The Most Powerful SEO Strategy “SEO Experts” Don’t Know About: The Geo Grid

There is a lot of perceived mystery and magic surrounding SEO, so many people pay a lot of money to someone to “do their SEO,” which is just a lot of nonsense. I can talk about “doing SEO” as well as anyone because I’m an actual search engine engineer but let me tell you what is really going on instead.

I’ll start with the basics of SEO, which might be boring for some of you. But from there, I’ll reveal a strategy that I think will blow your mind, and it’s completely legitimate. It’s called the geo category grid, and I’ve run this by top people in the SEO world – people I’ve known for years – and they all agree with it.

Google has always aimed to approximate what a human would expect to see if they searched for something like “truck accident lawyer Kentucky.” But how does Google determine who should rank for that? They need a voting system, and 20 years ago, that system was based on websites linking to each other. Every link was a vote in a popularity contest. The more votes you got, the higher you ranked.

SEO people started gaming this by creating tons of garbage pages that linked to each other to boost a particular page’s rank. As a programmer, I could generate a thousand websites, each with a thousand pages, and have them all vote for the page I wanted to rank by saying things like “Darryl Isaacs is the best Kentucky truck accident lawyer.”

Yahoo and Google used to crawl the web and count these votes, placing the website with the most links at the top. But as spammers started flooding the internet with these fake links, search engines had to become more sophisticated. They introduced a system called PageRank, where links from high-authority sites like government or media pages carried more weight. For example, a link from The New York Times was worth much more than a link from a random blog.

Search engines also started to look at other factors, like how fast links appeared (link velocity) and whether the linking sites were trustworthy. If too many links appeared all at once, or came from suspicious sources, it raised a red flag.

The entire system now revolves around the quality of links, not just the quantity. If irrelevant sites link to your page, like a blog about palm trees linking to a personal injury lawyer, it looks suspicious. Google’s algorithm works like a lie detector, examining various factors to determine if the links are legitimate.

In short, SEO is 90% about links and only 10% about content. Most of the internet is full of garbage links, and Google’s job is to filter that out. Does anyone have any questions about how link juice works and how SEO depends mostly on links?

Let me show you something borderline spammy and then explain a legitimate strategy we can all use to help each other. For instance, I searched for a house in Nashville, and the top result was Zillow, followed by other real estate sites. One site ranks on any address inside Nashville because they’ve scraped all the addresses and posted them on their website.

This site likely makes millions of dollars by ranking for these terms, and it’s all thanks to powerful links. They’ve got links from high-authority sites like NHL.com, where their real estate agent is a sponsor. This sponsorship link from a major site like NHL.com is the reason they rank so well, even though it might not seem directly related to real estate.

The point is that Google values high-quality, relevant links. The connection between a hockey team and a real estate agent in the same city is enough to establish relevancy for Google’s algorithm.

Similarly, if you run a blog about traumatic brain injury, you’ll link to relevant experts and research. It doesn’t matter where the experts are located; what matters is that the content is relevant to your topic.

This is how the top SEO professionals think. They focus on getting links that are either geographically or topically relevant. For example, if you’re a car accident lawyer in Louisville, you’ll want links related to either Louisville or car accidents.

We happen to control many high-authority websites and run groups with local businesses, so we can use these links to help each other. It’s a legitimate strategy, and it’s not spammy.

We want to show that we actually do the thing we say we do in the city we say we do it.

Google is a lie detector test that assumes you’re guilty unless you have actual proven experience doing HVAC in Las Vegas, Nevada, for example.

There is so much auto-generated non-sense that Google had to write this blog post on EEAT to explain what they’re looking for.

While ChatGPT is great at tuning content, it’s even better at assessing whether your content meets this simple standard of actually doing the thing you say you do in the city you say you do it.

The geo-grid is how you powerfully and legitimately do this.

The geo-grid is about leveraging company connections on different verticals in different areas around the country. This strategy is for local service businesses and is an example of an “SEO strategy” that actually works.

For example, plumbers in Dallas network with plumbers in Las Vegas (or an electrician in Phoenix working with an HVAC company in Phoenix).

The reason why this works is because pro-level SEO is indistinguishable from pro-level PR, social media, and content marketing. You can think of this almost like sharing in another company’s trust while building your own.

As a practical example, a client of ours at TLS Insulation – is a home attic insulation company located in Sarasota. We also have another client called Southern Values Cooling and Heating, which is an HVAC company located down the road in Bradenton.

By recording content together, adding links to blog posts with context, and making it clear where their service areas are, they’re able to rank higher in the Sarasota area – even though they specialize in different services.

What Does This Have to Do with SEO?

The mechanics of ranking on search engines is having high-quality content that gets linked to other sites that have juice (and viewers).

SEO in general is a fancy way of saying “are you Googleable?”

The key to getting Googleable is by producing content that we can repurpose on different platforms. The goal is that users engage with it and find the content helpful.

Because the more users engage with it, the higher the relevance and ability for us to get these rankings. It’s all a trickle-down effect of having good content.

For example, in 2021 I was featured on Forbes. Forbes has a DR score of 94 with 175.5 million links.

A backlink from a site like Forbes holds tremendous power when it’s linked to you. Simply being mentioned on a site with that high of a DR score is massive for your website.

Think about this in terms of social media.

If someone with 2 million followers tags your account, what are the chances that you’ll gain followers if the info is useful?

Very high.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking you have to be linked by some DR 94 site to show visible improvement immediately. Just like growing on social media, it takes time and networking with others in a similar niche.

If you’re reading this, chances are you already have most of the tools you need.

Most local service businesses already operate off relationships. They’re called referrals.

But why stop there?

We want Google itself to be our referral network.

​​The geo-grid is a concept used in local service business advertising, particularly in the context of social media and digital marketing.

It’s a strategy that combines geographical targeting (Geo) with category-specific targeting (Category) to create a grid that helps businesses reach their target audience more effectively.

Here’s How It Works

• Geographical Targeting (Geo): The business divides its service area into smaller geographic zones, similar to the Geogrid concept. This can be done using zip codes, neighborhoods, or other relevant geographic divisions.
  
• Category-Specific Targeting (Category): Within each geographic zone, the business identifies different categories of services it offers or different customer segments it wants to target. For example, a local service business like an HVAC company might have categories like “air conditioning repair,” “heating installation,” or “emergency services.”
  
• Creating the Grid: The business then creates a grid where each cell represents a combination of a geographic zone and a service category. This allows the business to tailor its advertising messages and offers to specific needs and interests of potential customers in each area.
  
• Targeted Advertising: Using this grid, the business can create highly targeted advertising campaigns. For example, if the business knows that a particular neighborhood has a high demand for air conditioning repair services, it can direct its advertising efforts for that service specifically to that area.
• Performance Tracking and Optimization: By monitoring the performance of advertising efforts in each cell of the grid (i.e., each geo-category combination), the business can identify which areas and services are generating the most leads and conversions. This allows for ongoing optimization of advertising spend and messaging.

Overall, the geo-grid helps local service businesses to be more strategic and efficient in their advertising efforts, leading to better targeting, higher engagement, and ultimately, more customers.

Let’s look at an example.

A business that does IV Therapy in Tampa like Oasis Mobile IV Therapy should partner with businesses also in Tampa or IV Therapy businesses outside of their local service area.

This leads to a “cross” in the sense that Oasis IV Therapy now knows the types of businesses they should collaborate with and link to and vice-versa.

Either IV Therapy clinics outside of Tampa or other local businesses in Tampa.

They’d have little in common with an HVAC business in New York or a Plumbing business in Boston. But they’d have much in common with an HVAC company in Tampa (Geo) or an IV Therapy Clinic in Phoenix.

By sharing link juice between these businesses they can grow together ethically.

How Is This Different Than Buying Links?

The companies would be sharing relevant information in a way which isn’t spamming.

For example, if I own Oasis IV Therapy and there’s another IV Therapy clinic in Boston, I could link to a blog post the Boston business published on the safest way to conduct IV Therapy.

The Boston IV Therapy clinic could do the same, improving the trust of both companies at the same time.

Using a geo-grid for local SEO does not violate Google’s policies because it is essentially a tool for analyzing and visualizing data. It does not involve any manipulative practices that would go against Google’s guidelines.

The geo-grid itself is simply a way to map and understand how a business appears in local search results across different geographic areas.

It helps businesses identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions to enhance their local SEO efforts.

On the other hand, a link farm is a group of websites that all hyperlink to every other site in the group, with the primary purpose of increasing the number of inbound links to each site.

Link farms are considered a black hat SEO tactic and are explicitly against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. They attempt to manipulate search engine rankings by artificially inflating the link popularity of the websites involved instead of E-E-A-T guidelines.

The key difference between using a geo-grid and participating in a link farm is that the former is a legitimate analytical tool for improving local SEO, while the latter is a deceptive practice aimed at gaming the search engine ranking system.

Geo-grids do not involve any manipulation of search results or link schemes; they simply provide insights based on existing search data.

There’s a Common Practice in SEO Called Local Service Pages

Essentially, if you have lots of local service pages based on the communities you serve.

The ideal being that Google will crawl your site, find location specific keywords, and amplify your presence based off of them.

There’s a catch.

​​It’s not the geo-tagging that shows Google someone is local to their community – it’s local content and local relationships corroborated across many channels

Geo-Tagging Only Works With Proof of Real Relationships

My friends at Isaacs and Isaacs, a law firm in Kentucky, used to practice an insane amount of geo-tagging by having local service pages in every town they serviced.

It’s not that having LSPs doesn’t help.

It’s that each page is the same, just with different text.

So whether it’s Crawfordsville, Louisville, or anywhere else – the only thing that’s different is the text.

Why would Google not want to promote this?

You guessed it.

There’s No Evidence of Real Relationships

In other words – Google can’t confirm that you do what you claim to do in the area you do service.

How do you fix that?

You document these relationships and make each page unique for those you’ve serviced.

An actionable step in their case would be to reach out to past clients they’ve served and ask for a video from them mentioning their location.

In the local service world, that would mean documenting service workers based off location and posting images.

Did You Know That Every Photo You Take On Your Phone Is Location Tagged?

Let’s say you’re a plumber in Tampa, FL.

Have local service pages of the surrounding communities like Brandon, St Pete, Temple Terrace, etc.

In each of these LSPs, take photos of work you or your team has done.

Post to the accurate pages.

Let your work speak for itself.

Google Has One Goal: To Promote Reputable Companies to Solve Issues

The good news is that if you’re good at what you do, the marketing part is surprisingly easy.

You just have to give Google what they want.

Which is proof of relationships and good work done in the place you claim it was done in.

That’s it.