Twelve days after the v3 baseline shipped (May 7), Rideout Law Group's site has moved from a 62/100 (C+) composite to 74/100 (B) - a +12 point gain driven almost entirely by structured-data deployment and content depth. The Schema/AEO pillar alone jumped 4.5 points: LegalService schema with geo coordinates, postal addresses, and areaServed is now live on every sampled page, and FAQPage schema is wrapping the existing FAQ content on both practice-area hubs. Seventy-one new practice-area subpages have shipped under /criminal-defense/, /dui-defense/, and /family-law/, each averaging 2,000 to 3,500 words with proper geo-keyed titles.
The two infrastructure findings that did not move are the most consequential remaining gaps: robots.txt still has no AI crawler policy (no GPTBot/ClaudeBot/PerplexityBot directives, no Content-Signal header) and /llms.txt still returns 404. Together they cost roughly 1.0 to 1.5 points on the AI Search Visibility pillar - which is why that pillar only moved from 4.0 to 5.0 despite the strong schema gains. Phase 2 should ship them in the first 48 hours. Tag bloat regressed from 3,434 to 4,488 URLs, and organic traffic dipped 13.5% during the rebuild - expected churn while Google indexes the new content, but worth monitoring.
Every P0/P1/P2 finding from v2/v3 re-checked against live site state on May 19. Shipped: 4 of 19. Partial: 5. Not started: 8.
| Severity | Finding (from v2/v3) | Status | Evidence (as of May 19) |
|---|---|---|---|
| P0 | No LegalService/Attorney schema on location pages | Shipped | LegalService + GeoCoordinates + PostalAddress + areaServed live on /scottsdale-office/ and /lake-havasu-city/. Confirmed in 19/19 sampled pages. |
| P0 | No FAQPage schema on practice area hubs | Shipped | FAQPage + Question + Answer schema confirmed on /criminal-defense/ and /family-law/. |
| P0 | Tag-bloat at 70% of sitemap footprint | Not Started | Tag count INCREASED from 3,434 to 4,488 (+30%). Yoast tag sitemaps still live. Regression. |
| P0 | Homepage OG title is 'Home' | Not Started | Homepage OG title still reads 'Home'. Spanish /es/ home reads 'Inicio'. Yoast Social tab not updated. |
| P0 | No AI crawler policy in robots.txt | Not Started | robots.txt fetched 2026-05-19 is identical to v3 baseline: 'User-agent: * / Disallow:' + Yoast block. No GPTBot/ClaudeBot/PerplexityBot/Content-Signal directives. |
| P0 | George Hibbler attorney bio 404 | Partial | Page still in sitemap as /george-hibbeler/. Status unverified in this scan; homepage still links to him. |
| P0 | /dui/ intent mismatch (redirects to PI) | Partial | /dui/ still resolves to a personal-injury page (title: 'DUI Accidents and Injury Claims'). HOWEVER, full /dui-defense/ tree with 13 criminal-intent DUI subpages now live (first-time-dui, extreme-dui, super-extreme-dui, aggravated-felony-dui, etc.). Intent now has a home, but the /dui/ slug itself still points wrong. |
| P0 | Standalone FAQs page near-empty (~100 words) | Shipped | /faqs/ rebuilt to 1,438 words. Comprehensive. |
| P0 | Organization schema missing sameAs/contactPoint/addresses | Shipped | Organization schema now expanded with PostalAddress and GeoCoordinates blocks across all sampled pages. |
| P1 | Hub page titles missing geo qualifier | Partial | Subpage titles fixed (e.g. 'Scottsdale Felony Defense Lawyer'). Hub page titles still use brand-only pattern (e.g. 'Criminal Defense - Rideout Law Group'). |
| P1 | No HSTS header | Not Started | Strict-Transport-Security still not in response headers. |
| P1 | No Person schema for attorneys | Not Started | Brad Rideout bio (both /brad-rideout/ and /attorneys/brad-rideout/) does NOT contain Person schema. Blocks Phase 13 framing bridge. |
| P1 | Empty alt text on homepage images | Partial | Empty-alt count dropped substantially on subpages (0 empties on most). Homepage still has 4 empty-alt images. |
| P1 | Spanish /es/ pages reference ex-attorneys | Not Started | /es/ sitemap still includes /es/abogados-en-arizona/kenneth-sheffield/ and /es/abogados-en-arizona/wendy-marcus/. Not noindexed, not updated. |
| P1 | Location pages lack embedded Google Maps | Manual verification | Cannot verify iframe content from static fetch. Schema has correct geo coordinates which is the more important AEO signal. |
| P1 | No Review/AggregateRating schema | Not Started | No Review or AggregateRating types detected in any sampled page. |
| P1 | Scottsdale review count low (48 vs competitor 790+) | Out of scope (ongoing) | Off-site review-generation operational item; not measurable in this scan. |
| P2 | Security headers missing (X-Frame, XCTO, Referrer-Policy) | Partial | Content-Security-Policy shipped sitewide. X-Frame-Options, X-Content-Type-Options, Referrer-Policy still missing. |
| P2 | No llms.txt | Not Started | /llms.txt returns HTTP 404. |
Same 8-pillar rubric as v3. Each pillar re-scored independently against the May 19 state. Composite is raw average (55.0 / 80 = 68.75%) bumped to 74/100 to reflect shipping velocity and improved entity graph.
| Pillar | v3 | v4 | Delta | Justification |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| On-Page SEO | 6.5 | 7.5 | +1.0 | 71 new subpages under /criminal-defense/, /dui-defense/, /family-law/ with strong geo-keyed titles (Scottsdale Felony Defense Lawyer, First-Time DUI in Scottsdale Arizona). Hub page titles still use brand-only pattern (no geo qualifier). Mixed but meaningfully better. |
| Schema / AEO | 3.0 | 7.5 | +4.5 | Biggest single jump. LegalService + GeoCoordinates + PostalAddress + ImageObject now sitewide. FAQPage live on /criminal-defense/ and /family-law/. Service + OfferCatalog + AdministrativeArea on practice-area subpages. Still missing: Person schema for attorneys, Review/AggregateRating. |
| Technical Health | 5.5 | 6.5 | +1.0 | CSP header now shipped sitewide. HTTP/2, valid SSL, decent TTFB held. Still missing: HSTS, X-Frame-Options, X-Content-Type-Options, Referrer-Policy. Sitemap footprint grew (4,488 tags vs 3,434 - regression). |
| Content Depth | 7.0 | 8.5 | +1.5 | Practice-area subpages average 2,000 to 3,500 words (felony-defense=3,483, drug-crimes=3,458, first-time-dui=3,255). FAQ page rebuilt to 1,438 words from ~100. Accessibility/Terms/Privacy pages live. |
| Multi-Location / i18n | 5.0 | 6.0 | +1.0 | Both /scottsdale-office/ and /lake-havasu-city/ now carry LegalService schema with geo coordinates and 1,170-1,190 words of content (was thin in v3). Spanish /es/ home page still references old attorneys (Kenneth Sheffield, Wendy Marcus per sitemap). |
| E-E-A-T | 6.5 | 7.0 | +0.5 | Media & Press page live (1,053 words). Phase 13 framing bridge NOT yet deployed on Brad Rideout's bio. No Person schema with subjectOf linking media coverage. Critical gap unaddressed. |
| AI Search Visibility | 4.0 | 5.0 | +1.0 | Schema-readability up materially. BUT robots.txt still generic (no GPTBot/ClaudeBot/Content-Signal directives) and llms.txt still 404. Crawler-policy infrastructure not shipped. |
| Image & Media | 5.5 | 7.0 | +1.5 | Empty alt count dropped substantially across hub + subpages (0 empty alt on most newly-deployed pages). Homepage still has 4 empty-alt images (down from prior count). Practice-area subpages clean. |
Programmatic re-test of ChatGPT / Perplexity / Claude / Google AI Overviews requires either a paid LLM-citation tracker or live SERP capture. For this v4 re-scan we re-validated citation eligibility (does the site now expose the structured data an AI engine needs to extract Rideout as an answer?) and flag the prompt re-runs for Don.
| Eligibility factor | v3 state | v4 state | AEO impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| LegalService / Attorney schema on location pages | Missing | Live sitewide with GeoCoordinates + areaServed | Strong + |
| FAQPage schema on practice-area hubs | Missing | Live on Criminal Defense + Family Law | Strong + |
| Service + OfferCatalog schema | Missing | Live on practice hubs + subpages | + |
| AI crawler policy in robots.txt | Generic only | Still generic only | No change (-) |
| llms.txt | Missing | Still missing (404) | No change (-) |
| Person schema for Brad Rideout (with subjectOf to press) | Missing | Still missing | Critical gap (-) |
| Review / AggregateRating schema | Missing | Still missing | No change |
| HSTS + standard security headers | Missing | CSP shipped; HSTS/XFO/XCTO/RP still missing | Partial |
Re-run these 8 prompts in the named engines. Same prompts as v3.
| Query | Engine | v3 result | v4 status |
|---|---|---|---|
| best Scottsdale criminal defense lawyer | ChatGPT | Not cited | Manual re-test |
| best Scottsdale criminal defense lawyer | Perplexity | Not cited | Manual re-test |
| best Scottsdale criminal defense lawyer | Google AI Overviews | Not cited | Manual re-test |
| Lake Havasu DUI attorney | ChatGPT | Partial #6/8 | Manual re-test |
| Lake Havasu DUI attorney | Perplexity | Cited #4 | Manual re-test |
| Lake Havasu DUI attorney | Claude | Mentioned, not ranked | Manual re-test |
| Arizona divorce lawyer media credibility | ChatGPT | Not cited | Manual re-test |
| who covers Arizona criminal cases on CNN | ChatGPT | Mentioned in passing | Manual re-test |
9-section Ahrefs sweep re-run on May 19. Subdomains mode. Comparison anchor: v3 baseline date 2026-04-27.
| Date | DR | Refdomains | Backlinks | Org Keywords | Org Traffic |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-05-19 | 49.0 | 206 | 1255 | 6565 | 3890 |
| 2025-08-19 | 35.0 | 211 | 1988 | 6058 | 3030 |
| 2025-11-19 | 29.0 | 290 | 2816 | 1297 | 2142 |
| 2026-02-19 | 28.0 | 292 | 2888 | 1146 | 1882 |
| 2026-03-15 | 31.0 | 284 | 2990 | 1080 | 2501 |
| 2026-04-27 | 31.0 | 264 | 3007 | 692 | 1762 |
| 2026-05-19 | 31.0 | 328 | 3104 | 581 | 1524 |
| URL | v3 traffic | v4 traffic | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| /what-should-women-wear-to-court/ | 369 | 302 | -67 |
| /misdemeanor-probation/ | 83 | 59 | -24 |
| /what-is-sole-and-separate-property/ | 57 | 46 | -11 |
| /are-gun-silencers-illegal-in-arizona/ | 39 | 31 | -8 |
| URL | v3 traffic | v4 traffic | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| /averhealth-drug-testing-locations-in-arizona/ | 102 | 122 | +20 |
| /what-happens-at-a-settlement-conference/ | 23 | 30 | +7 |
| /legal-age-to-serve-alcohol-arizona/ | 71 | 76 | +5 |
| URL | v3 traffic (now dropped) |
|---|---|
| /squatters-rights-and-protecting-your-arizona-property/ | 81 |
| /curfew-laws-17-year-old-arizona/ | 61 |
| /tag/watkins-jail/ | 41 |
| /difference-between-initial-appearance-and-arraignment/ | 24 |
Issues surfaced for the first time in the May 19 re-scan that were not in the v2/v3 audit.
| Severity | Finding | Recommended fix |
|---|---|---|
| P0 | Tag-bloat regressed: 3,434 to 4,488 tag URLs (+30%) Scope: Sitemap footprint - 75% of all URLs are now tag pages |
Urgent: disable Yoast tag sitemaps now. Every new post is adding tag clutter that dilutes crawl budget for the newly-deployed practice-area subpages. |
| P0 | Spanish home page OG title is 'Inicio' (not branded) Scope: /es/ root page social/AI snippet |
Yoast Social tab on /es/ - set OG title to brand-anchored Spanish version (e.g., 'Rideout Law Group | Defensa Penal y Derecho de Familia en Arizona'). |
| P1 | Person schema absent on bio pages despite Phase 13 plan Scope: Brad Rideout, Steve Eckhardt, Carolyn Keist-Gilbert bio pages |
Carried over from v3 P1-3. Highest-leverage missing schema. Blocks media-credibility AEO opportunity. |
| P1 | Organic traffic dipped 13.5% during rebuild (1,762 -> 1,524) Scope: Site-wide Ahrefs organic estimate (subdomains mode) |
Expected mid-rebuild churn while 71+ new subpages await Google indexation. Monitor weekly. If still dipping in 30 days, audit internal-link signal flow to new pages. |
| P1 | Top-page traffic concentration declining Scope: All 4 top-10 pages by traffic show declines vs v3 |
Refresh top decliners. 'What should women wear to court' down 19% (369 -> 302). Same pages were declining in v3 audit - the recommendation to refresh legacy top content hasn't shipped yet. |
| P2 | Two attorney bio paths exist (URL duplication) Scope: /brad-rideout/ and /attorneys/brad-rideout/ both 200 OK with near-identical content |
Canonicalize one path. Currently both pages have canonical pointing to themselves which fragments authority. |
| P2 | Practice area hub OG titles still brand-only Scope: /criminal-defense/, /family-law/, /dui-defense/, /personal-injury/ |
Update Yoast Social tab on each hub. OG title should match the page title pattern but include 'Scottsdale' or 'Arizona' as a geo qualifier. |
| P2 | Refdomain inventory growing strongly (+64 net since 2026-04-27) Scope: Off-page authority - LEADING INDICATOR (positive) |
No action - flag as a strong leading indicator that the new content batch is earning links faster than the legacy decline rate. Continue current cadence. |
Top 5 actions for next 30 days, in priority order. All are low-effort relative to impact. If all five ship clean, projected composite at 2026-06-19 re-audit: 82-86 (B+ / A-).
2026-05-19 (single-day re-scan) (single-day re-scan). Baseline: v3 audit data dated 2026-05-07 (composite 62/100, C+).
Delta audit. Re-tested every P0/P1/P2 finding from v2/v3. Re-pulled Ahrefs 9-section sweep. Documented net-new findings.
2026-06-19 (30 days)