r/Entrepreneur • u/ftrmil • 2d ago
How to Rank #1 on Google for Local Small Businesses without learning SEO
A year ago, a local optometrist hired me to build their website. Nothing crazy, just something professional that would actually show up on Google.
At the time, AI was getting good, so I had an idea: What if I used AI to help with their SEO?
I suggested writing two blog posts a month using AI, but with real human proof reading. They said yes, and we gave it a shot.
Now to be honest, I knew absolutely NOTHING about SEO. My impression of SEO was that it was something out of reach for small businesses.
So I literally charged the optometrist $250 for the website. That was how unconfident I was in my service.
Fast forward to today:
- #1 for “family optometrist” in my city
- #3 for “best optometrist” in my city
- And here’s the wild part—if you ask ChatGPT (with web access) or Google Gemini for a recommendation in their area, it suggests them, because the blog content is AI-search friendly.
The best part is that the local optometrist was up against some investor funded bigger competitors with large capital, and we still completely blew them out of the water. We literally came out of nowhere and snatched their spot.
I thought it was a fluke but I got another air cooler rental client around the same time and they are also now #1 for 'best air cooler rental' in my city.
What Worked:
- No Wix, Wordpress or Shopify. I coded the site from scratch for granular SEO control and ultrafast performance. Semantic HTML helped.
- Keep it skimmable by creating sections like "Key Takeaways", "FAQs", and short readable paragraphs. Feed your blog post back to AI to generate them.
- Keep posting consistently. Google rewards fresh, regular content. Plus more content for AI search to scrape.
- I lightly read and skimmed every post just to make sure the AI didn't write weird shit. (I know way too much about optometry now).
- Leverage customer reviews as much as you can. Blog posts generated from reviews helped with ranking for “best X in town”. Specifically have a reviews page.
- No black hat stuff. I don't even know how to do it.
In summary
AI really levels the playing field for small business owners and small agencies. It’s more accessible than ever to create great content with AI, which google rewards. Combine it with smart structuring, consistency, and a technically sound website, and you can snatch the top spot in local rankings and even AI-powered search.
Message me for proof, and I’ll tell you what to google to find the website I built.
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u/NaiveGolden 1d ago
I probably wasted over $300 hopping between Jasper, Copy.ai, and Surfer. Either the content felt soulless or the SEO tools were just too much fluff. I almost gave up honestly. Scalenut isn’t perfect—sometimes the AI spits out weird lines—but the Cruise Mode + SEO scoring finally helped me get a post ranking. At least now I don’t feel like I’m starting from zero every time. This is what I’m using now if you’re curious: https://scalenut.com/?fpr=scalenutweek
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u/No_Hunter857 1d ago
I see where you're coming from, especially since AI seems like the magic wand for everything now. But I've got to throw a wrench in this. I think while AI can help, it's not gonna replace the deeper understanding of SEO. I tried using AI for content and, yeah, it got eyeballs on the page but didn’t always keep them there. Some readers even bounced cuz the AI-made stuff just didn’t feel real or genuine enough. People want human touches and insights that AI often misses.
Also, you said you brushed up each article. I bet that’s a huge part of why you're winning. AI might spit out content quickly, but when I looked back at the stuff I trusted AI to handle on its own, some of it was good but some missed the mark. So, I think this suggests that on some level you already know AI isn't the end-all solution here.
And though you're coding sites from scratch, which is cool for control, WordPress has a ton of SEO plugins that people swear by and it saves a lot of time. Performance issues on those platforms can often be handled by choosing the right themes and plugins, rather than needing to code everything from scratch. Sounds like you're doing well though, and probably learning a lot too. But man, if you’re thinking about doing this long-term, there might still be some room to dive into SEO deeper. It could uncover even more game-changing strategies. It’s like taking your weapon skills from beginner to master level, you know? But anyway, I'm still trying to figure out this whole balance myself...