Verticals: industry-specific SEO and AI search work

Most agencies sell SEO horizontally, same playbook for every client regardless of vertical. We don’t. Different verticals have different buyer behaviors, different AI engine usage patterns, and different content moves that work.

Below is every industry we currently publish a specific page for, grouped by how the work actually differs. Three of them carry named client case studies. The rest carry measured search data for the vertical and no case study, which is stated plainly on each page rather than implied away.

Home services and the trades

Roofing, storm-driven demand, per-town service pages, and a search market where a domain authority 4 site currently holds position one. Published pricing against a category that hides it.
HVAC, two customers who behave nothing alike: the emergency no-cool call and the planned system replacement. Competitors pay up to $143 per click to reach these owners.
Plumbing, the highest cost per click measured in the trades at $198.62, emergency demand that is location-bound, and the higher-margin planned work most sites neglect.
Water and fire damage restoration, insurance-funded customers, the softest competitive search results we measured anywhere, and demand that peaks in winter when the rest of the trades go quiet.

Owner-operated local healthcare

These are practices owned by the clinician, not hospital systems or private equity roll-ups. Content for them is business content aimed at the owner. We do not write patient-facing clinical material without the practice’s own licensed clinician reviewing and signing it.

Dental practices, the largest search market in local healthcare and the most competitive results page we measured. Elective cash-pay procedures are where the work pays.
Med spas and aesthetics, cash-pay, high repeat frequency, and a buyer who researches heavily before booking.
Veterinary clinics, independents competing against corporate groups that run 91.7% of veterinary Google Ads. Over 95% of US pets are uninsured, so the client pays the whole bill and shops accordingly.

Professional services and B2B

Personal injury law firms, high local intent, bilingual content opportunities, practice area schema, Person schema for attorneys. Case studies: a bilingual personal injury firm (632% organic impression growth) and an Arizona personal injury firm.
Mortgage CRM and mortgage SaaS, B2B SaaS playbook with specific mortgage industry overlays. Loan officer audience, comparison content, technical product positioning. Case study: a mortgage software company (100 organic form submits in 90 days).
B2B SaaS, productized SEO for B2B SaaS companies in the under-50-employee range. Schema, comparison content, AI citation, conversion optimization on commercial pages.

Who we are not the right fit for

Honest list, and most of these are on it because we went and measured the market rather than because the work sounded unappealing.

Individual real estate agents. The National Association of REALTORS 2026 Member Profile puts the median member’s annual spend on marketing of services at $950. Our entry tier is $5,964 a year. Only 26% of members maintain their own website; 47% use one the brokerage provides, so there is often no asset we can even work on. Team leads and broker-owners are a different conversation.
Individual mortgage loan officers. Total US search demand across every phrasing of this buyer’s problem measures roughly 210 a month. There is not enough of a market to build a program on, and the compliance exposure on rate and payment claims is disproportionate to it.
Financial advisors registered with a broker-dealer. FINRA Rule 2210 requires a registered principal to approve retail communications before use. Our delivery model runs on AI production with human review, and a mandatory outside approval gate on every asset breaks it. Fee-only RIAs under SEC Rule 206(4)-1 have no pre-approval requirement, and that we can do.
Solo chiropractors. Industry survey data puts a solo practice’s entire annual marketing budget near $680 a month. Asking for $489 of that is asking for three quarters of everything they spend on getting patients. Group practices, yes.
Seasonal trades with a long revenue trough. Landscaping, lawn care and pool service bill a fraction of annual revenue for three to five months. A month-to-month subscription is the first line item cancelled in a cash trough, which makes us the wrong vendor rather than them the wrong client.
E-commerce and DTC consumer brands. Different content economics; paid social drives more than organic.
Enterprise software above $100K ARR. Procurement-shaped vendor expectations we cannot meet.
Crypto and adult industries. Google and Bing policy restrictions.

If you are in one of those, we will point you to someone who can help.

Why vertical specialization matters in AI search

AI engines cite differently across verticals. Law firm queries get cited mostly from law firm websites and bar association directories. SaaS queries get cited mostly from vendor pages, G2 and Capterra, and comparison content. Local service queries pull heavily from Google Business Profiles, review platforms and directories. Knowing which surfaces matter for each vertical changes the work order.

Buyer behavior differs sharply by vertical. Someone whose ceiling is leaking at 11pm searches nothing like a marketing leader comparing CRMs over three weeks. The optimization moves that work for one do not translate.

Vertical-specific schema matters. LegalService schema works for law firms. SoftwareApplication schema works for SaaS. LocalBusiness and its service-area variants work for the trades. Using the wrong type underperforms even when everything else is right.

One honest note on all of it. Google’s own documentation states there are “no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary,” and that structured data “isn’t required for generative AI search.” A great deal of what the industry currently sells as AI optimization is not documented by Google as necessary. What holds up is answering the real question near the top of the page, on a page that can be crawled, with your business details consistent everywhere else on the web.

If you are in a vertical we cover, the fit call gets specific about what works in your market.

Start ranking easier →

Med spa marketing and SEO: local search for treatment queries, Google Business Profile and treatment pages, $489 a month.

Mortgage SEO for loan officers: local search for loan officers and small mortgage shops, $299 a month.