5 AI hacks to dominate local SEO and search in Google and ChatGPT

The way people discover local businesses is changing. It is no longer just about showing up on Google: more and more users are asking language models like ChatGPT, Claude and other AI assistants which is the best service in their city. If your brand does not appear in those answers, you are missing visibility, clicks and potential customers.

The good news is that you do not need months of manual work to compete. With five practical AI hacks, you can align your local SEO with the way both Google and AI models “think”, improve your positions in Google Maps and increase how often your business is recommended in conversational searches.

Why local SEO and AI search must work together

Language models like ChatGPT run on advanced math and word patterns. They look at which terms appear together, how questions are phrased and which answers seem most useful given the user’s context. They do not “understand” content like a human does; they process text and language statistics.

This has a direct implication for your local business: if your website uses the same language people use when they ask questions in Google or in AI chatbots, both Google and these models are more likely to use your content as a reference and recommend you in their answers.

At the same time, Google still relies on classic local SEO signals: a well-optimized Google Business Profile (GBP), a clear landing page that matches search intent, relevant content for your city and service, and strong external links that validate your brand.

The five hacks below connect both worlds. They use AI to generate ideas, automate parts of the workflow and structure information, but always with a very practical local goal: more calls, more form submissions and more customers from your area.

Hack 1: Mirror real customer language with Reddit and turn it into FAQs

The goal of this first hack is to make your website talk exactly the way your customers do. If you can mirror how they phrase their doubts, both Google and ChatGPT are more likely to use your answers when someone asks a similar question.

Reddit and other local forums are gold mines to understand how people really speak when they look for a service: what they worry about, which terms they use and which nuances they add depending on their city or neighborhood.

Why this hack works

When the questions and answers on your site match almost word-for-word the queries users type into search boxes or AI chatbots, your texts fit perfectly into the patterns these systems have learned. This boosts your chances to:

Rank in Google for very specific, service-plus-city queries.
Be cited by ChatGPT or other models when they recommend local businesses.
Improve conversion rates because you answer exactly what the user had in mind, in their own words.

How to apply this hack step by step

Research questions on Reddit and similar forums.
Use an AI research prompt to collect threads and questions from Reddit and other local forums about your niche and your city. Filter the questions that repeat often or clearly reflect strong concerns and objections.
Reply with real value (not pushy sales copy).
Post helpful answers both on Reddit and on your blog. Avoid hard selling; focus on explaining, clarifying and guiding. Make sure your Reddit profile includes your business name so AI models can associate your answers with your brand.
Turn the best answers into a FAQ section.
On your website, create a Frequently Asked Questions section that reuses and improves those answers. Keep the users’ language (phrases, expressions, fears, examples) and group FAQs by topics or stages in the decision process.

Real-world example

A house cleaning business in Austin went from billing between 5,000 and 10,000 dollars a month to more than 80,000 dollars in just six months by spending 30–45 minutes a day answering questions on Reddit under their business name and turning that activity into strong FAQs on their website.

Hack 2: Optimize your Google Business Profile in minutes with AI

Mentions on Reddit and other forums help build authority, but most clicks come directly from your Google Business Profile (GBP). This second hack uses AI to optimize your GBP in very little time, from choosing categories to creating weekly posts.

1. Pick the right primary category

Your primary GBP category should match what people actually type into Google, not just how you describe your business internally. For example, many HVAC contractors choose “HVAC contractor” as their main category, but users tend to search for “AC repair” when the unit breaks.

Analyze your sector and ask yourself: “What phrase would my ideal customer type when they have the problem right now?”. That is your best candidate for the primary category.

2. Use tools and prompts to uncover categories and services

Browser extensions like GMBB Everywhere let you see which categories your competitors use and which services they list under each one. With that information you can:

Extract all relevant categories that show up in your area.
Use AI to generate an expanded list of services related to each category.
Group those services according to their semantic relationship to each category.

The key is to structure your profile in a way that matches how Google’s algorithm understands the relationship between words, services and business types.

3. Keep the profile active all year long

Google rewards active profiles. With one strong prompt, you can generate 52 weekly posts (one for each week of the year) based on your services, seasonal offers, success stories or short tips. Then you only need to review and schedule them.

Typical results of this hack

Adjusting categories and services, combined with a full GBP audit, has helped businesses stuck around position 17 in Google Maps move up to position 8 in a few weeks, getting closer to the coveted “top 3” where most clicks go.

Hack 3: Turn your homepage into a local landing page Google and AI love

Once your Google Business Profile is optimized, the next bottleneck is usually the page linked from the “Website” button, which for most local businesses is the homepage. This URL is the one that gets the most traffic and has the biggest impact on your local SEO results.

Why the GBP landing page matters so much

In many niches, around 90–95 % of traffic from Google goes straight to the landing associated with your GBP. Content that is two or three clicks away is much harder to rank and takes longer to generate results.

This is why your homepage must:

Explain clearly and briefly what you do and which problem you solve.
Include your primary service and your city in the title tag.
Use an H1 aligned with that local search intent.
Mention neighborhoods, zones or districts that reinforce your location.
Include a FAQ section with structured data (FAQ schema).

Think in terms of “completing the goal”

Almost nobody visits a plumber, lawyer or clinic website without a concrete need. Google watches whether that visit “completes the goal”: calling, sending a WhatsApp message, filling out a form or requesting a quote.

Your landing page should make that action obvious, easy and fast: visible buttons, a clear form, easy-to-find contact details, trust signals and copy that reassures the user they are in the right place.

Quick win example

A plumbing business whose homepage title tag was simply “Home” climbed in rankings after changing it to a combination of service plus city, optimizing the H1, strengthening action-oriented content and adding FAQs with schema. In a few weeks, it went from position 11 to position 6 in local results.

Extra trick: “incognito mode” in ChatGPT

Just like we use browser incognito mode to see non-personalized search results, we can use a kind of “incognito mode” in ChatGPT through a specific prompt. The idea is to ask the model to ignore any previous history or preference for your website and to generate a list of recommendations as if it did not know you.

This lets you check whether, from a neutral perspective, your business would realistically appear as a recommended option when someone asks, for example, “best eye clinic in [your city]” or “best AC repair company in [your city]”.

Hack 4: Build local service pages at scale (instead of blogs no one reads)

In many local businesses, a traditional blog is not the best tool to rank. Generic articles (“10 tips for…”) often attract people who do not live in your city or are not ready to buy, and they do not build the geographic relevance Google’s algorithm needs to see you as a local option.

Local service pages vs. generic blog posts

Instead of spending months creating broad, informational posts, this hack suggests using AI to build highly specific local service pages for your main combinations of:

Service + city.
Service + neighborhood or area.
Service + type of client (families, businesses, offices, etc.).

Each page should go deep into one service, explain the process, answer detailed questions and reinforce that you are a local solution (mentions of districts, areas, local testimonials, city-specific examples, etc.).

How to use AI to create these pages at scale

List your priority services and areas.
Start with the services that have the highest demand, urgency or margin, and with the areas where your ideal customers are most concentrated.
Create a master prompt for your local service pages.
Tell the model the service, city, tone of voice, target client type, common objections and calls to action. Then reuse that prompt by swapping only the key data (service, area, neighborhood).
Review, localize and publish.
Adjust references, add real examples, photos or local reviews, and link those pages from your homepage and, where it makes sense, from your Google Business Profile.

Impact example

An eye surgery clinic in a large city was getting tens of thousands of monthly visits from informational searches (“how to take care of your eyes”, “eye exercises”) but very few from local prospects. After they replaced part of that approach with hyperlocal service pages, total traffic decreased, but map rankings turned green across the board and call volume doubled within a few months.

Hack 5: Local links and consistent citations so Google trusts you

Content alone is no longer enough. AI has made text creation relatively easy and cheap, so Google needs additional signals to decide whom to trust. This is where local links and consistent citations (mentions of your business on directories, third-party sites and social profiles) come in.

1. Find local link opportunities with AI

A good “local off-site SEO” prompt can help you find:

Chambers of commerce and business associations.
Charities and community events that accept sponsorships.
Youth sports leagues, schools, universities and clubs.
Industry-specific directories and relevant local blogs.

Many of these links can be earned by sponsoring events or initiatives for a few hundred dollars, but they carry huge authority. A single link from a local university website, in exchange for supporting a talk or event, can be worth more than dozens of generic high-DA links with no local relevance.

2. Make your citations 100 % consistent

AI models rely heavily on mentions. If your business name appears with slightly different variants (for example, “ABC Plumbing” and “ABC Plumbing and Heating”), the model might interpret them as different companies.

With a “citation hunter” prompt, you can:

Identify where your business appears with inconsistent names, addresses or phone numbers.
Prioritize the most important portals to request corrections or removals.
Unify your name, address and phone number (NAP) across all profiles and directories.

This reduces confusion for both Google and AI models and strengthens the signal that all those mentions refer to one solid, trustworthy brand.

How to prioritize these 5 AI hacks

You do not need to implement everything at once. In fact, it is usually more effective to prioritize depending on where your business is today.

If you are starting from scratch with local SEO

Start with Hack 2 (AI-optimized GBP) and Hack 3 (local landing page).
Make sure your profile and homepage match your primary search intent and make it easy for users to complete their goal (call, message, book).

If you already have a presence but are not climbing the rankings

Apply Hack 1 to align your language with your customers and strengthen your FAQs.
Use Hack 4 to create local service pages focused on your priority areas.
Reinforce everything with Hack 5 by getting local links and cleaning up citations.

If you want to get the most out of AI

Turn your ideas, processes and success stories into reusable prompts.
Document which prompts you use for research, drafting, auditing and off-site work, so you can repeat the system for new services, cities or brands.

Quick implementation checklist

Use this list as a working guide for you and your team:

Checklist

Hack 1 – Reddit and FAQs:
Have you identified at least 10–20 real user questions from Reddit/forums and turned them into a FAQ section on your site?
Hack 2 – AI-optimized GBP:
Does your primary category match the term your ideal client searches for most? Do you have secondary categories and services properly organized?
Hack 3 – Local landing page:
Does your homepage include service + city in the title, an optimized H1, local mentions and visible calls to action?
Hack 4 – Local service pages:
Have you built specific pages for your most important services in your key areas?
Hack 5 – Links and citations:
Have you identified at least 10 local link opportunities and reviewed your main citations to unify name, address and phone?

FAQs about local SEO and AI

Does AI replace traditional SEO or does it complement it?

AI does not replace traditional SEO; it complements it. Google still relies on classic signals such as content, authority and external links, but it now also draws on language models and conversational search. If you only focus on classic SEO without considering how AI chatbots respond, you lose visibility; and if you only work with AI without a solid SEO foundation, your results will be fragile and short-lived.

How long does it take to see results from these hacks?

It depends on your starting point and how competitive your niche is, but many businesses start seeing improvements in Google Maps positions and lead volume within a few weeks after optimizing their Google Business Profile, main landing page and first local service pages. The impact of local links and citation clean-up usually consolidates over several months.

Do I still need blog posts if I build local service pages?

For local businesses, service pages often have much more impact than generic blog posts. A blog can still be useful if it focuses on specific customer questions and strengthens your authority on key topics, but it should not replace well-optimized service pages by city, neighborhood or client type. Your first priority should always be pages that attract “ready to buy” intent.

Which external links are most valuable for a local business?

For a local business, the most valuable links usually come from entities in the same city or region: chambers of commerce, universities, schools, associations, events, sports clubs and high-quality local directories. A single, highly relevant local link can outweigh many generic links from sites with no connection to your location or industry.

Take your local SEO and AI to the next level

Applying these five AI hacks can dramatically improve your local visibility in Google and in AI assistant recommendations. It requires a method, consistency and a solid strategy for content and links, but the outcome is clear: more calls, more form submissions and more customers from your area.

If you want to speed up this process and work with a team that understands both local SEO and AI-driven automation, start by reviewing your current assets, prioritizing the high-impact hacks and defining a 90-day implementation plan with clear traffic and conversion goals.

5 AI hacks to get Google and ChatGPT to recommend your business