Ask Eric.
Free, public, no email upsell.
Submit a marketing or operations question. Eric answers one publicly each week. No commitment, no nurture sequence, just a real answer from a Bay Area operator who has been in the work for sixteen years.
Recently answered.
A small archive of past questions. Newest first.
Apr 22, 2026
My GBP says I'm at 3.8 stars. Should I run ads to fix this?
From a dentist in Burlingame
No. Ads do not fix a 3.8. Ads pour gas on whatever the listing already does. You will spend money sending people to a profile they then bounce from.
Three things move a 3.8 to a 4.5 in 90 days, in this order: (1) reply to every existing 1 to 3 star review with a measured, specific response; (2) build a text-after-service ask process for the next 60 days; (3) only then, with a cleaner story on the page, consider paid acquisition. We have a free scorecard that scores review velocity and flags whether ads are worth running yet.
Apr 15, 2026
An agency wants $4,500/mo for "SEO." How do I tell if it's worth it?
From a restaurateur in Oakland
Ask three questions in writing: (1) what specific deliverables ship in months 1, 2, and 3? (2) what reporting do I get, and on what cadence? (3) if we cancel after 6 months, what do I keep?
If they cannot answer in concrete terms (counts, dates, screenshots of past reports), walk. The full version of this checklist lives in our blog post how to find a good SEO company.
Apr 8, 2026
Is schema markup actually worth installing on a small restaurant site?
From a chef in San Mateo
Yes. The lift is meaningful and the install is one-time. Restaurants with proper LocalBusiness + Restaurant schema get rich snippets (hours, ratings, price range) directly in search results, which lifts click-through 20 to 40 percent in our experience.
We built a free schema generator that produces the JSON-LD for restaurants in about three minutes. Test the output at Google's Rich Results Test before deploying.
For specific work, not just questions
Want a deeper answer than a public reply?
Free 10-minute call. We diagnose the actual problem and tell you whether SEOD or someone else is the right next step.