The Biggest Problem With SEO

Key Takeaways

I run a seven-figure SEO agency, and I'm about to talk some of you out of buying SEO because there are problems with SEO that nobody selling it will admit to you. Sometimes it's slow. It doesn't work for every business, and most importantly, if you need leads this month, it's probably the wrong tool. Now, my agency took a plumber from invisible to position two on Google Maps in 14 days. Now, I'm telling people on sales calls every single week, "Don't hire us." Same system, same team. What separates the two businesses is the one thing no explains before you sign an SEO contract, and a few of you are about to recognize yourself in the exact disqualifiers we run people through on those calls. Catching it today could save you thousands. Now, everyone telling you that AI is killing local SEO has it backwards, and I'll break it down because knowing these problems before you sign is what keeps you out of a 12-month contract that's never going to work. So, get that part right, and you've got an asset that's going to pay you for years instead. So, let me start with the thing nobody explains. That plumber I ranked in 14 days, and the speed had nothing to do with magic. This was an established business. He'd had his Google Business Profile for years. He already had a website. Everything Google needs to trust a business was already sitting right there. It was just set up wrong. So, what we did, we went in, we cleaned up the mistakes, and we then built on a foundation that was pointed in the right direction. Fixing what's already there is fast. It's building from scratch that's slow. And that wasn't some unicorn result that I cherry-picked. This is how a lot of these engagements go because most local businesses are sitting on stuff they set up wrong years ago and then never touched again. An old profile, maybe a decent site, but the wrong categories and the wrong structure underneath all of it. Go fix that setup, and a lot of the time Google is going to start moving you almost right away because the trust was there the whole time. Google just couldn't connect your entities. You weren't using it. But there is one situation where none of this really applies. And it doesn't matter who you hire to do this. Okay? This is a brand new business. New website, new Google Business Profile, zero history. That one takes months. And there's no shortcut. A restaurant that just opened yesterday has no reviews, no regulars, no one's ever eaten there. People don't trust it yet, right? And neither would Google. Google hates new things. So, if someone promises a brand new business top rankings in 30 days, they're probably lying. Now, the exception to this is if you happen to be somewhere like Eclectic, Alabama, population 1,140. And if that's you, congratulations, you can probably rank tomorrow just by setting up your profile. Now, let me be straight with you about ads versus SEO. Because the way this usually gets pitched is wrong. Ads are simple. You pay, the leads come in later that day. You stop paying, the leads stop that same day. Nothing carries over. You're buying each customer one at a time every single time. SEO works differently. Yes, it can be slower. It can cost more up front. But what you're building is a position that keeps producing leads that you're not paying for by the click. Now, here's the part nobody selling you SEO wants to admit. It is not set it and forget. You don't build it once and then coast. You have competitors. They're gunning for the same spots, and Google is constantly changing things. So, you have to keep feeding it just to hold your ground. But defending a top spot you've already earned is different than buying every single click from scratch month after month forever. So, when someone asks me, do I have to pay for this forever? The honest answer is that the work changes shape. The The lifting is up front. And after that, you're holding ground instead of starting over every single month. So, the real question isn't ads or SEO at all. It's whether you can keep paying for ads to bring leads in now while the SEO gets built up underneath you. And for most businesses, the answer is you run both for a while, then taper the ads down as the organic side takes over. And honestly, this is the fastest ways to tell if an agency knows what they're doing. A good agency can get an idea of your timeline based on how old your assets are and how competitive of your space is right there on the call. If they're quoting you a timeline before they've asked how old your profile and website are, they're potentially reading off a script. They're not looking at your business. Now, fast or slow, none of that matters if the content itself is built wrong. And what built right even means has changed more in the last couple of months than it has in the 10 years before that, which brings me to the problem that fools just about everybody. SEO can look like it's working while it's completely failing you. I had a client come to us. They were getting over 80,000 visits a month from Google. 80,000 a month. Their old agency's reports looked amazing. Chart always up and to the right, the whole deal. This is a LASIK eye surgery center in downtown Chicago, and almost none of those 80,000 people lived anywhere near Chicago. The phone wasn't ringing. So, how does this even happen? This happens because traffic isn't customers. Somebody clicking on an ad, somebody typing into Google, somebody asking ChatGPT for a recommendation, those are different moments in how people find you, and the same person will bounce between them. They'll get a name out of ChatGPT, then turn around and Google that brand to size it up before they ever call. So, you don't get to choose one of those and ignore the rest. You have to show up across all of them, and here's the part that people miss. Your content has two readers now, not one. There's the actual human who visits your website and there's the machine that decides whether that human ever sees you in the first place. Somebody prompts an AI, the AI reads all the content out there and then it hands back an answer with the recommendation attached. So, if your content isn't directly answering the questions people in your actual service area are asking, you're going to be invisible to both of them, the human and the machine. And no, before anyone asks, there's no separate AI index you have to optimize for. The same content does both jobs. That LASIK center had been writing for clicks and for volume, generic blog posts, and neither one of those readers cared. Now, here's the flip side of that and I run into this one constantly. The Rank Map glows green, top three everywhere you look, but the phone still isn't ringing. And in my experience, that comes down to one thing almost every time, reviews. They have fewer of them or worse ones than the two businesses sitting next to them in the pack. And this happens everywhere. Ranking in the top three gets you in front of people. The reviews are what turn that into a phone call. But now, hold on because this is where a lot of agencies are going to lie to you. Reviews decide the call, yes, but they are not the major ranking factor. Your setup is. And this is something that we've seen over and over and over again. So, when an agency tells you, "We can't rank you until you go get more reviews," what they really do is shifting blame onto you to cover for the fact that they don't know how to fix your setup. So, there are two questions that you should be asking about any SEO report that ever lands on your desk. One, how many of these visitors are actually local to me? And two, how do my reviews stack up against the two businesses right next to me in the pack? And if a report can't tie itself back to your phone actually ringing, then that report is the only thing they're selling you. You're paying for nice charts, not for more customers. And look, everything I've covered so far, the writing for humans, the writing for machines, structuring the profile, all the foundations, that's the exact stuff we work through together inside my AI SEO Mastery community. There's over 3,200 people in there getting a little bit better at this every single day. The link's down in the description if you want in. Now, that machine reader I mentioned, the AI deciding who gets recommended, it's behind the question I get just about every week. People want to know if local SEO is dying now that AI answers everything. And the answer is the opposite of what I keep hearing people say. Local SEO is not dying. If anything, AI is making it even more important. Let's walk through this. AI can write your emails. It can plan your vacation. But it is years away from showing up at your house and physically replacing your water heater. Somebody still has to do the actual work. And that means people still have to find that somebody. The job didn't go anywhere. What changed is who's making the recommendation. And more and more, it's the AI doing the recommending. What? >> [groaning] >> You already know, if you go to ChatGPT and ask it for a good plumber, it's going to name names, real businesses right there in the answer. So, which ones end up getting named? The ones with a clear identity, the aligned Google Business Profile, the real local signals, content that actually answers what people in the area are asking. In other words, the businesses already doing solid local SEO. The AI didn't kill the discipline. It gave that exact same work a second place to show up. You do the work one time and now it pays you in two places. One in the map pack and once in the AI answer. Now, let me give you the honest version of the risk here because there is a real one. At the end of the day, you don't control Google. They change the algorithm whenever they feel like it. And rankings move when they do. That's real. I'm not going to pretend it isn't. But the thing that survives every single update is the fundamentals. Clear signals about who you are, where you are, and what you do. And that same foundation is what earns you the AI recommendations, too. So, your asset is actually less dependent on any single algorithm than it has ever been. Now, one quick warning while I'm on this talking about AI, if you talk to an agency and they try to sell you AI optimization as a separate product, a separate line item, a separate retainer on top of your SEO, that's a red flag. There's almost no separate work happening. It's the same SEO they're already doing. They're just charging for it twice. Okay, so SEO works. It survives AI. It builds on itself. And now, for the part no agency is ever going to say to you, it's still the wrong choice for some of you. Maybe even for you specifically. Now, if any of these next four things describe you, do not buy SEO right now. Not for me, not from anyone. I'm about to turn away your money and I'll tell you exactly why. Number one, you need leads this month. SEO usually cannot save this quarter for you. It's an asset and those take time to build. So, if your pipeline is empty and payroll is due on Friday, think about running ads. It's the microwave, not the slow cooker, and there's zero shame in that. It's just the right tool for the timeline you're actually on. Come back to SEO once the bleeding stops. Number two, you can't fund the build without starving the business to do it. The asset only ever pays off if you survive long enough to finish building it. So, if paying for SEO means you can't make rent during the months it takes to build, you don't have an SEO problem, you have a cash flow problem, and SEO is going to make it worse before it makes it better. And don't try to split the difference here, either, because this is the mistake I see constantly. Somebody can't afford to do it right, so they do a watered-down version. Half the budget, half the work. That's the worst move you can make because SEO has a threshold. If you don't do enough to make it into the top three in the map pack or get recommended by AI, you would be better off not doing anything. Going from position 20 to position five looks fantastic on the report, but it does not result in a single new call. No one is going to scroll down to position five to find you. So, a partial budget does not buy you partial results. It buys you no results and a lighter bank account. Number three, you're brand new and you're expecting top three in a couple weeks. New website, new profile, no history. We already went through this. Google hates new things. The real timeline is likely months and anyone promising you otherwise is probably lying. And while we're on promises, anyone who flat-out guarantees you a ranking, they probably just told you everything you need to know about them. And don't take my word for it. This is Google's own documentation. Google itself that says no one can promise you position one. Okay, number four, you won't participate. You won't send a review text out to your customers. You won't approve content. You won't even answer the phone when it rings. And that last one matters more than people realize. We require our clients to actually answer their phone because when those calls keep going unanswered, we watch ranking slide. So, let me show you how seriously my agency takes the participation piece because this is straight out of our actual client contract. We literally write the review text into the contract itself along with a acceptable missed call percentage. The client is contractually agreeing to send it out and to answer the phone because if the owner won't lift those couple of fingers, the whole thing underperforms and guess who gets blamed for it. So, if you're not willing to do your small part, just save your money. Now, if one of those four was you, the honest move is not to sign anyway and cross your fingers. It's to wait, fix the one thing holding you back, then invest. Waiting like this costs you nothing. A failed 12-month contract can cost you $10,000 or more and a full year you're never going to get back. But there is a fifth group that I haven't talked about yet and this is the business that absolutely should be doing SEO. You're established. You're funded. You're willing to participate. You can't just quite justify a full agency retainer. And if that's you, the answer is not to sit around and wait. The answer is to start going to do a lot of this yourself. And doing it yourself has never been more possible than it is right now. Because here's what an SEO retainer is really buying you. The single most expensive part of SEO has always been content production. The pages, the articles, the structure underneath them. That's the bulk of what you're handing an agency money for every single month. And that's the exact cost I basically wiped out at my own agency with a tool I built called the Core 30 Agent. It does the grunt work on the content side for you. The research, the structure, the actual pages that both Google and the AI want to see. And the same system runs the same way whether an agency is driving it or you are. Which means you can start building this asset today before you're anywhere near ready to hand it off to somebody else. And every month you sit and wait is another month that asset isn't being built for you. So, I put together a full walk-through that shows you exactly how the whole thing works from start to finish. Go, click on this video and watch that one next. It's your next step.