Business
Alicia Patil, Director of SEO at Mockingbird Marketing, joins the show to break down what it really takes to rank and get cited in AI search today. With 14 years of SEO experience across corporate, niche, and agency environments, Alicia now leads SEO strategy for law firms and shares how her thinking has evolved.
In this episode, Alicia covers how to evaluate link quality and why indexation matters more than volume, why digital PR is shifting from "getting a name out there" to building AI relevancy, and why location pages are quietly outperforming informational blog content for AI-driven leads. She also unpacks how to structure service area pages without creating duplicate content, what actually builds E-E-A-T for multi-attorney law firms beyond bios, and the operational mistakes businesses make managing Google Business Profiles at scale.
Alicia also shares how AI overviews are reshaping the traffic picture, her cautious approach to testing AI-generated content with guardrails, and how she uses AI internally to turn technical SEO research into client-friendly visuals. Plus, her honest take on the rise and disappearance of featured snippets, and what SEO reporting looks like when leads matter more than rankings.
If you work in local SEO, digital PR, or law firm marketing, this conversation is full of practical, tested insight you can apply right away.
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In this episode, we discuss:
00:00 - 00:45: Introduction
00:45 - 01:30: Alicia's path Into SEO
01:30 - 02:45: Niche vs Generalist Agency Experience
02:45 - 03:45: Importance of Link Building for Local Business
03:45 - 05:00: Digital PR and AI Relevancy
05:00 - 06:15: How to Evaluate Link Quality
06:15 - 07:45: Prioritizing Content for Algorithms and LLMs
07:45 - 09:30: Building Location and Service Area Pages
09:30 - 11:00: E-E-A-T Signals for Law Firms
11:00 - 12:30: Managing Google Business Profiles at Scale
12:30 - 14:00: AI Overviews and Search Visibility
14:00 - 15:15: Using AI Content the Right Way
15:15 - 16:45: How AI Improved Day-to-Day SEO Work
16:45 - 18:15: Reporting SEO Performance to Clients
18:15 - 19:15: The Rise and Fall of Featured Snippets
19:15 - 20:00: Most Exciting AI Project Right Now
20:00 - 21:30: Rapid Fire Round
21:30 - 22:21: Closing Thoughts
Connect with Alicia Patel
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alicia-patil-b483bb84
https://mockingbirdmarketing.com/
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