Kevin Pauls Platinum Google Product Expert

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'm currently a Platinum Product Expert for Google Business Profile — one of five levels in Google's own Product Experts program. I run Simple SEO Marketing and I built Local Visibility Lab.

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.

It comes up in almost every first conversation, so here is the honest version: what the program is, where Platinum sits, and what it does and doesn't get you.

Google Product Experts is a recognition program Google runs for independent contributors — people who know a product deeply and spend their time answering questions in Google's official help communities. Members are not Google employees and are not paid by Google.

The program has five membership levels. I'm currently at Platinum for Google Business Profile: Google's definition is seasoned members who contribute beyond providing help, through mentoring, creating content, and more. Diamond is the level above it. I'd rather tell you that than round up.

What it reflects is time served on hard problems in public. In the Business Profile Help Community that means failed video verifications, hard suspensions, service-area and address eligibility, duplicate and merged listings, and the policy edge cases that don't have a documented answer yet. It's also why local SEO agencies bring me in to consult on reinstatement work, and why the reinstatement tooling inside Local Visibility Lab exists at all.

What it isn't: a hotline. Product Experts get no special access to your profile, no internal escalation path you couldn't use, and no ability to guarantee a reinstatement. What you get is someone who has seen your exact failure mode many times and knows which of the plausible explanations is usually the real one.

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 have trusted me with their business and their clients. Most of my work 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
  • Consulting · Google Business Profile issues

    Sterling Sky

    I consult for Sterling Sky, one of the best-known local SEO agencies in the industry, on Google Business Profile issues — reinstatements, suspensions, and the verification problems that come with them. It's high-stakes work: a suspended profile can take a business off the map overnight. That case load keeps me sharp on what Google is actually enforcing right now.

  • Past engagement · Local SEO & Google Business Profile

    Steady Demand

    I consulted 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 was 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.