How a Sports Blog Led to a 13-Year SEO Career

I asked Peter how he got into SEO 13 years ago.

He got into it like most people do. He had graduated with a degree in sports management and started a sports blog. It was kind of like Barstool Sports, not quite as crazy but similar, talking about controversial sports stuff.

After a few months promoting the blog on social media and forums, he kept seeing people mention search engine optimization. He thought that was interesting and started learning about it. He had some good success sharing content on Reddit and optimizing posts.

He thought about pursuing it as a career, got a few internships, worked at an agency, and it spun into a full-time role. That's how most SEO careers start, honestly. You stumble into it by accident, realize you're good at it, and decide to make it your career.

Local SEO Is the Wild Wild West

I asked Peter which niche he likes working in most.

He really likes e-commerce, but local is pretty fun too because you need to be on your toes constantly learning. "I feel like local SEO is like I made a post a while back probably even saw it was like the wild wild west of SEO where it's like it's just crazy," Peter said.

Recent example: Google now lets your competitors report you if you're using fake reviews. That's definitely going to be misused. Imagine your competitors mass reporting you just to mess with your rankings.

Local SEO changes constantly. Google Business Profile gets updated all the time. The map pack algorithm shifts. Review policies change. Spam tactics come and go. You have to stay on top of everything or you'll get left behind.

This is exactly what I experience in pest control SEO. Something that worked six months ago might not work today. Google rolls out an update and suddenly half the tactics in your playbook need adjusting. It's a constant cat and mouse game.

Building 50,000 LinkedIn Followers in Three Years

Peter has built 50,000 LinkedIn followers in three years. That's insane growth. I had to ask how he did it.

He remembered seeing a few people posting consistently and kept saying he was going to do it too. Eventually he just started, trying to post a few times a week. He got into a habit. At one point he was posting seven days a week and got burnt out. Now he's closer to three to five posts per week.

His original intent was improving his personal brand, but it's had massive benefits beyond that. He's gotten on podcasts, been featured in big publications, done sponsored posts, and gotten referral work from it.

"I think it's super important to like just stand out in SEO and obviously can also help pre-sell you and kind of build your expertise especially when you're trying to sell clients and agencies," Peter said. "So I'm a huge believer in personal brand."

This is something I'm working on more with my own personal brand. When someone searches for pest control SEO or finds me on LinkedIn, I want them to already know who I am, trust my expertise, and be ready to work together. Personal brand accelerates everything.

What SEO Actually Is in Simple Terms

I asked Peter to give a basic rundown of what SEO is for people who might be new to it.

At its core, you have content on your site and you're wanting to promote your services and make it more valuable. It's like any marketing. You're trying to promote it so you want to be the destination. If someone's searching Boston Pest Control, you want your website to appear as high as possible.

You do that through creating content that answers questions and getting backlinks. Backlinks are like citations, basically people vouching for your work. It's kind of like reviews for businesses where someone vouches for your work. You can think of backlinks the same way where someone spoke about you and cited you as a source.

Google sees those backlinks as votes of confidence. The more high-quality votes you have, the more Google trusts you and ranks you higher.

The Difference Between Citations and Backlinks

I asked Peter to explain the difference between citations and backlinks since people get confused about this.

Citations are name, address, and phone number listings. Some citations include backlinks, some don't. A backlink is a hyperlink back to your website. Google crawls that and you get a vote of confidence.

A backlink can be a citation if it includes your NAP info, but it could also just be a link without that information. Citations are more about consistency and trust. Backlinks are more about authority and rankings.

For local SEO, Peter recommends submitting to major aggregators and big ones like Yelp, Yellow Pages, and Merchant Circle. But he doesn't hyperfocus on them because they're more for trust rather than ranking. You can get more benefit from higher quality, niche-relevant backlinks.

This is exactly my approach with pest control companies. Yes, we get them listed on all the major directories. But the real ranking power comes from getting links from pest control industry sites, local news coverage, and other authoritative sources in their space.

The 20 to 25 Hour SEO Audit That Blew My Mind

One thing that caught my attention was when Peter mentioned spending 20 to 25 hours on an SEO audit. I've heard of 10 hour audits, maybe 15, but 20 to 25 hours is intense. That's three full work days just auditing a single website.

The client specialized in both renting and selling storage containers. Peter went through their entire website, focusing on each content template type and auditing all the major pages. He looks at title tags, headers, internal linking, citations, reviews.

He also looked at their blog strategy, backlink strategy, and all their Google Business Profiles. He found they could have more categories, they weren't responding to reviews, they didn't have services set up properly. With local SEO, audits take longer because there's more things at play.

Peter checks whether Google can crawl the site easily, whether content is optimized, and if everything is semantically friendly. For this client, a lot of pages were more than three clicks from the homepage. He recommended an HTML sitemap to put all the important pages on there and shorten the distance between the root and other pages.

Most SEO audits I see are pretty surface level. They run the site through Screaming Frog, check some metrics, and call it done. Peter's going way deeper, actually analyzing the strategy, the content, the local presence, everything. That's why he charges premium rates and gets premium results.

What Takes Up Most Time in a Massive SEO Audit

I asked what takes up most time in these massive audits.

It's honestly a mix. Some clients only want a technical audit. Others want everything. Peter worked with a men's health client in Australia that was dropping rankings over multiple updates. He noticed technical issues but also that the content wasn't well optimized. They implemented his strategies and saw massive improvement.

Peter's always been someone who uses a variety of tools and also manually looks at certain pages. These massive tools don't always get things right or they miss things. You need the human element analyzing the data.

Data is just data. You need analysis. Peter does this by ending audits with impact and prioritization. "I'll usually do that and then I'll end the audit with basically like the impact of each thing and prioritize it so they have an action plan and then on the top I'll do like an executive summary because what matters to them most is making money so it's like how can you show which things are going to make them the most money," Peter said.

This is crucial. Most SEO audits are just lists of issues with no context. Peter tells clients what will actually move the needle on revenue. That's what business owners care about.

Core Web Vitals and Page Speed Matter More Than Ever

I asked Peter about Core Web Vitals and page speed since it's become such a big ranking factor.

Core Web Vitals measure user experience metrics: how fast content loads, how quickly the page becomes interactive, and visual stability. Google uses these as ranking signals. If your site is slow, you're losing rankings.

The crazy thing? Most websites fail Core Web Vitals. They're too slow, too bloated, too many scripts running. Every plugin and widget you add slows things down.

Peter's approach is identifying what's slowing the site down and prioritizing fixes based on impact. Maybe it's images that aren't compressed. Maybe it's render-blocking JavaScript. Maybe it's a slow hosting provider. You have to diagnose the specific issues.

For local businesses, this is often an easy win. Your competitors probably have slow websites too. If you can get your site passing Core Web Vitals while they're failing, that's a ranking advantage right there.

Technical SEO Isn't Just for Enterprise Sites

One misconception I wanted to address: people think technical SEO is only for huge enterprise sites with millions of pages. That's not true.

Technical SEO matters for every website. A local pest control company with 50 pages still needs proper site structure, clean code, fast load times, mobile optimization, and proper indexing.

The principles are the same whether you're a billion dollar e-commerce site or a local HVAC company. Google wants to crawl your site easily, understand your content, and serve fast pages to users. If you're not doing that, you're leaving rankings on the table.

Peter's 20-hour audits might be overkill for a small local business. But spending 5-10 hours doing a proper technical audit? Absolutely worth it. You'll find issues costing you rankings that are relatively easy to fix.

How to Optimize for AI Search Platforms

I asked Peter about optimizing for AI platforms like ChatGPT and SearchGPT since that's becoming increasingly important.

The fundamentals are the same: create high-quality content that answers questions comprehensively. But there are some nuances.

AI platforms pull from sources they trust. Having citations from authoritative sources matters. Being mentioned in high-quality publications matters. Having structured data that helps AI understand your content matters.

Brand mentions are huge for AI. The more your brand is mentioned across the internet, even without links, the more AI platforms recognize you as an authority. This is why building your personal brand and company brand simultaneously is so powerful.

Traditional SEO tactics still apply: good content, authoritative backlinks, technical excellence. But now you also need to think about how AI might interpret and cite your content.

My Main Takeaway

The biggest thing I learned from Peter is that technical SEO audits need to go way deeper than most people think. It's not just running a site through Screaming Frog. It's analyzing every aspect of the site, the content strategy, the local presence, and prioritizing what will actually move the needle on revenue.

The second takeaway is that local SEO really is the wild west. It changes constantly. Competitors can report you. Google updates things weekly. You have to stay on your toes and keep learning or you'll get left behind.

The third thing is the importance of personal brand, especially in SEO. Peter's 50,000 LinkedIn followers have opened doors to podcasts, publications, sponsored posts, and referral work. Building in public and sharing your knowledge makes selling dramatically easier.

The fourth lesson is that data without analysis is useless. Anyone can pull metrics. The value is in interpreting what those metrics mean and telling clients what actions to take for maximum revenue impact.

If you want to learn more from Peter, connect with him on LinkedIn where he posts regularly about technical SEO. You can also check out his website for more in-depth SEO resources.

Ready to Dominate Your Local Market with SEO?

If you're a pest control company looking to show up at the top of Google and get more leads, that's what we do at Pest Control SEO. We help pest control companies dominate their local markets.

Want to see if we can help? Head over to pestcontrolseo.com and schedule a free strategy call.

Why Most SEO Audits Miss the Big Picture

Let me expand on why Peter's audit approach is so different from what most SEO agencies deliver.

Most agencies run your site through automated tools like Screaming Frog, SEMrush Site Audit, or Ahrefs Site Audit. These tools spit out hundreds of issues. Broken links, missing alt tags, duplicate content, slow pages. The agency packages this up in a PDF and calls it an audit.

The problem? There's no strategy. There's no prioritization based on your specific business goals. There's no analysis of what will actually move the needle on revenue. It's just a list of technical issues that may or may not matter for your particular situation.

Peter's approach is fundamentally different. Yes, he uses tools. But he also manually reviews pages, analyzes the competitive landscape, evaluates the content strategy, and thinks about the business objectives. Then he prioritizes recommendations based on impact.

This is why his audits take 20-25 hours instead of 5. He's not just running automated scans. He's doing strategic analysis that requires actual thinking and expertise.

For a local business, this matters enormously. Maybe you have 100 technical issues but only 5 of them are actually impacting your rankings. Peter identifies those 5 and tells you to fix them first. The other 95 can wait. That's the difference between strategic SEO and checkbox SEO.

The Executive Summary That Actually Matters

Peter mentioned ending audits with an executive summary focused on revenue impact. This is so important and most SEO reports completely miss this.

Business owners don't care about crawl errors or canonical tags or schema markup. They care about one thing: will this make me more money?

Your job as an SEO is translating technical issues into business impact. Don't tell them they have duplicate content. Tell them duplicate content is causing Google to rank the wrong pages, which is costing them an estimated $5,000 per month in lost leads.

Don't tell them their site is slow. Tell them slow load times are causing 30% of mobile users to bounce before the page loads, which means they're losing thousands of potential customers every month.

Don't tell them they need more backlinks. Tell them their top competitor has 50 more authoritative backlinks, which is why they're ranking #3 instead of #1, and that #1 position would bring an estimated 10 more leads per month.

This is what Peter means by showing them which things will make the most money. Frame everything in terms of business impact, not technical jargon.

Citations Are About Consistency, Not Volume

Let me clarify Peter's point about citations since this is something I see pest control companies mess up constantly.

Most businesses think they need to be listed on 200 different directories to rank well. That's not really true. What matters more is consistency across the major directories.

Your business name, address, and phone number need to be identical everywhere. If you're "ABC Pest Control" on Google but "ABC Pest Control LLC" on Yelp and "ABC Pest Control Inc." on Yellow Pages, that's confusing to Google. Consistency matters more than volume.

Focus on the major aggregators first: Google Business Profile, Yelp, Facebook, Yellow Pages, Bing Places. Make sure your NAP is perfect on all of them. Then add industry-specific directories like pest control associations, local chamber of commerce, Better Business Bureau.

You don't need to be on 200 directories. You need to be on the 20-30 that matter with perfectly consistent information. That's what actually helps rankings.

The HTML Sitemap Trick for Internal Linking

Peter mentioned recommending an HTML sitemap to shorten the distance between the homepage and important pages. This is a clever technical SEO tactic.

Most people think of sitemaps as just XML files for Google to crawl. But an HTML sitemap is a page on your website that humans can actually see, listing all your important pages organized logically.

The SEO benefit? Every page on that sitemap is now just two clicks from your homepage (homepage → HTML sitemap → specific page). This passes more authority to those pages and makes them easier for Google to discover and crawl.

For a pest control company, your HTML sitemap might organize services by category: Rodent Control (with links to mice, rats, squirrels), Insect Control (with links to ants, termites, bed bugs, wasps), Wildlife Control (with links to raccoons, skunks, opossums), and Service Areas (with links to each city you serve).

Now every service page and location page is just two clicks from your homepage instead of being buried 4-5 clicks deep. That's a simple technical win that most companies overlook.

Why Peter Manually Reviews Pages Beyond the Tools

Peter emphasized using both tools and manual review. This is critical for catching things automated tools miss.

Tools can identify broken links, missing meta descriptions, or slow load times. But they can't evaluate whether your content actually answers the user's question. They can't assess whether your value proposition is compelling. They can't tell you if your call-to-action is positioned well.

Manual review catches these higher-level issues. When Peter looks at a page, he's thinking like a user: Does this answer my question? Is it easy to read? Do I trust this company? Is it clear what action to take next?

He's also thinking like a competitor: What are they doing that I'm not? How is their content better or worse? What can we learn from their approach?

This combination of automated tool data plus human judgment is what separates good SEO from great SEO. The tools handle the tedious technical stuff. The human handles the strategic stuff.

Local SEO Requires Different Thinking Than National SEO

Peter mentioned local SEO being the wild west, but let me expand on why it's so different from national SEO.

With national SEO, you're typically optimizing for broad keywords with high search volume. Competition is fierce. You need massive backlink profiles and tons of content. It's a long game.

With local SEO, you're optimizing for geo-modified keywords with lower search volume but higher intent. Competition is local instead of national. Your Google Business Profile matters as much as your website. Reviews are a major ranking factor. The game moves faster.

Local SEO also has more spam. People trying to game the system with fake reviews, keyword-stuffed business names, fake addresses. Google's constantly fighting this, which means the rules change frequently.

You also have the proximity factor in local SEO. If someone searches "pest control near me," their physical location affects the results dramatically. You might rank #1 in one neighborhood and #5 in another neighborhood three miles away.

This is why Peter says you need to constantly be learning in local SEO. What worked last month might not work this month. A Google update could completely shake up the map pack. You have to stay agile.

Building Personal Brand Opens Unexpected Doors

Peter's journey from zero to 50,000 LinkedIn followers shows the compounding power of personal brand.

He started just trying to improve his personal brand. But it led to podcast appearances, publication features, sponsored posts, and referral work. None of that was in the original plan. It happened organically as his audience grew.

This is exactly what I'm seeing with my own content. I started sharing pest control SEO knowledge to help business owners. Now I'm getting speaking opportunities, partnership inquiries, and clients reaching out who already trust me before we even talk.

The key is consistency. Peter was posting seven days a week at one point before burning out and scaling back to 3-5 posts. Even at a reduced frequency, he's still showing up regularly, still providing value, still staying top of mind.

You don't need to go viral. You don't need every post to be a hit. You just need to show up consistently, share what you know, and engage with your audience. The opportunities come from that foundation.