— The Editorial Index
The SEO Cover
A curated hub of SEO articles, videos, tools, and people — organized by topic.
Topic
44 resources
Local SEO is the work of making a business discoverable to customers searching for what you offer within a geographic area—and it hinges almost entirely on Google Business Profile. Whether you're running a dental practice in Portland or managing twenty franchises across three states, your visibility in local search, the Local Pack, and map results depends on how Google understands and trusts your business data. It's not about ranking a homepage; it's about owning real estate in the places where intent and location collide.
The field right now is caught between two currents. Google is tightening enforcement—suspending profiles for policy violations, moderating reviews more aggressively, and rolling out new educational resources like GBP Playbooks to push businesses toward better practices. Simultaneously, the barrier to entry for bad actors remains low: spam attacks on reviews, aggressive city-page farms, and review manipulation are still common problems practitioners have to defend against. AI is quietly reshaping the execution—not through magic, but through faster, smarter ways to handle bulk tasks like location page creation, review monitoring, and profile optimization across multiple listings. The review ecosystem itself is fracturing slightly, with platforms like Yelp doubling down on their own policies while Google moderates its own. Meanwhile, real estate agents and chain businesses are learning the hard way that Google Business Profile isn't a free-for-all.
Focus on the basics: keep your GBP complete and honest, monitor reviews for both attacks and moderation errors, and treat AI as a tool for scaling competent work, not replacing judgment.
Phil Rozek
There’s a good chance your site is on WordPress. If so, priority #1 is to keep it above the earthworms. Keeping your site up and functional is critical for business, partly because it’s critical for your local SEO. For a WordPress site, plugins giveth and taketh away. They’re hal
Whitespark
Honestly, my friends, so much happened in local SEO in the second quarter of 2026 that I had trouble pruning my list down to a mere 23 especially noteworthy entries. And I’d bet anything that this means you missed at least some of these very important developments in our sector.
Phil Rozek
For many years now, people who know just enough about local SEO to be dangerous have blasted out “city” or “location” pages like they’re the Funyuns factory. Sometimes those pages are effective, and produce both visibility and customers, but usually they flop. Now, with AI on the
Sterling Sky
We are hearing lots of stories where Google is suspending Google Business Profiles for real estate agents working for eXp Realty. In this Google support thread, this individual was told by Google that “our guidelines currently restrict us from working with cloud-based brokerage m
Whitespark
TL;DR: • Google Business Profile reviews usually go missing for 3 reasons: business policy violations, spam attacks, or Google moderation errors.• Common triggers include sudden review spikes, incentivized reviews, review kiosks/shared IPs, fake engagement tactics, and reviews fr
Sterling Sky
![How to choose the right local SEO services for your business [+free downloadable checklist]](https://brightlocal-corp-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/brightlocal-corp-2026/wp/uploads/2026/05/Screenshot-2026-04-30-at-09.50.33.png)
BrightLocal
You’ve probably seen the Local Pack—that box at the top of Google with three local businesses and a map. For a small business, being in that box is the difference between a busy Tuesday and a very quiet one. Showing up in the Local Pack requires a dedicated strategy known as loca
Whitespark
If the millions of businesses with Google Business Profiles all clapped at once for Google’s new educational outreach in the form of GBP Playbooks, that would be some thunderous applause! While the Guidelines for representing your business on Google still remains square one for u
Phil Rozek
Sometimes I think Yelp might have matured, mellowed out a little, and eased up on longstanding policies that make no sense and don’t help anyone. But then Yelp just doubles down. Case in point: Yelp has started asking reviewers whether you asked them for a review. As you probably
Whitespark
Happy 2026 to all the local business owners and marketers riding the rough seas of this first quarter. I can’t recall another start to a new year with quite this much disruption to keep pace with. If you’ve been finding it challenging to take in all the latest local SEO developme
Sterling Sky
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Phil Rozek
Most advice on “how to use AI for local SEO” faceplants in at least one of three ways: The problem isn’t a problem you’ve got. The solution is too complicated or hard to digest. You can do it better yourself, perhaps the old-fashioned way. Even so, your local SEO campaign is a lo
Sterling Sky
TL;DR Two types of GBP suspensions: Soft suspensions leave the listing visible but unverified, while hard suspensions remove it entirely from Google Search and Maps, often causing major drops in calls and leads. Common suspension triggers: Frequent profile edits, duplicate listin
Sterling Sky
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Whitespark
What do you really need reviewers to write about if you’re marketing a restaurant and need to earn the business of new diners? Does it feel like you’re chasing Google, chasing AI, chasing SEO advice, chasing social media fame, and twisting yourself into a kind of pretzel to meet
Phil Rozek
All you know right now is that you’ve got an extra Google Business Profile page showing up on Google Maps and that it’s unverified (so you don’t have ownership or control of it). You may have found it by poking around on Google Maps, or someone may have told you about it. You may
Sterling Sky
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Sterling Sky
If you’re seeing “Posting reviews is turned off for this place,” you’re not alone. Over the last ~60 days, I’ve watched this hit multiple legitimate businesses and the pattern is weirdly consistent. What a “review block” actually is A review block is when Google temporarily restr
Sterling Sky
In the world of local SEO, a business’s reputation is its most valuable asset. When consumers search for a business or service, the rating on their Google Business Profile is one of the first things they see. When that rating does not reflect the true story, the business is signi
Whitespark
It was nice while it lasted! In 2017, Google rolled out Google Business Profile Questions and Answers, enabling local business owners to publish and respond to their own FAQs as well as queries from the public: Now, that same listing on desktop features no Q&A section: Big change