u/iamanishkumarsingh

Tested quite a few over the past months. These 5 kept coming back to my workflow:

1. Runway Gen-4.5 — best for creative control
2. Kling AI 3.0 — best for realistic motion
3. Sora 2 — best for narrative/cinematic content
4. HeyGen — best for business & client videos
5. Synthesia — best for corporate/training content

What are you guys using? If I missed something good, drop it in the comments, always open to adding more to the list.

They published a new official resource about optimizing sites for AI Overviews and AI Mode, and honestly… most “AEO/GEO hacks” people are selling right now seem overhyped.

The biggest takeaway for me:

Google basically says traditional SEO fundamentals still matter the most.

Not “prompt engineering for rankings.”
Not stuffing AI-friendly phrases.
Not publishing 500 AI-generated pages.

Instead, they keep reinforcing:

• Helpful content
• Strong technical SEO
• Clear page structure
• Unique expertise
• First-hand experience
• Trust signals
• Crawlability
• Content that actually solves problems

What stood out even more:

AI search appears to reward content that says something original instead of repeating the same rewritten info already ranking everywhere.

For local SEO, I think this changes content strategy a lot.

Local businesses that show:

• real experience
• local proof
• photos
• case studies
• customer examples
• unique insights about their city/service area

…probably have a much better chance of being referenced in AI answers than generic “best plumber in Dallas” pages.

Also feels like topical authority matters even more now.

Curious what everyone else thinks:

Are you changing your local SEO strategy for AI Overviews yet, or still treating it like normal organic SEO?

Not sure if everyone noticed but Google quietly removed the Q&A feature from Business Profiles late last year and it's fully gone now in 2026.

For me this was one of those features I didn't think I relied on until it disappeared. I used to seed common questions on client profiles as a way to surface specific services and keywords right on the listing. Nothing spammy, just stuff like "do you offer emergency repairs" or "is parking available" with proper answers.

Now that it's gone, Google still tries to answer those types of questions for users but it pulls from whatever it can find on your website, reviews, and profile description. Which means if you don't have that info clearly structured somewhere else, Google is either guessing or showing nothing.

So far I've been moving that content into three places:

1. Website FAQ sections with schema markup so Google can pull from it directly
2. GBP description, making sure the most common customer questions are answered naturally in there
3. Google Posts, rotating through common questions as individual posts each week

Curious what others are doing. Has anyone found a better way to replace what Q&A used to do? And has anyone noticed ranking or engagement changes since it was removed?

Curious what everyone's go-to free AI tools are right now. There are so many options out there and new ones popping up every week, so it's hard to know what's actually worth using long term.

Specifically I'm wondering two things:

1. What free AI tool do you find yourself opening almost every day?
2. Did any free tool replace something you were previously paying for?

For example I've seen a lot of people say they dropped Grammarly after ChatGPT got good enough for quick editing. Or people switching from paid stock photo sites to AI image generators.

Would love to hear what's actually sticking for people and not just what's trending on Twitter this week.

I've read probably 30+ business books over the last few years. Most of them were interesting in the moment but didn't actually change anything about how I run things day to day.

The few that did were usually not the popular recommendations everyone repeats.

For me it was The E-Myth Revisited. Not because it was some brilliant insight I'd never heard before, but because it forced me to stop doing everything myself and actually document processes. Boring? Yeah. But it's the reason I was able to step back from daily ops eventually.

Curious what that book was for you not the one you enjoyed reading the most, but the one that actually made you do something different in your business.

I've been doing local SEO for a while now and every time I onboard a new client I basically run through the same list. Figured I'd share it since most checklists online are either way too generic or packed with stuff that doesn't matter for a small local business.

This is aimed at business owners handling their own local SEO. Not everything will apply to every business but this is the order I work through and why.

Google Business Profile first, always

This is where most local leads actually come from, not your website. I check:

Is every section filled out? Business description, services, hours, service area, all of it. A half-filled profile loses to a complete one almost every time.

Are the categories right? Your primary category is one of the biggest ranking factors in the local pack. I've seen businesses jump multiple spots just by switching from a broad category to a more specific one. "Plumber" vs "Water Heater Installation Service" makes a real difference.

Photos. Businesses with 30+ quality photos get noticeably more engagement. Interior, exterior, team, work photos. Not stock images.

Reviews

Not just getting them but getting them consistently. A business with 50 reviews all from two years ago looks worse than one with 20 reviews spread over the last six months. I tell every client to build a simple habit of asking after every completed job. Even just a few per month adds up.

Reply to every single one. Yes even the short ones. Mention what you did and where naturally in the response. Those responses get indexed.

Citations and NAP consistency

Your business name, address, and phone number need to match exactly everywhere. Google cross-references this across directories and inconsistencies hurt your trust signals.

At minimum get listed on Yelp, BBB, Apple Maps, Bing Places, and whatever industry-specific directories exist for your trade. A plumber needs to be on Angi and HomeAdvisor. A restaurant needs to be on TripAdvisor and OpenTable. You get the idea.

Website basics

Your homepage should clearly say what you do and where you do it. Sounds obvious but I audit sites all the time where I can't figure out the service area until I dig through three pages.

Every service you offer should have its own dedicated page. Not one page listing everything. Individual pages targeting each service plus your city. "Water Heater Repair [City]" as its own page will always outperform a generic services page that mentions it in a bullet point.

Make sure your name, address, and phone number are in the footer of every page and match your GBP exactly.

Internal linking

Your homepage should link to every service page. Your service pages should link to each other where it makes sense. If someone lands on your plumbing repair page and you also do drain cleaning, link to it. This helps Google understand your site structure and keeps visitors moving around.

Local content that actually makes sense

I don't mean pumping out blog posts for the sake of it. But a few pages targeting "service + nearby city" for surrounding areas you serve can bring in traffic that a single city page won't capture. Just make sure each page has real unique content and isn't just the same text with the city name swapped out.

What I don't bother with early on

Schema markup, advanced link building campaigns, citation services that promise 500 directories. None of that matters if the basics above aren't solid first. I've seen businesses go from invisible to page one just by doing this list properly.

What am I missing?

This is what works consistently across the clients I work with but I'm always looking to tighten it up. Curious what other business owners or local SEOs would add or do differently.