Local SEO, from zero to mastery
No experience required. Start at lesson one and finish understanding every lever that decides whether nearby customers find you — and exactly how to pull each one. Taught plainly, in order, and built to be put on autopilot.
Start the course →Foundations
Start here. What local SEO is, why it decides whether nearby customers ever find you, and the simple machine running underneath every local search.
What Is Local SEO (and Why It Decides Who Gets the Customer)
The absolute beginning. What local SEO means, how it differs from regular SEO, the local results, and why it is the single highest-leverage marketing channel for any business with a location or a service area.
How Local Search Actually Works: Relevance, Distance & Prominence
The mental model that makes everything else click. The three factors local search engines weigh to rank local results, what feeds each one, and why “prominence” is the lever you’ll spend most of your time on.
Your CGM Local Profile
Your CGM Local profile on cgmimm.com is the foundation of your local SEO — the source of truth that anchors your local presence everywhere. In this module you claim it, verify it, and make every field perfect, then let that synced data flow out to Google, Bing, and the rest.
Claim & Verify Your CGM Local Profile
The first concrete step in local SEO. What your CGM Local profile is and why it sits at the center of everything, how to find out if one already exists for your business on cgmimm.com (it almost certainly does), how to claim it, how verification works, and the pitfalls that trip people up.
Optimize Every Field of Your Profile
A claimed profile is only the start. Here you complete and optimize every field of your CGM Local profile — category, name, services, description, attributes, hours, and photos — so the local search engines see you as the most relevant, complete, and trustworthy option in your area.
Keep Your Profile Active: Posts, Updates & Q&A
A complete profile is not a finished one. The engagement features — profile posts and updates, products, Q&A, messaging, and booking — signal an active, prominent business and turn profile views into customers. Here is how to use each on your CGM Local profile, and why an active profile wins across local search.
Listings, Citations & Consistency
Consistent business information across the entire web is the quiet backbone of prominence — it is how local search engines learn to trust you. In this module you build that web of trust, starting from your CGM Local profile on cgmimm.com, and learn to keep it clean.
NAP Consistency: The Backbone of Trust
The single most overlooked fundamental in local SEO. What NAP is, why having one canonical version of it matters, how inconsistency silently erodes your rankings and loses you customers, and a repeatable way to audit and fix your NAP across the web.
Citations & Directories: Building Your Web of Trust
How consistent listings become a ranking signal. What a citation is, the difference between structured and unstructured citations, the tiers of directories that matter (and why), and why quality and consistency beat raw quantity every time.
Find & Fix Duplicate Listings
The cleanup work that protects everything you’ve built. How duplicate listings form, the real damage they do to rankings and customers, how to hunt them down across the major platforms, and how to resolve each one cleanly.
Your Website & On-Page Signals
Your CGM Local profile and your listings prove you exist; your own website proves you’re real and reinforces exactly what you’re relevant for. In this module you make your site speak your customers’ language, structure it so every local search engine understands each page, and label your information so search engines read it perfectly.
Local Keyword Research: Speak Your Customer’s Language
Before you write a single page, you need to know the exact words your customers type when they’re looking for you. This lesson teaches you the kinds of local searches people make, how to find the real phrases they use, and how to map each one to a page on your site.
On-Page SEO for Local: Pages That Rank & Convert
With your keyword map in hand, this lesson turns it into real pages — titles and headings that signal location and service, consistent contact details, service and location pages done right, internal links, and the trust signals that make local search engines and customers believe you.
Local Schema Markup: Help Search Engines Read Your Site
A plain-English guide to structured data. What schema is, why it builds trust and can earn richer search listings, the LocalBusiness fields that matter, where it lives on the page, and how to test it — written for someone who has never touched code.
Reviews & Reputation
Reviews are the one prominence signal you can grow on demand — and the deciding factor when a ready customer is choosing between you and the business next door. In this module you’ll learn why they matter, how to earn them on a system, and how to turn your best ones into assets you own.
Why Reviews Are Your Biggest Lever
Reviews do two jobs at once: they push you up the rankings and they win the click once you’re there. This lesson breaks down exactly how reviews affect both ranking and conversion, and why they’re the single prominence signal you can actually control and grow.
A System for Earning Reviews (Without Begging)
Great reviews don’t happen by luck — they happen by system. This lesson gives you a repeatable, low-friction way to earn a steady stream of honest reviews from happy customers, plus the hard rules that keep you out of trouble.
Respond, Then Turn Reviews Into Testimonials
Earning the review is only half the value. This lesson teaches you to respond to every review the right way — good and bad — and then to convert your best reviews into testimonials you own and can use everywhere.
Authority, Measurement & Mastery
The advanced levers that lift you above equally-good competitors, the numbers that tell you it’s actually working, and the ongoing routine that keeps you on top. This is where you stop following steps and start running a system — where you become a master.
Local Link Building & Mentions: Earning Authority
Once your listings, website, and reviews are solid, authority is the lever that separates you from competitors who are just as accurate and just as close. This lesson teaches what backlinks and mentions are, why they raise prominence, and the white-hat ways to earn them in your own community.
Measuring What Matters: Tracking Your Local SEO
Doing the work is half the job; knowing it’s working is the other half. This lesson teaches you to read your CGM Local profile insights, understand why local rank is geo-dependent, separate the metrics that matter from vanity numbers, and run a simple monthly review.
Putting It All Together: Your Local SEO Mastery Routine
The capstone. A complete recap of every lever you’ve learned, the maintenance routine that keeps them all healthy, the nuances for multi-location and service-area businesses, the mistakes to avoid, and the mindset that turns knowledge into lasting dominance.
Learn it here. Automate it with Listify.
This course teaches the work; Listify does the tedious part for you — publishing one accurate profile to 90+ directories and keeping it perfectly in sync, so your foundation is always solid.
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