When someone asks an assistant to recommend an attorney, an accountant, a dental practice or a financial adviser, it becomes noticeably more cautious. Understanding what it looks for before it names anyone is the whole of the work.
Nothing is published on your behalf without your written approval.
Ask an assistant for a pizza recommendation and it answers freely. Ask it which accountant to use and the tone changes — it qualifies, it caveats, and it names far fewer businesses.
That caution is a barrier and an opportunity at once. It means fewer practices get named, so the ones that do hold a much larger share of the recommendation. It also means the usual marketing signals count for less. Volume of content and clever keyword work don’t move the needle. What moves it is whether your credentials, registrations, specialties and track record can be independently verified.
In an unregulated category, the question is whether a business is popular. In yours, it’s whether a practice is verifiable. That is a slower thing to build and a much harder thing for a competitor to take from you.
The same four measures we use everywhere, weighted for a category where trust does the heavy lifting.
Regulator registrations, professional body memberships, qualifications and practicing certificates — stated on your own site and corroborated where they can be independently checked.
“Full-service” is invisible. Practices named in answers are the ones whose specific areas of work are stated unambiguously and consistently, in the language a client would actually use.
Directories, professional listings, press, case reporting, association pages, genuine client reviews. Your own website is the weakest possible source of a claim about yourself.
Wrong practice areas, a partner who left, an office you closed, a service you no longer offer. In a regulated field these aren’t merely embarrassing — they can be a compliance question.
The economics are what make this worth doing carefully rather than cheaply.
A single additional client is worth considerably more in these categories than in most local businesses, which changes what a sensible marketing spend looks like — and how much care the work deserves.
Practices usually score well on accuracy and poorly on corroboration — a good website saying excellent things about itself, with very little independent verification behind it.
Professional practices carry obligations that most marketing suppliers never have to think about. We work to them rather than around them.
We’d rather understand the practice, the regulator and the specialties before quoting. If it isn’t a fit, we’ll tell you on the call rather than send a proposal anyway.
Engagements for professional practices typically start with a $497 audit, with ongoing work from $697 a month. Full pricing →
It shouldn’t, because we don’t make claims on your behalf and nothing goes out without your approval. Send us your regulator’s advertising guidance at the outset and we’ll work to it. That said, we are not compliance advisers and final responsibility remains with the practice — we’d rather be clear about that than reassuring about it.
Possibly less than for other businesses, and we won’t pretend otherwise. But referred clients increasingly check before they call, and an assistant that describes your practice incorrectly — or can’t confirm your registration — can quietly cost you a referral you never learn about. The accuracy half of this matters even where the visibility half doesn’t.
No. Nobody controls what these systems output, and in regulated categories they are deliberately conservative about naming anyone. We improve what can be improved and we report honestly on what moves.
We draft, you approve. For technical or advisory content we expect a fee earner or clinician to review it — we’re not going to write about your area of practice as if we understand it better than you do.
Alongside, usually without friction. This concerns a narrower set of signals than general SEO, and we’re happy to work to the same brief so nobody is undoing anyone else’s work. We’ll speak to them directly if that’s easier.
Two pages. The score and its four components, what changed since last month, which competitors were named alongside you and where, and what we’re doing next. It’s written to be readable at a partners’ meeting without translation.
Start with a free scan to see how you’re currently described, or arrange a conversation about the practice.