Probate and estate attorneys
Our first trade and the one we have published research on. An estate is worth three to seven thousand dollars, and thirty one of the thirty seven Louisville firms we audited never mention probate in their homepage title.
Trades we rank
Search work built around one trade at a time
We learn one trade properly, then run it across every market on the list. It is why the second client in a trade costs us a fraction of the first, and why we know your buyers' search words before you tell us.
Where we work today
Two trades open now, the rest by application.
Law firms more broadly
Family, injury, criminal and business practices. A market where directories hold more of page one than the firms do, and where almost every firm is competing on the one word everybody else is also using.
Other high value trades are taken by application. The test is the same in every case: one new customer has to be worth roughly a thousand dollars or more, you have to already have a website, and you have to be buried past page two. See the full list and the three tests.
Why one trade at a time
A specialist beats a generalist in a narrow market.
Most people selling this work take whatever walks through the door. A dentist one month, a roofer the next, a florist after that. Every one of those is a fresh start: new words to learn, new competitors to read, no idea what normal looks like.
We do the opposite. We pick one trade and learn it until we know what the buyers type before the business tells us, what a good position is worth in that trade, and which of the names on page one are real competitors rather than directories.
That knowledge does not reset when we move to the next town. It is the same trade, so the same understanding travels, and the second business in a trade gets the benefit of everything the first one taught us.
It matters to you in a plainer way too. When we say a phrase in your trade is worth winning, that is a judgement built on having read the whole field rather than a guess from someone who met your industry a fortnight ago.
It also means we can tell you honestly when the answer is no. A trade where the first page is owned by national franchises is not a trade where a single local business can be moved to the top, and we would rather say that on the first call than take a year of your money finding out.
The cost of being this narrow is that we turn down more work than we take. The three tests are what decide it.
How a trade gets added
Three things have to be true before we open one.
The money has to be there
One new customer worth roughly a thousand dollars or more. Below that, the arithmetic never works for the business and we would be selling something that cannot pay for itself.
The field has to be beatable
We read the whole first page for the main phrase. If it belongs to national franchises or roll ups, a single local business cannot be moved past them and the trade is closed before it opens.
The basics have to be undone
If every business in a trade already does the obvious work, there is nothing for us to sell. The trades worth opening are the ones where most of the field has never put what they do in the title of their own homepage.
Probate passed all three, which is why it is first. We have published the research that proved it so the reasoning can be checked rather than taken on trust.
Keep reading
Where to go next.
the trades that usually qualify
A list, and the three tests behind it.
where we work
The national market list and how it was built from the census bands.
research we published
First party market research, done before we asked anybody for anything.