I’ve got a bone to pick.
You ever feel like someone is breathing down your neck while you’re trying to do your job—except they have no idea what your job actually entails?
Welcome to the world of SEO consulting, where the biggest obstacle isn’t Google’s algorithm—it’s the marketing generalist or colleague who suddenly decides they’re an SEO expert because they signed up for a $29/month tool.
This one’s for all the real SEO pros who suffer in silence.
Why Internal Teams Make SEO Harder Than Google Does
The best SEO work I’ve done never made a splash. It just… worked. Quietly. Over time. Without applause.
Google doesn’t hand out trust. You earn it the hard way—by doing the right stuff, over and over, even when no one’s looking.
But because we’re not making noise 24/7, someone always assumes we’re not doing enough—and suddenly, Chad from marketing wants to “optimize the homepage.”
Progress doesn’t die from bad ideas—it dies from good intentions wrapped in ignorance.
One minute we’re mapping a content silo, the next we’re arguing about whether the homepage should “pop more.”
Not because they mean harm. But because SEO isn’t intuitive. It’s technical, behavioral, and algorithmic.
And dabbling in it without context breaks more than it fixes.
SEO Tools Are Great—Until They’re Not
Most SEO tools are built to always show you a problem. Why?
Because if everything looks fine, you stop paying.
Like flagging a title tag that’s four characters too long as if your site’s about to collapse.
That’s not insight. That’s upsell.
What they don’t tell you:
- Google doesn’t care if your title tag is 71 characters. It cares if your content’s garbage.
- A broken internal link might hurt crawl depth. But that’s not why your blog’s stuck on page 6.
- Your URL structure isn’t going to save you from thin content or keyword stuffing.
Still, I keep seeing folks—usually armed with Ubersuggest (sorry, Neil)—walking into meetings like they’ve uncovered a scandal.
Are they wrong? Not exactly.
But they’re obsessing over things that don’t move the needle while the real issues sit untouched.
Case Study: Jim Adler Didn’t Rank Because He Was Famous
For context: I served as Director of Digital Marketing for Jim Adler & Associates starting in 2017. So I’ve heard every theory about why he ranks well.
So when a client said, “He only ranks because he’s famous,” I knew I had to set the record straight.
Yeah—Jim Adler, The Texas Hammer, was already everywhere before I showed up.
You couldn’t drive 10 minutes in Texas without seeing his face on a billboard or hearing his voice on the radio. He had brand recognition locked down.
But here’s the thing: his website was dead in the water.
No organic traction. No real SEO foundation. A well-known name, but no digital performance to match.
When I stepped in as SEO and digital lead in 2017, we got to work.
Here’s what actually moved the needle:
- Tore the site apart and rebuilt it around real, scalable topic clusters
- Killed off the legal jargon and rewrote for humans and search intent
- Tuned everything for speed, mobile, UX, and schema—because rankings aren’t just about keywords
- Ignored the fluff: no chasing vanity backlinks or obsessing over title tag pixel counts
This is what the current traffic data shows:
As you can see, progress was pretty stagnant from 2012 to 2017 and then we skyrocketed. 🚀
Fame didn’t drive that. Execution did.
So when someone says, “Well, he ranks because he’s Jim Adler,” I know they’re missing the point entirely.
The Confidence of the Unqualified: When SEO Feels Like a Group Project
The hardest part? They think they’re helping.
No bad intent. Just bad instincts.
Give someone a dashboard and a blog post, and suddenly they’re poking holes in strategies that took 20 years to learn the hard way.
Let me give you a real one:
They see a competitor ranking with /houston-car-accident-lawyer/ in the URL and decide that must be the secret sauce. So now they’re suggesting you blow up your clean, aged, internally linked URL—the one that actually performs—because “that’s what others are doing.”
What they’re really doing?
- Nuking your historical SEO signals
- Wrecking your topical architecture
- Breaking what’s working just to chase someone else’s surface-level playbook
They’re not analyzing. They’re playing SEO bingo with someone else’s site structure.
And that’s the problem:
A little knowledge + a lot of confidence = the Dunning-Kruger Effect in full bloom.
If you don’t spot it, it’ll dismantle everything you’ve built—quietly, piece by piece.
Backlinks: The Most Overhyped Obsession in SEO
Let’s just get this out of the way—because it comes up every damn time:
“But what about backlinks?”
Yeah, they still matter. But they’re not your golden ticket—especially if you’re in personal injury.
Let’s get real about a few things:
❌ You’re not going viral on Instagram for your ten tips after a rear-end crash.
❌ You’re not getting cited by Harvard Law Review.
❌ And no one’s linking to your “What is a Contingency Fee?” page like it’s groundbreaking journalism.
So what do firms do? They buy links.
Still happens. Still sometimes works. Still risky. Still expensive.
But here’s the truth no one selling you $200 guest posts wants to say:
Backlinks don’t fix broken SEO.
They amplify good structure, solid content, and legit topical authority. That’s it.
Otherwise, you’re just lighting money on fire—and hoping Google doesn’t notice.
What Law Firms Need to Understand
If you’re a law firm partner reading this, here’s the hard truth:
If you hired a legit SEO pro—let them work.
Don’t hand the digital strategy over to the events coordinator or the branding team just because they “know Canva” or “used to manage the newsletter.”
Let your internal team stay in their lane—where they shine:
- Community events
- Local sponsorships
- Photo ops with the mayor
- Instagram stories and ribbon cuttings
Let your SEO expert do what they do best, like:
- Mapping out site architecture for search, not aesthetics
- Writing NLP-optimized content that actually ranks
- Tracking AI Overviews, SERP volatility, and topical cannibalization
- Building the kind of authority Google actually rewards
This isn’t about stepping on toes. It’s about not wasting time—and not wasting your budget on pretty work that doesn’t bring in cases.
Closing Thought
Real SEO isn’t sexy. It doesn’t get applause in meetings. It doesn’t come with flashy dashboards.
But it works.
And if it keeps getting interrupted with half-informed suggestions from someone who just discovered what a meta description is, you’ll never see the compound effect that makes SEO unstoppable.
Want results? Trust the process.
Or better yet, trust the professional you hired to manage it.
Need help figuring out if your SEO strategy is on the right track? Contact BetterCallSpencer.com and get a real breakdown of what moves the needle—not just what shows up on a cheap audit.