How Adrian Ghantous brings SEO and AI search to contractors
Adrian Ghantous is the founder of EddyRank, which provides SEO and AEO services for general contractors and remodeling companies. The conversation covers how a focused niche, testing on personal websites and tracking visibility in AI tools shape EddyRank’s approach to helping contractors win work.
Choose a clear niche, learn by working on your own website, and measure whether marketing leads to calls and jobs. Rankings and traffic reports matter less to clients than the work they bring in.
What’s the short story of how your business started, and what makes it genuinely different from the other options your customers have?
I got into SEO a few years ago with my own blog and got hooked on figuring out what makes a site rank. I started EddyRank to bring that to contractors and remodelers. What makes me different: I only work with contractors, I test everything on my own sites before using it for clients, and I focus on whether Google and AI tools actually recommend them, not just on rankings. It’s just me, so clients work directly with the person doing the work.
How did you win your first customers, and where does most of your new business come from today?
My first client came through a referral from a friend. I worked for free at the beginning to prove the results, and it turned into a paid engagement. Today new business comes from direct outreach to contractors and from inbound leads who find me online.
What’s one decision that changed the direction of your business, and one mistake that taught you the most?
The decision: focusing only on contractors and adding AI search on top of traditional SEO. The mistake: early on my pitch focused on asking for something instead of providing value, and it didn’t resonate. I learned to talk about what actually matters to a contractor: jobs they’re losing to competitors.
What has changed in your industry or in what your customers expect over the last couple of years, and how have you adapted?
Homeowners now ask AI tools like ChatGPT who to hire, not just Google, and those tools recommend only a few companies. I adapted by tracking AI visibility for clients, building their presence on the sites AI pulls from, and keeping my pricing and results transparent so contractors can see the value in jobs, not rankings.
If you were advising someone starting out in your industry today, what would you tell them to do first, and what would you tell them to ignore?
First, pick one niche and practice on your own website before you touch a client’s. Getting your own site to rank teaches you more than any course, and it gives you proof to show. Then get one client, even if it’s free at first, and focus on real results for them. Ignore the shiny tools, the “rank #1 in 30 days” promises, and trying to serve every type of business. Clients don’t care about rankings or traffic reports. They care about calls and jobs, so measure that.
Thank you to Adrian Ghantous and the team at EddyRank for sharing what actually worked with Leaders Perception readers.
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