Field Notes · 12 notes
Thirty years of watching this industry contradict itself.
No listicles, no ‘ultimate guides,’ no content written to rank for a term I don’t care about. Case studies with the real numbers, teardowns of public sites, and the thirty-year memory pieces.
Notes from the field.Click one. See the job.
Case studies and teardowns from thirty years in search. Every number on these cards is real. The client names are left out on purpose.
Ranking for its own name and nothing anybody searches for
The keyword report looked healthy until you crossed out every brand term. One row was left standing. Five pages on the entire site, zero of them for a service or a location.
Ranked #1 for the term that matters. Nineteen hours to answer an inquiry
The rankings were real. Everything downstream of them was theater, and the median response time was doing the losing. Claimants choose inside an hour.
$3,000 a month in ads, landing on a page that lost three buyers in four
The ads were fine. The site behind them was the problem, and nobody in the building could say which half of the budget worked.
They ranked first and still couldn’t get anyone booked
Top three in every market. A booking widget that rendered a blank white box on half the devices that reached it. Online bookings up 156% after the fix.
They were optimizing for the 30% of conversions that didn’t matter
Six locations. Every report counted form fills. Ninety percent of their booked jobs started with a phone call nobody was measuring. Booked jobs up 38% in 120 days.
Google was crawling 340,000 URLs to find 11,000 products
Faceted navigation had multiplied the catalog thirty times over. Most of the store had never been indexed at all, and the agency’s answer had been to write more category descriptions.
A law firm ranked #1 and lost the case anyway
A six-attorney plaintiff-side firm, around $9M in annual fee revenue, holds the top organic position for the term that matters most in its market. It also takes a median of 19 hours to answer an inquiry.
A landscaping company that ranks for its own name
The monthly report showed 3,100 organic sessions and a top position for every term that ranks. Nearly all of it was people typing the company’s name. The profitable half of the business was invisible.
A dental group on a website nobody can book on
Four locations, strong rankings, and a booking widget that fails silently on iPhones. Nobody on the team had tried to book an appointment from a phone in two years.
Ranking for its own name, and nothing anybody searches for
The keyword report looked healthy until you crossed out every brand term. One row was left standing, and they ranked ninth for it. 530 brand searches a month against 18,400 category searches they miss.
Your pricing page is an SEO asset and you’ve hidden it
Buyers search for what things cost. Most businesses refuse to answer, so a forum thread or a directory answers for them. Here is how to publish a number without committing to one.
A bigger SEO problem than your title tags
A checkout that leaks converts every dollar of acquisition spend into a bounce. Ranking better on a leaking funnel just means more people leave. Price the leak first.
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01
Case Studies
Ranking for its own name and nothing anybody searches for
The keyword report looked healthy until you crossed out every brand term. One row was left standing.
Aug 2026
02
Case Studies
Ranked #1 for the term that matters. Nineteen hours to answer an inquiry
The rankings were real. Everything downstream of them was theatre, and the median response time was doing the losing.
Aug 2026
03
Case Studies
3,000 a month in ads, landing on a page that lost three buyers in four.
The ads were fine. The site behind them was the problem, and nobody in the building could say which half of the budget worked.
Aug 2026
04
They ranked first and still couldn’t get anyone booked
Top three in every market. A booking widget that rendered a blank white box on half the devices that reached it.
Aug 2026
05
They were optimizing for the 30% of conversions that didn’t matter.
Six locations. Every report counted form fills. Ninety percent of their booked jobs started with a phone call nobody was measuring.
Aug 2026
06
Teardowns
Google was crawling 340,000 URLs to find 11,000 products.
Faceted navigation had multiplied the catalogue thirty times over. Most of the store had never been indexed at all.
Aug 2026
07
Teardowns
A law firm ranked #1 and lost the case anyway
A public site, taken apart the way a paid audit would be — including the parts they were doing well.
Aug 2026
08
Teardowns
A landscaping company that ranks for its own name
A public site, taken apart the way a paid audit would be — including the parts they were doing well.
Aug 2026
09
Teardowns
A dental group on a website nobody can book on
A public site, taken apart the way a paid audit would be — including the parts they were doing well.
Aug 2026
10
Teardowns
Ranking for its own name, and nothing anybody searches for.
A public site, taken apart the way a paid audit would be — including the parts they were doing well.
Aug 2026
11
The thirty-year memory pieces
Your pricing page is an SEO asset and you’ve hidden it
One of the thirty-year memory pieces: what this industry keeps forgetting, and what it costs.
Aug 2026
12
The thirty-year memory pieces
A bigger SEO problem than your title tags
One of the thirty-year memory pieces: what this industry keeps forgetting, and what it costs.
Aug 2026
Nobody browses for a plumber. Home-services demand detonates.
From the industries pages
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