This week's teardown · Get quoted by the machine The machine is answering. It just picked someone else's name. Hey Reader, Quick spooky-season truth to start your week. Right now, someone is asking Google or ChatGPT a question your business is the perfect answer to. And the machine is answering them. It just picked someone else's name to say. That's the AI Overview, the answer box now sitting at the top of search, and it's changing the game. Search used to be ten blue links and a click. More...
7 days ago • 3 min read
This week's teardown · Don't go dark Going dark for the season will haunt you in spring. Hey Reader, Since it's still October, one more spooky story. A seasonal business wraps up its last booking of the year, and then goes fully dark. Ads off. Blog silent. Website untouched for months. Come spring, they flip the lights back on and find a graveyard where their traffic used to be, while a competitor who stayed warm all winter is booked through June. Assuming Google will hold your spot while you...
15 days ago • 3 min read
This week's teardown · The undead edition There are zombies shuffling around your website. Hey Reader, It's October, so let's talk about the undead. Specifically, the ones living on your website right now. I call it zombie content. Old blog posts and forgotten pages that get no traffic, rank for nothing, and convert nobody. They're not dead, because Google still has them indexed. They're not alive, because they earn you nothing. They just shuffle along. And they are not harmless: What the...
21 days ago • 3 min read
This week's teardown · Claim your lane The map pack is the podium. Three spots, no page one. Hey Reader, Quick one this week, because it's the highest-return hour in local marketing and almost nobody spends it. When someone searches “near me,” Google doesn't lead with ten links. It leads with a map and three businesses. That's the podium. If you're not one of the three, your website never even gets a shot at the click. The good news: getting into that map pack doesn't take a six-month content...
28 days ago • 2 min read
This week's teardown · One mothership You're splitting your horsepower five ways. Hey Reader, Quick gut check. How many websites does your business actually own? Not how many do you use. How many exist. The main site, sure. But also the course site. The landing page for that webinar. The microsite from the launch two years ago. The blog someone parked on a subdomain. Go count them. I'll wait. The 90-second sprawl count 01 List every domain and subdomain your business owns. Check your...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
This week's teardown · Take out the bricks Your site isn't underpowered. The trunk is full of bricks. Hey Reader, Quick question: when did you last open your own website on your phone, with the wifi off, and actually count the seconds until it loaded? That's the connection a lot of your customers are on. And if you're tapping your foot waiting, so are they, right before they hit the back button and click your competitor. A beautiful website that loads slowly is still a slow website. That's...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
This week's teardown · Volume vs. intent 30,000 visitors. Zero bookings. Hey Reader, An agency once bragged to a business owner that they'd sent him 30,000 visitors in a single month. He was thrilled. Then he checked his calendar. Zero new bookings. Not one. Here's what went wrong, and it's the most common mistake I see: he was chasing volume instead of intent. Volume with no strategy is a dragster with no steering. Big search numbers feel like winning. Loud, fast in a straight line, useless...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
100+ ChatGPT Prompts to Revolutionize Your Day This week's teardown · Read the telemetry Where did your last five leads actually come from? Hey Reader, Quick question, and be honest with yourself. Can you name where your last five leads came from? Not “the internet.” The actual channel: organic search, a paid ad, or your Google Business Profile. If you hesitated, you're not alone, and you're not bad at this. You've just been driving without a dashboard. Let's prove it, and then let's fix it....
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
This week's teardown · Rent vs. rank Your cost per click is a confession. Hey Reader, Quick gut check. Go look at your Google Ads bill from last month. Now answer this: how many of those keywords could you be ranking for organically, for free, right now? If the answer is “I have no idea,” you're not alone. It's the single most common blind spot I see on sales calls. And it's expensive, because every click you pay for on a keyword you could own is rent. Rent builds equity for the landlord. Not...
2 months ago • 2 min read