Evolve or Die: Law Firm SEO in the Age of Google's AI Mode – Strategies to Stay Ahead

Google’s new AI-powered search is about to change everything for law firm marketing. In this episode of The Optimized Law Firm Podcast, Patrick Carver explains why we’re facing a “Yellow Pages moment”—and what your firm needs to do to avoid getting left behind.

Learn how Google’s AI mode will disrupt search results, reduce organic traffic, and make ranking harder than ever. Discover the essential strategies of the “AI Visibility Framework”—including modern SEO, expanding your online distribution, and leveraging advertising.

If you want your law firm to maintain or grow its market share in this new AI-driven search world, don’t miss this conversation.

Main takeaways:

1. Adapt or Get Left Behind: Google’s new AI-powered search mode will reduce organic traffic for law firms. Firms must rethink their approach to stay visible.
2. Embrace the AI Visibility Framework: Success now requires three pillars—advanced SEO strategies, broader content distribution, and paid amplification to maintain market share.
3. No Silver Bullet: There is no single hack to beat AI search. Firms need a comprehensive, adaptable strategy to navigate this seismic shift in consumer behavior and technology.

Transcription:

00:00:05:16 – 00:00:34:04

Speaker 1

Good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining. I’m just going to check kind of go through a couple of checks, make sure everybody hear me so far. Who’s joining in? The comments are open. So if you want to use emojis or anything, anything you want, that would be awesome. Yep. All right, cool. So it’s like everybody can hear me and I see the chat go into.

00:00:34:06 – 00:01:02:03

Speaker 1

Awesome. Thanks so much for joining and we’ll get going in just a couple minutes. Just going to let kind of everybody filter in as we go and hope everybody’s got something fun lined up for this weekend. My days are pretty much now 100% filled with running around chasing a couple of toddlers. So my biggest hope is just to get a little sleep.

00:01:02:03 – 00:01:43:15

Speaker 1

But thanks so much for, again, taking some time out of your day to come in and join us here. I’m really excited about this topic and get a chance to speak with everybody about it. It’s a it’s really kind of fundamentally, I think, going to change the marketing landscape and right now is really the perfect time in my my view to talk about this and and kind of lay out what some of the strategies that we think are going to be big moving forward, how you can position your law firm to succeed in this.

00:01:43:15 – 00:02:08:12

Speaker 1

And we’ll go from there. So give it just about a minute more and and we will get started. And you’ll also see I’ve got Melissa on our team who is manning the chat as well. So kind of throughout this, there are going to be a couple of points where I’m interested in getting feedback. And but if you have questions in general, I’m going to try to leave a little extra time.

00:02:08:12 – 00:02:27:02

Speaker 1

I’m going to keep this to under an hour. So look for you. We’ll probably have a few minutes at the end to ask any questions. So if you do have questions as they come up, definitely drop them in the chat, Melissa. We’ll keep an eye on them and then we can cover those at the end of the presentation.

00:02:27:04 – 00:02:50:29

Speaker 1

Awesome. So I’ll go ahead and get started. This is 12 and we can get get this thing rolling. Just so you’re aware, we will also be recording this. So if you are interested in getting the full three came later, you have to leave early. We will have the full recording, transcript notes, etc. So we’ll be more than happy to get that over to you.

00:02:51:01 – 00:03:18:22

Speaker 1

So quick question to start this off, who has seen a competitor in the last six months, last 12 months, get a case that you feel like should have been yours, but they got it because they were better at marketing but worse at practicing law. If you if you’ve had this scenario, just type of one in the comments or give me give me an emoji.

00:03:18:25 – 00:03:40:07

Speaker 1

This is something I hear all the time, right, from my father, who’s an attorney from from a lot of our clients, is that the folks out there who are getting a lot of the cases aren’t really the best lawyer necessarily run the best law practice, but they are very skilled at marketing and getting out there in front of people.

00:03:40:07 – 00:04:07:22

Speaker 1

Right. That critical point when they are looking for a lawyer and because of some of the recent changes happening in the world of legal marketing with a eye with Google, what they’re they’re planning to do with their AI mode, which I’m going to talk a lot about today. We’re really at this this kind of defining moment, in my opinion, of how you are going to market your business moving forward.

00:04:07:22 – 00:04:29:26

Speaker 1

And my concern is that this is more or less our Yellow Pages moment. And so, you know, growing up, my point of reference was my dad’s law practice. And, you know, right when I was getting into learning about marketing and the Internet, you know, the big conversation point was how everybody used to advertise in the Yellow Pages. Now everything’s going digital.

00:04:29:26 – 00:04:58:29

Speaker 1

And so I think in a way, we’re at that point where we’re having our own kind of Yellow Pages moment. And the concern for folks like me, and I’m sure folks like yourself, is that if you don’t act now and get a solid strategy together and be part of this vanguard of understanding how AI is going to impact your business, you are going to see those same competitors who are not necessarily be better lawyers.

00:04:59:02 – 00:05:20:04

Speaker 1

They’ve not been doing it for as long. You don’t have your experience, they don’t have your results, but they’re the loudest and they’re the ones that are more effective at taking advantage of trends like this. So here’s what we’re going to cover today. We are going to first kind of identify what this Yellow Pages moment is all about.

00:05:20:11 – 00:05:46:25

Speaker 1

What are these fundamental changes that are, I believe, really going to transform the landscape for legal marketing. I’m also going to talk about some of the big mistakes I think most firms are going to make during this during this transition. And then finally, we’re going to talk about our visibility framework, which is our way that we’re going to help our clients position them to be the preeminent winner in the market that they are going for.

00:05:47:03 – 00:06:08:27

Speaker 1

And how to do this moving forward in face of, I think, a lot of big challenges. So do me a favor and I’m going to keep this as tight as possible. I’m going to leave some room at the end of the discussion for questions so I can answer any of those as well. But, you know, if you want to get maximum value out of this today, put your phone away, close the other tabs.

00:06:08:27 – 00:06:30:05

Speaker 1

I know I’m thousand percent guilty of this because I’m gonna go through a lot of information. Do it quickly. I will. As I mentioned before, if you just got here, we’re going to make this recording available. We’ll put information on how to get that after. But if you signed up for this, we’ll send it out so you don’t worry about taking notes or anything like that.

00:06:30:08 – 00:07:02:00

Speaker 1

So just quickly about myself and our company. So we obviously run a legal marketing company and I started this in 2000, about ten years ago. And over that time we’ve helped hundreds of law firm owners get more clients, build their presence online. And on the conservative side, we generated over $50 million in revenue. One of the things I’m most happy about or most proud of with our business is we’ve grown from basically just me to now.

00:07:02:00 – 00:07:25:27

Speaker 1

We have near 40 employees and we’re working with over 85 law firms throughout the country. Is that in 2024 we had a 98.7 retention rate among our clients. And so that’s not to say we don’t lose clients, we don’t make mistakes at all. But I think in this business it’s all about reputation. It’s all about who can, you know, who has integrity and can really deliver on the promises.

00:07:25:27 – 00:07:51:24

Speaker 1

And so for us, it’s all about delivering return on investment for our clients. And I believe that is the number one driver of why we’ve had such a strong retention rate. Now, not only that, from the law firm side, we actually practice what we preach. And what I mean by this is that over the past six months it has been a complete unknown storm of things happening in this space.

00:07:51:24 – 00:08:37:05

Speaker 1

Ever since activity launched. It’s really, you know, created this this this storm of things happening where we don’t really know what the future is going to look like in a lot of respects for marketing. And so if you have come to this with one of the kind of driving forces that you’ve seen your traffic go down on your website over the past 6 to 12 months and you’ve seen leads go down as a result of that, that is 100% due to the influence of I, I overviews in Google and effectively a diminishing ability to get clients through what I would call the traditional digital channels.

00:08:37:07 – 00:09:00:13

Speaker 1

Now, I bring all of this up because we have been cooking a lot of these and testing a lot of these strategies to offset that and get success in spite of the way the market is shifting. And we’ve been very successful at it not only for our clients, but we are more aggressive with our own testing for our own marketing.

00:09:00:13 – 00:09:29:28

Speaker 1

And if you look at this graph right here, what you’ll see is that not only have we sustained during this period of enormous levels of traffic going down, even for big publishers, big companies are seeing this impact as well. We have been able to come out relatively unscathed. That’s not to say we haven’t had setbacks and and problems associated with it, but we have been able to grow our online traffic and ultimately grow our business during this period.

00:09:30:00 – 00:10:00:06

Speaker 1

So I want to know real quick before we we dive into more of the slides and more kind of the education strategy point. Curious kind of with everybody on the call today, what’s your current level of expertise with ten being an absolute expert? No, wait just a second. All right. We’ve got aa9 point nine. Love it. Okay. So we got some threes.

00:10:00:09 – 00:10:30:28

Speaker 1

Awesome. Thanks for thanks for adding in. So, you know, I tend to think I’m on the cutting edge of this, a lot of this stuff, but I would still put myself on the the bottom half right. And the reason for that is because things are changing so quickly. It’s really hard to to keep up and consider myself an expert because literally huge pieces of the Internet are just fundamentally changing every day based on this.

00:10:31:00 – 00:10:56:09

Speaker 1

And so I think going into this, the the thing that I will preach consistent with this is that, you know, you want to have kind of an open mind and be open to change. Right. I think the winners that will come out of this whole situation are going to be the people who adapt quickly, who keep an open mind and then double down on the things that are really working for them.

00:10:56:12 – 00:11:05:15

Speaker 1

So another one more question. Do you consider a threat to your law firm or do you consider it an asset?

00:11:05:18 – 00:11:26:28

Speaker 1

All right, we’ve got an ass, we’ve got a lot of assets. So I think, you know, it sounds like, you know, I’ve heard of this both ways, right? Some in some regards people see, you know, I as maybe coming in and threatening their line of work. Right. Threatening that everybody’s going to go and have a robot doing their estate plans and in writing the personal injury cases.

00:11:26:28 – 00:12:14:24

Speaker 1

And, you know, I think there is some some some of that, but I generally think it’s an asset. And to be honest, when I first saw the latest change by Google, which is really the impetus for this whole webinar, is there last new product demonstration where they launched a AI mode and at first this felt like a big threat to my my business, right, which was that instead of having regular search results, those ten blue links that you normally see, it was now going to be more of like a chat CBT experience where the old ways that we were generating visibility for our clients and showing up in those search engine results, which is the

00:12:14:24 – 00:12:43:28

Speaker 1

core of of what we do, core of SEO. If that was all going away, what am I going to do? What am I going to sell? But then after a little bit of extra thought, I realized that this is much less of a threat and more of an opportunity because I believe that folks like myself and people like you who are on this webinar, who are curious about AI, who are thinking, you know, in a forward manner about your own law firm, you will be the big winners.

00:12:44:01 – 00:13:14:07

Speaker 1

Because if you are aware of activity and you’re aware of these tools that are out there and you’re even using them to improve your work and expedite things and get better quality, I still believe you’re in the top 1% of the world because there’s as much as we kind of know in the bubble about what this is happening, most people are still not using GPT, they’re still not integrating AI on a daily basis.

00:13:14:07 – 00:13:40:25

Speaker 1

And so I’m betting big on myself, our team, and also I’m betting big on forward thinking attorneys like yourself that you are going to be out there and you will be the beneficiary of this because you are leaning forward into the trend and there’s no one else that’s going to be better to be able to adapt to the changes that will be necessary to maintain or grow your market share.

00:13:40:27 – 00:14:18:03

Speaker 1

For me, there’s really three things happening that are driving this, this seismic change, right? So number one, it’s the rise of alternative search engines. So this is things like chat type, perplexity, Google’s Gemini, different, different tools like that. The second piece of this is that consumer behavior is changing quickly. And then finally, I believe the biggest change across any of the topics we’re talking about today is going to be Google’s new AI mode and how they envision the future of search on the Internet.

00:14:18:06 – 00:14:39:02

Speaker 1

So let’s talk a little bit about these and then we’re going to spend the most most part of today really getting into the solution. Right. And what you need to do to prepare your business for us. So the first thing is that we have this growing this phenomenon of growing market share of alternative search engines. To be clear, Google still is absolutely quaint, right?

00:14:39:02 – 00:15:05:23

Speaker 1

So if you look at the number of monthly searches happening, it’s I mean, there’s no there’s no comparison. Right. And so even over the past six months, I haven’t really felt the need or felt a real urgency to go out there and change our whole business model for dealing with, you know, how to get placed in charge of it, because the number of searches happening there are so minuscule.

00:15:05:23 – 00:15:41:14

Speaker 1

Right. Compared to even players like being or Yahoo! Are still, you know, enormously have enormous market share compared to something like activity. That being said, I believe that there are other factors here that are going to make these other search engines more ubiquitous and are going to get used more frequently. There’s projections out here that air searches are going to capture much more of their market share within, you know, within ten years or five years.

00:15:41:20 – 00:16:14:27

Speaker 1

I think it’s actually going to happen even quicker to some degree, depending on how quickly Google can change and how quickly they will roll out AI mode in their their regular searches and at what level. The other thing that is driving this trend for me is that consumer behavior is changing quickly. And so when we look at this number of the projected market share for these alternative search engines, I’m calling them, the massive driver for that number are younger people.

00:16:15:04 – 00:16:39:03

Speaker 1

Okay. And so, as you know, if you know, if you have anyone in your office who who’s a little bit younger, they are they have a different relationship with the Internet than we do. Right. And I’m putting myself in the the older category with this. But if you look at how they’re finding information and what they’re what they’re doing, yes, they are using Google.

00:16:39:06 – 00:17:08:16

Speaker 1

But the percentage of people using these these alternatives like chat activity and these tools is so much higher for the younger generation. And so I’m predicting that as the market for legal services grows with this demographic and they’re graduating college and they’re looking for estate plans and they’re getting a DUI, things like that, they are going to increasingly use AI and chat bots in their in their research right.

00:17:08:19 – 00:17:35:13

Speaker 1

And so this is just putting it in context of how much of that market share is being driven by the younger generation who are going to be the consumer of tomorrow. And so I think it only is logical that you need to start thinking about how these people are finding information. Right. And we want to position you so that you are you have the maximum visibility.

00:17:35:13 – 00:18:06:04

Speaker 1

Now you have a short term strategy, but you also have the long term strategy as well. And let’s go to the final component of this, what I believe is going to produce the most massive change across the board. And so this comes from Google’s last product launch, talking about their aim and what I believe is happening here is Google has always traditionally been the the search engine, Right.

00:18:06:10 – 00:18:32:28

Speaker 1

And there was a bit of a trade off between the publisher and Google. Right. They would index all of your content. You would write articles about different laws, how to deal with laws, nuanced, different things like that. And then they would connect users with you. Right? And so you’ve always had this trade off where you produce the content you get traffic in return.

00:18:33:00 – 00:19:05:21

Speaker 1

I believe that the air mode is going to fundamentally change this. If you go to tragedy, you know, that experience is totally different, right? They are not going to give you a big block of links. Instead, they are going to give you a specific answer. Right. And so we started to see this about six months ago with the air overviews, and this is what an overview looks like if you’re if you’re not familiar with it, these are going to be popping up all over the place.

00:19:05:23 – 00:19:32:20

Speaker 1

The adoption of this has been massive since they started to introduce these. The you know, the growth of them has been enormous. Right? And so for a while this was kind of the only air component Google had in the search. What did this result in? Lots of decreased traffic. Because if you were going on to Google for a question like this, you probably don’t really care who is going to answer it as long as it is effective.

00:19:32:20 – 00:20:21:03

Speaker 1

Right. As long as it is accurate. And there was some commotion at the beginning about how accurate these answers were. And that will continue to to improve. But this isn’t going anywhere. And if you look at the level of adoption, it has, you know, massively grown over the past six months since they since they roll this out. Now, what what this has led to for a lot of our clients and probably probably you as well if you’re if you’re not a client is that these air overviews started to answer all questions that were what we call informational queries and in some cases that could lead up to a 50% reduction in traffic.

00:20:21:06 – 00:20:49:15

Speaker 1

Most often this was like between 20, you know, 10 to 20% of traffic or right around or 20% a good a good number. And we weren’t really too worried about this as we were watching it play out in real time because revenue lead numbers were were mostly stable because the air reviews were not targeting what we call transactional keywords are target keywords for us.

00:20:49:15 – 00:21:22:04

Speaker 1

And so a good example of this is, you know, we’re in we’re in Atlanta, Georgia, and a informational keyword would be what is the statute of limitations for a personal injury claim in Georgia? Right. A transactional or target keyword is going to be auto accident lawyer, Georgia, those target keywords we’re not affected largely by these reviews. And so as a result, the revenue and the leads were generally stable.

00:21:22:08 – 00:21:46:13

Speaker 1

We saw this drop off of traffic, but it was a lot of stuff that didn’t really correlate with with clients, someone searching for that, that statute of limitations question could just as easily be someone writing a paper. It could be a college law student, it could be it, or it could be someone. And so we did see some lead drop from that, but it wasn’t massive.

00:21:46:15 – 00:22:17:28

Speaker 1

And so our focus at the time and still continues to be is focus on those target transactional terms that that really drive it. But what I see as the big threat to law firms today is how Google is going to fundamentally change their platform. And it’s my belief that they are changing their and rolling out this AI mode as a way to combat chat activity.

00:22:17:28 – 00:22:43:21

Speaker 1

Because even though chat JPT, which I’m going to just kind of refer to ubiquitously as an, you know, for AI search engines, but you have perplexity, you have these others out there, but it’s still, I think, very much a, you know, a competition, right, with no clear mark winner. But it certainly has the most they I believe, are seeing the rapid adoption of GPT.

00:22:43:24 – 00:23:22:20

Speaker 1

Right. And they have seen and kind of been, you know, knocked down a peg over the last year with all of the hype, all of the press coming out about chatbots. And I think that was a huge warning signal to Google that, hey, we’ve got to do something to kind of shake up what we’re doing in order to head off this this this headwind or this competition that is is absolutely coming as it gets out in full and really scales up to compete because it feels like it’s more intuitive, you’re able to find information easier.

00:23:22:20 – 00:23:49:08

Speaker 1

You don’t have to go search through ten pages. You can have an answer done for you right there. And so they started coming for these queries and we noticed that it really meant that a lot of your traffic from these queries was was dropping off. But what I believe is going to happen next is that they are going to come for transactional target keywords as well.

00:23:49:15 – 00:24:14:10

Speaker 1

And so if you look on the right for this new AI mode, they’re not really interested, I believe, anymore in sending people off site, off their platform. Right. And historically that’s not been the case. They’ve had that relationship of you’re the publisher, we’re the indexer, we’re going to give you traffic. Right? I think that’s all going to change.

00:24:14:16 – 00:24:42:15

Speaker 1

And at some point over the next year, this is what it’s going to look like. You were going to put in who’s the best criminal lawyer near me. And it’s more or less going to pick a winner or a couple of winners. And there’s really not probably going to be nearly as much opportunity to capture more of that market share by being the first result and then someone clicking off and going to go to your website.

00:24:42:18 – 00:25:19:24

Speaker 1

I think over time people will find it more intuitive to ask a question like this and then stay within Google’s platform to do follow up questions. Right? And so if they see you in today and years past, they would click on the first result or maybe the second result because something stood out. They’re going to go through your website, look around, and I believe what will happen ultimately is that there will be fewer clicks generated from that point and it will be all about optimizing these results and standing out that way.

00:25:19:26 – 00:25:42:01

Speaker 1

But the user is going to continue to ask questions inside this air mode as opposed to jumping off site, which I believe ultimately makes it a little bit harder, make the competition more, more fierce, because you’re not you don’t have that. You’re not, you know, that ability to kind of get one on one attention with your potential client.

00:25:42:03 – 00:26:12:21

Speaker 1

So we have this fundamental shift at some point, Google will monetize it. They will be putting ads in there. Those solutions haven’t really rolled out, I think, in large part due to the fact that they kind of got caught napping on this to some degree. And so their goal at this point is claw back market share and make sure that they are the solution for generative search moving forward or these air search engines.

00:26:12:23 – 00:26:32:16

Speaker 1

And then they’re going to figure out the monetization piece later because from their business model, if they can keep you in their environment, in their platform for a longer period of time, they’re going to be happier. They’re going to be able to sell more and monetize it better than sending people off site all the time. So it creates this environment.

00:26:32:16 – 00:26:56:10

Speaker 1

Now for this problem where if you have a law firm and you have been historically reliant on search traffic, what exactly do you do? Right? If they come in and and scoop up half of your traffic and they’re starting to predict those winners right in the in the result where the people don’t have to leave, you know, what’s the solution?

00:26:56:10 – 00:27:22:01

Speaker 1

Right. And I’ll tell you right now, there is no one thing right. I am kind of the least clickbait marketer you may get out there because I guarantee just since we started this webinar, you probably have emails in your inbox that are, you know, big red flags talking about you’ve got to do this now, you’ve got to do this one thing.

00:27:22:01 – 00:27:55:05

Speaker 1

And I have the answer right. I’ve got the one thing that’s going to save you in this in this big evolution. And what I want to encourage you to do is not get wrapped up in some of the, you know, what I would call less than, you know, savory marketer trends out there or their focus and wanting you to think about when you to feel like you have to do one specific thing and they’re going to put a fancy name on it.

00:27:55:05 – 00:28:24:06

Speaker 1

It’s going to be AI engine optimization or, you know, generative engine optimization. And then we’ve got, you know, large language model optimization and a lot of I mean, all of it really is for me the same thing. I don’t think ultimately there’s any fundamental difference from calling it search engine optimization, because ultimately, yes, it’s technically like a large language model in lamb.

00:28:24:10 – 00:28:55:06

Speaker 1

It’s it’s an AI search. It’s really still all just search engines. Right. And so the makeup is going to change. There’s people coming in who are going to take more market share. The types of results are going to change, But I still believe that SEO, traditional SEO that will encompass all of this is is still an enormous factor for the success of your firm in the future.

00:28:55:08 – 00:29:28:02

Speaker 1

So I highly encourage you to, you know, skip the hacks and snake oil salesmen who are going to come in and send you a bunch of alarmist information that check out this report. You’re not you’re not optimized for chat. JPT Something like that. And at this point in the game, it’s so unknown. There’s there’s still so much that’s not known that nobody is going to have one silver bullet that is going to fix all of this and and put you, you know, miles ahead of your competition.

00:29:28:05 – 00:29:43:13

Speaker 1

You know, been doing this for ten years. A lot of you, I’m sure, have been practicing law for way longer than that. And, you know, as these changes have happened throughout the years, I’m sure you’ve heard it’s going to be video videos. The next thing you got to jump on or it’s it’s social media, it’s all of these things.

00:29:43:15 – 00:30:10:27

Speaker 1

And in the end, the user behavior that somebody when they need a lawyer, they’re going to go get out their phone and search. Right. Whether that’s Google or maybe that’s something new, I think that’s going to basically be the same. Right. So how do we position you for success, not only today, but also in the future? And this is what we’re calling our air visibility framework.

00:30:10:29 – 00:31:05:08

Speaker 1

There’s three components of this. The first is doubling down SEO. So again, I’m using this this term for all air engines, all search engines. It’s basically when someone searches for something on the Internet, are you going to be there? Right. So for me, that is still all search engine optimization. So that’s the foundation will continue to be the foundation, but we want to start thinking about how to grow distribution and we want to start thinking about how to get more visibility and more clients, not only on the the SEO side of things, but also elsewhere, because it’s my belief that through all these changes as they roll out, you’re going to see the same effect

00:31:05:08 – 00:31:38:13

Speaker 1

that happened with air overviews, which was a net reduction in traffic and leads coming to clients. So Google’s response when talking about AI and talking about overviews, they would say that, Oh, but look at these opportunities for you to be featured next to the AI overview answer. And there’s some truth to that. But what we have seen in practice is that if there is an AI overview, the likelihood that somebody is going to click off that page is much lower.

00:31:38:15 – 00:32:05:13

Speaker 1

Okay. And Google introduced similar things in the past like the question pack, but it’s never had this type of impact where people are driven to stay on on that platform. And so I believe firmly that SEO is still the biggest game in town, being in search results, being in these new is going to be is continue to be both in the short term and long term a huge part of your business.

00:32:05:19 – 00:32:29:29

Speaker 1

But we want to start diversifying a little bit and start making up that 10 to 20% of traffic that they’ve taken away, which may actually get pulled out more. And so we want to grow your distribution not only in search but also in these other platforms across the Internet, places that younger generations are starting to utilize more when they’re doing their customer journey.

00:32:30:06 – 00:33:12:19

Speaker 1

The final piece of this is to amplify that with advertising. So let’s talk about what this actually looks like. The a key thing to keep in mind through Azure navigating this topic is that all of these AI search engines are large language models. They are going to source their information differently. Google, for instance, and their Gemini product, they have a deal with Reddit, so they are using Reddit to train their model and basically have a direct pipeline to all of the information on Reddit.

00:33:12:21 – 00:33:43:20

Speaker 1

So what happened is a net result of this after signing that deal is that Reddit’s traffic skyrocketed. And if you go into Gemini, you’re more likely to get a response or a a response that has been fueled in some part by Reddit or their other high higher authority sources that they prefer, then something else, right? Then say Instagram or TikTok just started doing or is about to do public post as a default.

00:33:43:20 – 00:34:11:26

Speaker 1

So whoever gets a deal with TikTok is going to benefit from that information. And so each of these uses different methods to collect information on the Internet and then in their own algorithm as far as how they produce those results for transaction queries. And when searching best criminal lawyer in Atlanta, they’re all going to use a bit of a different system to come up with that.

00:34:11:29 – 00:34:37:03

Speaker 1

So in my view, it’s a waste of time trying to game on. And so if you get inquiries from marketers who are going to focus exclusively on something like, you know, hey, we’re going to get you number one in chat, they’re really missing the picture, the big picture, right? Because in my view, these are there’s still a a big competition going on and we’re nowhere near close to seeing a lead horse.

00:34:37:03 – 00:35:03:10

Speaker 1

I would say activity is definitely at the higher end right now. But, you know, perplexity, you just signed a deal with Samsung. They’re going to be in every new Samsung phone is the default. Apple’s talking about buying them. They may come up with their own AI search engine or buy a lesser known player and elevate them. And so it’s going to be a dogfight over the next couple of years between all of these individual search tools.

00:35:03:10 – 00:35:28:27

Speaker 1

So we really just don’t know which one’s going to be the best and which one you should, which we should optimize for. So my philosophy with this is that you now want to be everywhere all at once, and we do this already with our with SEO by putting you across the Internet in as many places as possible. And we do that through citations.

00:35:28:29 – 00:36:12:17

Speaker 1

We build you social signals by setting you up on platforms like Facebook, trying to get your profile listing on Yelp, on Google business, all of these different places. And so that really doesn’t change. That’s effectively the same thing. But we need to start going ten X on that, right? And so beyond just having a Facebook page, we’re now believing that there’s more of an importance of starting to establish kind of micro communities based on a lot more of these feeder systems that these A.I. tools are going to get their signals from.

00:36:12:17 – 00:36:39:15

Speaker 1

And so a good example of this is like everybody uses Yelp a lot. And so one of the early ways to kind of game this is can you go and prove your position on Yelp? Right? And so that as a byproduct of you being, you know, having a better profile, having more reviews on that platform, you are going to be at the top of Yelp’s algorithm, which by product goes into the search results.

00:36:39:15 – 00:37:08:03

Speaker 1

Right. So we’re starting to play around more with being and using Bing Webmaster tools so that because Djibouti’s primary dataset they’re getting from is being search results, right? So getting into all of these feeders, these tributaries, if you will, is is going to be increasingly important. So a couple of specific changes or things that will continue to be important really fit into these three buckets.

00:37:08:03 – 00:37:29:13

Speaker 1

We have our content. We are a trust signals and our our technical SEO. So number one, you’re going to continue to put out content and I would argue even even more you need to do faster iteration, right? So instead of working on one page and changing it once a year, we’re talking about changing it a couple of times a year, right?

00:37:29:13 – 00:38:05:29

Speaker 1

And so for us, the way our plans will look moving forward as we start to roll these out and really, you know, put that put that into black and white or put that down on paper, we are going to be doing a lot more changes. So instead of two optimizations per month, we’re going to do ten, we’re going to do 20 because we to show Google that we are consistently updating the material because the tools are out there and the people that are going to succeed are those who up to date high quality information that’s continuing to iterate on itself.

00:38:06:01 – 00:38:29:05

Speaker 1

And then a final piece of this that I think is really useful for you to start thinking about is knowledge gain or knowledge add. And the premise of this is that if everybody’s out there using A.I. tools to write content and and put that on their website, it’s all going to be derivative. It’s all going to be more or less moving it around and mashing up with the same kind of ideas is going to form the consensus.

00:38:29:05 – 00:38:49:16

Speaker 1

And so we’ve seen Google come out and about how they are looking for content that is going to have knowledge ADD, right? And so these are things like, you know, if you have a practice area page can you talk about some of the specific cases that you’ve won or just the results? Right. Can you talk about, you know, have a video of you talking about particular courts?

00:38:49:24 – 00:39:19:25

Speaker 1

Can you have the lawyers that are going to do those cases? Adding more of this information that is not already accessible on the Internet is going to be a big deal, in my opinion. We didn’t talk about trust signals. And so in in reality, this is still link building. So we’re talking about links, but I believe increasingly it’s going to be less about links and more about overall mentions, visibility, things like how many, how many followers you have on Facebook.

00:39:19:27 – 00:39:43:00

Speaker 1

Are you getting traffic from Facebook back to your website? We know that part of Google’s algorithm is based on user signals. And so if you were getting people to your website, they’re staying longer. They’re going to it’s going to be you’re going to get rewarded for that. You’re also going to get reward if you have diversified traffic. If you’re getting traffic from a few different places, this can be paid, it can be organic.

00:39:43:00 – 00:40:18:09

Speaker 1

And then the final piece of this is that we’re rapidly moving to a world where, you know, the currency is going to be technical related. And so I envision a world where the website is going to look fundamentally different. And basically you may end up just using GTI as your kind of primary operating system. And you say, you know, pull up, you know, a couple of the best lawyers in this town, it’s going to ping your website and then you can kind of customize what information you’re you’re looking for, ranked them based on, you know, who who has the most cases.

00:40:18:09 – 00:40:41:21

Speaker 1

Right. And so having all of that information to be easily crawl able, your website is in the top 1% in terms of speed and also using structured data, which is going to be an enormous piece of this moving forward. So having F-Secure schema and all these other types of schema that can be used to better help search engines and these crawlers understand your website.

00:40:41:25 – 00:41:07:00

Speaker 1

The good news, we’re doing all of that already with Constellation. We are just going to continue to be on the forefront of this and really take it, take it over over the top in the in the years coming. So couple of ways you can get increased trust signals. So instead of just focusing on reviews from, say, one source like Google, you want to start getting them as many places as possible.

00:41:07:03 – 00:41:25:16

Speaker 1

And if you want to do a an easy task, go to chat CBT and say, Best lawyer, you know, best criminal lawyer in my city or whatever your practice area is, go look at where they’re getting their citations. Right. And it may be although it may be Yelp, you can start to draw some understanding about how they are determining who is in fact, the best.

00:41:25:20 – 00:41:55:19

Speaker 1

And that’s where you want to be, right? So you want to build as many of those as possible. And we’re going to help our clients do that across the board, not just with Google. And then I would argue you also want to start documenting every possible question that you get from a client or a potential client and more or less build your own database, because that is going to be extremely helpful for these lens because a lot of the questions or the searches that are happening on these tools are longer form questions.

00:41:55:19 – 00:42:17:09

Speaker 1

They’re different than best criminal lawyer. It’s who is the best criminal lawyer that accepts payment plans and also has this trying to very long right. And so having structured data with specific questions as many as you can answer is going to put you in a better position to be the person that shows up when they’re asking those questions.

00:42:17:12 – 00:42:35:15

Speaker 1

So let’s talk about the second prong of this. So we know kind of SEO is going to be still be a major part of this. And whatever shape these tools go into, they are fueled by the Internet, Right? And so we are not going to shy away from that. We want to still be the kings and queens of that.

00:42:35:15 – 00:43:04:11

Speaker 1

Right. But I also believe in this other path, right, to further diversify your business, which for me is the distribution at scale and then using ads to to grow that. Okay. And so what we want to think about is having our and this kind of model we’ve come up with is that we call it a content engine. We have a base content which is going to be like your website, and then we’re going to repurpose that to other formats.

00:43:04:18 – 00:43:43:11

Speaker 1

We are then going to distribute that on websites, on social platforms, on we may even turn it into like an Amazon ebook, like YouTube videos, kind of anywhere that that possibly could be a feeder signal. You want to be repurposing and adding and pushing your content out and we’re going to develop or what we have developed and what we’re going to be introducing to clients and, and really, you know, being on the forefront of this is the system ization and the repetitiveness of being able to do this at scale with one piece of content that’s going to go out and feed 100 or 500 different signals going in.

00:43:43:14 – 00:44:12:01

Speaker 1

So the problem up till now and why I’ve historically not been a huge fan of social media is that, number one, people, generally speaking, don’t go there to make decisions. I once heard Facebook’s the place where you go to actively avoid making decisions. And I think that’s that’s totally true. And so this is changing for me a little bit because now I’ve seen some reports that, you know, the majority of people now get their news from social media.

00:44:12:03 – 00:44:42:22

Speaker 1

The younger demographic is more natively using social. So I think over time, people will start to use social platforms more to research people find out about, you know, lawyers and legal services. But you cannot expect to throw out a bunch of posts and you’re going to be successful. And I hear this all the time where folks come to me and they say, We want to do social.

00:44:42:22 – 00:44:58:27

Speaker 1

We want to we want to get big on tech talk. I want to hire somebody, you know, and they’re going to make me big. On Tik Tok. It’s like it just does not work that way because the people who are really good out there taking advantage of it right now. Have you know, have a skill for that. They have they have a thirst and a drive.

00:44:59:00 – 00:45:22:05

Speaker 1

You can’t just throw out a couple of videos and expect to be successful. And so that barrier has always prevented me from really recommending it to our clients. So the question for me and what we’re trying to solve is how can this be done at scale so that you are getting benefit from these additional channels, but you don’t have to become a Tik Tok expert and you don’t have to be out dancing or getting ice buckets thrown at you and stuff like that.

00:45:22:12 – 00:45:44:25

Speaker 1

So the problem is that doing this manually for each different platform is slow. Often the content is bland because you’re taking one thing from Facebook and you’re doing the exact same thing on Twitter and it may not even make sense because of the different platforms. And then you’re also trusting someone to do it right and make sure it’s error, error prone.

00:45:44:28 – 00:46:20:15

Speaker 1

This is an enormous task. It’s not particularly hard to make, you know, unique content for all these channels, but it is a huge challenge from a logistics point of view. So what we have started to develop are workflows that are multi-step using AI tools, using decision trees, using it’s basically like software, mini software where we’ve developed this system where we can plug in one page and it’s going to go create unique content across as many platforms as we we want, right?

00:46:20:17 – 00:46:48:29

Speaker 1

So it’s going to take one piece, it’s going to put in into an AI tool and it’s going to create a YouTube script based on our rules for the best practices, for a YouTube script, and then it will have something completely different for Meta and then something completely different for Twitter. And previously that was extremely time intensive and really not not worth it, right?

00:46:48:29 – 00:47:20:15

Speaker 1

Because the this, the the possibility that you’re going to be really successful with it is is not that high because let’s face it, talking about statute limitations on Twitter is like not going to go viral for the most part. Right. And so the people who are out there winning in this space are really creative. And I would say, you know, that’s something you’re kind of you can train, obviously, but it’s more of a natural thing than a than something that you can just sprinkle a couple posts out and make it make it really successful.

00:47:20:18 – 00:47:50:06

Speaker 1

So what’s changing with my my thought process here and how do we actually take advantage of this? This other piece of the Internet that is out there? So my belief is that funnels are going to become increasingly important. And so what this means for me is that we are going to have a traditional marketing funnel where at the top of the funnel that is going to be your site content that will get repurposed into social media posts.

00:47:50:08 – 00:48:23:17

Speaker 1

That one article you wrote is going to get turned into a YouTube video. We have all of these distribution points, right? So that’s kind of your your base foundational level. We can then watch and monitor those boost posts, boost items that are getting traction or boost all of them just to get more visibility. And then as we create that audience on those platforms, we can then use advertising tools to retarget those people with what we call middle of the funnel opportunity.

00:48:23:17 – 00:48:51:09

Speaker 1

So those are things like guides, webinars, checklists, other that we may not be have here. And so the idea is that we want to start to develop a system of like micro commitments, right? And micro ins, so that we are kind of getting them to know us, trust us and ultimately like us. So we’re accomplishing the top part through that content engine.

00:48:51:11 – 00:49:24:10

Speaker 1

This will be done through retargeting, getting those people who have actually shown interest in some of the information that you put out. And then finally, we want to further work them down the pipeline with your intake team and also with more ads trying to get them on and schedule a a call and a click. So in the past, I believe this strategy has been largely impractical for most law firms because you put a bunch of posts out, it’s your mom, your friends are the ones clicking on them and you’ve spent all this time on it.

00:49:24:10 – 00:49:58:09

Speaker 1

And really no one, you know, it hasn’t it hasn’t helped find you any net new customers, right? As this changes the, you know, kind of the final piece of this, the secret sauce or piece that brings us all together is going to be amplification, because in reality, you know, there are only a certain subset of lawyers who are going to naturally be good at driving, you know, driving awareness and driving eyeballs and creating that that audience naturally.

00:49:58:09 – 00:50:27:00

Speaker 1

And so we want to use amplification for this, and we want to do that by putting money behind the promotion to build these audiences and then retargeting people who have actually engaged with that content, right? So with our own business, we focus a lot on video and so we’re putting video out on Meta and these are platforms and then we are retargeting people who’ve watched at least 50% of those videos.

00:50:27:00 – 00:50:46:24

Speaker 1

And so this way we’re out there allowing people to kind of self-select that they’re interested in a topic and we’re putting so much content out there that there’s really a good spectrum of things that they could be interested in. And so our goal and what we’re working on as a company is how we can get better at repurposing this content.

00:50:46:24 – 00:51:14:15

Speaker 1

So it’s native to these platforms and it actually is getting organic traffic. But then we’re also going to back it up with these ads, right? And the good thing about this is that the ad costs are substantially lower when it comes to like cost per click and some of these other factors. Now, the caveat there and what we’ve seen in practical testing over the past ten years is that the lead quality is generally lower on social platforms.

00:51:14:18 – 00:51:35:23

Speaker 1

So I think part of that was, you know, we could have done better right, with doing better filtering of those and make people jump through more hoops and show more interest. But I also think it’s inherent to the platform right, that people are not going their first thought is not to go on Meta or Instagram to find a lawyer.

00:51:35:25 – 00:51:57:21

Speaker 1

So there is going to be kind of a very different strategy than what we use with search engines, which is more like a direct response. And this we we kind of want to, you know, slowly get people down to to where we want them to be. Right. So ads are going to be a big lever that we can push on that.

00:51:57:27 – 00:52:38:02

Speaker 1

So kind of wrap things up. Right. So we’ve we’ve talked about this big change happening that it’s in some way search engines and A.I. tools are going to affect your law firm and the amount of traffic you can get, whether or not you are featured in those in a spots. And so we want to not only push as hard as possible with that, but we want to start expanding our horizon right and start to look at these other channels where we can make up that 10% of traffic or that 20% of traffic, and we can start to get more leads to ultimately kind of compound our success.

00:52:38:08 – 00:53:00:22

Speaker 1

So I’ll leave it there for now. Just want to say, you know, thank you guys so much for, you know, for coming today and spending your your valuable lunch time with me. We are we are a couple of things going on from this. I’m going to think about any questions. If you have any questions, you can put them in the chat.

00:53:00:25 – 00:53:26:04

Speaker 1

I’ll look at them. Or if Melissa wants to hop on and add any that she’s seen, happy to do that. If you are curious about how your website shakes shakes out, I’m happy to. You know, we would love to give you an eye on it. Right. We would love to look at your website, how you’re found in those tools, how your found in search and and talk with you about it.

00:53:26:04 – 00:53:54:27

Speaker 1

And if you’re interested in that, it’s completely free. You can scan the QR code or you can go to go constellation dot com slash book and that will put you on a call, will prepare the audit and present it to you in no heavy pitch. You know, we’re definitely a, you know, not a hard sale kind of company so you know, you don’t have to come in and worry that I’m going to I’m going pitch you real aggressively or anything like that.

00:53:54:27 – 00:54:19:25

Speaker 1

I generally find this stuff exceptionally interesting. And so I would love to talk more with more about your particular business and and see how we can help or some ideas that we can provide for you Next. If if you got any value out of this, I would love if you could leave us a review. I understand you may not, you know, may not be ready to, you know, come on, as a client or, you know, that’s that’s not what you’re after right now.

00:54:19:25 – 00:54:41:03

Speaker 1

But if you thought this was interesting, if you got at least one thing from it, leave us a review. Because just like you, our business is, you know, in a lot of ways contingent on, you know, the the the social proof. Right. The success we get for our clients and the the information we put out there. And so the more reviews we can get, you know, clearly will be will be we’ll be better off for it.

00:54:41:03 – 00:55:10:05

Speaker 1

And we would really appreciate it. So let me see if we we have any questions in in the chat that I can answer. So I think one I saw was does this count as a ceiling? No, but we might be able to do that in the future. And yeah, I think that’s that’s pretty much pretty much it. So just a reminder to we will send this out as a as a recorded webinar.

00:55:10:07 – 00:55:33:13

Speaker 1

So if you, you know, came in late or anything like that, we’ll, we’ll get this out to the same email that you signed up with and when you when that happens, if you have any other colleagues that are interested in this stuff forwarded to them and we’d love, you know, love to talk to anyone who does, in fact that you need marketing help.

00:55:33:16 – 00:56:15:07

Speaker 1

So yeah, I think that’s it for now. I’ll kind of hang out just for a minute more to see if there are any any questions that that anyone has for today. Okay. Okay. I think that’ll do it then. And I really appreciate everyone. Okay. So let me see. Okay. We do have a question. Hey, Rick. So have we started Tik Tok or Twitter ads answers?

00:56:15:07 – 00:56:51:00

Speaker 1

No, at this point. So what we’re kind of most focused on at at this moment in time is really this building out this organic pipeline so that when we create content, we can distribute it at scale. And the idea behind this is that these the and Google in general are increasingly going to be using these trust signals for, you know, for their results.

00:56:51:00 – 00:57:15:23

Speaker 1

And so how you affect that ads can’t really affect that. You’re not getting any real long term value out of those ads. Absolutely. You can get get leads from that. Not not disputing that at all. But the the whole ecosystem for search up till now has been a lot of it is your authority. And that’s gauged by how often you’re found on all of these other websites, the links and everything like that.

00:57:15:23 – 00:57:38:25

Speaker 1

And so our thought process with this in this kind of new environment is we want, you know, we’re heavily focused on building this engine. We’ve done it internally, but now we’re going to start to play around with it with clients. So if you you know, if you’re interested in that, we’d love to have you on is kind of part of like the Vanguard Group within our with our roster of clients.

00:57:38:28 – 00:58:11:23

Speaker 1

And then the next step for that is going to be is going to be ads. Okay. And so we’ll kind figure out which ad channels make the most sense. We’re going to do a lot of testing to figure out, you know, what’s the value from Tik-tok versus Metaverse. Instagram like that. So that, you know, we we’re not doing spring parade tripod strategy, but ultimately we’re going to get you know, we want to get as much value from these, you know, more emerging platforms.

00:58:11:25 – 00:58:48:14

Speaker 1

Cool. Any other questions I can help with? I think we got a few more people hanging out. Cool. All right, Everybody want to wish you a happy weekend and hope you have something fun planned Again, I really appreciate this. You showing up and and being here and being part of this. We will be doing another webinar on the last week of Friday or excuse me, the last week of July.

00:58:48:14 – 00:59:03:14

Speaker 1

It will be on Friday at noon. So you’ll be hearing about it. We’re going to cover ads. So that might be where we do talk about some of the tick tock or some of the other channels that we can work on in and how this is how air is going to impact that as well. So. All right, thank you all so much.

00:59:03:14 – 00:59:07:08

Speaker 1

And I hope you have a great rest of your day. All right. Take care.