Casey Dolan Consulting

09/10/2026

You know the poster. Same three colors, same font, and a plate of food that's almost food - the burger's glowing a little and nobody can say what the green thing is. Took four minutes in an AI tool, and it shows.

Same week, researchers at one of the big AI labs said out loud that it might end the world by 2030. Can't help you with that one. The poster I can. Almost every business owner out here has tried AI on the one job it's worst at - the thing people can see. The work it's actually good at is the boring stuff nobody sees: reading fifty reviews and telling you what customers never mention, turning the PDF menu into real text, cleaning up the customer list with five spellings of La Quinta.

New on the blog: the one rule for what AI should and shouldn't touch, and five things worth doing before season while it's still 105 out. https://caseydolan.com/ai-for-small-business-beyond-posters/

09/02/2026

Every month I send website reports to clients. This month, one restaurant's report stopped me: roughly nine out of ten visitors went straight to a menu, and most of the Google searches that brought them there had the word "menu" in them. One person searched the restaurant's name plus "menu with prices."

If you serve food in the Coachella Valley, your menu page is your real homepage. The rest of the site is mostly there to look nice.

New on the blog: what the data says, what most restaurant menu pages get wrong (PDFs, old prices, a happy hour that changed six months ago), and six fixes worth making before season.

https://caseydolan.com/restaurant-menu-page-real-homepage/

08/26/2026

It's August in the desert, which means there are two kinds of business owners right now: the ones catching their breath before season, and the ones pretending season isn't ten weeks away.

I'm using the slow weeks to build the systems I'll be too busy to build in November — including, finally, an actual posting schedule for my own channels. The shoemaker is getting shoes. We'll see if they fit.

No link, no pitch. Just accountability in public.

08/18/2026

People sometimes ask what a $975 website actually gets them. Here's the honest answer: it gets you exactly this.

sophieannhinkson.com is the Website Essentials package as sold — one page, built properly. An author who needed something credible to put in front of literary agents and editors, and needed it quickly. Hero, about, featured work, publications in two languages, contact form. Blank domain to live site in about two weeks, nothing added, nothing hidden.

Fixed fee, includes the Avada theme license (which stays yours for the life of the site), and everything is in your name — site, hosting, domain, analytics. It's the right-sized option for a business that needs a proper front door before it needs a full house.

Details: caseydolan.com/checkup

08/13/2026

Most people who call me about a website have never hired a web designer before. Why would they have? Nobody hands you a checklist for it.

So after 20+ years of doing this around the Coachella Valley, I wrote the one I wish every client had before our first call - six things to sort out ahead of time. Do them and you'll get more accurate quotes, compare designers fairly, and spot a bad fit before you sign anything. Even if you never call me.

The short version: know what the site is actually for, gather a few examples you love (and a couple you hate), take an honest inventory of your content, set a real budget range, be realistic about timing, and know what to ask.

Full checklist here: https://caseydolan.com/before-hiring-a-web-designer/

08/06/2026

Most business owners I talk to already suspect something isn't working online. The phone is quieter than it should be, the site feels dated, they're not sure what actually comes up when someone searches. What they don't have is evidence.

That's what the Business Checkup is: a hands-on review of the four things that decide whether someone finds you, trusts you, and gets in touch — your website, your Google Business Profile, your search visibility, and your tracking. You get written findings sorted into fix now, fix soon, and honestly, leave it alone, with rough effort and cost for each — whether I do the fixing or someone else does.

It's $295, fully credited toward any project booked within 60 days. And if I go through all four and find nothing meaningfully worth fixing, I'll tell you so and refund the fee. I'd rather say that than invent work.

Details: https://caseydolan.com/checkup/

07/29/2026

New site just went live for Palm Springs Aesthetic, a concierge Botox practice here in the desert.

Clean, modern, a little bit of that Palm Springs feel. The kind of build where the design gets out of the way and lets the work speak.

Take a look: https://palmspringsaesthetic.com/

Concierge Botox · Coachella Valley A Stanford physician's approach to Botox. A house-call practice serving the Coachella Valley. Two decades of clinical and anatomical expertise behind every visit, delivered

07/29/2026

New site just went live for Palm Springs Aesthetic, a concierge Botox practice here in the desert.

Clean, modern, a little bit of that Palm Springs feel. The kind of build where the design gets out of the way and lets the work speak.

Take a look:
palmspringsaesthetic.com

07/21/2026

Four months since my last post. I spent the spring telling clients that consistency beats intensity, then went quiet on my own channels until July. Shoemaker's kids, no shoes, you know the story.

Here's what changed in local search while I was heads-down: AI answers now sit on top of nearly every search that matters, Google Maps keeps getting better at answering questions before anyone reaches your website, and your Google Business Profile is quietly doing more work than your homepage. If you haven't looked at any of that since spring, you're not behind — but the gap is real, and season is closer than it feels in July.

Full rundown on the blog: https://www.caseydolan.com/what-changed-in-local-search-2026/ And if your website also sat untouched for the first part of the summer, no judgment. So did mine.

Let's address the four months of silence on this blog. I spent the spring telling clients that consistency beats intensity, then walked back to my own website and didn't touch it until July. Physician, heal thyself. The client work got done, the shoemaker's kids went barefoot, and here we are.

03/13/2026

Google Maps is getting a pretty interesting upgrade.

Instead of typing something like “restaurant near me,” people can now ask Maps questions like:

• “Where’s a good brunch spot with outdoor seating?”
• “What’s open right now?”
• “Where can I get a quiet place to work?”

Google calls it Ask Maps, and it’s basically turning Maps into a recommendation engine powered by reviews, photos, and business info.

For local businesses, that means things like reviews, photos, and Google Business Profile updates matter even more.

I wrote a quick post explaining what’s changing and a few practical things businesses can do about it.

Read it here:

Google Maps has quietly become one of the most important marketing platforms for local businesses. People use it to find restaurants, compare service providers, check reviews, and decide who looks trustworthy enough to call. In many cases, they never even visit a website before making that decision....