Ep. 19 - Who Needs SEO, Anyway?

In this episode, I tackle a question I hear all the time: “If SEO is so important, why are you always so skeptical about it?” 

I get it - SEO can feel like a black box, full of promises and very few guarantees. 

But here’s the truth: I do believe in SEO. I just don’t believe in the hype, the hacks, or the hollow promises.

Join me as I break down the real value of SEO for law firms, why it’s still essential in today’s digital landscape, and how to separate the pros from the pretenders. 

I’ll share insights from Google’s own John Mueller, explain why “clicks” aren’t the metric you should be chasing, and reveal the red flags to watch for when hiring an SEO agency.

If you’ve ever wondered whether SEO is worth the investment - or how to do it right without getting burned - this episode is for you.

Let’s cut through the noise and talk about what actually works.

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

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

This is Pod Populi, podcast for the people. Call the Pod Professor. That's my name. Hi, and welcome back. I'm John Risby, the Law Firm Growth Professor. For those rejoining me, I'm glad to see you again. And for our first-time listeners, it's great to have you here. 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, right here in Coral Springs. If you've been following this podcast for a while, you've probably noticed some themes, and those themes might leave you asking some uncomfortable questions like these. Next, why should I invest in something that can't guarantee results? Who needs SEO anyway? Now these are all fair and reasonable questions, and I'm going to answer all of them, starting with that middle question about investing in things that don't come with a guarantee. You see, there's a paradox here. We as attorneys, we can't guarantee our clients results. In fact, any attorney that that tries to guarantee results could be sanctioned if it gets back to their State Bar Association. Because we know the law isn't always as cut and dry as it seems from the outside. What looks like a bulletproof action to our clients could turn out to be a pasta strainer when we look at it up close. What seems to be a slam dunk is actually a complete miss because our clients were texting, or they had one beer too many with dinner, or just don't remember what really happened, uh, and don't remember it accurately, or one comma's out of place in an awkward place in the filing. Or the product formula has two letters transposed in the patent application. I practice patent law, and that's an actual case, by the way. The unexpected can happen in a legal case, and judges are people. They're not clones, they have their own biases and preconceived notions, and no two decision makers are a hundred percent in alignment. This knowledge is baked right into the ethics of our profession. So far, no arguments, right? We can all agree that you shouldn't make promises on outcomes in litigated matters. The irony here is that as attorneys, we take chances and roll big dice on behalf of our clients all the time. But as a profession and as a class of people, we tend to be very risk averse when it comes to our own affairs. We're all looking for a sure thing. It can't miss surefire win every time. We don't invest in things that don't work as advertised unless we have no choice. So maybe it's understandable that we're skeptical of investing in things that don't come with a guarantee that they'll pay off. Why would we? Here's the thing Google, and I know you're probably tired of hearing about them, says that SEO is still the best way to reach people in the digital marketplace. But in an article posted this week in Search Engine Journal, they interviewed John Mueller. Uh he's the best known public representative at Google Search. You cannot have a higher authority on Google Search than him. And he specifically said that promising instant results is the single biggest red flag there is when hiring an online marketing firm. And yet we see digital marketing companies doing that all the time, and particularly when pitching to lawyers. Why? Because certainty sells. But you cannot have mathematical certainty when it comes to SEO. And anyone that promises that is an outright fraud. There's too many moving parts that the SEO firm cannot control. As I said in my last episode, Google's March update included 2,596 different modules and 14,000 signals. That's way too many signals for a human being to deal with. They can make sure the site and the social media channels adhere to SEO's best practices. They can make sure the link scheme is clean, that each link does what it's supposed to do. They can create the content, check the content, and also make sure that the content aligns with your branding and intended message. They can evaluate what's being put into the system and what's coming out in terms of clicks and user engagement. But they can't control what competitors are doing. They can't give you concrete numbers about how their SEO is impacting your bottom line except by inference and guesstimation. They can't see what Google is doing internally between deploying the latest SEO and the page ranking that's being determined. As John Mueller puts it, SEO consultants can't do that. They can't manually go into Google Systems and tweak the dials and change the rankings. Here's the thing though, SEO done carefully and correctly by someone who knows what they're doing can and does pay dividends. Sometimes these dividends have to be measured by inference, as I said earlier. For a pay-per-click or PPC campaign, you can directly measure and track the sales funnel from impression to signing the retainer agreement to cashing the check or the EFT hitting your firm's business account. Organic rankings don't work that way. You could see a bump, then a low, then a spike, then a plateau, and then a drop. It's not a smooth curve. Like I started paying$1,500 a month for SEO services in January, and in July my firm made$150,000 in revenue. Well, last July we only pulled in$75,000. There's just too many moving parts we can't see working in real time. There may be external factors driving that revenue increase that can't be completely quantified. So it sounds like you don't really believe in SEO as a vehicle for law firm growth, John. Why are you selling it when you're always so down on it? And don't misunderstand me. I absolutely do believe, no, I know that SEO and internet marketing are crucial to growing your law firm. I know it the same way I know that lifting up a heavy object and letting it go with my hand means gravity will take over. But it's not that I'm not a believer in SEO by any means, but SEO comes with its own set of headaches, problems, and uncertainties. No, I cannot guarantee you above the fold rankings on page one on Google in 30 days, or your money back. I wouldn't if I could, because overpromising is right out of the black hat playbook. It's exactly what Mueller was warning about and what I talked about earlier. I'd rather underpromise and over-deliver than commit myself to something outlandish that probably won't land. My problem with SEO is largely with the hacks, the cheats, and the gamers. The people who try to influence the system and get their clients quick results and quick wins and then bail when their tactics catch up with their clients. I'd rather take the slow, steady, measurable approach that shows something is being done and something is happening gradually than putting my clients in a position of having to clean up the mess that I left behind. So I believe in organic SEO. I believe the basics of good content and connecting with an audience haven't changed or gone out of style. No matter how much the AI enthusiasts say the opposite. If for no other reason than as a way to fight back against this rising tide. Try to highlight what SEO can't do or tell you why you shouldn't expect immediate results. John Mueller says it could take up to a year to fully deploy an SEO program and realize real results. I'm personally a little skeptical about that, especially if you're not starting from the ground up. If you've already got a website, social media channels, and a real world presence, your gains are going to be more incremental and slower than if you're starting from a brand new build when the acceleration curve seems a lot steeper. That's my own personal experience and the trends I've measured since I got into this game. Mueller has a lot more data to work with, which means he's better positioned to see high-level trends. He also has insight about what's on the horizon with Google and other search engines because Google controls around 90% of the uh internet traffic. Where Google goes, so goes the future of search engines. So if you manage to make SEO sound like an expensive crapshoot that my firm doesn't really need, who needs this stuff anyway? Well, I do, you do, your competitors do, and your clients do. If you do anything regarding your business on the internet, you need SEO. This is just a fact of modern business life. Do you necessarily need a full SEO makeover and paid search and Google ads and your firm flashing up 50 times a minute in someone's Facebook feed? No, you don't. Unless something's really askew with your SEO scheme to begin with. What you if you have a website and social media channels, you need SEO. Sure, in the beginning, you can do it all yourself. Some people actually do that. They have the time, interest, drive, and they get enough knowledge to learn about this stuff to a point where it's more cost-effective to do it in-house than it is to outsource. But that's the exception and not the rule. Even then, it's not a bad idea to have someone from the outside audit your SEO every so often and see if you've missed anything. With so many signals that could boost or tank your placement in uh SERPs, there's a very good chance that you have. And most of them are likely to hurt your standing on their own. Probably, uh, are they going to tank it completely? Probably not. But if you put together enough things you've overlooked or disregarded as unimportant, they can sink you slowly before you even realize that your boat's in trouble. So, when does it make sense to hire outside SEO consultants for your law firm? The short answer the time you're spending on your SEO is disproportionate to the time you're spending building your law firm. Hiring in new associates, onboarding new clients, preparing cases, conducting depositions, polishing your arguments, planning your approach in court, managing your staff. These are the core tasks that you should be focusing on. That doesn't mean SEO is unimportant, just that at a certain point it's going to pull you away from the core work required to build your firm in the brick and mortar world. Let's face it, unless you're brand new, starting your own firm from the ground up, you're probably not directly managing the office or dealing with HR headaches. You've got a person for that. You're likely not dealing with the books, payroll, accounts payable or receivable, or ordering office supplies. You've got a person for that. And you're certainly not personally grabbing a wrench and fixing that leaky sink in your in the men's room. You've got a person for that. Some people relish being the chief executive grand high cat herder and being involved in everything that happens in their firm. They budget their time and energy in a way that they can keep those plates spinning at once, seemingly uh without any extra effort or missed beats. But somewhere, something's suffering, something's getting missed, and you'll probably find out what it is at the worst possible time, in the worst possible circumstances, and in the worst possible way for you, your clients, your firm, and ultimately your reputation. Murphy's Law is a real thing, folks, and even the best uh plate spinner needs a rest once in a while. The trick here is to get someone on board who can cover those gaps before they become a gulf that you can't jump over. Personally, I like the two for eight rule. You should spend no more than two hours on SEO for every eight hours that you spend growing your practice. If you're spending more than this or you're not seeing positive growth-oriented results when you keep to this time budget, it's time to hire someone to take that load off your plate. So, okay, let's say I've convinced you that there really is value to hiring on an outside SEO consultancy firm. What metric should you be looking at? It shouldn't surprise anyone that Google says the best possible metric is cold hard cash in hand. It's a tangible, real thing that you can measure and evaluate, especially over time. But this is hammering on I'm hammering on this point because it's important to understand working out just how much new money is coming in from your SEO can be tricky and even impossible. The dividends offered by paid search, uh, ads, and so on can be tracked and traced at every point in the funnel. Organic search has a lot more moving parts, most of which are hidden from casual view. Unlike paid search, you can see the money going out and the money coming in. But organic search relies more on inference and trends to figure out how much of your new revenue is coming from it. One metric you should absolutely not trust is clicks. People are clicking on and using these search terms. No, low skill, low return, low value agencies focus on these because they're ag they aggregate everything, every possible keyword and term that's even tangentially relevant to your firm. And what do you get? A lot of garbage and background noise, clicks that don't mean a thing and don't put you one thin dime into your firm's war chest. But to the SEO agency pushing clicks, uh, they're hand delivering your firm, the holy grail, and the dozen knights to carry it for you. These agencies don't care or don't even know what a good click looks like. They don't care about relevance. They want a metric that they can easily evaluate and makes them look like they're doing something to earn their fees. And to be fair, they are. It's just that what they're doing doesn't really line up with what your firm needs to be successful in the SEO game. They're not going to promise you money, but they've got to give you something to keep you hooked and keep you writing those checks. Ranking positions and site traffic are better, but only a little. Instead of just throwing random numbers out that you more or less have to take on faith, now you've got something you can readily see working. But if you're ranking number two in organic search for a low volume, low uh value term, it's probably not going to move the needle much, if at all. This brings us back to the but we gave you all these clicks problem. Who gives a damn about a click if it's not a good click? By which I mean a click made with the intention and interest and the end goal of putting money into your firm. A good SEO firm will give you clearly set milestones. Maybe in month one, they're going to work on making sure your content is updated. Your site gets a makeover if it's needed, and your links are all working as expected. In month two, they're going to be generating new content, promoting your firm on social media, and polishing all the metadata. Month three, they're dipping into paid search and ads. And every point they're checking in at least weekly and giving you continuing status reports. You're kept carefully in the loop, and they're giving you the information you need to see that they're not just partying away your retainer before they get down to business. But here's the thing uh before for at least the first quarter, you have to be actively engaged in this process. You know your firm, your clientele, and your ideal client better than anyone. You should. You're the one that built it. Uh, so you're probably going to need to be very hands-on at this point because it's up to you to help craft the milestones the firm should be hitting and work with them to determine the KPIs that will keep you paying them. Let me throw in a word of caution here. If an SEO firm agrees to everything you ask for with no discussion and no pushback, you're probably not getting with the firm that you want to be working with. They'll promise anything so that they can keep uh getting your money into their bank account, but they're probably going to be chock full of excuses for why this, that, and the other thing wasn't done to spec at your next check-in. You're engaging an SEO firm because supposedly they know what they're doing, just like your clients engage your law firm because they believe you know what you're doing and will represent them and their interests appropriately and accurately within the scope of the law. While you should be uh absolutely be engaged and involved in the decision-making process, especially earlier on, you should be able to trust your agency to tell you what's possible, what isn't, and how to create an organic search footprint that won't wash away the next time the Google algorithm updates. If they agree to anything and everything you ask for off the bat, no matter how outrageous, this isn't an SEO firm you want to work with. So let's talk about that in the comments. Have you engaged an SEO firm in the past? How did that go? Did you see any of these red flags? And what did you do about them? Most importantly, what was the outcome and what did it teach you about what you're looking for from the next agency? The comments are open and I'm listening. So let's start a dialogue. Once again, folks, I'm John Risby, the Law Firm Growth Professor. Thanks for tuning in today. And before you go, make sure you like, subscribe, and share this episode with your friends and colleagues that are lawyers trying to grow their law firm. And drop me a comment below. I'm glad you came today, and we'll talk again soon. 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 path is fun. If the patent office says your idea is not new, that's just red tape that will cut right through. So when a new idea pops into your brain, call the patent professor. That's my name.