SEO in 2026: What is working?

Описание: While the enterprise giants fight over AI agents, local businesses just need the phone to ring.

Shannon Kinney, Founder of Dream Local Digital and a veteran of the newspaper-to-digital transition, argues that for 90% of businesses, "Global SEO" is a distraction. In 2026, the battle for local dominance isn't won by keywords—it's won by Trust Signals.

With AI Overviews (SGE) now handling the majority of "near me" queries without ever sending a user to a website, Shannon explains why your "Digital Footprint" matters more than your domain authority. She breaks down her agency's "HoneyBadger" approach: a tenacious, multi-channel mix that forces Google to see your business as a legitimate entity, not just a set of keywords.

In this episode, you will learn:

The "Trust" Metric: Why Google's 2026 algorithm favors businesses with consistent "offline" signals (reviews, local news mentions, community events) over those with perfect on-page SEO.

The New Homepage: Why you should spend 50% of your optimization time on your Google Business Profile (GBP) and Apple Maps, rather than your actual website.

"Near Me" Nuance: How to win the hyper-local queries that AI agents prioritize (and why "generic" content is invisible to them).
The Multi-Channel Safety Net: Why relying solely on organic search is dangerous for SMBs, and how to use low-budget paid ads to "feed" your organic data.

Stop optimizing for robots that don't buy from you. Start building the local authority that human neighbors (and AI agents) actually trust.
This diagram visualizes how off-site signals (Reviews, Mentions, GBP) now outweigh traditional on-site factors for local search visibility.