Unit outcome: Improve legitimate local visibility using accurate business data, useful location experiences, reviews, citations, and policy-aware operations.
Improve legitimate local visibility using accurate business data, useful location experiences, reviews, citations, and policy-aware operations. Work through the four lessons, apply each exercise to a real, approved, personal, or sandbox site, and retain the result in your continuing portfolio.
Recommended prerequisite: access to a real, client-approved, personal, or sandbox website. Units 1–3 require no prior SEO experience.
Progress is self-reported. Mark a lesson complete only when you are satisfied with the applied work—not because you reached the bottom of the page.
Want completion marks to survive navigation? Save progress in this browser. Without opt-in, progress lasts only on the current page.
Translate this principle into an observable decision: identify the audience task, the evidence available, the business consequence, and the verification method. Keep facts, assumptions, and recommendations separate.
Do the work
Exercise
Create a profile specification or audit without making unauthorized live changes.
Acceptance check: your output should name its source evidence, assumptions, intended user or business outcome, and how the conclusion could be verified.
Quick check
Compare your reasoning
1. Why must profile information match real operations?
Compare with guidance
Accuracy supports users, trust, and policy compliance.
2. Is adding extra keywords to a business name a safe optimization?
Compare with guidance
No, unless those words are genuinely part of the real-world business name under policy.
Portfolio handoff
File the evidence
Save the exercise output in your own course workbook or project folder. This site does not upload or retain your work.
Lesson 9.2Not started
Local Ranking and Conversion Factors
Local Pack versus local organic, proximity, relevance, prominence, and expert-survey limitations.
Open on YouTube. Interfaces, platform policies, and product details may have changed; learn the durable principle rather than memorizing buttons.
Learn
The working idea
Local Pack versus local organic, proximity, relevance, prominence, and expert-survey limitations.
Translate this principle into an observable decision: identify the audience task, the evidence available, the business consequence, and the verification method. Keep facts, assumptions, and recommendations separate.
Do the work
Exercise
Convert survey findings into hypotheses, then label which are controllable, partially controllable, or not controllable.
Acceptance check: your output should name its source evidence, assumptions, intended user or business outcome, and how the conclusion could be verified.
Quick check
Compare your reasoning
1. Are survey weights Google-confirmed causal factors?
Compare with guidance
No; they reflect practitioner consensus and observation.
2. Why separate ranking factors from conversion factors?
Compare with guidance
Visibility and customer action are different outcomes.
Portfolio handoff
File the evidence
Save the exercise output in your own course workbook or project folder. This site does not upload or retain your work.
Lesson 9.3Not started
Citations, Reviews, and Reputation
NAP accuracy, relevant directories, duplicate listings, review response, and no review gating or deceptive incentives.
Open on YouTube. Interfaces, platform policies, and product details may have changed; learn the durable principle rather than memorizing buttons.
Learn
The working idea
NAP accuracy, relevant directories, duplicate listings, review response, and no review gating or deceptive incentives.
Translate this principle into an observable decision: identify the audience task, the evidence available, the business consequence, and the verification method. Keep facts, assumptions, and recommendations separate.
Do the work
Exercise
Audit ten citations and write responses to one positive, one mixed, and one legitimate negative review.
Acceptance check: your output should name its source evidence, assumptions, intended user or business outcome, and how the conclusion could be verified.
Quick check
Compare your reasoning
1. Is submitting to every directory a sound strategy?
Compare with guidance
No; prioritize relevant, trusted sources and data accuracy.
2. What should a response to a legitimate negative review do?
Compare with guidance
Acknowledge the issue, avoid defensiveness or disclosure of private details, explain a remedy path, and take sensitive resolution offline.
Portfolio handoff
File the evidence
Save the exercise output in your own course workbook or project folder. This site does not upload or retain your work.
Lesson 9.4Not started
Local Landing Pages and Spam Handling
Useful location pages, unique local evidence, multi-location architecture, doorway risk, documentation, and current-policy escalation.
Open on YouTube. Interfaces, platform policies, and product details may have changed; learn the durable principle rather than memorizing buttons.
Learn
The working idea
Useful location pages, unique local evidence, multi-location architecture, doorway risk, documentation, and current-policy escalation.
Translate this principle into an observable decision: identify the audience task, the evidence available, the business consequence, and the verification method. Keep facts, assumptions, and recommendations separate.
Do the work
Exercise
Brief one location page with staff, service area, proof, local details, directions, inventory/service differences, reviews, and a unique purpose. Create a non-retaliatory spam-evidence checklist.
Acceptance check: your output should name its source evidence, assumptions, intended user or business outcome, and how the conclusion could be verified.
Quick check
Compare your reasoning
1. What makes a city page doorway-like?
Compare with guidance
Near-duplicate pages created mainly to funnel searchers without distinct local value.
2. What should precede a spam report?
Compare with guidance
Objective evidence, current policy review, accurate identification, and a documented legitimate channel.
Portfolio handoff
File the evidence
Save the exercise output in your own course workbook or project folder. This site does not upload or retain your work.
Unit 9 exam
Apply it without pretending the browser is your professor.