Kevin Pauls

About

I got into SEO because I wanted to know why some sites got found and others didn't.

I'm Kevin Pauls, an SEO consultant and self-taught web developer in Kelowna, British Columbia. I run Simple SEO Marketing, I built Local Visibility Lab, and I'm a Platinum Product Expert for Google Business Profile.

How I got here

Websites first. Then the map pack. Then the tools to run both.

  1. 01

    Building websites

    I don't have a computer science degree. I taught myself to build websites, and I couldn't stop pulling pages apart to see why the technical stuff mattered: heading structure, accessible HTML, what a crawler actually sees versus what a person sees. That habit turned into SEO, and it's still how I work. Show me the source.

  2. 02

    The Google Business Profile problem

    Working with local service businesses, the website was only half the picture. The other half was the map pack: the Google Business Profile, verification, and the suspensions that can take a business offline overnight. I started answering questions in Google's Business Profile Help Community and kept going. Google recognized that work through its Product Experts program; I'm now at the Platinum tier.

  3. 03

    The agency, then the platform

    Simple SEO Marketing is the agency that grew out of that work: Google Business Profile management, local SEO, and websites for service businesses in Canada and the US. Local Visibility Lab is the tooling we built to run it, turned into a product for other agencies and multi-location brands, with a practitioner community and a weekly group call attached. I also publish what I learn along the way, on video and in long-form.

The credential, explained

What "Platinum Product Expert" actually means.

Google's Product Experts are independent contributors recognized for deep expertise and for helping others in Google's official help communities. The program has tiers, and Platinum is one of the senior tiers, reached by a small group of experts worldwide. It isn't something you can buy; it's earned through demonstrated, sustained expertise that Google itself acknowledges.

In practice it means I spend real time inside the Google Business Profile Help Community, working through verification failures, suspensions, and policy questions for business owners and other marketers. That's also why it's a credibility anchor for both of my companies: the person behind them is someone Google trusts to help solve the hardest Business Profile problems.

Google Product Expert is a recognition program run by Google for independent contributors. I'm not affiliated with or endorsed by Google, and no specific ranking or reinstatement outcome is guaranteed.

My profile in the Help Community →

Who I've worked with

From a $50K mom-and-pop to companies doing $400M+ a year.

I've been asked "who do you work with?" and "why should I trust you?" often enough that the honest answer is: companies like these trust me with their business and their clients. Most of my consulting runs through agencies and platforms, which is how I've seen inside so many industries across the United States and Canada.

  • Steady Demand
  • dbaPlatform
  • Highstreet Insurance Group
  • Local SEO & Google Business Profile consulting

    Steady Demand

    I consult for Steady Demand on local SEO and Google Business Profile services. For all things GBP, Ben Fisher's team is the industry go-to, and it's a privilege to work alongside them.

  • Location page expansion · technical SEO

    Highstreet Insurance Group

    When Highstreet's brand expansion merged acquired local businesses into the parent brand, local visibility took a hit. I was brought in to consult on the technical side of the website as it related to local SEO: accessible HTML, page structure, and formatting for location pages.

  • Advisory panel · technical SEO consulting

    dbaPlatform

    dbaPlatform is a local SEO software platform and agency. I sit on their Falcon Link Advisory Panel with other industry experts, and I was brought in to audit and work through technical issues with their website and overall visibility, including ideal customer profile and buyer persona work for an evergreen marketing strategy.

How I work

Four things I keep coming back to.

  1. 01

    Google has to understand who you are, what you do, and where you do it.

    Every tactic is downstream of that sentence. If a change doesn’t make one of those three clearer to Google, it’s probably noise.

  2. 02

    Technical decisions have local consequences.

    A heading structure, a redirect, an address format, a category choice: each one changes what Google understands about a business. I treat the code as part of the strategy, not a separate department.

  3. 03

    If the tool doesn’t exist, build it.

    Local Visibility Lab, the GBP Categories lookup, the site kit my agency builds on: all of it started as something I needed and couldn’t buy.

  4. 04

    Straight answers.

    No guaranteed rankings, no guaranteed reinstatements. If something isn’t realistic, I’ll say so early and tell you what is.