he's just a trading guy that couldn't. He did it but it all got automatically banned and then you're in purgatory, then you're never coming back. So we don't have a Google business profile for him. He still ranks really well. Yeah. And locally. But like ChatGPT really leans on that heavily. So I was noticing Chat wasn't recommending him, whereas Gemini and Claude were. And ChatGPT really pulls on Google Maps or the same kind of signals that Google Maps surfaces. So it will go and look at like the number of competitors, review count, star ratings, recency of reviews, velocity descriptions, photos, all that sort of stuff and business directory. So it's. I feel ChatGPT is a lot more local SEO driven than Gemini and Claude, which pull on a lot more stuff. Admittedly I don't use a paid version of chat.

[00:08:54] Arthur: I do.

[00:08:55] Michael: Yeah. So maybe you would see something different perhaps.

[00:08:58] Arthur: Yeah. So where does Claude get its. Well, when you say it searches the web, where does it predominantly look? Is it Google, is it Bing?

[00:09:05] Michael: Both you ask, you try to ask it what it's looking, where it's pulling that from and it will be very vague. I use APIs and stuff and it doesn't tell you. Yeah, but Google, really. Yeah, it would be. Right.

[00:09:17] Arthur: Because that's where all the data is.

[00:09:19] Michael: Yeah. And I haven't even checked what the Bing rankings are for this stonemason. But the basic gist is you need a strong website that has pages around every suburb that big ups yourself. Like I often see, AI will go and read on stuff you say about yourself on your site and repeat it verbatim when it does its search results. So an example is he's a stonemason, He's a solar operator, 25 years of experience, blah, blah, put that all on the site and then we've built pages for like Mermaid Beach, Burley, like suburbs.

[00:09:58] Speaker D: Yeah.

[00:09:58] Michael: And if I go search, who's a good stonemason to install stone on my wall in Mermaid beach? If I want someone that's going to do a good job kind of thing. Like a specific thing.

[00:10:07] Arthur: Yeah.

[00:10:08] Michael: It goes and sees that he has a Mermaid beach page and that he's been around 25 years and then it just recommends him because he's been around 25 years. But he's just written that on his site.

[00:10:17] Arthur: Yeah.

[00:10:18] Michael: So you need the content on your site.

[00:10:21] Arthur: Yep.

[00:10:21] Michael: Like your Website is.

[00:10:23] Speaker D: Yeah.

[00:10:24] Michael: Basically the, the pitch to the AI, the first thing that it's going to look at. But you need to be able to be found in Google first. Like if you're that said, sometimes it pulls stuff. This query fan out technique pulls results from page like 6, 7 of Google. Yeah, that was interesting.

[00:10:40] Arthur: And the thing is you probably. You could be ranking for longer tail keywords that it's finding as well. But you do, you still need to be found is what. Yeah, I guess the main point is.

[00:10:52] Michael: Yeah, you need the content on your site. You need to be, you need authority. Like that third party validation that I spoke about. That's link building has always been link building.

[00:11:01] Arthur: Yeah.

[00:11:02] Michael: But AI will take stuff like just branded mentions. So if you like you know, a local community group where people whinge about like someone, someone's cat came in my front yard.

[00:11:13] Speaker D: Yeah.

[00:11:14] Michael: If this is your cat, like there's

[00:11:16] Arthur: a photo of like a security camera

[00:11:17] Michael: cat just whinging like who's this person that put their dog poo in our bin? Whatever. Those groups also have people talking about like who's a good plumber for a bok dream? And that stuff is all being found, you know, when we talk about the like through the pages.

[00:11:34] Arthur: Yeah.

[00:11:35] Michael: The AI is reading all of that. Think about the crap AI has to read. People whinging about E bikes and teenagers and anyway, in amongst that it's finding that content. So it's not just link building like you would do from a normal SEO point of view. Yeah. That stuff's important to rank in Google still. But you want to be going to your local community groups, name dropping yourself on whatever post you can find that's relevant to your keywords and your locations. Even going on Reddit. Reddit has become a cesspool of people spamming businesses to found like that for a while.

[00:12:09] Arthur: It's getting worse and worse, worse and worse.

[00:12:12] Michael: I have a theory that in like a couple of years time it's just not going to be useful anymore for humans.

[00:12:20] Arthur: Right.

[00:12:20] Michael: Is it? Yeah.

[00:12:21] Arthur: Yeah. It's sad because it was one of those platforms where you'd go to for actual real honest people's opinions on things. But now it's just. Even in the last six to 12 months I've shifted away because I know that people are just plugging their own affiliates and products and things like that and it's very hard to see what's like legit.

[00:12:41] Michael: Yep.

[00:12:42] Arthur: And get like a good honest response on something.

[00:12:44] Michael: Yep. So people are. Yeah, I, I don't know, like But

[00:12:49] Arthur: I guess that's why Facebook groups were good, because they were often, like, localized. They're often closed groups, so you need to get someone to approve. So you, you would think that the staff and opinions there are more legitimate than something like Reddit, where anyone can make an account and post.

[00:13:05] Michael: But I think ultimately everything is going to be astroturfed, if you want to call it that, by people incentivized to be trying to show up in AI and Google.

[00:13:16] Arthur: Absolutely. Yeah.

[00:13:17] Michael: So even closed Facebook groups, there'll be people that build profiles and season them and use them to spam stuff. Yeah, for sure. That said, just, you know, if you're a local business in an area, you would have a Facebook page and you could recommend yourself in these posts. Because the other thing I've noticed is recency, like, freshness matters. Like, if you are in a roundup post from 2019, that's probably worthless. So fresh stuff, new posts, new articles. Like if you. If I search blockchain plumber in a suburb on the Sunshine coast, it's pulling recent posts, not stuff from years ago.

[00:14:00] Arthur: So are you talking like off site or on site?

[00:14:03] Michael: Off site.

[00:14:04] Arthur: Off site. Yeah.

[00:14:04] Michael: Yeah. Well, you know what? Both, really. Generally you don't want to have, like, not that most service businesses would use dates and metadata and that sort of stuff anyway. But yeah, so, yeah, most, like, if I'm a service business, most aren't doing a good job of things like suburb pages. So this was a big one. Like, if you want to rank when someone, if someone's going on AI, think about how they're going to use it. They're probably typing in, like, I am getting a stone wall done at my house in whatever suburb and I want to work, like, who are the top three people in the area that are local, where I can check out their work and have done other walls in, like the neighborhood. Yeah, the AI is going to go out and find all that stuff. If you don't have content on your site, talking about that, that's the first sort of fail point for you. Yeah. And most execute that pretty poorly. Like, they use templated pages where.

[00:14:58] Arthur: That's it. Yeah. I did something similar for a pest control client where the content they had on their site was very general and it wasn't really speaking to the location because different locations have different climates, different pests. Like this one was based on the sun, sunshine coast, so they have termite problems year round. Whereas, like other locations here, maybe seasonal.

[00:15:19] Michael: Right.

[00:15:19] Arthur: Where it's warmer, more moist, but just, you know, making the Content more targeted to that suburb made a difference.

[00:15:27] Michael: Yeah.

[00:15:28] Arthur: Because A, it's more relevant and B, it started ranking because it was, you know, speaking to that market and relevant.

[00:15:37] Michael: Yep. So that on your site is a starting point.

[00:15:40] Arthur: Yeah.

[00:15:41] Michael: So I like suburb pages. Talking about all of your benefits and selling points as a business, which is what we talk about from a conversion point of view, like benefit driven copy in the way people would care about. So you don't just list features but benefits, that sort of stuff so that the AI can pick up on that when people are asking questions around that like who's the best or the other

[00:16:02] Arthur: thing I did is. And you hate this but eat.

[00:16:06] Michael: Yeah.

[00:16:06] Arthur: So creating a little author profile for the owner and then, you know, spruiking it all around the site, publishing all the posts on his behalf with the little blurb with all his experience and all his accreditations and all the stuff that you'd want to see. Yeah, I think that plays a part as well.

[00:16:23] Michael: Yeah.

[00:16:24] Arthur: Because previously the posts were basically nameless, generic rubbish. Right. It was just like how to treat your house for termites, one caller pest control company like blah, blah, blah. Now the content's super targeted for that specific region written by an experienced pest control expert which, you know, logically makes sense. It's going to rank better.

[00:16:44] Michael: Yeah.

[00:16:45] Arthur: And it's going to show up.

[00:16:46] Michael: Yeah. On the topic of onsite as well. Not E, E A T but AI likes structure. So you know, like some local business websites are just a hodgepodge of trash like wix. There's stuff all over the place, no structure to it. If information on a page is more like well organized and it has heading, subheading, bulleted list, numbered list so that when AI lands on it, it's easy to extract information and claims from it. That stuff does better. So that's something else. Which again that's an SEO. When you were trying to optimize for featured snippets and stuff in the past

[00:17:29] Arthur: doing that like on blog posts with like FAQ schema and then anchoring like a table of contents, making it very easy for people in Google and any sort of crawler to kind of consume the content.

[00:17:40] Speaker D: Yeah.

[00:17:42] Michael: So for me the big differences between like we ranking for SEO is super important.

[00:17:46] Arthur: Yes.

[00:17:46] Michael: And that's the first and foremost thing you need to do. All the good SEO basics where you can have extra additional influence on just the AI side of things I would say is like Quora, Reddit, Facebook groups, just branded mentions in that having some sort of reference to your Brand in that doesn't have to be links, but they're looking at that stuff a lot more. And then other things like random business directories and hyperlocal stuff that might not have done stuff from an SEO point of view in the past. AI is looking at that trust, trust stuff. Awards, local awards, Anything local. Even if you're featured on, like sponsoring a sport team or whatever. A local sport team. And having your name mentioned on that really helps. But outside of that, it's really doing the SEO basics well, I guess the other thing is link building. It's not always so important to have a link. Now, just mentioning your business name and location keywords and service keywords in an article on the topic of stone installation on the Gold Cove. So, you know, you used to. If you would reach out to people and they'd publish content and not link to you, it would be a disaster.

[00:19:00] Arthur: You reach out and you beg them for a link.

[00:19:01] Michael: Please can you just make this word a link? Yeah. Now if you're just looking at AI as where you're wanting to show in, that's not so important.

[00:19:09] Arthur: Yeah. I mean, you still probably want to get the link for SEO.

[00:19:13] Michael: Of course.

[00:19:13] Arthur: Yeah, for sure.

[00:19:14] Michael: Because again, everything we're talking about here, most people are finding you through SEO still. Yeah. AI is a tiny fraction of traffic and leads for service businesses at the moment. The other big thing point of difference with AI compared to SEO is roundup posts. Like, they bloody love AI loves top lists or listicles. Like, you know, the top five plumbers in. I don't know, Naura.

[00:19:42] Arthur: Do you think it'll just get smarter and realize people are now manipulating it? Yes, because like, everyone's doing it. So eventually AI is going to be like, okay, well these aren't real. Like, these aren't real. So it's going to bypass all those listicles and roundups and start actually using all the things you're talking about now.

[00:20:01] Michael: Yeah, it's going to be.

[00:20:04] Arthur: Sorry, I was going to say. And again, these roundup posts and lists are very subjective as well. To someone.

[00:20:10] Michael: Right? Well, yeah, it looks at that as part of its query. Fan out. You know, like, so if it sees you on them. Yeah, but then it also sees that you've won local awards on an award site.

[00:20:25] Speaker D: Yeah.

[00:20:26] Arthur: Pieces.

[00:20:26] Michael: You've got heaps of reviews talking about all of that stuff. So which is ultimately, what is it? It's just being a good business operator at the end of the day. Like, it's all stuff that you should be trying to do.

[00:20:39] Arthur: Yeah, true. Very true.

[00:20:40] Michael: Create content around stuff that your people are searching for, get links, win awards, be featured in like reviews, roundup posts, get reviews from customers that talk about suburbs. Like it's all like no brainer type stuff. Yeah, I think that, well, that makes

[00:20:58] Arthur: sense that only the best businesses show up in AI, right?

[00:21:02] Michael: Well, yeah, largely it is frustrating when businesses. You think a business should show up and it doesn't.

[00:21:12] Arthur: Well, yeah, but I mean based on everything you said, a business that's getting good reviews, that is getting awards, that has people mentioning them and Reddit, different communities naturally deserves to be in an AI overview.

[00:21:25] Speaker D: Yeah.

[00:21:27] Michael: So AI is serving the purpose of a human doing all sorts of research across all sorts of different platforms very quickly and just amalgamating it all.

[00:21:36] Arthur: Yeah.

[00:21:37] Michael: So be present across all of them and you have a chance at least.

[00:21:41] Arthur: Yeah, for sure. Interesting stuff.

[00:21:44] Michael: Yeah.

[00:21:45] Arthur: Again it's interesting because it all kind of falls back to SEO. Good SEO is, you know, the foundation of it all.

[00:21:53] Michael: Yeah.

[00:21:53] Arthur: And then you supplement with these other things, like 8020 SEO, get SEO cranking, supplement it with these other things and then you have a good chance of appearing in ChatGPT and everywhere. Everywhere else.

[00:22:05] Michael: Like I asked Claude, when you're searching a keyword like best stone installer and the Gold coast or something, what are you actually prioritizing? And it told me relevance to the specific query. So does the page address the topic? Is it on service pages, directories, linking to it? So that's just basic SEO.

[00:22:24] Arthur: Yes.

[00:22:24] Michael: Then it says authority signals. I'm naturally drawn to content. I like the idea of AI being drawn to content that appears credible. So well known directories like hi Pages, house service seeking, established business websites, government or industry bodies, media outlets. If you have a thin one page site with no detail, it gets less weight than a site that has more detail. So all of those authority signals recency and freshness. So more recent content gets priority, especially for queries where currency matters. So pricing, availability, reviews. Yes, that's in your reviews as well. Specificity and depth. So page that has types of stone, local applications, pricing photos, FAQs, rather than just a generic, we do stone installation, straight content being structured, which I spoke about before. Then the big one is corroboration. So when multiple sources agree on something, it's more confident in signing it. So that's being on all the business directories, it's being in roundup posts, it's being on Quora, Reddit and Facebook. That's it. That's basically it.

[00:23:24] Arthur: Nice.

[00:23:24] Michael: So be in all of Those spots when Google, when the tools do their fan out searches and you show up in AI and you can capture that 2% of traffic that's there and maybe get a couple of leads a year.

[00:23:36] Arthur: Yeah. See, I guess it does seem like a lot of work for little, I guess, result at the moment.

[00:23:43] Speaker D: Yeah.

[00:23:44] Arthur: For a small service based business.

[00:23:46] Michael: Yeah. I think it's going to stay that way for a while yet.

[00:23:48] Arthur: Yeah. I mean you can do all this and I guess it goes back to what you said. Like you as a business should be doing these things anyway because that's what a good, good business is. Right. Gets good reviews, gets awards. Maybe not awards because rewards, we know you buy pain. Yeah, you buy awards a lot of the time, but everything else, reviews, you know, getting people speaking about you in communities or like favorably. If you're doing a good job as a business, that would come naturally a lot of the time.

[00:24:13] Speaker D: Yeah.

[00:24:14] Michael: And if you're focusing on SEO, where traffic and leads come from at the moment, you're hitting a lot of that anyway. So it's not wasted effort because your Google rankings.

[00:24:23] Speaker D: Yeah.

[00:24:23] Michael: And first and foremost, when we talk about it like it's fanning out and searching Google, so you need to be there from an SEO point of view, that's the most important part to start with. So that's it.

[00:24:35] Arthur: Nice. I like that. That was interesting.

[00:24:37] Michael: There's not much more to it really. Like there's no magic thing that'll have you number one for everyone all times for.

[00:24:43] Arthur: So this is why you've been gone for six months.

[00:24:48] Michael: Yeah, part of the reason, I guess.

[00:24:52] Speaker D: No, it's good.

[00:24:54] Arthur: I like it.

[00:24:55] Michael: So. Yeah. Hopefully you enjoyed that.

[00:24:57] Arthur: I did.

[00:24:57] Michael: Hopefully the listeners enjoyed that, but I think they will. We'll wrap this one up. We'll be back at some point in the future when we can be bothered to do another episode with another episode of the SEO show. But until then, happy, happy. Semantic fanout query indexing, if that's a thing. See you later. Bye.

[00:25:16] Intro & Outro: Thanks for listening to the SEO Show. If you like what you heard, don't forget to subscribe and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. It will really help the show. We'll see you in the next episode.