Charlie Sells brings 15 years of experience in brand messaging and positioning to discuss how small businesses can cut through complexity and build authentic brands that show up in search.

Service Business Branding Charlie explains why service-based businesses should "stay hyper local" rather than trying to compete regionally. His advice for finding your competitive advantage? "Don't try to be bigger. Don't try to be flashier. Don't try to be anything other than who you are."

Working with a Florida event staffing company, Charlie discovered their retention rate was in the 80-90% range. "They're the most trusted name in conference and event staff"—that became their differentiator, not trying to be the biggest.

The Two-Part Brand Audit Framework Charlie always looks for two things: "Are we being really consistent? Every touchpoint of our brand—does it look the same, does it sound the same, does it feel the same on a sales call, social media, website, emails, in-person interactions?"

Second: "Are you really leaning into your unique competitive advantage?"

Branded vs. Non-Branded Search From his time at Dave Ramsey's Ramsey Solutions, Charlie learned a crucial lesson: "If they will get their branded terms right, then you can focus on the non-branded terms." He warns that "shiny object syndrome is rampant amongst entrepreneurs" who chase non-branded traffic while neglecting the basics.

His blunt take: "Search engines are the yellow pages today. You want to make it easy for somebody to just find you like that."

The Website Problem Charlie's most surprising piece of advice for clients: "If the weight of your business lands on your website, you have a problem."

Why? Your website is just one piece of your ecosystem. "If everything in your ecosystem is speaking the same language, then it's going to work." But when there's "no cohesive experience, no ecosystem," that's when brands struggle.

Technical SEO Still Matters Charlie shares a story about his staffing client who had keywords "in the graphic at the top of our page. In a designed graphic that can't be crawled, that had no alt text. I'm like, 'Nobody cares about that and Google's not recognizing it.'"

The lesson? "You have to plant a flag in the ground and say, here I am, and make it easy for people to find you."

Is SEO Dead? Charlie's take on the AI/LLM disruption: "I don't think traditional SEO is dead still. I think it still matters." While LLMs are changing search, "somebody is still looking for what you have" and "it still matters that you match intent more than anything else."

His strategy for the AI era? "I'm pushing folks to go way more grassroots and find ways to get on podcasts with niche audiences that are actually in their ICP."

Charlie's Two Essential Switches When onboarding clients, Charlie always starts with:

1. Mindset of Curiosity: "You've got to have a mindset of curiosity. If you are certain, if you are dead set, if you are rigid in your thinking about your brand, then this is not going to go well." His favorite question: "What is it like to be on the receiving end of your brand?"
2. Hold It With an Open Hand: "We've got to zoom out and not just think end of the month, end of the quarter. We've got to think about if where we want to be a year from now is our goal. What has to be true between now and then?"

Redirecting Good Ideas One of Charlie's most valuable skills is helping clients understand placement: "Just because it doesn't belong here doesn't mean it doesn't belong somewhere." A direct-to-camera video might be perfect for an email sequence but wrong for the homepage.

Wyatt Bonicelli of Evolve Agency shares practical local SEO tactics for home service businesses—from Google Business Profile optimization and location page strategy to creative link building through local sponsorships and a clever gift card referral system that turns every customer into a lead generator.

In this episode, Jeremy Rivera sits down with Wyatt Bonicelli, founder of Evolve Agency in Edmond, Oklahoma, to discuss the unique challenges and opportunities in marketing home service contractors. An engineer turned marketer, Wyatt has carved out a niche helping window cleaners, roofers, and other service professionals transition from relying solely on word-of-mouth to building a sustainable online presence that generates leads on autopilot.

The conversation covers the full spectrum of local SEO—from the critical importance of Google Business Profile verification to the age-old question of "how many location pages are too many?" Wyatt shares his approach to building local authority through sponsorship link building, Chamber of Commerce memberships, and creative tactics like using ChatGPT to find partnership opportunities.

Perhaps most valuable are the practical, low-cost marketing wins Wyatt recommends: car magnets, A-frame signs, door hangers with neighbor referrals, and a brilliant gift card system that creates a built-in affiliate program for service businesses. He also drops a Google Maps "driving directions hack" that sends trust signals to Google daily.

The episode wraps with a candid discussion about lead follow-up—why 90% of service calls go unanswered and how the Harvard study showing 400% better conversion within five minutes should change how contractors approach their phones.

• Why home service contractors struggle to invest in marketing (and how to meet them where they are)
• Google Business Profile optimization for service-area businesses without a physical address
• The location page debate: How many is too many in 2024?
• Hub-and-spoke internal linking strategy for multi-location businesses
• Creative link building through local sponsorships and advanced Google queries
• The noindex mistake that cost one client years of branded search visibility
• Steve Hunziker's gift card referral system explained
• Why LLMs haven't disrupted local SEO (yet)
• Combining Meta ads with SEO for short-term and long-term growth
• The $10/day Meta ad strategy that pre-sells door-to-door visits
• Lead follow-up statistics that should terrify every service business owner
• Low-hanging fruit: Car magnets, A-frames, and door hangers
• The Chamber of Commerce SEO bump
• Google Maps driving directions hack for daily trust signals

"Any page on your website that doesn't have a link internally, externally, it's probably not going to get indexed."

"You're 400% more likely to convert if you call within the first five minutes."

"Let's turn one lead into more. Let's try to get three or four out of every one. And that pyramid will just continue to grow."

"We're kind of in a bubble a lot of times and think that everybody else is using the tools the same way that we are."

"If they don't have any web presence at all, no online reviews or a website talking about what they do and where—it's a little harder to trust them with a big check."

Wyatt Bonicelli is the founder of Evolve Agency, a digital marketing firm based in Edmond, Oklahoma specializing in web development and SEO for home service contractors. With a background in engineering, Wyatt brings a systematic, results-driven approach to helping small businesses—particularly window cleaners, roofers, and renovation contractors—build their online presence and generate leads without relying solely on wor...

In this deep-dive conversation, Alejandro Meyerhans shares his journey from Spanish waiter to CEO of a successful link building agency, revealing the mathematical foundations and strategic frameworks that make link building work. We explore the science behind PageRank, the evolving role of links in LLM optimization, Google's HCU updates, and the hard truths about operating within platform ecosystems.

Alejandro Meyerhans is the CEO of GetMeLinks, a strategic link building agency serving agencies and CMOs. Since 2016, Alejandro has built his SEO expertise from the ground up—starting with affiliate sites, becoming a forensic SEO auditor, and eventually leading one of the industry's most respected link building operations. He's known for his data-driven approach, combining mathematics, game theory, and rigorous testing to demystify what actually works in modern link building.

Connect with Alejandro:

• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/alejandro-meyerhans
• YouTube: Alejandro Meyerhans SEO
• Company: GetMeLinks.com

• How Alejandro discovered SEO in 2016 while trying to escape waiting tables in Spain
• Working with Dominic Wells at Onfolio (now NASDAQ-listed)
• The transition from building affiliate sites to becoming a forensic SEO auditor
• How he became CEO of GetMeLinks after being a client first
• The intersection of math, statistics, game theory, and SEO

• Why link building has intentional opacity and FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt)
• Key influencers: Charles Floate, Matt Diggity, and the TEDSEO testing community
• Understanding what's working versus understanding why it works
• The importance of analyzing competitive backlink profiles
• How to read the link graph and replicate winning strategies

• PageRank: The foundational "link juice" model and how it divides authority
• Anchor text ratios: Why exact match anchors no longer work (0% in most winning profiles)
• Reasonable Surfer: Link placement matters—body links above the fold carry more weight
• Passage rank: Surrounding text relevance amplifies or diminishes link value
• Link velocity: Must be proportional to traffic, brand search volume, and referral sources
• Container authority: The power of both the linking page AND the linking domain
• Sequential timing: Why you can't start a new site with 100 digital PR links

Related Resource: How to Start a Link Building Campaign

• Understanding Google's seed list: .gov, .edu, and tier one authorities
• How topical authority spreads from hub sites in each vertical
• Why locksmith SEO is different from e-commerce which is different from YMYL
• The completion game: You only need to match top 3 competitors plus a bit more
• SEO as a jigsaw puzzle—technical foundation, content, user signals, brand signals
• The logarithmic nature of PageRank (getting from DR 80 to 90 costs exponentially more)

Related Resource: Link Building for New Websites

In this episode of the Unscripted SEO Podcast, host Jeremy Rivera sits down with Alison Ver Halen, founder of AV Writing Services and author of Content Marketing Made Easy. Alison shares how she accidentally fell into content marketing after graduating during the 2009 recession, and how writing blog posts for a law firm led to $75,000 in new business within just six months.

The conversation covers the evolving landscape of SEO and content marketing, including E-E-A-T principles, the Helpful Content Update, the "robot sandwich" of AI-driven search, and why storytelling remains the most powerful tool in a content marketer's arsenal.

Alison Ver Halen is the founder of AV Writing Services and a content marketing strategist with nearly a decade of experience. With degrees in English and Psychology from Lawrence University, Alison helps professional service providers attract, engage, and convert high-quality leads through strategic blog content, landing pages, and brand storytelling. She is also the author of Content Marketing Made Easy.

• The $75K Blog Post Discovery: Alison's first content marketing client saw $75,000 in new business within six months—just from blog posts she was writing for his law firm
• Information Gain is Everything: The key to standing out isn't just creating content—it's adding your unique perspective, experience, and stories that ChatGPT can't replicate
• E-E-A-T is About How You Write: Rather than technical markup and author schemas, E-E-A-T signals come from first-person experience and professional perspective woven into your content
• Don't Propose on the First Date: Match your calls-to-action to where prospects are in the buyer journey—a newsletter signup beats a sales call request for top-of-funnel visitors
• The Robot Sandwich: With AI tools searching other AI outputs based on human-created content, writing for humans remains the winning strategy
• It's Still SEO, People: Despite the hype around GEO, AIEO, and AEO, the fundamentals of search engine optimization haven't changed—just the platforms
• Guest Everything: Podcasts, blogs, newsletters—earned media builds the Know-Like-Trust factor that drives real business results

• [00:00] Introduction and Alison's background
• [02:34] The $75,000 aha moment in content marketing
• [04:02] Methodology for researching and developing unique content
• [05:54] E-E-A-T: What it really means for content creators
• [10:22] The "robot sandwich" of AI-driven search
• [14:05] Understanding the buyer journey and sales funnel
• [15:51] Lead magnets and CTAs in the post-ChatGPT era
• [19:42] The Helpful Content Update and brand identity
• [26:08] GEO, AIEO, AEO—why it's still just SEO
• [27:02] Link building in the age of LLMs
• [36:49] Best practices for content quality and distribution
• [41:08] Where to find Alison Ver Halen

"After six months, he came back and told me that I had brought in $75,000 worth of business to his law firm just through the blog posts I was writing for him."

"We are primed to connect with stories, we are primed to remember stories. So that is critical for getting your point across and for being memorable."

"I refer to it as proposing on the first date. Like, well we just met, dude. That is way too much way too soon. And you're gonna scare them off."

"AI does not generate anything. It just regurgitates what humans have already created."

"It's still SEO, people. Just becau...

Will Wang of Black Belt Consulting joins Jeremy Rivera to discuss his journey from corporate IT analyst to accidentally building a seven-figure marketing agency. In this candid conversation, Will shares the expensive lessons he learned about hiring (including a $500,000 mistake), how he's leveraging AI for market research while keeping humans in the loop, and why he's betting big on YouTube and Instagram while going bearish on LinkedIn for 2025.

This episode is packed with practical insights for agency owners, consultants, and entrepreneurs who are scaling their businesses and want to avoid the costly mistakes that come with rapid growth.

Listen to the full episode: Unscripted SEO Podcast

Will Wang

• Company: Black Belt Consulting
• Instagram: @blackbeltconsultant
• LinkedIn: Will Wang
• Email: will@blackbeltconsulting.co

About Will: Will grew up in Sydney, Australia, worked in corporate IT making $130-150K/year before taking the leap into entrepreneurship. After two years of struggles and making every mistake possible, he built a seven-figure marketing agency which he sold 12 months ago. He's also a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt (earned 4 years ago) and now runs Black Belt Consulting, helping businesses scale from $25K to $250K per month with strategic marketing consulting.

• Growing up as an immigrant in Sydney, Australia
• The soul-crushing reality of corporate IT ($130-150K salary trap)
• The difficult decision: when to make the leap with a family to support
• Two years of stumbling through every possible business mistake

• Why he hired a general manager when the business wasn't ready
• The account manager who created an unnecessary layer between clients and strategy
• The remote copywriter problem: why proximity matters for creative roles
• Key lesson: "We weren't big enough for a GM. We just needed me to spend less time working in a few of the things on the business"
• Taking full ownership: "It was all my fault... their abilities were hampered by how I supported them"

• The shift to small core teams of highly competent people
• His new hiring framework: creativity vs. process-driven roles
• When to hire locally vs. when to leverage cost arbitrage with virtual teams
• Using online jobs.ph and Upwork strategically
• "Give people a goal, give people a vision, and then hire people who are competent and disciplined enough to do what they need to do"

• Using Loom videos to document processes instead of writing SOPs yourself
• Having your VA or operations person create the documentation by following your recordings
• Why being the "big picture creative" doesn't mean you can't systematize

• How customer research went from weeks to minutes
• Using ChatGPT and Claude to build detailed customer avatars
• The critical rule: "Nothing that gets delivered to clients is actually AI done"
• AI for research, humans for delivery—that's the framework
• Building AI-enabled teams in 2025

• Going all-in on YouTube: "YouTube is the big one for me. I'm investing a lot into that this year"
• The Instagram surpri...

Jeremy Rivera interviews Kyle Bailey, founder of Front Burner Marketing, about local SEO strategies specifically designed for home service businesses. Kyle brings a unique perspective as one of the few SEO professionals who has actually worked in the trades—framing, roofing, drywall, and kitchen/bathroom remodeling.

Kyle Bailey

• Founder, Front Burner Marketing
• 15 years in home service digital marketing
• Former tradesman turned SEO specialist
• Author of upcoming book: What's Your Story? The Path to Connection with a Homeowner

Connect with Kyle:

• LinkedIn: The Kyle Bailey
• Website: FrontBurnerMarketing.net
• Twitter/X: @FrontBurnerMarketing

• The attention gap problem: business owners are firefighters and babysitters
• Why before-and-after photography is critical but difficult to execute
• Kyle's hands-on approach: driving to clients in Texas to handle photography personally
• The urgent need to adapt to AI-driven search changes

• Every home service business has a unique story that competitors lack
• How to identify and articulate your core values
• The difference between shotgun vs. rifle messaging (broad vs. focused)
• Employee, friend, and customer audits to discover hidden core values
• Why story-based differentiation creates genuine connection with ideal customers

Key Resource: What's Your Story? - Front Burner Marketing

• Why only 3 out of 100 franchises can effectively compete in local SEO
• Corporate restrictions on messaging, location pages, and customization
• The Quiznos cautionary tale
• Due diligence steps before buying a pizza franchise or any franchise
• Free discovery calls available to assess franchise SEO viability

• The "barrel of $100 bills at every red light" concept
• Neighborhood signage opportunities: 30-second content goldmine
• Co-marketing with complementary trades (painters, siders, window companies)
• How to create video content on job sites with partners
• Transcribing videos into blog posts for multiple websites
• The professional advantage: extracting marketing value from daily activities

Related Article: Matt Brooks of SEOteric on nexus-based link building

Example Businesses:

• Permacast Walls (precast concrete walls)
• Newton Crouch (renovations)

• Why community cleanups work on Reddit (when normal promotion fails)
• Keep America Beautiful: National nonprofit with county-level support
• Community Clean Links - organizing community cleanup initiatives
• SEO benefits: event directories, national aggregators, Google event SERP
• Brand mentions directly in search results
• Documentation strategy: branded team, photos, no pitching

• Michael McDougald's quote: "Your least trained but most popula...

Lisa Corwood, founder of Fuelled Agency, joins Jeremy to discuss how she transformed creative marketing experiments at a UK car dealership into a full-service agency philosophy. From the viral "Where's Wally" campaign that sparked it all to navigating Search Everywhere Optimization in 2026, this conversation covers authentic community engagement, why no industry is truly "boring," and the looming question of AI-generated content quality.

Lisa Corwood
Founder, Fuelled Agency

• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• YouTube

• (00:01) Introduction and Lisa's background
• (00:18) The origin story: From UK car dealership to agency
• (02:15) Creative community engagement vs. traditional advertising
• (04:13) Facebook Groups and providing genuine value
• (06:01) The "spray and pray" problem on Reddit and social platforms
• (07:05) Ad blindness and brand values alignment
• (08:51) Building content ecosystems that connect
• (10:59) Why "boring" industries have the most passionate audiences
• (13:14) Showing your team and humanizing your brand
• (15:06) The "20 leads" question: Testing your funnel
• (16:54) Co-marketing with complementary businesses
• (18:44) Search Everywhere Optimization: The multi-platform customer journey
• (21:20) The accelerating pace of change in digital marketing
• (23:24) AI content, "slop," and the trust problem
• (25:22) Gen Alpha's skepticism toward AI-generated content
• (27:57) What's next for Fuelled Agency in 2026

"If you're going to go in there, don't just walk in a room and shout what you're saying and go out. Treat it as if it's a group of people—not a place to just spray and pray."

"No matter what business it is—if it's selling a product, if it's shiny, if it's Lamborghinis or diamond rings—behind all of that is a team that makes that happen. Tell everybody about it!"

"If you got 20 leads right now into your business, where would they go and what would happen with them? If you don't have an answer to that, there's something you need to look at."

"Customers will hop from one platform to the other to get what they are looking for. They won't just take a five-star review as gospel."

"I'm not against AI—but use it in collaboration, in conjunction. You can't solely rely on it."

Lisa's Agency & Socials

• Fuelled Agency
• Fuelled Agency Services
• Creators Club
• Lisa on LinkedIn
• Lisa on Instagram
• Lisa on YouTube

Industry Resources

• Search Everywhere Optimization Guide – Single Grain
• Search Everywhere Optimization – Backli...

Guest: Tianna Mamalick, SMB Marketing School

Tianna Mamalick shares her 12-year journey in SEO and why she's passionate about working with small businesses. With honest insights on managing client expectations, pairing SEO with paid ads, and the current state of AI-generated content, this conversation reveals what's actually working for service-based businesses right now.

Why Small Businesses? For small businesses, a 10K monthly revenue increase is life-changing. Tianna shares how clients email her about hiring their first employee or taking their first vacation—results that go far beyond vanity metrics.

Managing Expectations Brutally honest approach: clients sign for three months minimum, must have budget they can afford to lose, and receive realistic assessments of whether their business model fits the proven formula.

SEO + Ads Strategy When done strategically, pairing ads with SEO helps prime new location pages and service pages through engagement, even though ads don't directly impact SEO rankings.

The AI Content Reality After extensive testing: AI-generated content isn't ranking. Tianna's agency went 100% back to human-written content, using AI only for outlines based on top-ranking articles.

Content Strategy Shifts

• Focus on service pages over blog posts
• Every service needs its own detailed page
• Mine customer support logs and sales calls for real language
• Create collaboration posts featuring complementary businesses

AI Search Adoption Despite the hype, less than 10% of traffic comes from ChatGPT for most small businesses. Prepare by enriching About pages and author bios, but don't panic about immediate massive shifts.

• Andy Crestodina & Content Chemistry
• SEOteric - Matt Brooks
• Get Me Links - Alejandro Marinas
• Gus Pelogia interview on SEO's universal superpower
• Michael McDougald, Right Thing Agency
• Precast Walls - service business example

"People want to work with people they like, know and trust. It's not just about the backlink. We're really looking at conversions—how can we get SEO to convert for you?" — Tianna Mamalick

• Website: smbmarketingschool.com
• Instagram: @smbmarketingschool
• Funnel Summit - January 28th

✓ Service pages first: Make product and service pages comprehensive before worrying about blog content

✓ Human content wins: AI-generated articles aren't ranking—use AI for outlines, humans for writing

✓ Record everything: Mine sales calls, customer support logs, and front-line staff conversations for gold

✓ Every service gets a page: Stop using men...