Jeremy Rivera interviews Kyle Bailey, founder of Front Burner Marketing, about local SEO strategies specifically designed for home service businesses. Kyle brings a unique perspective as one of the few SEO professionals who has actually worked in the trades—framing, roofing, drywall, and kitchen/bathroom remodeling.
Kyle Bailey

• Founder, Front Burner Marketing
• 15 years in home service digital marketing
• Former tradesman turned SEO specialist
• Author of upcoming book: What's Your Story? The Path to Connection with a Homeowner

Connect with Kyle:

• LinkedIn: The Kyle Bailey
• Website: FrontBurnerMarketing.net
• Twitter/X: @FrontBurnerMarketing

Key Topics Discussed

The Unique Challenges of Home Service Marketing (02:00)

• The attention gap problem: business owners are firefighters and babysitters
• Why before-and-after photography is critical but difficult to execute
• Kyle's hands-on approach: driving to clients in Texas to handle photography personally
• The urgent need to adapt to AI-driven search changes

Your Story as Your Superpower (04:00)

• Every home service business has a unique story that competitors lack
• How to identify and articulate your core values
• The difference between shotgun vs. rifle messaging (broad vs. focused)
• Employee, friend, and customer audits to discover hidden core values
• Why story-based differentiation creates genuine connection with ideal customers

Key Resource: What's Your Story? - Front Burner Marketing

The Franchise Limitation (06:30)

• Why only 3 out of 100 franchises can effectively compete in local SEO
• Corporate restrictions on messaging, location pages, and customization
• The Quiznos cautionary tale
• Due diligence steps before buying a pizza franchise or any franchise
• Free discovery calls available to assess franchise SEO viability

Community Co-Marketing: Driving Past Free Money (10:00)

• The "barrel of $100 bills at every red light" concept
• Neighborhood signage opportunities: 30-second content goldmine
• Co-marketing with complementary trades (painters, siders, window companies)
• How to create video content on job sites with partners
• Transcribing videos into blog posts for multiple websites
• The professional advantage: extracting marketing value from daily activities

Related Article: Matt Brooks of SEOteric on nexus-based link building

Example Businesses:

• Permacast Walls (precast concrete walls)
• Newton Crouch (renovations)

Community Cleanups and Local Link Building (21:00)

• Why community cleanups work on Reddit (when normal promotion fails)
• Keep America Beautiful: National nonprofit with county-level support
• Community Clean Links - organizing community cleanup initiatives
• SEO benefits: event directories, national aggregators, Google event SERP
• Brand mentions directly in search results
• Documentation strategy: branded team, photos, no pitching

The AI Search Reality (24:00)

• Michael McDougald's quote: "Your least trained but most popular customer support representative is ChatGPT"
• Kyle's Dallas remodeling company: dominant on Google, invisible on ChatGPT
• "You're out of time" - the urgency of adapting to AI platforms

The 80/20 AI Strategy (26:00)

• 80% effort: telling your story cleanly and authentically
• 20% effort: strategic positioning for ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini
• Weekly tracking experiment: "Chicago plumber" across all platforms
• Early volatility vs. emerging consistency in AI results
• How to monitor what competitors are doing in AI search

Related Service: AI SEO at Front Burner Marketing

Website Shift: Discovery vs. Vetting Device (28:00)

• The old model: 10 blue links leading to discovery
• The new model: users vet you after AI/maps/reviews discovery
• Google's evolution: ads → maps → People Also Ask → featured snippets → AI Overview → Reddit
• AI summaries now appearing in Google Business Profile descriptions
• How AI interprets and summarizes content (not direct quotes)

The Investment Reframe (30:00)

• Why $30,000/year feels expensive but $15/hour feels cheap
• Calendar mining: extracting marketing value from existing activities
• The compound effect of consistent SEO investment over 3-5 years
• Professional services as high-end employees, not expenses

Explore Services: Local SEO Services at Front Burner Marketing

Best Quotes

"If you're a home service business owner, I can almost guarantee you you're driving past free money every day. Just think—every red light you come to, there's a barrel of $100 bills over there and you just drive right by it."

"Your website's now a vetting device rather than a discovery device because of the changes Google had already made."

"You're out of time. You're in that movie scene where the ferry's pulling away, but the ramp's still down and the car's trying to jump over. That's where you are right now."

"If you could only say one thing to your homeowner, what would it be? That takes some time, some effort, and some meditation."

"When you connect on core values with your ideal customer, they feel something. Even if they never buy from you, they feel it."

Key Takeaways

✅ Home service businesses need to prioritize storytelling over keyword optimization. The most effective marketing starts with identifying and communicating core values that differentiate you from competitors in commoditized markets.

✅ Co-marketing with complementary businesses is massively underutilized. Simple actions like taking selfie videos with painters, plumbers, or other trades on job sites creates authentic content, builds local authority, and generates natural brand mentions across multiple websites.

✅ AI search is fundamentally changing the discovery process. Business owners can no longer afford to wait—80% of effort should focus on clear storytelling while 20% should go toward strategic positioning in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other LLM platforms.

✅ Neighborhood-level content is free money. Taking 30 seconds to photograph neighborhood signage and create location-specific content for every job creates micro-location pages that dominate local search without significant investment.

✅ Franchise models severely limit local SEO effectiveness. Out of 100 franchise conversations, only about 3 can make the necessary changes to compete effectively in local search due to corporate restrictions on messaging and website customization.

✅ Community involvement must be documented and linked strategically. Sponsoring cleanups, attending galas, and supporting local organizations only generates SEO value when properly documented with photos, links, and cross-promotional content across multiple platforms.

✅ The days of H-tag and keyword optimization are over. If your SEO isn't part of telling your authentic story, you're building on sand. Modern algorithms and AI platforms reward authority, authenticity, and relevance.