TL;DR:
1. A New Era for Legal Marketing
At the inaugural Fireproof Conference, Corey Vandenberg joined a panel of industry leaders to deliver a message few are ready to confront: SEO has changed. This isn’t just evolution. It’s a full strategic reset.
AI has flattened the playing field when it comes to content volume. What matters now isn’t how much you publish, but how well you think. Law firms chasing quantity are falling behind those focused on structure, relevance, and search intent.
2. Why Theory of Constraints Beats the Arms Race
A better mental model for today’s SEO is the Theory of Constraints, a framework Corey referenced during the panel. Instead of producing more content by default, firms should focus on identifying what’s actually holding them back.
That constraint might be slow site speed, limited crawl budget, poor user experience, or content that doesn’t match search intent. Solving the right problem will drive more impact than simply scaling production.
3. The Hidden Cost of Being Indexed
Every page you publish comes with a cost. Not just for you, but for Google. Corey explained a concept Clixsy uses called the cost of retrieval. If your site is slow or low-value, it becomes too expensive for platforms to prioritize.
Even tools like ChatGPT are being optimized for energy efficiency. As environmental pressure builds, low-quality or inefficient content will quietly be ignored—regardless of how much of it you produce.
4. Attribution Is a Mirage. So What’s Real?
A user sees your PPC ad. Then they search for your firm by name. They read reviews, visit your site, and eventually convert. So who gets credit?
That is the wrong question. Corey reframed attribution as a distraction. Your website doesn’t just close leads. It serves as a discovery channel, a trust builder, and a place for confirmation before a decision. The journey is not linear, and your marketing shouldn’t be either.
5. The Takeaway: Trends Over Tricks
Fireproof wasn’t about short-term tactics. It was about a shift in how the best firms approach growth. Strategy is no longer about doing more. It is about doing what matters.
Clixsy helps firms focus where attention is actually going. We prioritize value over volume and help clients publish with precision. SEO has changed. Now is the time to change with it.
6. In This Conversation: Corey’s Full Panel Remarks at Fireproof
The game has completely shifted. It is entirely different.
In fact, this last presentation we talked about, Theory of Constraints, I think is a much better mental model for thinking about how to execute on SEO today.
Because the game is no longer, “If everybody has AI, more is an advantage.” You also have to be thinking about the incentives for the companies you’re trying to optimize for. Companies like Google, OpenAI, and all the other LLMs.
If everyone has the ability to launch a content arms race, then those platforms will focus on printing and ignoring, not reading and analyzing.
So you have to be approaching your website from the perspective of trends.
Which pages are being ignored by Google, and why?
How often are we being kept out of the top 10 results?
Because our site is too slow, it becomes too expensive for Google to recall.
We use a term for this: the cost of retrieval.
We look at a page and evaluate what it is costing Google or ChatGPT or any of these platforms to process it.
And they are not just looking at that cost from a business standpoint. They are also under environmental and sustainability mandates to reduce energy usage.
If you’re not factoring that in, you’re thinking about the wrong things.
From a more pragmatic perspective, not just a technical one, I would also say this: you may be fundamentally misunderstanding the intent of the searcher.
You’re assuming they are all in discovery mode. That they are simply searching for “car accident” or “injury attorney.”
But frequently, there are six or eight searches involved before they arrive at your site.
They might first interact with your PPC ad. Then they might think, “That guy looks interesting,” and search for you by name. That shows up as a branded search.
Then they read your reviews. Then they visit your website.
By the time they get to the phone call and your intake team asks, “How did you hear about us?” and they say, “I Googled you,” who gets credit for that lead?
Was it the initial PPC ad? Was it the Google Business reviews?
The answer is, it doesn’t matter.
You have to think of your website as a discovery channel, a brand confirmation channel, and a place for information.
Searchers are asking questions and learning as they go.
You cannot apply a single lens and assume it is just one thing.
