Ep. 30 - How to Future-Proof Your Firm Against Algorithm Chaos

In this episode, I dig into one of the biggest frustrations in digital marketing: the fact that no one really knows what’s coming next. 

Google has more than fourteen thousand ranking signals, AI tools are rewriting the playbook overnight, and every algorithm update feels like a moving target. 

No wonder so many law firms are scrambling.

But here’s the truth: you don’t need to chase every signal or predict the unpredictable. 

The real key is to build a foundation that lasts no matter what changes come down the pipeline. I break down the three pillars that matter most—creating evergreen content, keeping it updated, and positioning yourself as a thought leader. 

I also explain how to balance stability with the flexibility to pivot when necessary, so you stop reacting to every shake-up and start playing the long game.

If you’re tired of chasing algorithms and ready to focus on what really works, this episode is for you.

Tune in now and learn how to stop worrying about the next Google update and start building a marketing strategy that stands the test of time.

Want to learn more about how our agency can help your law firm grow? Speak with John Rizvi ☎️

Transcript

John Rizvi : 0:00

This is Pod Populi, podcast for the people. That's my name. Hi, and welcome. I'm John Risby, the Law Firm Growth Professor. For my new listeners, I'm pleased you came to join me today. For my returning listeners, it's always great to have you. In my podcast, I share the strategies for growth that have worked for me in growing my law firm from a startup with just me, a laptop, and a cell phone operating out of a spare bedroom to where we are today, a team of 60 professionals generating over 10 million a year in revenues from our 10,000 square foot headquarters in Coral Springs. You know, there's one major pain point that it seems everyone in the marketing sphere avoids bringing up at all costs. And there's a perfectly good and valid reason for it. It frustrates absolutely everybody. Clients worry about it, businesses worry about it, marketers worry about it, but nobody seems to want to take it head on and just call it what it is. So, John, what are you even talking about? I'm talking about the future. See, no one knows what's coming next. You don't know how the next algorithm update is going to shake up the marketing ecosystem. We don't know what the next AI iteration is going to do or how it's going to impact what we're doing. We can make educated guesses, but that's about it. And it frustrates everyone. Everyone worries about what the next move is going to be. We want stability. We want certainty. We're lawyers after all. We want an idea that we know will hold up to anything that's coming. The problem is we're aiming at moving targets. How do you aim at a moving target? You've got to lead it. You've got to see where it is and which direction it's moving, and aim just ahead of it and fire at exactly the right time. This works fine when you're only aiming at one target. Today, right now, we've got 14,000 individual signals we're trying to predict, anticipate, and work around in digital marketing spaces, and that's just considering Google. If we're lucky and really, really good, we may hit about a thousand of them with any individual piece of content. But when you've got thousands of targets, those trajectories and speeds cannot be determined, and they're basically invisible. Hitting anything at all can feel like an exercise in blind luck. Coldplaying as the law of averages. So how do we hit those targets? The short, simple, brutally honest answer is we don't. John, what do you mean we don't? Well, you just said we have 14,000 of these to aim at. Now you're telling me we're not supposed to even try to hit them? It sounds crazy, doesn't it? But stick with me here. Here's why I say we don't need to aim at those targets. We're trying to future proof our marketing so that no matter what the algorithms do, no matter how it changes, no matter what AI does, we still have a basic foundation and will not move it. We don't need to outperform the competition. We don't need to have all the bells and whistles. We don't need to try to hit every single one of those 14,000 signals that Google thinks are so important. All we need to do is make sure that we have the basic foundation in place. How do you create that foundation? Well, the first thing you do is you create great content. That's it. That's all. Create great content. Create content that stands the test of time. In the legal profession, our ideas, our concepts, and our knowledge is what the law is. It's continually changing and evolving. The Supreme Court hands down a decision, which unexpectedly overturns precedent that our firm relies on as bedrock for its clients' arguments. Well, great, half your website's gone now, because one decision that your previous arguments were based on now no longer applies. And of course, whether you agree with the Supreme Court's decision or not, you don't really get to say, yeah, but we're not going to do that because the Supreme Court says so. But the basics of family law, the basics of patent law, the basics of tort law, personal injury, they're not likely to change anytime soon. You've got something to build on. So you go with what you have and you go with what you know. And it's important in this situation to try to stay away from specific case law as much as you can. Case law precedence can be thrown out the window at any time. Focus only on what's known to be concrete right now. The second thing to do is be willing to revisit your content every once in a while. Maybe there's been a shakeup of some kind. Maybe AI has changed how the patent office, for example, looks at patents. Maybe the Supreme Court has handed down a decision that just effectively ended 100 years of settled case law. What do you do with that? Well, you revise, you update, and you make it known to search engines and your audience that the content was revised and updated. By doing this, you're showing that you're keeping current and keeping your audience current with the latest trends, you're acknowledging the facts, and the third thing you need to do is secure your position as a thought leader. Now being a thought leader is really not that difficult at its most basic. What you do is find something that you know a lot about that you're passionate about, and you think other people need to know about. Then you try to write about it in a way that makes it as engaging, interesting, informative, and relevant to your potential clients as you possibly can. If you have these ingredients, bam, you've got everything you need to get started. It's not always fun trying to find a topic like that because, especially with thought leader pieces, they need to be evergreen. Breaking news generally doesn't lead to think pieces that revolutionize perceptions of any particular industry. I'm sorry, it just doesn't. That said, you can and should talk about overarching trends that you've noticed. You can try to prepare your clients for the future, but there's really only so much you can do about wild speculation. What happens if the Supreme Court turns over this key ruling that has been settled case law for five, ten, fifty, or even a hundred years? Now you've got a problem because you're trying to uh project, based on what the Supreme Court has done in the past and is doing now, what they might do in the future, and you're trying to uh predict how that's gonna impact your clients. Wild speculation doesn't help anything, and it could be more damaging to your firm and its reputation than any number of unfortunate uh Google updates. Thus, your firm's marketing works the same way. We don't know what the next AI iteration is going to do. We don't know what signals Google is going to prioritize or deprioritize. What practices are they going to stick with or outright ban? We don't know what they're planning behind the scenes, and we won't know until it rolls out. AI overviews, uh, when Google first came out with them, hardly anybody knew about them, even in marketing spheres. You would think marketers would be on top of that. Well, no, because Google did it quietly and behind the scenes and they caught everyone by surprise. They rolled it out basically in the dead of night. Nobody had a clue about it. And by the time everyone woke up the next day, oh hey, look, we've got AI overviews here. Now what do we do with it? You have to adapt to the machine. You have to try and make friends with it and become one of the key sources that AI overviews and other AI tools reference. And that's hard to do for a lot of people because you're trying to think ahead of what Google's doing. Yahoo, Bing, for example, or insert your other favorite search engine. If you're trying to think ahead of what they're doing, and you've got to try to future proof your content and your site as much as you possibly can on top of that, it's a lot to juggle. Sometimes the evergreen model doesn't really apply either. If you're moving locations, if you're opening a bigger office, if one of your senior partners has retired and you're bringing somebody new in, this is information that your current and potential clients legitimately would like to know. It's not evergreen. It's not likely to be interesting in the long term, but it's still worth noting on your website and in your digital marketing when a major shakeup like that happens. Balancing all these different requirements and needs and priorities requires a strange combination of stability and dynamism. You have to be able to think long term, but still be able to pivot when and where necessary. Okay, so we're thinking long term now. I'm talking 5, 10, 15 years down the line. Well-executed websites are still going to be able to stand the test of time unless some online tastes uh setter, God forbid, decides to say, you know what, dark purple and bright orange is the hot website trend this year. I'll let you sit with that mental image for a minute. Oh, and let's bring Comic Sans back while we're at it. Are you kidding me? But it could happen. All of a sudden, Comic Sans and Dark Purple and Bright Orange are all over the internet just because they're in. But the content will remain the same. Trends and experiments may change what the ideal website looks like relative to what you're used to. The basic construction may change somewhat, and you need to have somebody on deck who can deal with those changes when they come. However, you don't need to be so mired and worrying about what's going on with this next generation of Google that you're not thinking one, five, ten years down the line. The point is, if you want that stability, uh you also need to have the flexibility to adjust and course correct whenever necessary. When Google does something weird with the next algorithm that comes out and the algorithm after that, and the algorithm after that. Now, if it sounds like uh I've said all this before, it's because I have. This isn't necessarily new information, but the direction in which online marketing and search engine algorithms are moving means that it's important that we seriously consider and realize that we can't affect what the algorithms are going to do. So we have to figure out how to make changes that do come down and sting less when that happens. How do we make it so that the algorithms are more or less irrelevant to our practice and can't have too negative of an impact on our law firms, marketing, and rankings? And how do we get out in front of eyeballs on the internet? The short, simple answer is this we think in terms of not chasing Google rankings, not chasing what the algorithm is doing, not trying to protect, project it, anticipate it, or get ahead of it. Instead, we want to think about what we can do in spite of the algorithms, what we can do with the information we have, with the abilities we have, and with the skills we have. That will make Google less of a factor in ranking your law firm and getting you out in front of people who need your services. That is why we're going back to the drawing board. You've got to go back to basics. You've got to look at what's going on and say, okay, what's worked for 30 years and what's still working today? We don't know what the future is going to be. Nobody has a crystal ball that will cover every single contingency. We don't need it anyway. All we need is to focus and emphasize on what can get us the most results with the least effort. Now, yes, you're still going to need to come off of some ad spend. You're still going to need to spend money on Google ads and Facebook ads and place that any places that your target audience is likely to be, you should absolutely consider spending money there. But there's more to that. You need to be spending some time there as well. You need to be interacting with people. You need a team who can interact with people on your behalf, who know what they're talking about. Maybe you have people in your firm that can take on that role in rotation. Somebody does your social media updating and responding on Monday and Friday. Somebody else is in charge of it on Thursday and Tuesday. Maybe you rotate out Wednesdays, something like that. Maybe you have an intern who can field basic inquiries that come from social media on the weekends, which makes your firm more responsive to potential clients and helps boost your reach and perception of reliability. These are all perfectly valid options. They're low risk and low expense. You don't need to spend a lot of money to get the job done. Now, a lot of marketing agencies will tell you that you have to take a wrecking ball to everything and start all over. In some cases, that may actually be true. And yes, it means spending some money. However, it's important to remember that just because somebody says it doesn't mean it's necessarily so. It's entirely possible that you don't need to start from ground zero. You just need to make some refinements, tweaks, update some things. The more of that you do, the easier it will be to figure out where the leaks are in your marketing, and the easier, more efficient, and cheaper it should be to plug those leaks. Here's the other thing I want to be clear on. We want to keep abreast of the big changes. When I say big changes, I mean things like uh Google rolling out an algorithm, and all of a sudden, nothing that worked in the last 15 years is working. There's always a bit of instability. There's always a bit of a shakeup when those come out. But they usually resolve in a few days to a couple of weeks. So when a new algorithm drops, you need to pause, breathe, wait, and see where it puts you. Because if you've done everything right and you're thinking ahead of the curve as you should be, you'll probably find that you'll have more working for you than you think you do. You'll probably find that you're in a better position than you expected. And that's a good thing. We want that. We like this uh as a weed. The more of it you see, the more you can relax because you can be sure that what you're doing is working as it is. And you don't need to worry about chasing the 14,000 signals from Google because you've already got the basics down and you're in great shape. On the other side of this equation, you've got these guys who uh are chasing the algorithms and chasing the rankings based upon what the algorithms are doing. They're the ones who are scrambling to try to figure out what's going on, and they should be. They're the ones busy chasing the clout, they're chasing the rankings, but they're not doing the things that get you solid, sustainable, trusted rankings. And that brings me to my last point for this podcast: trust. Your information has to be good. Now, as we already talked about, things change, algorithms change, Supreme Court decisions come down, laws change, even regimes change. All of these different things play a role and work together to create a situation where what you know today may not even apply tomorrow, and that's okay. You can work with that. You can ride the wave. If this, then what you know uh what's going to happen next. And if that happens, how do you go from there? So now you know, at least in broad strokes, how how to deal with this as far as your law firm marketing goes. And as far as keeping your clients and your potential clients informed as to what these changes are and what they mean for them, uh, and you have to. Why? Because nobody's worried about what's happening with your law firm except you and your marketing team, and maybe your state bar, and if that's happening, then something's really gone wrong. Your clients are worried about their bottom line, their safety, their health, their quality of life, and their ability to navigate the legal system after an injustice or a tragedy, uh, which is fair. They should be self-interested. Our job as lawyers is to represent their best interests in the best and most ethical legal light possible. So we show them how and why we're the right ones to represent them. We don't worry too much about fancy SEO tricks that may not work after the next algorithm deploys. We just do what we do best, do it well, and trust that over time, the people relying on tricks and hacks will fall to the bottom. While your firm is still safely on top, shortcuts always take longer than just doing it right to begin with. Don't let your firm be the next one to prove that rule by becoming a cautionary tale. Think beyond the next algorithm update, and you'll be in excellent shape to weather just about any storm, even the wildest SEO changes that can be thrown your way. Once again, I'm John Rizby, the law firm growth professor. Don't forget to tune in next time as I explain why the internet is only 90 seconds old and what that means for our marketing. Before you leave, please make sure you hit the like button and subscribe so you don't miss anything. And please feel free to share this with your colleagues and friends who might enjoy this podcast. Thanks for joining me today. So when a new idea pops into your brain, call the patent professor. That's my name. I'm a law school professor. An engineer too. I think math is fun. Patent started. If the patent office says your idea is not new, that's just red tape that will cut, right? So when a new idea pops into your brain, call the patent professor. That's my name.