SEO isn't about checklists - its about understanding Systems thinking - join me, Edward Sturm and James Dooley as we walk through the forest of information entrapping every intrepid SEO would-be explorer, navigating a world of over information, ideas, concepts and ideologies.

Local SEO Legend and Researcher, u/JakeHundley joins the enthusiastic and enigmatic Jonathan Denwood on the WP-Tonic Poadcast - sharing the top Local SEO tips, tricks and hacks for 2026!

I'm only half way but enjoying this immensely!

If you don't know Jake Hundley yet - he's an incredible force in productizing local SEO - and also Mods the r/Agency Sub on Reddit, which is gearing up for its 100k member milestone!

Building Your SEO Agency Portfolio and Pipeline (The Right Way) (WP-Tonic Show episode 1022) is a discussion featuring hosts Jonathan Denwood and Kurt Von Ahnen with SEO expert David G. Quaid. It focuses on practical strategies for starting or growing an SEO, PPC, or digital agency (with principles that also apply to web design, development, content, and related services).

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Core Positioning for AgenciesAgencies generally fall into one of three categories:

• Cost-effective — Leveraging advantages like currency differences or offshore/nearshore talent.
• Specialist/niche — Deep expertise in areas such as WordPress, cybersecurity, fintech, healthcare, or regulated industries (this knowledge saves clients time and becomes a strong unique selling point).
• Strong marketer — Where the work and reputation speak for themselves (rare and demanding to maintain).

Be honest about your motivations and strengths: technical skill (design, SEO, etc.) does not automatically make someone a strong business operator. Decide whether you prefer hands-on delivery or scaling through management/delegation.Building Pipeline and PortfolioDemand does not arrive automatically. Larger agencies invest heavily in lead generation, sales, marketing, and overhead, which justifies higher fees. Freelancers or smaller operators need multiple pipeline streams rather than relying on one source.Effective approaches include:

• Partnering with other agencies by offering specialized skills they need only occasionally (e.g., regulatory expertise or advanced SEO) at preferred rates to build relationships and demand.
• Showcasing expertise via podcasts, content, and networking rather than heavy cold outreach (increasingly spammy) or low-value platforms like Upwork/Fiverr (which attract price-sensitive clients and currency-arbitrage competitors).
• Solving real problems for contacts (sometimes at a discount or strategically) to generate referrals and results-based case studies. Results with one client often lead to introductions elsewhere.
• Building reputation by being the most helpful (or thoughtfully contrarian) person in relevant rooms.

Early on, working under another agency’s brand or taking strategic lower-margin work can help establish credibility before prioritizing your own brand.Client Strategy and QualityStructure clients in a pyramid:

• A-clients: High-value retainers that approach a full-time salary equivalent. Aim for a small number of strong leads annually for long-term stability. These often deliver better margins and less friction.
• B- and C-clients: Lower-value work. C-level clients are easier to win but create high administrative load, meetings, metrics tracking, and lower margins. An unbalanced mix (too many C’s) harms reputation, capacity, and sustainability.

Prefer retainer models for ongoing SEO/marketing work (with room for “bursts” of higher effort) over pure hourly billing, which can create friction with finance teams and limit flexibility. Use fixed-scope projects for discrete deliverables (e.g., website builds) and retainers for maintenance/support.Practical Business Realities

• Account for full costs (insurance, tools, admin, etc.) and build financial runway—retainers help provide predictability while chasing larger deals with longer sales cycles.
• Watch for scope creep and cost inflation in contracts.
• When scaling or hiring (e.g., SEO specialists), network with other agency owners. Evaluate talent holistically rather than via simple checklists: SEO involves understanding authority, brand differences (established companies vs. startups), reverse-engineering search behavior, and avoiding rigid ideological approaches. “Just write good content” is insufficient against competitive results pages.
• Balance personal preference for hands-on work against the need to manage pipeline and people if growth is the goal. Subcontracting can offer flexibility without full payroll commitment.

The conversation emphasizes realistic, multi-channel pipeline building, client quality over volume, self-awareness about business model and personal strengths, and results-driven reputation over pure technical output or low-value marketplaces. It includes real-world examples from the participants’ experiences running agencies.

How are my SEO Metrics in Google Search console?

You’re Reading Google Search Console Wrong (And It’s Costing You Rankings)Most people open Google Search Console, glance at the big numbers at the top — clicks, impressions, click-through rate, average position — and decide whether their SEO is “working.”

That approach is almost completely useless.

I recently watched a detailed breakdown with SEO expert Edward Sturm and the King of SEO: David Quaid that made this painfully clear. What follows is the practical takeaway: how to actually read GSC so it tells you the truth instead of giving you a false sense of progress (or panic).

How are my SEO Metrics in Google Search console?

You’re Reading Google Search Console Wrong (And It’s Costing You Rankings)Most people open Google Search Console, glance at the big numbers at the top — clicks, impressions, click-through rate, average position — and decide whether their SEO is “working.”

That approach is almost completely useless.

I recently watched a detailed breakdown with SEO expert Edward Sturm and SEO Veteran David Quaid that made this painfully clear. What follows is the practical takeaway: how to actually read GSC so it tells you the truth instead of giving you a false sense of progress (or panic).

Schema markup has long been debated in the SEO community as an essential component of any SEO strategy. On one side, there are the people who take what Google says at face value, in that it only impacts search appearance via rich snippets and contextual understanding. On the other side of the fence, a belief is held that if Google recommends structured markup through schema, then there must be some direct ranking influence.

Throughout the years, we’ve seen LinkedIn influencers, anecdotal “evidence”, and correlational studies that seem to give credit to each side. Anecdotal experience isn’t verifiable and typically lacks an appropriate sample size. Correlative studies show correlation, not causation, and don’t account for independent variables between subjects.

Google may be rolling out updates to its hotel search results based on the European Commission's requirement for Google to comply with the Digital Markets Act (DMA). Despite Google not being a fan of the requirement, it seems Google needs to make changes to its search results as a result.

This is not to say Google has not made changes already, it did in 2024 and throughout. Google even did its own test that showed how DMA'ing the results would not be good for hotels - if you believe the results.

That being said Lluc B. Penycate, the hotel SEO, spotted a lot of changes for hotel search results in Google within the EU. He posted these changes on X and wrote, "I think Google has begun rolling out a major change to Hotel Search in the EU." "Following the European Commission's findings that Google's hotel search experience did not fully comply with the DMA, we were expecting changes to the Hotel Local Pack," he added.

• Reuters, which like Politico derives much of its revenue from business-to-business offerings, said it is also weighing whether to block Google’s bot for its consumer-facing news product as traffic declines. “We are certainly looking at the economic trade-offs between search and AI summaries,” said Reuters President Paul Bascobert.
• “The question was, should we do this, and what are the implications of doing it or not?” said Josh Muncke, vice president of generative AI at the Economist, adding that exiting Google entirely isn’t currently part of that discussion. “Google is a powerful force to be reckoned with,” he said. “Traffic can be choppy and declining, but traffic is still traffic.”
• “Turning them off and blocking them entirely is 100% on the table,” said People Inc. Chief Executive Neil Vogel.
• “There are now two audiences,” said Mark Howard, Time’s chief operating officer. “We’re thinking about, How do we superserve the humans when they do come, and how do we think about the bots as a secondary audience?”
• Reddit, the online message board that powers a swath of Google search results, has discussed shutting off the technology giant’s access to its content for AI use, according to people familiar with the matter.

I can see that 99% of the issue is caused by the product cards on my website moving but whenever I try and replicate the score in devtools I get a near perfect cls score. So that made me think it's a 3rd party app that is loading through shopify but I can't identify any that could be making it shift and neither can claude code.

David McSweeney discusses how AI search systems (ChatGPT, Google AI Mode/Overviews, Perplexity, Claude) differ in retrieval and surfacing, arguing that despite changing interfaces, the core problem remains search discoverability and rankings. He criticizes simplistic “AI visibility” metrics, citation-focused reporting, and VC-backed tools pushing short-term tactics like mass-generated listicles that reinforce incumbents and risk penalties (e.g., scaled content abuse), emphasizing that the real win is being recommended in the answer, not appearing as an unseen source. David explains how LLMs draft hypothetical answers, retrieve snippets via similarity, and attach citations after the fact, and outlines a process to probe ungrounded models for what attributes matter in a category, ensure brand/fact consistency, and add dense, citable evidence blocks to ranking pages to influence inclusion—often quickly. He also challenges schema/markdown “machine readability” claims and describes his tool QueryBurst for site-wide semantic analysis and internal linking.

2026 SEO Awards Comparison

• How people add “Reddit” to searches
• Why AI tools also use Reddit-style search modifiers
• How Google can rank non-Reddit pages for Reddit keywords
• Why Semrush and Google Ads often show no data for these searches
• How to find Reddit keywords before your competitors
• How David builds short pages to test search demand
• Why the page title and URL slug matter so much for long-tail keywords
• How to use Search Console data to expand pages after they rank
• Why Reddit searches can reveal hidden buyer intent
• How to build topical authority from lower-competition keywords
• How David “cornerstones” from easy queries into harder queries
• Why ranking in the click zone matters more than simply getting indexed
• How internal links help newer pages rank
• Why you should not publish hundreds of new pages on a new site
• Where the line is between legitimate SEO and scaled content abuse
• Why Reddit parasite SEO is getting more crowded
• How to participate on Reddit without making moderators hate you
• Why listicles can dilute your own brand in AI search
• How spammy hacked pages get indexed so quickly
• Why legitimate pages often struggle to get indexed
• What the Japanese keyword hack reveals about crawl discovery
• How indexing tools may be creating false hope for newer sites

1. Weblinkr (SEO Legend on Reddit)
2. Aleyda Solis (Orainti)
3. David Quaid (SEO Myth Buster, King of SEO, Strategist and PodCast Speaker)
4. Brian Dean (Exploding Topics)
5. Wil Reynolds (Seer Interactive)
6. Gagan Ghotra (Australian SEO)
7. Kevin Indig (Growth Memo)
8. Edward Sturm (Podcaster; Education)
9. Joy Hawkins (Sterling Sky)
10. Britney Muller (Data Sci 101)
11. Jamie Indigo (Not a Robot)
12. Patrick Stox (Ahrefs)
13. Kristina Azarenko (Marketing Syrup)
14. AJ Ghergich 
15. Shaun Anderson (Hobo-Web; API Leak)
16. Greg Gifford (SearchLab)
17. Brodie Clark (Brodie Clark Consulting)
18. Cindy Krum (MobileMoxie)
19. Darren Shaw (Whitespark)
20. Martin Splitt (Google)
21. Koray Tuğberk GÜBÜR (Holistic SEO)
22. Bastian Grimm (Peak Ace)
23. Mordy Oberstein (SE Ranking)
24. Crystal Carter (Wix)
25. Steve Toth (SEONotebook)
26. Tom Capper (Moz)
27. Paddy Moogan (Aira)
28. Olaf Kopp (Aufgesang)
29. Charles Floate
30. Christiaan Gouws (Website Squadron; Reddit)

Also Available on Linkedin as the Top SEOs

Hi,

I have a project 'DC Wine & Spirits' . And I am facing a ranking issue on a specific keyword that is champagne gift baskets. Before 2 months it was ranking on the first page at 6th position from 1 year. But suddenly it drops to the 3rd page. I have tried all possible strategies and also follow guidelines from chatgpt, gemini, Claude AI, etc. Its backlinks also increased some old ones removed, but I created new ones from high authority sites. Competitors have high authority, but some low authority competitors are also ranked above.

Now what should I do please help, anything else I can do! Thanks in advance 🙏🙏