Capabilities
Get found first. Then everything else.
Deadpan Labs is a Miami SEO and GEO agency. We get Shopify and DTC brands found (ranked in search and named in the AI answers buyers now ask first), and we report it monthly in a workspace you can open, not a PDF. There are six practices, listed below. Every one of them is sold on its own.
The core is getting the store found: technical SEO and generative-engine optimization run together, measured monthly against the questions your buyers actually ask. Around it sit paid media and brand, software and mobile, and security. Every engagement comes with a progress dashboard of your own, which is why our reporting is instrumented, not assembled. Each practice carries its own scope and its own invoice.
Last updated 2026-08-22 · Deadpan Labs · Miami, FL
01
SEO & AI search
Our core, and a complete engagement in its own right (you don't need anything else from us to buy it). Technical SEO, generative-engine optimization (GEO), and the content that fuels both: ranked in classic search and named in AI answers (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews) when a shopper asks what to buy. We don't hand you a scorecard and walk away. We run the fix, or integrate your existing tools and agencies. You get a monthly panel showing whether the answers name you and who they name instead, and those metrics land on your own dashboard, not in an attachment.
Typical work: product data an engine can actually read, a content engine, getting named in the answer.
What you get
- A monthly panel of your buyers' real questions across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI, sampled repeatedly
- Named substitutes: which brands the engines recommend instead of you, and the sources they cite to justify it
- Product and organization structured data across the catalog, at variant level where it matters
- Technical audit: crawlability, metadata, structure, speed, and whether a parser can read a page a shopper finds complete
- Citation work: the independent roundups, review platforms and community threads the engines actually read
- The raw answers attached to every report, so you can check our work
02
Paid Media & Brand
Campaign strategy and buying across Meta, TikTok, and Google on tested creative, plus naming, voice, and visual identity, run for you or alongside your team, with results on your dashboard.
Typical work: a launch campaign, a scaling account, a name and identity from scratch, a rebrand.
What you get
- Account and funnel audit, creative testing matrix
- Buying, optimization, and plain-language reporting
- Naming with availability checks, voice and messaging guide
- Visual identity kit: type, color, and usage rules
03
Your progress dashboard
The part other agencies don't have. Every engagement comes with a dashboard of your own, built on the same technology as Vercid (the operating platform our company builds) and scoped to the work: search positions, AI-visibility verdicts, the brands cited instead of you, and brand and campaign progress, updated as we work, not summarized once a month. You log in whenever you want. It is not a PDF and it is not a spreadsheet.
Typical work: none to buy. It comes with a retainer, and it is live from the first month.
What you get
- Your own login, not a shared report link
- AI-visibility verdicts query by query, with the raw answers attached so you can check the work
- Search positions and the technical fixes shipped against them, dated
- Brand, content and campaign progress in the same pane as the search numbers
- Runs from any device, built mobile-first
- Updated as we work, not assembled the week the report is due
- Running the STORE itself (orders, inventory, fulfillment, payments, CRM) is Vercid's own product on the same technology. Separately sold, separately priced, and not something this agency needs you to buy.
04
Software Development
Full-stack software: web apps, platforms, storefronts, internal tools, browser extensions, and interactive products. Tracked on your progress dashboard alongside the rest of the work, not a separate handoff you have to go find.
Typical work: a storefront, a web app or platform, an internal tool, an interactive product.
What you get
- Honest scoping with milestones and no black-box estimates
- Web apps, platforms, and storefronts, designed and deployed
- Browser extensions, API integrations, and internal tools
- Interactive products: 3D web experiences and browser tooling we've built and shipped
- A launch card on your progress dashboard, next to the rest of the work
- Source and handoff docs for what we build for you (yours outright on final payment), so you're never hostage to us for the next change
05
Mobile Apps
Your own iOS and Android product, built native-feel from a first working prototype through store launch and the updates after, yours to ship under your brand.
Typical work: an MVP for the app stores, a companion app, a cross-platform rebuild.
What you get
- A working prototype and scope you can see before committing
- Cross-platform build: one codebase, both app stores
- App Store and Play Store submission and review handling
- Analytics, crash reporting, and post-launch iteration
06
Security & Compliance
A bounded audit and hardening engagement, not a compliance platform you pay for monthly and manage yourself. We lock down and keep clean the whole live surface (your store, your data, your email) and map you to the standards buyers ask about.
Typical work: a security audit + hardening, email authentication, a compliance readiness check.
What you get
- Security audit and hardening across the live web + database surface
- Email authentication (DMARC, SPF, DKIM) and anti-spoofing
- Compliance mapping: SOC 2, GDPR, PCI, HIPAA readiness
- A recurring monthly external security sweep (headers, TLS, exposure), reported by severity
What you can buy alone
Six practices, six separate invoices.
The most common question we get is whether one practice is a gate on another. None is. Here is the whole answer in one table.
| Practice | Sold on its own? | How it is priced |
|---|---|---|
| 01 · SEO & AI search | Yes, this is the core | Audit up front, then a monthly retainer |
| 02 · Paid Media & Brand | Yes | Monthly retainer, or a one-off identity project |
| 03 · Your progress dashboard | No, it comes with the work | Included with any retainer |
| 04 · Software Development | Yes | Scoped project, milestone-billed |
| 05 · Mobile Apps | Yes | Scoped project, then post-launch iteration |
| 06 · Security & Compliance | Yes, as an add-on | Bounded audit, then an optional monthly sweep |
How the search work is priced lives on the pricing page. Software and mobile builds are scoped per project, because the honest number depends on what you already run.
Why one team
The build and the getting-found are one decision.
Whether an answer engine can read your product data is decided by how the page was built, not by anything written about it later. That is why these practices are one team and not a referral chain. Three public findings, each from the organization that ran the study:
- 1 · Fewer clicks come off the same result page. The Pew Research Center tracked 900 U.S. adults across 68,879 Google searches in March 2025 and found that users clicked a traditional search result on 8% of visits where an AI summary appeared, compared with 15% of visits where none did. Users clicked a link inside the AI summary itself on just 1% of those visits.
- 2 · Being cited still runs through ranking. Semrush, studying 5,000 keywords and more than 150,000 citations, found Perplexity's cited domains overlap Google's organic top ten by more than 91%, and Google AI Overviews by roughly 86%. Google AI Mode is the outlier at roughly 54% domain overlap, which is why one engine is never the whole picture.
- 3 · Most companies cannot see their own stack. BetterCloud's 2026 State of SaaS report found that only 56% of the applications organizations use today carry IT approval, and that mid-market organizations went from an average of 116 apps to 164 in a single year. Adding a vendor is rarely the fix.
None of that says a vendor can promise you a ranking or an AI recommendation. It says the technical build, the search work and the AI-answer work are the same surface being read by different machines, and that splitting them across three companies puts the handoff exactly where the failures happen.
The way we work
Most projects touch more than one practice.
One team
One relationship, not four vendors
Take one thing or several: the growth work, a build, security. Each stands on its own, with its own scope and its own invoice. Run more than one with us and they share a single relationship instead of four: no repeated onboarding, no separate sales call, no extra vendor to chase.
Honest scope
You see the plan before the bill
We scope in the open: what it takes, what it costs, and what the first milestone looks like, before any commitment.
Handoff, day one
We train your team, then step back
The moment your team can run the work in-house, we say so, and stay only for what you still want us carrying. Not vendor lock-in dressed up as support.
Built to ship
Every build lands on your dashboard
We don't hand you a thing and walk away. What we build shows up on your progress dashboard next to the rest of the work, and if it's customer-facing, ships with the work to get it found.
Questions buyers ask
Frequently asked.
Can I buy one practice on its own?
Yes. Most engagements start with the search and AI-search work, which is a complete engagement that needs nothing else from us. So is a software build, a mobile app, a brand identity, or a security audit. Your progress dashboard comes with any retainer and isn't sold on its own. Running the store itself (orders, inventory, payments, CRM) is Vercid, a separate product from the same company, and you never need it to hire us. Each practice carries its own scope and its own invoice, and running two with us means one relationship, not two vendors.
Why does one team build the software and also run the search work?
Because the two decisions are the same decision. Whether an AI answer engine can read your product data is settled by how the page was built, not by anything a marketer writes afterward. Semrush, in a study of 5,000 keywords and more than 150,000 citations, found that Perplexity's cited domains overlap Google's top-ten organic results by more than 91%, and its cited URLs by 82%. So the technical build, the classic search work, and the AI-answer work are not three jobs with handoffs between them. When they sit in different companies, the handoff is where the work goes missing.
Is SEO still worth funding now that AI answers exist?
Yes, and the evidence points the same way for both. The Pew Research Center tracked the browsing of 900 U.S. adults across 68,879 Google searches in March 2025 and found users clicked a traditional search result on 8% of visits where an AI summary appeared, against 15% of visits where none did. That is fewer clicks from the same page, which is the argument for being named inside the answer. It is not an argument for abandoning rankings, because the same Semrush study shows Google AI Overviews reuses roughly 86% of the domains already in the top ten. Ranking is now a precondition for being cited, not a substitute for it.
Do you promise a ranking, or that ChatGPT will recommend us?
No, and treat anyone who does as a liability. Answer engines return different results for the same question minutes apart, and no vendor controls what a model says. What Deadpan Labs commits to is the work and the measurement: the specific fixes, done, and a monthly panel of your buyers' real questions that records whether you were named, where, and who was named instead. The number you get is a direction over time, not a score with two decimal places.
What if we already have an agency or our own tools?
Then we integrate with them. The SEO and GEO practice runs either done-for-you or wired into the tools and agencies you already pay for, with the measurement landing in the same place either way. BetterCloud's 2026 State of SaaS report found that only 56% of the applications organizations actually use carry IT approval. Adding a seventh vendor to an already unmanaged stack is usually the wrong move, so we would rather connect what you run than sell you another subscription.
What proof do you have that any of this works?
Client names stay confidential, so the proof we can show in full is first-party: we grew one of our own products from zero to more than 900 downloads in its first three weeks with no ad spend, and past 6,000 by October 2026, and we run the same monthly AI-visibility panels on our own brands that we would run on yours.
The close
Not sure which practice you need?
Most engagements touch more than one. Tell us about your store and we’ll scope the shortest path to getting it found.