In this Drive-By SEO short, Joshua Albanese, founder of Spearleaf, visits Sweet Spot Medi Spa in Fort Myers, which shows up first on Google Maps with a strong rating, good photos and replies to every review. When he asks AI for the best med spa in Fort Myers, it isn't listed first, and he explains how authority signals on its website and on outside directories and Reddit, the work of AI search optimization, would help.
Read the full guide: ChatGPT vs Google: How Each Picks a Local Business →
Video Transcript
So this is another episode of Drive-By SEO, where we optimize businesses to get them more customers. Today the customer is Sweet Spot Medi Spa. So we're in the parking lot right now, and I went ahead and Googled them on Google Maps, and they are showing up number one.
They have great ratings. There's really nothing to comment on here. The photos look really good. They have some before and afters. Everything is really saying a really good set of positive signals. They have an amazing rating right there, and then when we look at the reviews, which will populate here in a second, they'll be responding to every review as well. And that's also a big signal to Google, hence why they have a really good rating.
Now when we go to AI and we search for best med spa in Fort Myers, where we're at right now, they don't show up number one. And so if they were my customer, this is what I would do for them. We're missing authority signals. I'd be looking at what was on their website that we could optimize for, especially the words "best med spa." We would look for any other places in Fort Myers that might rate med spas, that might optimize for that, so that way we can actually get authority signals outside their website and also build authority signals in their website.
These are the two biggest things. A lot of companies are focusing on Google reviews, which is really important, but in the new AI search era, it's just not Google reviews anymore, because they don't have access to that. ChatGPT, Perplexity, they're looking for reviews outside, so I would search for directories that are ranking spas and get them on that, so that way we can get more reviews on other websites.
Things like Reddit would do a really big job for establishing them as an authority in their local area, which means they're going to make a lot more money and get a lot more customers.
Read the full guide on why Google Maps rankings and AI picks differ →