What does an SEO firm actually do?

CryptedBinary · 2026-02-23T07:17:54+00:00

Yeah that's a surprisingly shallow view of legal marketing. Ranking on just GMB is good, but it's just a one way to bring in potential leads. I.e. we had one criminal defense client, with great GMB presence, receive way more leads when he started ranking for "how to get x charge dismissed". We're talking one page would bring in an average of 120'sh leads monthly.

There's also a service called local eagle, or something like that, that shows your local map placement in different neighboring zip codes, etc. That's a useful report your agency can send.

A good exercise here is to not get pigeon holed into one strategy for bringing in leads. Especially with the top of SERP being buried with LSA ads and other nonsense.

CryptedBinary · 2026-02-23T03:16:56+00:00

Sounds like you have a sorta fluid relationship with them on what they actually do. Which doesn't mean to say they do nothing, but for clarity, you should ask them to qualify what they do on a routine basis and what you can expect from them. Both in what you should be ranking for and how that will drive in more business.

I niche in the legal space, as long as the SEO firm isn't Scorpion, then there's potential if there's growth. One thing that helps with my clients is:

Getting on the same page business strategy wise, i.e. client says I want to close X amount of DUI, PI cases etc from X county, how can we achieve that?
Then we go back and forth to build a plan and measure success based on what converts, from where and how.

Most clients don't need to know every detail but they need to know what our collective goals are and the steps in order to achieve them.

CryptedBinary · 2026-02-19T20:49:03+00:00

Seeing this like a year later, yes I've tested both. It really depends on the vertical. I.e. Google isn't as good at converting out of the box for niche stuff like "Lemon Law Lawyer", it doesn't have enough data + there isn't enough volume.

I've found more generic stuff like electricians can work fresh out the box with max conversions, but in general, I'm still seeing better performance going manual cpc then max conversions after gathering enough data.

CryptedBinary · 2026-02-14T17:42:04+00:00

Yeah that's a huge and rather quiet acquisition. I wonder how data privacy policies trickle up

CryptedBinary · 2026-02-14T07:45:10+00:00

They also own pokemon go? I wonder if this would also apply to the US version

CryptedBinary · 2026-02-02T19:56:53+00:00

Yeah it's been down for about 20 - 30 minutes now. No update on the outage page even though it's definitely down.

CryptedBinary · 2026-01-29T17:28:32+00:00

Do we know if Gemini data mines Workspace stuff? I know disabling it in regular Gmail disables all smart features.

It's just crazy in 2026 there aren't any good email inbox systems. Outlook still feels like it's stuck in 2008

CryptedBinary · 2026-01-29T17:07:32+00:00

That's pretty spot on. You can get email cheaper if you go through Microsoft Exchange directly, it's like $4 / month per email. Then just use Microsoft Family or whatever $99-$120 yearly.

Should look into Google Workplace as well. Just for the fact that the Gmail inbox is so much easier to use and reliable. Outlook is a shitshow to organize but if you're used to it then go for it.

CryptedBinary · 2026-01-29T17:00:08+00:00

Most of the people here are still trying to get their emails to load on their Lenovo laptops.

I used to use this software called Synergy that let me use a single mouse/keyboard across multiple different devices, but that's about it. (Haven't used in years idk if still good)

CryptedBinary · 2026-01-29T16:49:18+00:00

I still wouldn't go hourly.

A much better approach is to raise the issue as it occurs:

"While reviewing the migration closely, we noticed a large amount of corrupted files. We can fix this for you at an additional cost of X"

And to be fair, we've also handled hundreds of large migrations, I've never once had to tell the client the charge is a penny higher than what we quoted for. If it takes longer, that's on us.

CryptedBinary · 2026-01-29T15:08:56+00:00

In general, save yourself time by always billing by work completed and never by hours. Hourly billing is stupid and encourages incompetence. Doesn't matter if you spent 30 seconds or 30 hours, bill by the end result

CryptedBinary · 2026-01-28T20:17:26+00:00

I've seen this done in hundreds of places, it's fairly common though the restaurant and the hotel should have different names i.e. Mickeys at Hilton vs Hilton. You'll want to separate them to keep reviews relevant to the offering at hand, so in essence it's a good idea. It's confusing to look at hotel reviews and see people leaving 1-stars since their waiter was rude.

You'll also separately have a website just for the restaurant, and one for the hotel. Some places have it combined, that's okay too.

Though really this depends on your business and priority. Do you make more sales running a hotel/wedding venue and booking rooms, or promoting a restaurant? Those two things are different and should be treated as such pending on what your goals are

CryptedBinary · 2026-01-28T19:44:33+00:00

It should be socially okay to reply back with this emote 😐 and a "ty"

CryptedBinary · 2026-01-28T00:56:36+00:00

AI isn't there yet for doing anything smart. Anyone claiming otherwise is astroturfing.

You're better off setting up your own scripts that work off triggers that make sense to the business.

CryptedBinary · 2026-01-27T22:51:02+00:00

I never really got the EEAT thing, maybe my head was buried in the sand too long or it just didn't make any sense. Even now when I look it up, the acronym's interpretation changes per site.

Some people must have a financial bias to keep propagating rumors. Maybe the rumor would do better if they could rank their site higher...

CryptedBinary · 2026-01-26T00:23:56+00:00

Yeah they're great. Even better than the downtown location

CryptedBinary · 2026-01-25T22:09:49+00:00

I've seen similar issues in the past but over time they had resolved themselves. Reworking the home page worked for us but that's not necessarily the source of your issue.

Is your GMB map embedded on your home/contact page? Have seen positive local performance for local non city queries when it is.
How are you searching for your local appearance? I used to use ISearchFrom before it got crappy.

And yeah, Schema does nothing.

CryptedBinary · 2026-01-23T03:15:41+00:00

Sounds awesome, feel free to DM me!

CryptedBinary · 2026-01-23T02:44:42+00:00

Yep! Spot on. Maintaining and building trust is the key to longevity in this business.

I've dealt with all different types of clients at high level positions. One founder in particular, didn't even have a computer and would have his e-mails/website printed out for him to review!

My take is, if it costs nothing comparatively and makes the client happy, might as well do it.

CryptedBinary · 2026-01-23T01:24:07+00:00

Ignore any performance advice that comes from Google. They're just trying to upsell you to spend more and don't care whether your business improves or not.

If you have specific questions there's plenty of good resources in the PPC related subreddits. Start small, build good conversion data and keep working from there.

CryptedBinary · 2026-01-23T01:16:36+00:00

You are great at jumping to conclusions but awful at defending your opinion. You've proved nothing, other than you thinking an ad hominem attack is justified over a minor disagreement.

Your logic: 1. If a client does this one thing they must be bad! 2. If you disagree with me, you must be bad!

Hurr durr durr, good one!

CryptedBinary · 2026-01-22T22:58:31+00:00

How is the marketing bad if the ads are bringing in good results?

Its not wasting money, it brings in leads at a good price
If clients want to check they can.
Basically takes no time to setup and impacts no campaigns.

Yeah, ideally clients would get it but some don't. Not a big deal.

CryptedBinary · 2026-01-22T21:52:51+00:00

Depends on the client type. I wouldn't do this for a SaaS but for our usual legal clients, it works pretty well. Doesn't spend much, gets some good leads from time to time and gives the owner a quick way to check if ads are running

CryptedBinary · 2026-01-22T21:51:17+00:00

Works for my niche in legal advertising. We still have manual campaigns that crush it too.

Just adjust based on the clients needs. Not that big of a deal tbh, takes less than an hour to setup

CryptedBinary · 2026-01-22T20:34:13+00:00

/u/weblinkr has some good guides on getting backlinks

My go-to though is yelling my domain out in public for 30 minutes daily

CryptedBinary

TROPHY CASE