When AI Eats the Middle: Rethinking Local SEO as the Buyer Journey Goes Conversational | Ep. 30

Performance SEO Unpacked

Performance SEO Unpacked brings together host Ruchi Pardal and Fred Shramovich, who has been in the SEO industry for over 15 years and now manages four different retail brands across fast-moving apparel and lingerie. The conversation starts with how people find and choose stores today when AI assistants are creeping into the buyer journey and long, very specific local questions are becoming normal. Instead of simple “near me” searches, Fred is tracking prompts like “long black dress at a boutique” or gifts under a certain price and watching how AI answers those.

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Fred shares how a lean team, strong partners, and flexible third-party store pages let him move fast with local content, Google My Business, reviews, and store-level information. He spends a lot of time in Google Search Console, social media comments, and reviews to understand what people actually ask, from busy moms to price-point holiday gifting. The episode walks through ongoing testing, collaboration with merchandise and website teams, Reddit and social listening, and deeper, more specific reviews as signals to stay visible in an AI first, locally focused journey.

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👤 Guest Bio

Fred Shramovich has been in the SEO industry for over 15 years, with experience on both the agency side and the enterprise side. He is currently managing four different retail brands, including a mix of apparel and a lingerie brand, and works with a very lean team supported by a local SEO provider that builds and manages store pages. Outside the office, Fred sells car detailing products and helps small businesses maneuver the SEO journey with large focused content strategies. He is also blessed with a family with two kids and a wife.

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📌 What We Cover

• How AI assistance is changing local behavior from “pizza restaurant near me” to very, very long questions about specific products, brands, hours, distance, and competitors.
• Why Fred tracks prompts with tools dedicated to the AI space and constantly tests different content formats for categories like bras, dresses, sweaters, and jeans across multiple stores.
• How deeper research in Google Search Console, reviews, and social media comments reveals frequently asked questions that are not being answered yet on Google My Business posts, local pages, or site content.
• Using Facebook, Instagram, YouTube comments and even competitor social channels to spot concerns and themes, then answering those better and treating improvements like “little grains of sand in an hourglass.”
• Navigating multi-attribute local journeys where people ask for a red mini dress for a hundred dollars or gifts under $50, and coordinating with merchandise and website teams instead of going rogue.
• Why Fred still treats Google My Business, citations, and Apple’s business center as important, but pushes harder into sentiment, review depth, and specific details like services installed or products purchased.
• How review management systems, daily monitoring, and habitual negative sentiment at a single location can trigger real store-level fixes and brand-level learning.
• Personalizing local content for different markets like Florida versus New York, using store pages, FAQs, and service content to reflect local nuance while AI and Google results keep getting smarter.
• The importance of regular meetings, open communication, and letting data show traffic, revenue, and year-over-year growth so teams trust experiments and remove blockers for local SEO.

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🔗 Resources Mentioned

• Google My Business / Google business listings – Store hours, updates, posts, and reviews as a core local presence across all four retail brands.
• Google Search Console (referred to as Google Search Council) – Daily data on queries and pages that helps Fred understand what he already knows and what he is not answering yet.
• Apple business center – A newer place for business listings that needs to be completed alongside other major platforms.
• Facebook – A go-to place on desktop for scrolling individual posts and comments to find real questions and issues from customers.
• Instagram – A channel where comments are harder to read at scale but still part of the social listening mix.
• YouTube – Video comments, including competitor videos, as a source of product questions, concerns, and keyword research.
• Reddit – A growing focus for serious SEO work, with subreddits for particular cities or areas and a need for a Reddit strategy that respects policies and communities.
• Google Maps – Part of Ruchi’s curiosity about a future where something like Google Maps could be integrated with Chat GPT or Perplexity.
• Chat GPT and Perplexity – AI assistants mentioned as possible locations where local features, maps, and buyer journeys could coexist with or shift away from traditional Google searches.
• ResultFirst: Visit for more SEO tips and strategies.
• Connect with Ruchi Pardal on LinkedIn for a conversation about SEO.

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