Your website is the only place that doesn't say so. This is what we found when we looked at it, what we think you're sitting on, and what Koken Labs would do about it.
Optima, Community Tax, Anthem, Larson — the names that own the ad space in this category — run on an intake model: a salesperson takes the call, a case manager takes the file, and the “former IRS agent” in the ad is somewhere down the hall. In our view that model is why the category has a trust problem.
One credentialed person, start to finish. The person who picks up the phone is the person who worked inside the IRS, and the person who works the case. No handoff. No sales floor.
That isn't a slogan we made up. As we understand it, it's how your practice already runs — tell us if we've got that wrong. The site just doesn't lead with it.
“Former IRS” appears fifteen times on irstaxrelief.com. Every one of them is inside a testimonial or a sidebar. The homepage's only headline tag is on a button. The Offer in Compromise page never says who'll be handling the offer.
A visitor has to already know why you're different to find out why you're different.
One constraint we're designing around. Circular 230 §10.30 bars anything that implies a current relationship with the Service. So “former” stays unmistakable everywhere, nothing reads as “IRS-certified,” and the positioning is built on what you did and what you know — not on a badge. You know the rule; we're flagging it so you know it's built in.
We crawled all 68 pages, read the headers, weighed the images and checked the markup. Nothing is broken — every page loads, the sitemap is clean. But the parts search engines read first are mostly missing, and that's what twelve unattended years does to a WordPress site.
The http:// version returns a full copy of the site and points to itself as the original. Google usually picks the secure version, but every signal is being split until a one-line redirect is in place. We'll confirm in Search Console what it actually chose.
Offer in Compromise is 170 words. Wage Garnishment is 169. The pages that rank for those terms typically run 1,200 to 2,000 words.
/irs-problems/, /tax-problems/, /support-for-irs-problems/, /tax-relief-solutions/, /tax-irs-relief/, /irs-tax-support/, /get-irs-help/ — one topic split seven ways so that none of them wins.
All 22 posts — ATM fees, life insurance, saving for college — were published the same month and none mention the IRS. They pull the site's topical focus away from the thing you sell.
The structured data gives your business name as a URL and lists an 800 number the site itself doesn't show. If that 800 line is a live tracking number, tell us — otherwise it's a mismatch that hurts local ranking.
208 of 209 images have proper alt text — rare, and someone clearly cared. Sitemap, robots, canonical tags (on the https site) and every title are correct and unique. The server answers in half a second; the slowness is payload, not hosting.
We have no access to Search Console, no backlink data, no real rankings, and no lead history. The site's own tracking went dark in 2023 when Google retired it.
The good news: a newly verified Search Console property usually returns up to sixteen months of query history. That's the first thing we'd do, and it would tell us more than any crawl can — including which of those seven overlapping pages Google actually prefers.
Where do your clients come from today?
If the practice runs on CPA and attorney referrals and the site has never been a lead source, then the site is a cost center until it proves otherwise — and the plan below should be smaller and faster. If some meaningful share comes from search, it's already leaking. We'd rather know before we recommend anything.
Every finding above, with the evidence and the fix order, is on the full scorecard.
“Pay IRS with pennies on the dollar” appears on three pages of the site, and it's the <title> of one of them — the text Google shows in results.
Three things about this phrase, then: it's the exact phrase the mills use, it's the phrase the IRS's own “OIC mill” warnings and the FTC's consumer guidance both point to, and it's sitting on your Offer in Compromise page — the one page where you'd most want to sound like the professional and not the ad.
It reads like 2014 designer copy, not yours. Here's where it lives. Removing it is a fifteen-minute job and we'd do it in week one — or you can do it tomorrow and owe us nothing.
A solo practice doesn't beat a national ad budget on the head terms, and we won't pretend otherwise. The plan is to split the ambition: own Utah County outright, and take the national work only where a real expert's answer beats a marketer's.
“IRS help Orem,” “tax attorney Provo,” “enrolled agent Utah County” — a handful of local firms, not a national ad budget, and a Google Business Profile is most of what wins it. We ran these today: you don't appear in Google's results or its local pack yet; Kennedy Tax Solutions, Emily Ryan Tax, Paramount and PFG Tax do. Your profile exists — under the name “Rucker Tax Resolution,” which is a third name for the same practice. We've only seen it from the outside; if it's thin, this is the first thing that moves.
One honest caveat: reviews will be structurally thin. People who had IRS trouble rarely want to say so publicly. We'll build what we can; we won't promise a review program.
Someone searching “CP504” or “LT11” has a letter and a deadline. In our judgment that's the highest-intent query in the category. Expect IRS.gov at the top for every one of them, and the mills have pages too — so this isn't uncontested.
What's uncontested is your version: which unit sent it, what clock is actually running, what the next letter will be, what an examiner is looking at. That's what a content farm can't write. Roughly forty notice types, each pointing to one of your services. Today the site mentions none — and when we searched “CP504 notice Utah” today, Google flagged every result “Missing: Utah.” Nobody has written the local version.
We ran two questions in ChatGPT today. “I got a CP504 notice and I live in Utah — who should I call?” got the IRS line, the Taxpayer Advocate's Ogden office and two free clinics. No private firm at all. “Name the best local firm for IRS collection problems in Orem” put you first — “Enrolled Agent and former IRS revenue agent” — with your site and number.
So the model already knows who you are and rates you. It just never reaches for you when someone describes the situation instead of asking for a firm. Closing that gap is markup and specificity — notice pages, structured answers, a credentialed author entity — and it compounds with the notice work above.
Redirects, headline tags, meta descriptions, image compression — any competent WordPress developer can do Phase 1, and if that were all you needed we'd say so and point you to one. What needs Koken Labs is what comes after.
We found “pennies on the dollar” on three pages, flagged it as an FTC and §10.30 exposure, and told you where it lives whether or not you hire us. We also cut the “do you qualify?” widget — the lead-gen pattern in this vertical — in favor of a “which letter did you get?” lookup that is useful before it's a lead form. A regulated practice needs a builder who knows what not to say.
The notice library is built from your dictation. Koken Labs' own tooling turns short recorded sessions into drafts you correct — roughly forty pages in ten weeks, at two to four hours a week of your time. That pipeline is what we build for a living.
Making a business the answer a model can name — structured, credentialed, specific — is the core of Koken Labs' own work. On the call we'll show you the author and service markup we'd ship, and run the Utah queries live again so you see the answer change for yourself.
There's a decision gate at week six, measurement is installed before anything else, and nobody asks you to spend blind.
The first two phases fix what's broken and re-center the site on you. Then we stop, look at the data together, and you decide whether the content engine is worth building. If the answer is no, you still have a fast, correct, honest site.
Make the site measurable and correct. Nothing here needs your time beyond a few answers and two access invitations.
http to https. Add the missing headline tags to all fifteen service pages. Write the 62 meta descriptions.Rebuild the front door around the one thing nobody else can claim.
End of week six. We sit down with the Search Console data, the first six weeks of GA4, and what the local listing is doing. You decide whether Phase 3 is worth your time — because Phase 3 costs you time, not just money.
The notice-number library, written from the inside. This is the part only you can make true.
Keep what's working, measure what isn't, and decide about paid with data.
Where do clients come from today?
Referrals, search, word of mouth, a mix. This sets the size of the plan more than anything we found on the site.
Search Console and Google Business Profile access.
One invitation each. Search Console alone may recover up to sixteen months of history the site's own tracking lost.
Which clients do you actually want?
Utah families with a levy, or business owners nationally with a payroll problem? The content plan is different for each.
Is the 800 number a live tracking line?
It's in the site's hidden markup but not on the page. If it's real, we keep it and make the two agree.
Two to four hours a week, in Phase 3 only.
Short recorded conversations about what really happens after each notice. We write; you correct. Without this, the content engine is boilerplate, and we'd rather not build it.
Sign-off on tone.
Everything ships in your voice under your name. You'll see every page before it's live.
Not visits. Not rankings. Not “impressions.” The count of people who found the site, made contact, and turned out to be someone you'd actually take on. Everything else is a leading indicator, and we'll report those too — but this is the one the plan is judged on.
We start at zero because the site can't currently count anything. That's Phase 1's job. By the decision gate you'll have six weeks of real numbers and up to sixteen months of history to set them against.
Guarantee a ranking. Nobody honest can. Search compounds over months and Google decides, not us.
Project revenue. We don't have your close rate or your case values, and inventing them to make a slide look good is exactly the behavior this plan is meant to distance you from.
Promise reviews. See above. We'll build the ask into the process and report what comes.
What we commit to is the work, on the schedule above, with the reporting to show whether it's paying.
Everything in this plan is either configuration, writing, or structure — and the writing only works because you know what happens inside the building. We'd like to make the site say what your practice already is.
Commercial terms are a separate conversation and depend on which version of this plan you want. The next step is a forty-minute call: you answer the six questions above, we verify Search Console together on the call, and we'll both know a lot more by the end of it.
Book the callOr reply to the email this came with — whichever is easier.