What SEO taught you to stop doing

For at least the past ten years, local marketing meant one thing: optimize for Google.

Build links. Get reviews. Optimize the GBP. Get in the map pack. Maybe run some Ads or LSAs. Track your rankings.

It worked. The businesses that did this well won. The ones that didn't fell behind.

But here's what happened along the way: many stopped doing everything else 🫠

The stuff that stopped mattering

At some point marketers realized that certain activities didn't move the needle on Google rankings.

Press mentions in local newspapers? Didn't help rankings.

Chamber of Commerce involvement? No ranking impact.

Community sponsorships? Nice for goodwill, irrelevant for SEO.

Awards and recognition? Unless it came with a backlink, why bother.

Local radio or TV appearances? Couldn't measure the impact, so couldn't justify the spend.

One by one, these activities got deprioritized.

Marketing budgets shifted toward what was measurable and what moved rankings. Everything else became "nice to have" or disappeared entirely.

I'm not blaming anyone. I heavily shifted budgets to SEO. We all did. You optimize for the system you're measured against.

The system is changing

The problem? More people are using AI. Now AI is recommending businesses. And it uses completely different signals than traditional search.

When ChatGPT decides which plumber to recommend in Phoenix, it's not just checking map pack position. It's not counting citations on Yelp and Yellow Pages.

It's asking: What can I say about this business? What do I know about them? What makes them a credible recommendation for this specific query?

And the answers come from:

→ Press coverage and news mentions
→ Awards and recognition
→ Community involvement and sponsorships
→ Third-party references across the web
→ Rich, specific review content
→ Clear explanations of what they do and who they serve

In other words: exactly the stuff most marketers stopped doing.

The businesses that never stopped

Here's the irony. The businesses best positioned for AI visibility right now are the ones that never stopped doing general local marketing.

The family-owned HVAC company that still sponsors Little League teams and gets written up in the local paper when they do free repairs for elderly residents.

The regional law firm that kept doing TV ads and press releases around wins even when the SEO consultants said it didn't help rankings.

The dental group that insisted on community involvement — free dental days, school partnerships, local health fairs — because the founder believed in it, not because it helped SEO.

These businesses have a decade of third-party mentions, press coverage, and community presence that AI models can reference.

The businesses that went all-in on SEO — optimized GBP, citation building, review generation, local landing pages — have a strong Google presence, but often a thin AI presence.

There’s nothing being said about them except what's on their own website and whatever anchor text they chose for their backlinks.

Why this happened

This isn't Google's fault. It’s not even marketers’ fault. They built a game, and we optimized for it.

Google's local algorithm rewards proximity, relevance, and prominence. Prominence mostly meant reviews and links. So that's what we focused on.

The things that didn't correlate with rankings got cut. Marketing budgets are finite. You invest in what moves the revenue metrics.

For a decade, the metrics were all Google metrics. So we built Google-shaped marketing programs.

Now there's a new system. And it rewards different things.

What AI visibility actually requires

AI models form opinions about businesses based on what they can find across the web. Not just your website. Not just your GBP. They try to get the full picture.

A business with:
→ Press mentions describing what they do
→ Awards that signal quality or specialization
→ Community references that establish local presence
→ Reviews that tell specific stories about specific experiences
→ Third-party content that corroborates their expertise

...is recommendable. AI has material to work with.

A business with:
→ An optimized GBP
→ A website with location pages
→ Reviews that say "great service, highly recommend"
→ No press, no awards, no third-party mentions

...is findable on Google but could be largely invisible to AI because there’s little to nothing to confirm what they say about themselves.

The portfolio problem

For multi-location businesses, this is a strategic gap.

Your corporate marketing probably still does some PR, some awards submissions, some community involvement. But it's likely concentrated at the brand level, not distributed across locations.

Your Phoenix location might have won a local "Best Of" award three years ago. Your Houston location might have been featured in a local news segment. Your Denver location might sponsor a youth sports league.

But nobody's tracking this systematically. Nobody's building a location-level inventory of third-party mentions and community presence. Nobody's asking "what can AI say about each of our 50 locations?"

The locations with rich third-party presence will outperform in AI recommendations. The locations with nothing but an optimized GBP will be invisible.

Same brand. Same services. Different AI visibility — driven by a decade of untracked local presence (or absence of it).

The path forward

This isn't about abandoning SEO. Google still matters. The map pack still matters. Reviews still matter.

But the next layer of visibility requires things SEO trained us to ignore.

For single locations:
→ Get back into local press. A feature in the local paper is AI material.
→ Submit for local awards. "Best Of" lists get referenced.
→ Sponsor local events. Community presence creates third-party mentions.
→ Build relationships that generate coverage, not just backlinks.

For multi-location businesses:
→ Inventory what exists. Which locations have third-party presence? Which have nothing?
→ Create a playbook for local PR at the location level, not just corporate.
→ Track community involvement by location. Sponsorships, partnerships, events.
→ Make "what can AI say about this location?" a standard audit question.

One thing to note about all of this. It might not happen fast. AI LLMs are trained on prior datasets that might not have included your business.

Yes, doing this work will eventually pay off, but it might take time before these new efforts get recognized.

The Lost Decade

I call this the “Lost Decade” because many have spent ten years optimizing for one system and letting everything else go.

The businesses that stayed balanced — that kept doing press, community involvement, and brand building even when it didn't help rankings — are accidentally ahead.

The rest, well, have catching up to do.

The good news: this work is familiar. It's the marketing that existed before SEO dominated everything. Local PR. Community presence. Third-party credibility.

The tactics aren't new. Many just stopped using them.

Time to start again.

Talk soon,
Garrett

P.S. — Next week: the specific signals AI uses to decide who to recommend, and how to audit your current presence against them.