Latest / The Jon and Marc Podcast / Digital PR Is the New SEO: Lessons for Law Firm Marketing

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Digital PR Is the New SEO: Lessons for Law Firm Marketing · The Jon and Marc Podcast

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Short term strategies always leads to mistake and it doesn't
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allow you to differentiate. If you don't differentiate, you
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just blend in with everyone else.
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I want to find something completely different that
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they're not doing, that I can do to make myself stand out ahead
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of them. Yeah, yes, that's what I I think
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that is going to be the future of search.
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We have an incredible guest with us today.
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She's the founder of the Freelance Coalition for
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Developing Countries, the senior Content Marketing Manager at
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Moz, and a very active public speaker.
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She's a force in the marketing world known for her sharp
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insides and no nonsense approach SEO, which has led to a massive
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following on social media. Please give a warm welcome to
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the one and only Chima. Thank you so much for having me
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on for that awesome intro. I was telling talk about how
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excited I was for this episode because we usually speak to
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people who have made their living in the legal industry and
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then we try and apply things that happen outside the legal
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world to the legal industry. And now we get to speak to
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possibly the expert on content marketing and how to apply that
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to the legal space. So thank you so much for taking
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the time out of your day to join us.
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Of course this is going to be fun.
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So a lot of what you've written about at least recently.
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And for those of you that that don't know, Chima runs the blog
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on MAZ and contributes consistently there.
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So check out and follow her her blog post.
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I read her three most recent posts and we use that to kind of
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shape the way that we're going to talk about branding in the
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legal space. Everybody in the legal space
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wants to know what should I do with my marketing?
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From an SEO to AI to all things digital to traditional media.
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Law firms have invested heavily in their brands offline and have
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done so online over the past decade or so.
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How can we show law firms that branding assists SEO and AI
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visibility? I think there's a lot of data
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out there right now. Even a few months ago I
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published something on the most blog where we basically said
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that LMS use known brands with high domain authority when they
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are looking for sources for retrieval.
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And a lot of those brands are big media websites, you know,
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sites like BuzzFeed, First Bustle, a lot of the Zip Davis
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websites, all of those sites. So it's, it's basically that if
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you are doing branding right, if you're getting third party
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reviews, you are showing up in the training data sets that
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these LLMS like to cite. Then that is going to correlate
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in probably more branded searches, more visibility on
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traditional serves and more mentions on AI and LLM because
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they pull from known sources. And by known sources, I mean
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high D authoritative websites when they are generating
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answers. So yes to SEO helping you get
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more visibility in NMS, but also yes to SEO helping you get more
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visibility in traditional search engines.
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How would you recommend showing that to a firm when their
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impressions are going up as what we're seeing in Search Console,
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but their clicks are going down? How do you show them that their
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brand is showing up and that that actually is having an
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impact downstream in their funnel?
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Is it turning into leads? Is it turning into cases just
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because they're showing up more? I think that's a very good
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question. And you hear me say this a lot,
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but in a way, the part that we're even asking this question,
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I blame SE OS in a way because we are the ones that trained C
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suits and decision makers to believe that traffic is the
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ultimate metric, right? If we did not train them to
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think like that, you'd not be asking this question right now.
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You're asking this question because this is the problem that
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we are seeing for many C suits. Even for us, many of our clients
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are asking the same questions. Why are my clicks down and my
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pressures and OPS and you're telling me that that's not
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something to be worried about? The truth is that he has to tie
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back to revenue. That is what they should be
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thinking about. If traffic is down but we are
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still generating businesses, we are still getting brand
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awareness, we are still getting leads coming through the
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pipeline, then that's all that should matter.
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If you notice that business is down and traffic is down, then
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that is your queue to start yourself.
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Is my website even optimized to convert what is coming through?
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You know, traffic was a very good mirror for many people not
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to do the work. You know something would
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eventually sift through to leads if you got a high enough traffic
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number, but now with declining clicks, you actually have to do
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the work For CRO, it's not just SEO anymore, it's SEO and CRO is
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your website optimized for conversion.
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When people come to your site, what is the page that they land
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on the most? Is that that page optimized to
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lead them through a conversion pathway that leads to them
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becoming a lead? If you ask a random person to go
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through your website from the point of entry on Google to
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finding your contact page, is that process easy?
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If it's not, then you need to optimize that.
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You also have to look at it in terms of what are you even
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ranking for that is driving traffic.
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We talk a lot about traffic, but nobody really talks about the
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cost of that traffic. Not all traffic is good traffic
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and traffic is also expensive because that is the cost of
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hosting. There's all this cost associated
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with having a big content library.
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So you have to understand all of this traffic we're getting, how
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much of it is actually going towards commercial and
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transactional keywords? Are there even gaps down there
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that we haven't optimized for? What are our competitors doing
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to drive revenue in terms of organic that we can replicate?
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Those are the things that we need to be doing more of.
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And if we're doing that, it will definitely lead to the metrics
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that matter for this usage and that makes it easier to get buy
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in and to show the value of SEO. Not impressions are up and
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clicks are down. That is the wrong thing.
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That usually happens, as I said, as a result of you training them
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to see traffic as the end goal. Oh, they'll point at me saying,
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yeah, that felt very important. It's funny, one of the first
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conversations we have with a lot of our prospects or new clients
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is we frame them and like reteach them that how we measure
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performance and our strategies are not optimized towards like
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rankings and traffic. Those are leading indicators
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which are important, but like leads and sign cases for us is
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what we measure off of for success.
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And it can be very deceiving because they're like traffic's
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not going up or sometimes even after migration, traffic will go
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down because they'll have a ton of blog content that was
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irrelevant bringing in ton of traffic.
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It wasn't really topically relevant or driving potential
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leads that we just chop from the side on migration.
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So traffic drops and they're like, what's going on?
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Be like you're getting better traffic to the people that are
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actually going to be leads that are convert versus all this
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garbage clicks that are irrelevant to anything that
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might be your target audience. Exactly.
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That's exactly that's Mark. I also think that part of the
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reason that our industry has led on that it's an easy metric to
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report on when you're not doing very good work to show that
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you're doing something with someone who's uneducated in SEO
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marketing. Exactly because I've worked on
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websites where the goal was to drive like 1,000,000 clicks to
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the websites. Well, some people, when they're
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doing display advertising, that's a little different, but
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most clients aren't like that. Yeah.
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I think when you just make that your end goal, it allows you to
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not focus on the things that actually matter for a business.
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And again, who did all of that? Is that serious?
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You know? It's all our fault.
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Yeah, I was reading a post by someone else in our space last
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week. They were touting that on a
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monthly basis, they're producing almost 100 pages of content for
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each of their clients in the legal space.
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I saw that post today. OK, so Mark and I spoke about
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that. They said that almost 100 pages
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and they showed a graph of traffic increasing significantly
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and I was like this shows nothing.
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Yeah, but it was coming from a thought leader in our space, and
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we're here having a conversation about the opposite.
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My question to you is not about that.
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My question to you is, we know the people on this call, right?
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Mark myself, Chima, you know that that is wrong.
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We are telling you, anyone who's listening, that that is wrong
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and you should not use the number of pages created or
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traffic as a metric that you are basing off your business
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decisions. However, there are other people
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who are running law firms and who are marketing leaders at law
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firms who are making decisions based off of this
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misinformation. How do we educate them that the
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things that they are seeing surrounding traffic, whether
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it's growing or declining or surrounding number of pages, are
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the wrong things to look at? I think once again, it all comes
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back to what I just said before, which is why that's what I
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always want to ask them when they say, oh, our competitors
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are doing X, why are we not doing X?
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I'm going to ask you, why do you want to do what they're doing?
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You know, if you always have your goals for SEO front and
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centre, what are those goals? Is it to drive leads?
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Is it to drive brand awareness? Is it to do XXX?
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And you use those goals to measure against what the
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competitors are doing. Does it align?
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Do you don't want to just create the same thing they're doing
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because then you're just repeating and that doesn't allow
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you to stand out. You want to do the stuff they're
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doing that aligns with your goals for SEO.
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And you also do not want to be reactive.
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If you're always going to be reactive, then you're always
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just going to be creating short term strategies.
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Short term strategies always leads to mistake and it doesn't
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allow you to differentiate. If you don't differentiate, you
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just blend in with everyone else.
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What you want to be doing instead is like I said, keeping
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those goals front of mind, making sure that the stuff that
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you are, I don't want to say copying, but the stuff that you
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are being inspired from with competitors aligns with your own
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goals. But more importantly, figuring
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out how you can create content that leads to revenue generating
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activities versus just creating 80 pieces of blog post or trying
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to drive 100K traffic to your website.
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Again, I always start with why. Why do you want 100 people
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visiting 100,000 people visiting your website?
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Why do you want to do this exact thing that they are doing?
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If you ask them that question, why you're going to see the
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client just looks confounded. They don't really have an
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answer. They just want to copy because
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of FOMO, you know, is the fear of missing out is the fear that
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if we're not doing that, they were not being seen as serious.
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But serious to whom? The end user or the person who
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is who you're trying to attract actually doesn't really care
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about that. They want it to be easy for them
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to find you for the things that they're searching for when
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they're looking for you. If your competitors are doing
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something else that doesn't align with that, then you need
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to not focus on them, but keep those SEO goals front of mind
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and weigh every decision you make against those goals always.
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Let's talk about how to create that content.
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Informational content has somewhat been commoditized,
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right? With AI overviews with LLMS,
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giving people answers very simply without citation
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sometimes. What are the right ways and the
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actionable takeaways that those listening can say?
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These are the things that I should be doing to create really
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good informational content for my users that will meet those
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business goals. There has been a lot of debates,
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you know. Should we stop creating
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informational content since it's eating into clicks?
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The answer for me is that you should not stop creating
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informational content because for legal brands, in my opinion,
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people are still typing informational queries.
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They are still asking what should I do if I've been hit by
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a car or what should I do if I sleep in the supermarket or
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things like that. All of the queries that would
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lead them to find you are mostly informational if you are being
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honest. What you need to do instead is
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give more than your competitors. So let's say for example,
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somebody is looking for a keyword, right?
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And everybody else literally has the same type of content on page
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one. What if you go an extra mile and
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you give them a downloadable checklist that says what to do
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in the 1st 24 hours after a car accident and it's just a
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checklist or boom boom boom, boom, boom, boom, boom and you
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attach it to the blog post. That is something that they can
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quickly use to make a decision. What if you give them something
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that says a checklist on steps to take before speaking to an
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insurance adjuster? Think about all the common
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questions that usually have or usually get from people on the
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first call that they jump on with you and you build like a
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yes or no guide. You know, can I see you after
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sleeping in the supermarket? Yes, 12345678 points
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NO123456789. You know that kind of makes it
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easier for them to make a decision because not everybody
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who is researching is ready to speak to a lawyer.
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They might find that I'm not ready for that here.
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They're trying to find clues to make that decision.
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So if you provide something extra, that makes the content
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you're giving them actionable. 1, you are doing better than
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your competitors on the Serbs and that makes you more helpful.
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That makes the person who's doing that content more likely
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to take action. Two, you are also making them
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more lead ready whereby by the time they jump on this call with
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you, they're coming in more informed, they're coming in
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feeling more confident that they have a case and you're getting
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more right feet leads versus doing like maybe 30-40 calls
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that are not relevance. You know, this is kind of like a
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qualifier voice also as a way of you giving something extra.
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So back to the question, you should be creating informational
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content, but you should be giving something more with the
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informational content that you create that makes your content
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actionable and allows you to stand out from all of the
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sameness that is on the set. Follow up question, that too.
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So in your opinion, we've all seen it happen before.
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What do you do when you know you're working on a page and you
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see a page, let's call it a garbage piece of content ranking
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above you that you know is not very good?
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Gosh, Oh my God. What is your thought process do
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you go through when going through this?
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Because we've all lived through it where like this doesn't make
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sense. You want to read through the
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screen and like strangle Google. I literally wrote about this on
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my on the post I did on was I'm, I'm just like pissed every time
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I see that because I think there was a project I was working on
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recently and maybe half of the pages that we're ranking for all
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the keywords I was looking at where websites that had no
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business right in that content, which means that there are no
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incentivized to provide value. And if it's now a high domain
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authority websites that has like a lot of links, a lot of
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credibility, your chances of even outranking them, no matter
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how good your content is, from what I've seen is always very
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low. So it's a matter of choosing
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your battles. You can, you can do the right
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things, you know, provide all of these extra assets.
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What? What do they have?
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You know, what don't they have? That's the question.
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Maybe they don't have a video. Maybe you could put a video on
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your content. Maybe you could pair that video
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with APDF. Like I said, you know, what can
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you add to your contents that makes it better than theirs?
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Maybe you could bring in a subject matter expert, some
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lawyers on your team to add their insights, you know, to
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just make it more credible. But there are still many cases
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where you do all of this and the content still doesn't outrank
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that garbage content. So it's now on you to think
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about what was the goal of creating that content is for
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visibility, right? Is there somewhere else that you
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can take that content for it to show up?
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In my opinion, if it's something that is trending right now or if
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it's something that can tie into what's relevant, you could
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repurpose that for and jump on a podcast.
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Even if you have to pay to play, I don't care.
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You could look for Reddit threads where people are talking
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about that topic, provide some detailed information, and then
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link to your content so that it looks relevant.
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You know, you start to think about how can you distribute
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this content outside of traditional Seps so that you're
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not just relying on Google for that traffic.
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I don't want to be all doomsday and just say you do your best to
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move away. You do your best, but you also
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think outside of Google so that you're not just tied to organic
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for that. Visibility was also a matter of
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choosing your battles at the end of the day, honestly.
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You bring up an interesting point.
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I want to dive into this just a little bit more.
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When many people are looking at who is ranking above them, they
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are looking at what they are doing that your firm, your
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business is not doing. You're saying to flip that.
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You're saying look at what they're doing and then find
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things that they're not doing that you can do to do better
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than they are. However, it still may not work,
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right? Google still may not reward it.
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And there's a litany of reasons why.
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And I think that the man behind the curtain controlling what
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ranks high and what doesn't rank high, no one will ever know what
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lever to pull and will the reason why that specific site is
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ranking above you. But coming at it from that
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perspective of I don't just want to match what they did because
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it's working and try and do it a little bit better, I want to
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find something completely different that they're not doing
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that I can do to make myself stand out ahead of them.
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Yeah, yes, that's what I, I think that is going to be the
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future of search and visibility because that builds affinity,
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right? If you do the same thing that
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everybody's doing, you just, you just contribute to the noise.
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All of that noise is going to be surfaced on AI overviews and
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LLMS. You're literally contributing to
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them just feeding off your content.
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I'm not sending you traffic. If I can get that answer on AIOA
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views, why should I come to your website?
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Except I'm specifically looking for a lawyer.
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But if you add something else that LLMS cannot surface, then
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you have an edge. That's why I said the PDF.
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That's why I said maybe a video. Think about anything at all that
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you can provide that your competitors have not done to
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give you that edge and make your content more authoritative.
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That is what you should be doing.
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You can't just stop at saying what?
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What are my competitors doing that I should do?
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No. What have they not done that I
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can do that is going to help the person reading this contents
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feel like if I have gotten all the answers I need and I don't
18:47
need to go back concepts and do another search.
18:49
I have a quick question for you. So living in the world of
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content marketing and having deep expertise in that, what is
18:54
your advice to firms, to agencies, SE OS to marketers who
19:00
you know, content has been king forever is always been the
19:02
thing. But now we have this new shift
19:05
where AI content is flooding the market.
19:07
And what is your recommendations to people on whether they should
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be using writing with AI, not using AI?
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How do you compete against competitors for putting out a
19:14
ton of pages just from a content marketing perspective?
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What is the like the the content strategy from a organic content
19:21
perspective moving forward the of recommendations on?
19:24
I would say first of all you need to start thinking more
19:28
diverse. We have literally, if I may use
19:30
this word, tied to the titties of Google surfs.
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That is the only way to describe it, tied to the teachers of
19:38
Google Sep. We need to remove our mindsets
19:41
from that and start to think more full funnel.
19:44
If no, we're not going to survive.
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How search is going to keep changing, keep changing the
19:49
sense of all of these AI futures eating even more into clicks.
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That's the first step. Second step, you need to make
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affinity your new North Star Affinity in the sense of how do
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I create contents that brings people directly to my websites
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and makes my brand a habit based on recognition versus trying to
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compete with. Ten other brands on Seps and
20:16
also competing with AI overviews.
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So a lot of that is thinking outside the box.
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What is going on in the industry right now in terms of legal like
20:24
that people are talking about what is trending right now.
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You know, a lot of that kind of conversation is happening on
20:28
Reddit, but it's mostly happening on social.
20:30
If it creates your own op-ed as a lawyer on that, you publish it
20:35
on your website, you write about it on your LinkedIn, you make a
20:39
short TikTok video on that. You find a podcast that we
20:43
future you because they're trying to get into that
20:46
conversation. You maybe do a webinar to guide
20:51
people on how to navigate something like that if it ever
20:54
happened to them. You play into trends.
20:56
Trends are a great way to really build affinity.
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You do all of that stuff and you start to see that you're not
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just getting traffic from organic anymore.
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Your traffic now becomes more direct.
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That's something that's actually happening with us at Moores
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right now. A lot of the content we are
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creating, even though it's targeting some keywords, is not
21:15
ranking. But these are our best
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performing pieces in this year so far.
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Best performing in terms of traffic.
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That has nothing to do with organic and everything to do
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with people finding this content being shared on social media,
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being shared on TikTok and all of all these other places on
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e-mail, newsletter, people talking about it, and then other
21:35
people coming to find that content because we are tapping
21:38
into conversations. That is happening right now.
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For example, when the whole SEO is dead thing was going on on
21:44
LinkedIn, I immediately wrote a thought leadership piece on
21:46
that. When Jono Anderson published his
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post on, there was a post he published that went kind of
21:52
viral. That was when I did my own take
21:54
on the should we stop creating informational content?
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Think about it in legal mindset right now.
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I don't want to use an example because there's always something
22:01
going on in legal with a celebrity, with something in the
22:05
news. How do you create a conversation
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that is something that nobody else has said but they should be
22:13
thinking about? If you're able to get people to
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think differently from what everybody else is saying, that's
22:19
affinity right there. Then they want to go and Google
22:22
your name and then they Google your name and they find your
22:24
website and then they want to see more of the stuff that
22:27
you're written. But if you share that, for
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example, in a Reddit thread, I've seen people that have
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driven like 10K20K clicks from writing a very relevant answer
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to a Reddit thread and then putting their link that was
22:41
relevant to that discussion. So that's the second part.
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First part that I said, unfook your mind and remove yourself
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from Google status. No matter, start thinking about
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how you can create content that ends affinity and makes people
22:54
remember your name because that is where we are heading towards
22:57
with the future. If I go on steps today and I see
23:01
a brand I know I don't care what position they are in, I'm going
23:03
to click on that brand irrespective of position because
23:06
I trust them. That's who you want to be.
23:08
That's the kind of content we need to start talking about with
23:10
content marketers. But last question, when you
23:13
talked about should we be using AI, Yes, we should.
23:16
I use AI to write all the stuff you've seen me publish on
23:19
LinkedIn on the most blog. No, Chima, don't say it so.
23:24
Yes, but hold on, there's a caveat.
23:26
The problem is not AI in itself. The problem is how people use
23:29
it. I've always said this.
23:30
People expect AI to be the experts.
23:33
That is where you always fall short.
23:35
AI is not a thinker. I think that's the mistake
23:38
people make. They expect it to be a thinker
23:40
that can strategize. It is absolutely crap at
23:42
strategize it, but it is great at execution.
23:45
Execution in the sense of say I want to create content.
23:48
Now I know what I want to write about.
23:50
I can give it a rough outline. I can ask you to find where the
23:53
gaps are. Help me structure this outline.
23:55
It does that. I give you the bullet point of
23:57
what I want to talk about. It already knows my voice
24:00
because I've created a GPT that has trained its extensive on how
24:04
to write like me. It creates the draft subsection
24:07
by subsection, and I keep editing that draft until it gets
24:10
to the point where it feels like my voice, and then it gets
24:13
better with the outputs. But I never use the outputs in
24:17
the content. I always tweak the output so
24:20
that it feels like me. The more I keep doing this, the
24:23
more it's able to get closer to what I'm looking for in terms of
24:26
tone. But always is me tweaking it, is
24:29
me telling it what I'm going for, is me giving it examples
24:32
and all of all the stuff. So even though I'm writing with
24:35
AI, nobody can tell I'm writing with AI.
24:37
People don't even believe me that the poster should restart
24:41
creating informational content. Any of the thought leadership
24:43
post I've written, I wrote that with AI and that's because it is
24:46
still my voice. That's important thing.
24:49
It's still my thought leadership.
24:50
You wrote it, but you came up with the content and the concept
24:53
is you. Yes, it's just helping you make
24:57
it write the actual piece. Yes, is.
25:00
Your ghostwriter. Thank you, that is the way to
25:02
see it. As is my ghostwriter and my
25:04
editor. So that's the difference between
25:06
everybody who's creating those AI generated crap is that they
25:09
literally just use ChatGPT to create an outline and then they
25:13
ask ChatGPT to write the content in one go.
25:15
I tell you this, ChatGPT is absolutely shit at writing
25:19
content in one go. You literally need to write it
25:22
sub heading by H threes by H threes and then you edit that H3
25:26
by H3 until that history is perfect before you move on to
25:30
the next one. People are trying to automate
25:32
this shit like that. It doesn't work that way.
25:35
I've read a lot about this, people trying to use AI to
25:38
address complex situations. What I've seen work better, and
25:41
it sounds like that mimics your process, is breaking down a
25:44
larger process into smaller chunks and having the AI do that
25:48
one little piece and iterate and iterate and iterate until it's
25:51
done and then you move on to the next step.
25:53
It's very good at writing in sections, sections being like
25:55
H3SH3SH3S and then you assemble the whole.
25:59
But it is not good at doing a big task at once.
26:03
Question for you too. So I loved every everything you
26:06
said about the content strategy of thinking creatively and all
26:08
the different strategy you can do.
26:10
What I was thinking though, is what you described is the exact
26:14
opposite of every traditional SEO I've ever met.
26:16
They've been content focus and technical SEO.
26:19
It's like the two main pillars. There's like building and stuff
26:21
like that, but they focus on what is the technical SEO stuff
26:24
I can do and what is the content piece of it.
26:26
And almost nothing that you said is related to any of those
26:29
things on site. It's all offsite signals and
26:31
being more like a holistic creative marketer.
26:34
So how do you see the industry changing or how do you see
26:37
someone who's done SEO traditionally, as we noted,
26:40
moved to that role or that skill set because it's completely
26:44
different I. Agree, and I if I'm being honest
26:47
with you, I think many people are going to struggle because
26:50
many SUS and content people do not know how to write original
26:54
contents. What many agencies feedback to
26:57
their clients is a list of keywords and another list of
27:01
keywords. Everything tends to be coming
27:03
from the serfs, but how many agencies will tell their
27:07
clients? Oh, what if we could create a
27:11
research that would allow us to naturally attract links on,
27:17
let's say for example, 40% of people do not file a complaint
27:22
or do not you after this incident or that incident?
27:25
Like what are the big keywords that bring in the revenue?
27:30
What are the research possibilities there?
27:32
You know, this is creative thinking that ties to revenue
27:36
and Legion, but it's just can't be keywords.
27:39
Many people are going to struggle because they don't know
27:41
how to think creatively outside the box.
27:44
So, for example, I had an idea. So there's recent news that
27:48
Taylor Swift was engaged. So if I was maybe a family
27:51
lawyer, I can easily write an article or commentary about what
27:55
all the celebrity prenups that I've written and what to look
27:58
for in a celebrity prenup and how they're usually structured.
28:01
Where super rich people get married and give that commentary
28:03
that's kind of tied to a common trending event.
28:05
But also give commentary on something people might ask for
28:08
because she has a whole ton more money than he does.
28:11
No, it's not even that. I think a better angle would be
28:13
how do 2 rich people or two super rich people structure a
28:17
prenup when they're getting married.
28:19
In most relationship is one person is richer.
28:21
Travis is wealthy, you know this is like a super rich wedding and
28:25
people are going to be interested in that kind of
28:27
thing. What does a prenup agreement
28:29
look like when 2 super rich people are getting married?
28:33
That would be an interesting article to write.
28:37
And then imagine that you've just written the article.
28:39
OK, how do you distribute this? Go on Reddit, look for those
28:42
threads where people are talking about Taylor Swift and this
28:46
engagement. Everybody's talking about it.
28:48
Make a TikTok video. It's going to trend because it's
28:51
relevant right now. Go on LinkedIn, maybe make a
28:54
post about how people don't think about prenups, and maybe
28:57
there's a data to show how many people don't sign prenups.
29:01
That's going to be interesting. You just have to be very
29:03
creative in how you decide to distribute that.
29:05
But if you create that kind of content and it's relevant right
29:09
now, you're going to get the clicks because people are
29:11
searching for that kind of information and it will just pop
29:14
up also on Google Discover, which is another great source of
29:18
information. Aside from individuals having to
29:21
shift their mindset from traditional content or technical
29:24
LED SEO to this new way of thinking, how are businesses who
29:29
rely on agencies that they have hired to do SEO supposed to
29:33
evaluate whether or not their SEO agency is the right fit for
29:37
them to be able to now expand into this broader marketing
29:40
execution and strategy, or if they need to make a pivot in
29:43
what they're doing from a vendor perspective?
29:45
You're just trying to be polite and not call them snake oil
29:48
salesman. Yeah, in a safe space, John,
29:53
you're in a safe space. Well, there, there are really
29:56
good SEO agencies that I think are doubling down on SEO and are
30:01
not thinking like you're telling people to think, right.
30:03
And that may work for some, but for others, they do need to
30:06
evolve. Those don't have to be snake oil
30:08
salesman. There are other, there are
30:09
legitimate SEO agencies. We could talk about the snake
30:11
oil salesman in a second. But what I'm saying is, even if
30:15
you have a good SEO agency, how can a law firm look at that
30:18
agency and say, can they do the things that Chima just told me I
30:21
need to be doing from today moving forward?
30:24
They will usually have digital PR.
30:26
That's the first sign for me because if they are being
30:29
serious about evolving from that traditional SEO, they will 100%
30:34
have digital PR baked into their services because it is important
30:39
for citations, is important for getting those mentions, is
30:43
important for visibility, period.
30:45
For me, that's the first clue. If it's just a traditional
30:48
agency that's still doing the same old shit, they are not
30:50
going to have digital PR. But if it is an agency that is
30:53
seeing this trend and how it's shifting and they're serious
30:55
about helping their clients, the first clue is going to be that
30:59
they will have digital PR baked in as part of what they are
31:03
offering their clients. Knowing fully well that if
31:07
you're talking about AI visibility, then you need
31:10
mentions and you need all these other things that you can mostly
31:13
get through Jita PR. Vita PR is also that creative
31:17
element that I've been talking about.
31:19
All of all this research stuff, all of all this jumping on
31:21
trends and creating that type of content, digital PR is going to
31:25
also help with that. So that for me is the link that
31:30
moves you from just doing technical SEO, keyword research,
31:34
and all of all those traditional contents to doing what I think
31:37
is the next level of not just creating helpful contents that
31:42
can get that visibility, but also showing up in the places
31:45
that matter. That's the first sign.
31:47
The second sign is that they're going to be reporting on AI
31:51
visibility. If they're doing SU rights and
31:54
you're trying to assess if this is an agency you want to keep
31:57
working with, are they already doing anything to help you get
32:00
more visibility in LLMS? You know, if they are not, then
32:05
you probably need to reassess it because you can see that that
32:07
trend is already here. It's not even a trend anymore.
32:10
It's a reality. You know they 10,000% need to be
32:13
tracking AI visibility, need to be reporting on what they are
32:16
doing, going to improve your visibilities in LLM and also the
32:19
type of queries that are driving that visibility because you want
32:23
it to be queries that lead to revenue.
32:26
Everything has to come back, in my opinion, to brand awareness,
32:29
to leads and to revenue. To clarifications here on the
32:33
digital PR side, can you define digital PR for those who are
32:36
watching who just think of it as traditional link building or
32:39
link placements or guest posts? This is a very good question.
32:42
I think it's all the activities that you do to get more mentions
32:48
and visibility on 3rd party websites.
32:51
A lot of data PR is not stuff that's happening on your
32:54
websites, it's stuff that's happening on 3rd party websites.
32:56
So for example, when there's a trend, digital PR can help you
33:00
quickly respond to that trend with content that will go on a
33:04
media publication, like a news website or things like that.
33:08
They can help you find opportunities to jump on a
33:11
podcast and share your opinion on that trend because many
33:15
podcasts will be looking for guests for something like that.
33:18
They can help you jump on the conversations on Reddit and
33:22
things like that. Basically all of the things that
33:24
you would not be thinking about with traditional PR.
33:27
When I think of traditional PR, I just think about all of the
33:29
announcement that they make on places like Yahoo and the rest
33:32
of them and they just put you've done this, you've done this, you
33:34
know, boring asked that for being honest, doesn't really get
33:36
traffic or doesn't really drive any engagement data.
33:39
PR is the opposite of that is more engaging, is reactive, but
33:44
is also a lot of planning to prepare for what could come.
33:47
I think it's just more fun and it's just more engaging and it
33:50
drives more results in my opinion.
33:51
The more and more I listen to you, I couldn't agree more with
33:54
your stance on digital PR and just how to be creative in the
33:57
space. I almost see a new role coming
33:59
into the SEO world where there's always been like content Seos,
34:02
you know, they're like, hey, I have a great content background.
34:04
There's always been like technical Seos who are good with
34:06
content, but they really love nerdy on the technical aspects.
34:09
But I think there's a new role for like creative SEO, for
34:12
digital PR and just thinking creatively to get those
34:15
engagements where a lot of Seos are not the creative marketer
34:18
types. You know, usually see creative
34:21
marketers more on the paid side where it's, you know, TV
34:23
advertising, social media advertising, where you have
34:26
people that are very creative as focus, where this, this is a new
34:29
opportunity for creatives to come into the SEO space to
34:33
evolve the strategy from where it is today.
34:35
I agree. I was even just saying, I think
34:37
I was going to make a post about this, that we are going to need
34:40
people who think like storytellers because a lot of
34:42
the contents is going to feel like storytelling.
34:45
Storytelling that ends affinity, you know, storytelling that is
34:49
still tied to revenue. But it has to feel like
34:53
storytelling as people who are storytellers are also creatives
34:56
because you have to be a creative to be a storyteller to
34:59
even think about all those ideas.
35:01
So I agree with what you just said because literally that's
35:04
the stuff I've been thinking about, that the next generation
35:07
of content folks are going to have to be storytellers who can
35:11
think outside the box, outside of traditional keywords, who can
35:15
jump on all of these trends and and create content that nobody
35:19
else is doing to build affinity more than anything else.
35:22
Love it, I love it. I want to follow up on your
35:25
comment about tracking AI visibility.
35:27
This is something that a lot struggle with because every time
35:30
someone prompts, they're going to get a unique response from an
35:34
LLM. How do you recommend business
35:36
owners and Seos appropriately track AI visibility?
35:40
I don't even think there is one way to do that right now because
35:42
like you said, you have to assume that every keyword has a
35:45
set volume of 1 because no two people are typing the same thing
35:49
in ChatGPT, or any of these elements because of how we are
35:52
literally using it like a conversation.
35:54
But what's a lot of the AI trackers are doing right now is
35:58
that they can aggregate. They can aggregate the searches
36:01
that have similar intents and combine that to show you what
36:06
people are searching for that relates to your brand.
36:09
That can be a great way to assess what type of queries to
36:12
be optimizing for and things like that.
36:14
But I think the most straightforward way, if you set
36:17
this up in GA 4, you can see refer traffic from CHA GPT and
36:22
from all about these other places.
36:23
And that gives you like an overview of how much traffic
36:26
you're getting from these other limbs and how much result is
36:28
driving ball. If you want to then get
36:29
granular, that's when you now start using the AI trackers that
36:33
can aggregate the searches that relates to your brand and then
36:37
show you potential searches for that and also how you are
36:42
appearing one and the sentiments around the responses that are
36:47
being generated on that because that's also important.
36:50
You want to at least you want to make sure that the sentiment
36:52
they are representing you correctly and the answers are
36:54
representative of your brand. We've been tracking it very
36:57
granularly from every, you know, whether it's Chef, GBT referring
37:00
us to traffic. We don't know down to the
37:02
keyword level though exactly what it is.
37:04
But for example, it's usually a pretty specific page they went
37:07
to. So we know what's going for and
37:09
we're tracking that attribute all the way down to the signed
37:11
case. So we can say, hey, this person
37:14
came from ChatGPT. They landed on the Memphis car
37:17
accident lawyer page. They filled out the form there
37:19
and then we signed them up. So we have an idea that like
37:22
that chat in ChatGPT was related to somewhere in the universe of
37:26
this. We usually do manual searches
37:28
too on like Google to like see what the AI overview showing,
37:31
but sometimes in ChatGPT double check it.
37:33
But that's our best guess for now.
37:34
Yeah, that's a totally smart way.
37:37
I also think that it's also a good way to analyze which pages
37:42
are this LLM sending the most traffic to, so that you can
37:46
optimize the hell out of those pages to make sure that whatever
37:50
is coming through those pages are designed to convert those
37:54
leads. It's one thing to track the
37:56
clicks to your site, it's another thing to analyze the
37:59
pages that are getting hit by the LLMS as they're crawling
38:03
your site. So looking at your server log
38:05
files and actually seeing which pages are the LLMS constantly
38:10
coming back and crawling, that means that those pages are
38:13
important. You may not be getting a
38:14
citation, but your content is being pulled into some response
38:18
somewhere if it's constantly being re crawled.
38:21
That's a good tip. It's a very technical way to do
38:23
this, but you pull all that data out and then you you can
38:25
actually run it through an LLM to give you the pages that are
38:29
actually being surfaced. So there are ways to do this
38:31
more than just looking at the pages that are actually getting
38:33
the clicks so you can look and do the manual checks like you
38:36
guys were talking about or even get more technical with it.
38:38
Chima, knowing that we're talking today mostly about the
38:41
impact of all these SEO and AI changes and branding changes
38:45
around law firms, what is something outside of the legal
38:49
industry? We're going to put you on the
38:50
spot here that you see being really effective right now and
38:54
taking advantage of the current SEOAI transition that may be law
38:59
firm owners and marketers can think about applying into the
39:01
legal space. I think for me, the thing I've
39:04
seen that has been very effective has to be contributing
39:08
to social commentary based on what's happening right now.
39:11
If you think about it from the from what you're trying to get
39:13
right, citations, mentions, all of all that stuff, what's the
39:15
fastest way to get it? The fastest way to get it is
39:19
they said media mentions, right? But how do you get on those
39:22
media dimensions? A lot of the time is true
39:25
contributing to trending topics. I've seen this be very, very
39:30
effective, but it also requires you to stay in the loop and
39:34
understand what is going on right now that I can contribute
39:37
to that. I feel very confident to write
39:39
about if you can do that and then you won't have like your
39:44
agency. Figure out a way to to
39:46
distribute that on Reddit. Figure out a way to quickly get
39:49
you on a podcast. Figure out a way to show you how
39:52
to make a tick tock video. Just something allows you to
39:54
just chop this up. The more you do this, the more
39:57
you end affinity because the more you're going to get people
40:00
that that are finding you when they are looking at this type of
40:04
content. I keep saying affinity because I
40:06
really see this as the way to make your brand memorable.
40:10
So if you do all of this stuff that has to do with trends,
40:14
that's one way. If you do research, research is
40:16
another way. Look at the keywords that you
40:18
are targeting, the ones that are your big money makers.
40:21
What are some ways that you can do a simple research on that?
40:25
If you're able to do something that is low lift and then figure
40:28
out the way to distribute that and get it future in the media,
40:32
that's another great way to end those measures and to bring that
40:35
traffic. But again, it has to be tied to
40:38
keywords that would drive commercial or transactional
40:42
keywords. I think another way is if you're
40:45
a small business, if you're a small legal firm, you're trying
40:47
to get active, you have other lawyers in your firm.
40:51
Something that have been seen a lot of brands do that be very
40:53
effective is getting all their teams to start being active on
40:57
social media, LinkedIn specifically, you know, start
41:00
getting active on on social media, start creating content on
41:04
TikTok. Most of the people who would be
41:07
reaching out to attorneys, ordinary everyday people where
41:10
they consuming content a lot of big time they're on Reddit,
41:12
they're on TikTok, their social media.
41:14
How do you get your teams to start creating content and
41:19
putting their own thought leadership?
41:21
The more they can do that, it's going to feed or into your brand
41:25
and then your brand is also going to borrow authority into
41:27
their brand. So it's your team doing this
41:31
work to build their thought leadership to get their content
41:34
out there and then you doing the work on the brand side to also
41:37
get your brand out there. There are lots of stuff you can
41:39
do that in my opinion feels like easy lift, but requires you to
41:43
have like someone who is doing digital payout to make sure that
41:47
you're maximizing the reach of this content and you're always
41:50
like right there when something is happening.
41:53
That's how you should have relevance as a small brand that
41:56
has, I don't want to say limited budgets, but it is trying to
41:58
like get revenue from all of these activities.
42:02
It takes the position of these agencies or these companies from
42:06
traditionally being very reactive from an SEO perspective
42:09
to being extremely proactive with their content and their
42:12
strategies and being willing to change that age.
42:15
Yes, that's it. That's literally those agencies
42:19
need to start thinking about themselves like lawyers.
42:22
They need to be in the know about what are lawyers talking
42:26
about, what are people talking about.
42:28
Their feed needs to be dominated with that kind of content so
42:32
that they are aware the moment a new conversation shift is
42:36
happening. That's their job.
42:38
Actually, their job is to bring you that so that you can create
42:40
the content as a SME and then they take that content and they
42:44
figure out how do we get you in a podcast?
42:46
How do we get you doing a TikTok?
42:47
How do we get you jumping into what's happening right now so
42:49
that you can spread your authority.
42:51
That's actually their job. And if they're not doing that
42:55
for you, then they're not doing enough.
42:56
My opinion again, that is where the digital PR angle comes in.
43:00
I feel like we could sit here and talk to you for hours and
43:03
continue to pull out useful Nuggets of information that
43:06
people can apply, but unfortunately our time with you
43:08
is ending and I want to thank you so much.
43:11
This has been such an amazing conversation with real
43:14
actionable items that lawyers can take away from Chima.
43:16
We will talk to you very soon. Follow Chima on the Moz blog,
43:20
follow her on LinkedIn. She's very funny.
43:23
And if you're looking for a cause to support as the year
43:25
comes to a close, take a look at the FCDC.
43:27
They do great work. Chima heads up an amazing
43:30
organization that does great work across the world supporting
43:32
those in developing countries who are focused on all types of
43:35
technical work in the marketing space.
43:37
Thank you so much John and Mark for having me.
43:40
Thanks for joining us, I love this conversation.