Local SEO Tactics for the AI-Powered Web  ## Metadata - Author: [[The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast]] - Full Title: Local SEO Tactics for the AI-Powered Web - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/e7959842-732e-4e74-b84a-3994a213debb ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **AI Overviews Transform Local SEO** - AI overviews are a fundamental shift in local SEO, turning Google into a content creator, not just a link provider. - This reduces website clicks but delivers quick, efficient answers to users. Transcript: John Jantsch Know that's a big question, but let's start there. David Hunter Absolutely. Yeah. So AI overviews are not a small change. It's a fundamental shift. It's not a little algorithm update, which is what we're used to as marketers working with Google and others. But this is a big difference here. I think the biggest complaint that marketers have is that it's evaporating the clicks to your website. Because it, you know, sort of complaint number two is that it distills the answer on its own. So Google is no longer just simply the provider of 10 blue links. Now they are a content creator. So Google as a content creator is fundamentally different from what it has been for the last 30 years or so. And that's a big difference. But at the same time, on the upside, boy, it gets the answer very quickly. Now, it might not always be the right answer. The sources might be a little bit weird, but to the end user, it ([Time 0:01:55](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a293c87f-bf7f-400e-a49e-06365e168c87)) - **Conversational Search is Rising** - Users increasingly use conversational, long-tail queries for local search, guided by AI features. - This shift makes local search more nuanced and tailored than before. Transcript: David Hunter Yeah. And, and I mean, it makes sense. As consumers and users of Google, we're definitely used to typing in, yeah, pizza near me and finding a quick response through the map pack. I mean, that's fairly efficient, but you don't get that nuanced conversational answer. So what we're doing as consumers, and I think that, you know, it's almost a happy accident by Google that they've rolled out AI overviews. And then phase two is this AI mode, which I think is sort of the future of what the Google SERP looks like. They're almost training us as consumers to start querying with long tail conversational searches. And so I'm seeing that behavior change. You know, and I look at it and I have colleagues that are always like, well, you know, the old folks, they're not going to do that. Well, yes, yes, they are. ([Time 0:03:45](https://share.snipd.com/snip/88e4c9ff-0674-40d6-b5a3-63b86032b543)) - **Proximity's Reduced SEO Weight** - Proximity still matters in local SEO but less than before; prominence and expertise weigh more now. - Local SEO results account for relevance and authority more than just physical closeness. Transcript: John Jantsch Do we take advantage of getting it to show us in a wider range? David Hunter Right. And you're dead on about that with the service area business. I think there's a lot of opportunity for them to really get even more visibility because of this. When local search first became a thing, there was proximity and then prominence and relevance, right? Those were the three components that made up local search. John Jantsch Have a lot of reviews. Right, right. David Hunter And be relevant. If I'm looking for a remodeling contractor, don't show me a list of the barbershops, right? So it's got to be relevant. And obviously it gets much more nuanced than that because, well, what kind of remodeling? I mean, home remodeler, commercial, whatever. So bathrooms, kitchens, but there's definitely a shift happening. And so at Local Falcon, we have basically spent, we've built our platform on tracking results around you, right? The grid, we use a grid pattern where you can basically see over top of your business, but then expand it out however far you want to go radius wise, and then you drop a bunch of pins and you Can see these results. Well, the future is definitely changing. And so we recently ([Time 0:06:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/72982f0d-8af4-4505-bb02-599ed79cff89)) - **AI Local Search Can Be Impressive** - David did a local search for best pizza in a mid-size city and found AI-generated results included good places even if a 10-minute drive away. - However, some locations showed outdated or far sources, revealing AI sourcing challenges. Transcript: David Hunter Provide you with the absolute best list, but it's pretty close. You know, I was, I, so I live in the Great Lakes up in Erie, PA. And I did that exact search, pizza near me. And this is a city of an area of 250,000 people. There's not that many options. And so when I look at it, I saw the list. I'm like, this is actually, this is pretty good. I mean, some of these places are probably a 10 minute drive, but they are darn good pizza places. So in the chaos that is coming within these results, it does seem to be finding pretty decent, pretty decent results out of that, which is which is definitely encouraging. Product that we've got, we are basically, we show you, you know, essentially the output itself, as well as, you know, we will, we will identify what brands were pulled. And then below that, we show you the sources. This is where I start to like really lose my head. So we've got, I've got an agency that, that called Epic Web Studios has been around for, for, you know, 17 years now. And I started doing searches around that, like who's the best web developer in Erie, Pennsylvania, right? The list of results that came back was so haywire. I mean, we're talking, there were businesses that were, that I remember from 10 years ago that are since out of business, you ([Time 0:11:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/20024e4f-52a9-494e-a0fa-ca2a8c7da8f9)) - **Improve AI Understanding With Content** - Evaluate what AI understands about your business by querying ChatGPT about your brand. - Add visible, location-specific, bite-sized content on your site to improve AI recognition and rankings. Transcript: David Hunter The white hat sense? I mean, number one, you need to understand what people are saying or, you know, how the LLM, the large language model, is understanding your content, right? So go, simply go ask ChatGPT about that. What do you know about Local Falcon, right? And just simply Google that, you know, excuse me, search that on ChatGPT and, you know, understand right out of the gate, at least it has a, does it know who we are, where we are, what we Do? If not, you better start adding some content to your website in a visible way that is going to make sure that it, you know, the next time the bot does come by, it pulls it in and, you know, Can use that in terms of its reasoning. When you do add that content, it needs to be done in a very like bite-sized way, right? Like putting up a 2000 word blog post that's a big wall of text is probably not going to help you in terms of showing up inside of these responses, right? Just think about how the responses come back. They're very short snippets. And so if you can write in short snippets and get kind of the core idea down to one or two sentences, and then, you know, I'm not saying don't do the 2000 word blog post. What I'm saying is ([Time 0:15:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/329918d6-e3fd-4010-9723-eb84476f1fca)) - **Structure Content and Use Schema** - Structure content with short, clear sections and FAQs to align with AI's snippet responses. - Use schema markup to help bots understand your pages and improve SEO performance. Transcript: David Hunter Shot of showing up. John Jantsch Well, and I think what we're saying is good content is good content, should be written for humans, should be valuable, should be educational. But a lot of the tweaks that maybe need to happen are in the structure. So you have the overview at the very front. Here's what this article is about. You have the table of contents. You know, you have the 2000 words and at the end you have FAQs. I mean, it's probably more about structure, isn't it? It's a big, it's a huge piece of it, right? David Hunter So again, it's really about how, you know, ChatGPT, OpenAI, Anthropic, you know, others, Google understands the information. So they do that in these little, you know, they'll basically pull little passages out. And then that contributes to the larger, you know, the larger model understanding what ([Time 0:17:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/47946c8a-e27a-4863-8cf7-7ed13639f4a7))