Show Up Everywhere: AI Search Optimization for Contractors 🚀

Here's something that should keep you up at night.

When a homeowner in Your Market asks ChatGPT who's the best contractor for a kitchen remodel, do you show up?

What about Google's AI overview?

Perplexity, Grok Most builders have no idea they're still playing the old game, obsessing over Google rankings while the search landscape shifts underneath them.

Your competitor down the street, he might already be the one getting recommended and you'd never even know you had lost that lead.

Today, I'm, sitting down with Wes towers.

Wes runs Uplift360, a digital agency that spent 20 plus years helping builder and tradesmen turn their online presence into an actual lead generation system.

Not just a pretty website that sits there.

A system that rings the phone.

And here's what makes this conversation different.

Wes isn't just talking about SEO.

He's talking about search everywhere optimization, how to show up across Google, ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and Perplexity.

Because that's where your buyers are looking.

Now we're going to break down why Google rewards novelty, why unpolished content is outranking the polished stuff, and the one move you can make this week to start showing up where it actually matters.

If your website cost you ten grand and is generating zero trackable leads, this one's for you.

Let's get into it.

You're listening to Beyond the Bid, the show by GO First, where we share the systems, strategies and practical AI for builders.

Keep listening to learn how to win more of the right projects, boost profitability and scale.

Beyond the Bid.

All right.

Welcome in, Wes.

Thanks so much for joining today.

Welcome to beyond the Bid.

so we had a little bit of time to chat before, minus my technical mishaps, but today we were going to talk about how home builders and business owners are really starting to deploy AI to be found online in more creative ways that are, you know, not just contractor near me.

Typing that in on Google.

Right?

It.

yeah.

You said something that's really interesting there that like Google will index like novelty.

can you highlight that just in terms of, is that more for like showcasing projects or you know, what really makes you stand out as a, as a home builder or as a business owner?

Yeah, absolutely.

I know.

for a while HubSpot has a, like an AI grader tool and I was using that for a little bit to see how my sites were ranking.

things like that exist though, where you can see, you know, how you Rank on Google vs ChatGPT and Gemini and Perplexity and all these different things.

Yeah.

That's huge.

Yeah.

It's almost like as soon as they secured the clients, like can I see their phone to.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah, I bet.

That's huge.

So, this is my fault, but I realized we didn't even, I didn't even get give you a chance to kind of talk about uplift and your origin story and how you got into this space.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

Good for you.

It, you know, it's, it's one of the hardest things I think to, to or maybe not hard.

It's, it's easy to start a business.

It's hard to stay consistent with it.

Yeah, it's like when you're working for somebody, you're getting a slice of the pie.

When you start your own thing, you don't even have the recipe to make a piece of.

yeah, absolutely.

Well, that's awesome.

That's quite the, that's quite the story.

So nowadays with like the clients that you're working for or working with and the services and the websites that you guys are creating, do you have a process that you follow in terms of, you know, like helping them reach their certain goals or certain content pieces or traffic to the site?

Anything like that?

Absolutely.

And then do you guys primarily work with That story that you said, the 100, what was it, 140k project.

and was that a plumber who secured that?

Yeah.

Okay.

wow.

that's amazing.

Yeah, that sounds really neat, I guess for you know, some of the audience who may or may not.

They might not be happy with their website, let's say.

Or maybe they don't even have one up.

maybe they're you know, just a.

Currently a subcontractor.

So they're a specialty trade and they're thinking about, they want to hit that next level.

They want to become maybe a general contractor.

And in order to do that, they know that they need a site.

but then, you know, you quickly go on Squarespace or WIX or whatever and the task just seems super daunting.

what would, what's your like, your recommendation for those guys?

sure.

Cool it.

Yeah, absolutely.

I know.

I, I actually have it on my desktop.

There's a photo.

I really like it.

And it just says show, don't tell.

And I'm a, I'm a big proponent of.

Absolutely, absolutely.

So part, of this show that I nerd out quite a bit on just this new world of AI that we live in.

in your workflows, have you found any new cool toys or tools or workflows that you really.

That looks great.

Yeah.

That's crazy.

If you, this is just down this rabbit hole, but if you have AI generated imagery on your website, well, I wonder if that tool will like recognize that and then you know, if maybe that in the alt text, Google will read it and like change your ranking or something.

Yeah, Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

The those, yeah, picture perfect insane graphics that Nano Banana can knock out or chat can knock out.

Nowadays it's like everything is at that scale.

So the unpolished, you know, ums and blurs and all that, that's the more human side is I, I think what's actually ranking higher at least in which is interest.

Yeah.

it's crazy.

It's just absolutely insane in the last like 6 months how AI generated media is just rocket shipping.

yeah, it's.

So I guess for those who regardless of, you know what, at what point in their business they're at, do you have one piece of advice for those who you know, want to rank higher to get more advanced in how people are finding, how potential clients are finding them in AI overview or in chat or even just, you know, simple searching online.

That's great.

Yeah, absolutely.

The, the core message.

There's a, another company in the U.S.

in Texas.

They're called Story Brand.

And yeah, I'm a big proponent of just that like how to create taglines and your, your one liners.

Just simplifying it down just because it's so easy to add in the fluff.

You know, It Might actually be called Story Brand.

I don't.

I forget what the.

Yeah, it's good stuff for sure.

Well Wes, this was, this was awesome.

I'm glad we had a chance to chat today.

for those who are just curious about learning more and maybe even getting started with design, how can they find you?

Cool, Excellent.

Yeah, we'll make sure we link that in the show notes as well as that tool, show.

yeah, yeah, you can show.

cool.

Yeah, yeah, I think I'll try and direct more people towards you before we give them the self help option.

yeah, yeah, absolutely.

but thank you again for the time today.

This was a great conversation.

Take care.

Look, my entire mission with this series is to see talented builders and business owners stop getting run over by operational chaos and to actually start building the business they deserve.

If this episode gave you even one tool or 1% of a tool to fight back, please share it with a fellow builder.

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Until then, systems scale your success.