Episode
They Ranked #1 on Google and Got Only 5 Calls a Month - So He Told Them to Move
- Podcast
- The Edward Show
- Published
- Jul 10, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3003
- Processing state
not_requested
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Summary
E1102: Ranking #1 on Google does not matter if the market is too small to produce meaningful business. Legal SEO expert Nick Cohen explains why he told a law firm to move offices even though it ranked first for nearly every important personal injury keyword in its city. The firm had around 200 reviews but received only about five calls per month from SEO. The problem was not its rankings. The problem was the city. Nick has worked in local SEO for 17 years and runs Matador, an agency serving more than 180 law firms. He also has his own personal injury firm, giving him direct insight into which SEO strategies generate cases rather than just rankings. We discuss: - Why ranking #1 in a small city may still produce almost no calls - How to choose cities based on population, competition, reviews, and demand - Why Nick recommends targeting markets with at least 50,000 people for a Google Business Profile - How opening a real satellite office can give a business access to an entirely new county - Why his Ventura office now generates roughly 50% of his cases - Why mailbox locations and fake offices are not a reliable long-term strategy - How to structure city and service pages - When a competitive page needs supporting content - How internal links from supporting pages strengthen higher-value pages - Why Nick focuses on only two or three cities at a time - How he expands outward from an office in five-mile stages - Why publishing hundreds of nearly identical city pages is likely to fail - How to make location pages unique with case results, statistics, intersections, and local resources - Why he usually targets cities instead of neighborhoods - How he updates pages in stages instead of publishing 4,000 words at once - When to add more copy, images, video, links, and footer plac…