Insights from Episode 8 of the David Quaid SEO Show, with Jake Henley (Evergrow Marketing / Agency Growth Podcast) and David Quaid.
Local SEO used to be simpler. You added a few service keywords to your business name, packed your service descriptions with location terms, and watched the leads roll in. That world is gone.
We sat down with Jake Henley, CEO of Evergrow Marketing and host of the Agency Growth Podcast, to break down what is actually moving the needle this year. Here is what came out of the conversation.
What Is Local SEO
Local SEO is the work of getting a business found when someone nearby searches for what it sells, mostly through Google Business Profile (GBP) and the map pack. What has changed is how few of the old tactics still do anything.
Google has systematically removed the levers local SEOs used to pull. Service descriptions no longer affect rank. Listing dozens of services helps visibility, but not ranking.
At the same time, ads have taken over more of the page. So the honest answer to “what is local SEO” in 2026 is a shorter list of things that work, plus a paid layer you can no longer ignore.
Local SEO Services
The biggest shift in 2026 is an ad placement change, not an algorithm change. Google has aggressively scaled up Local Service Ads (LSAs), pushing organic listings further down the page. It also redesigned LSAs so they look nearly identical to regular Google Business Profile listings.
“2026 was the first year where we really saw Google focus on [LSAs] and go after almost like a redesign to where it’s not just a carousel. Now they actually look like Google Business Profile listings to a user.” — Jake Henley
Users who used to avoid ads now click them without realizing it. If your competitors run LSAs and you do not, you are losing traffic that was once organic. Any local SEO services you buy or sell have to account for that.
The quality issue. LSA leads tend to be lower quality. Many of the calls are existing customers, spam, or people looking for services you do not offer. Agencies are seeing 60 or more of 80 monthly LSA calls turn out to be non-leads, a real drop from the organic GBP call volume businesses used to rely on.
Local SEO Service
A surprising share of organic traffic ends up converting through paid search. David has seen ad campaigns where 95% of leads are branded. Users find you organically, then click the ad when they are ready to buy.
“If you’re not running at least branded ads, you’re just losing out.” — David Quaid
Even a 10-cent bid on your own brand name makes it harder for competitors to bid on it, because you hold the quality score advantage on your own name.
Google’s new AI Max campaign type also blends branded and non-branded keywords. Jake’s team has found that mixing them lowers CPA on the non-branded terms.
Small Business SEO
For small business SEO, Jake narrows Google Business Profile down to four factors that still matter.
- Business name. Keywords in your business name still help. If they are not part of your actual DBA, you risk suspension or reverification.
- Physical location. A pin on the map consistently beats a service-area-only listing for ranking in a target city. The trade-off is that you will not rank as far out, but you will dominate your immediate area.
- Primary category. After location, this is the single most important GBP factor. You can have up to 10 categories, but the primary one carries the most weight.
- Reviews. Frequency, consistency, quality, and replies all matter. Keywords in reviews may help, though you cannot control that without violating policy. Replying matters; keywords in your replies do not.
Review policies are tightening. Google has always been more relaxed than Yelp about asking for reviews, but that is changing. Recent policy updates restrict mentioning specific staff members in reviews, likely a response to businesses gamifying internal review competitions.
Yelp remains the strictest platform. At the end of the review process it asks users whether they were asked to leave the review. If they say yes, the review gets hidden. QR code cards on tables and “leave us a review on Yelp” announcements over the loudspeaker are everywhere, and enforcement is catching up.
Local SEO Audit
Start any local SEO audit by comparing your GBP categories against what your website actually says. Jake shared a telling story: a client’s profile would not verify because one listed category did not match anything on their site. The category name was similar but belonged to a different industry.
“If your categories don’t match the content on the site or what type of business you are, that profile is not going to get verified.” — Jake Henley
Jake estimates your website accounts for roughly 20% of your GBP ranking. That sounds small, but it is one of the few factors you control directly.
Local SEO Agency
David pushed back on the 20% figure for high-competition niches. Take a law firm with 14 offices across five states, competing against 40 to 50 other firms for three map pack slots. There, the website’s importance jumps to 60-80%.
In these markets, cannibalization becomes a serious problem. Dozens of service and location pages start competing against each other, and that competition spills over into Google Maps rankings.
“We found that as pages started to rotate against each other, it affected the Google Map listings.” — David Quaid
A local SEO agency working in a crowded niche should treat site structure as a ranking factor for the map pack, not a separate project.
Local SEO Company
For higher-ticket local businesses, especially attorneys, satellite offices can be a game-changer. Google prioritizes physical locations over service-area businesses for “near me” searches, so a real address in a target area buys ranking power.
“If they can afford four to 10 clicks just to rent an office location in a target area — that’s silly not to do.” — Jake Henley
Verification has become much harder, though. The days of verifying a UPS box with a postcard are over. Google now asks for video evidence, articles of incorporation, and certificates of existence. Some businesses still get verified instantly with no extra steps, but it is not guaranteed.
If a local SEO company suggests a satellite office, ask how they plan to get it verified.
Local SEO Software
A lot of local SEO software sells schema markup as a ranking feature. Jake tested that claim with a controlled study across landscaping clients, all on identical templates and all managed by the same agency.
Methodology:
- Removed all breadcrumb schema (native from Yoast) from every client site
- Ran a 5-week baseline reset
- Added comprehensive local business schema, including the “sameAs” property, to the test group
- Observed for another 5 weeks
- Tracked Google, Bing, Yahoo, Gemini, ChatGPT, and Google Mobile
Result: zero improvement in rank or visibility across platforms, with one small exception. ChatGPT showed some positive movement, though it is unclear whether that was a fluke. Even that requires being indexed on Bing first.
“It’s not an insider knowledge thing. It doesn’t work.” — David Quaid, on schema for ranking
The full methodology is published at evergrowmarketing.com.
Local SEO Expert
Despite the hype, LLMs have not replaced Google for local search, and they lack the infrastructure to do it. Google has a map tool, a fleet of Street View cars, and decades of business data. ChatGPT and other LLMs rely on partnerships and SERP APIs to reach the same information.
Consumer behavior backs this up. For emergencies like a burst pipe or a lockout, people go straight to Google. For considered purchases like landscaping or legal services, they research more, but they still use Google because it is the brand they trust.
“LLMs have a long way to go. Google has the branding to know that if I need something now, I’m going to use Google.” — Jake Henley
Local SEO Tools
Keyword cannibalization across location and service pages is one of the most overlooked problems in local SEO. The local SEO tools you need to find it are free.
David highlighted a key pattern: cities and states are not “conferred” to pages in subfolders. If you have /connecticut/lawyer and /new-york/lawyer, Google sees two pages called “lawyer”, not two distinct pages. They cannibalize each other.
How to diagnose it:
- In Google Search Console, look for queries where more than one page ranked in the last 24 hours
- Search
site:yourdomain.com "target query"to see which page Google considers most relevant - If a blog post outranks your service page for a commercial keyword, you have a problem
Jake’s fix: do not build templated location pages. Build project pages instead: real before-and-after case studies with photos, materials, problems, and pricing. They are useful to readers and immune to spam updates.
Local SEO Packages
If you are comparing local SEO packages, or building one, these are the takeaways from the episode to check against.
- Local Service Ads if your competitors run them; organic alone is no longer enough
- Branded search ads, at minimum, to protect your brand
- Work on the four GBP levers: name, location, primary category, reviews
- GBP categories that match your website content
- Less time on schema, more on content and reviews
- Real project pages instead of templated location pages
- Satellite offices for high-ticket businesses in competitive markets
- A cannibalization audit before blaming AI Overviews or spam updates for traffic loss
