Ep. 57 - Hiring an SEO Agency: This Mistake Will Cost You Everything

If you’re hiring an SEO agency and the first question you ask is about certifications… you might already be making a costly mistake.

In this episode of the Law Firm Growth Professor podcast, I break down why certifications in SEO don’t mean what you think they do—and why relying on them can actually steer your law firm in the wrong direction.

Because here’s the truth: SEO is one of the least regulated industries out there. Anyone can claim expertise. And while Google certifications and degrees may look impressive on paper, they don’t guarantee real-world results.

So what does matter?

Experience. Track record. The ability to execute.

I’ll walk you through:

• Why certifications alone are a weak signal of SEO competence
• The critical difference between “book knowledge” and real-world results
• How to properly vet an SEO agency (and the questions most law firms forget to ask)
• Why a strong portfolio beats a stack of credentials every time
• When taking a chance on a “maverick” marketer might outperform a traditional agency

If you want your marketing dollars to actually generate cases—not just reports—this episode is required listening.

Because at the end of the day, results matter more than résumés… and résumés matter more than certifications.

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

Transcript

John Rizvi 0:00

Hi, and welcome. I'm John Rizvi, the Law Firm Growth Professor. For my new listeners, I'm pleased you came by to join me today. And 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. If you've ever seen the movie Blazing Saddles by Mel Brooks, you probably remember the scene in which Cheech Martin says, badges, we don't need no stinking badges. And it was great for a laugh in the theater, it's great for a laugh in your living room. But it's not so funny when you go to your SEO agency and you ask what kind of certification they have to be able to do these things, and then all of a sudden it starts. We don't need no stinking certs. Well, technically, that's true. SEO and digital marketing in general is one of the least regulated sectors of the U.S. economy, which is wild when you think about it. There's not that many gatekeepers, especially relative to the field of law. You have to go through law school, you have to graduate from there, you have to pass the state boards, pass all your exams, and you have to be able to function as an attorney in your jurisdiction, take CLE courses, and it goes on and on. So that can be a very uh uncomfortable conversation to have when you're sitting here with eight to 12 years of additional schooling beyond college, plus all your state mandated uh and federally mandated exams and your demonstration of the ability to serve as an attorney, and you've got this kid in skinny jeans telling you, Well, I sort of went online and I found out how to do SEO. But this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Some people are just naturally good at learning how to build websites and understanding how to market a product or a service to people. Okay, we can work with that to a point. But more and more colleges and universities are starting to take internet marketing seriously. Usually uh before, say, uh 2015, most SEO education was kind of rolled into a catch-all marketing and communications course. And it wasn't given a whole deal of shrift. Today, of course, it's a multi-billion dollar industry in the United States. And consumers, even lawyers, like to get value for their money because of course we do. Uh so when you're handing your money over to somebody, we want to make sure that it's somebody with a background where we can actually see, oh, okay, this person does have the skills, and they do have the knowledge to do that. So far, to the best of my knowledge, the only search engine with a fully fleshed-out certification program is Google. Now that makes sense because Google is basically setting the rules of the modern internet. So, of course, having a certificate from Google sounds great. Oh well, this person has certifications and user experience, or they have certifications in Google My Business. They understand how geotagging works. Yes, in theory they do. In uh Google courses, they're not cheap because, of course, they have a reputation to uphold. However, the exams are not proctored in any meaningful way, and the certification shows that they have the book knowledge, they have the theoretical grounding that they need to do this stuff, but that doesn't guarantee that this is going to translate into the real world. It's like somebody who studied as a history major and they have credentials, but they couldn't tell you the difference between a Roman urn and a Grecian empora. And as you'd say, well, wait a minute, you literally have a grounding in this, you've got an education in this. Why do you not know these things? SEO is even less regulated. Now a lot more agencies are stepping up their game as far as making sure that they do hire people with either educational credentials or certifications from Google that say, yes, this person does know what they're doing. And in theory, that should be enough. But a lot of these people who are waving certs and degrees around don't really understand how to properly format a URL. They don't understand how metadata works. They don't understand how to take a website from zero to a fully functioning, public-facing, interactive space for you and your client. And you might think, well, wait a minute, if they've got all these certs and all this education, why can't they do this? Which is a fair question. Now I'm bringing this up because those certifications, while it's good to have them, and it's great when people can show them, they're not necessarily the be all end all. And they don't necessarily indicate that you're going to get a skilled, knowledgeable professional. What they show is that this person could crack a book. This person knows how to look stuff up online. Uh, okay, both of those are fairly important in their own right. And I'm certainly not going to knock them, but that's not going to help them figure out from 300 shades of blue uh which exact shade your law firm needs. It's not going to help them test and pivot. It's not going to help them be able to draw a logo for you. And even if they can draw the logo, create the logo, there's nothing to say that they know how to take that logo and turn it into an SVG or a vector and be able to print it on business cards or the header of your website. So you've got to think about all of these things. It comes back to that old joke that we've all heard and we've all rolled our eyes at it. What do you call the person who graduates last in their law school class? Answer counselor. They still graduated, they still put in the work, they graduated dead last in their class. Well, what results do you expect from that person who graduated last in their class? If you're like most people, you're thinking, uh, I'm not exactly sure that I want this person working on my case. Well, the same thing applies with SEO, except again, it's not well regulated, and it's certainly not regulated anywhere near uh the degree that conventional marketing and advertising uh and the legal world are. So instead of asking about certs, ask about their track record, ask about their resume. One of the best SEO minds that I know is a guy who has never had any formal marketing schooling. He doesn't hold any certs from Google, he's never been to a coding boot camp, didn't graduate from college, so he doesn't have any of those pieces of paper. What he does have is over 15 years in the game. And he's done everything from content creation to graphic design, and he's had to teach himself all of this because his clients requested it. And I asked him, would you rather deal with somebody with no certs but an extensive resume or somebody with all the certs and no resume? And he said, John, if I have to pick between the two, I'm picking the one with the resume over the person with the certs any day, because a person with experience has been in the trenches and they already know a lot of the solutions, uh, the problems and the pitfalls that the person with all the certs and the degrees and the book learning wouldn't have a clue about even asking. Now, of course, ideally the person with the resume is answering to somebody with a degree somewhere, but that doesn't mean that this person's experience should be thrown out with the bathwater just because they don't have the degree or the certification that you're looking for. Some of the silliest work I've ever seen come out of an SEO agency came from people with degrees from reputable universities. We're not talking about people who went to flyby nightuniversity.com, uh paid a thousand bucks, and printed off a master's degree or something silly. Uh, you know, these are people who've graduated from Stanford, MIT, Wharton, that have gone to big name schools, but they didn't know how to build a backlink uh into their content. And you ask, and if you do ask them to write a piece of content, uh, they look at you like you just threw a dead fish on their desk. So the question is, at which point does the paper chase become counterproductive? Well, you ask your SEO agency what their experience is. The certs are great and you can get to those, but if they've got somebody with a solid resume and they may say, okay, uh, I don't have any certs, but I've got all these testimonials and websites uh and clients uh that I've done work with, and they can point you to examples of their work, that person is already going to be a better and stronger candidate for helping your law firm succeed with your SEO than the person who doesn't. Now I want to be very careful here and be very clear. I'm not down on academic work and I'm not down on people who get uh these certifications. Not even down on people who are a little bit snobby about the paper. Oh, well, you don't have a cert. I don't trust you to do my work. But the scariest people you'll run into are the people who have certs and have degrees and have everything in the world except a clue. A person with a resume will be happy to show it to you. They'll be happy to tell you I've done this and this and this, uh, and what makes me the right person to do this work for you. Just like we do with our clients. Oh, well, I've argued cases, I've done this, I've uh been written up in uh a law review, etc. Uh all of that's wonderful and it helps build confidence, but it doesn't guarantee that you're going to be the right attorney for their problem. Likewise, the paper chase may or may not help you identify a good SEO agency. And you run into the same problem with people who are just starting out and agencies and law firms that are just starting out versus established law firms. Sometimes the new kid on the block may be a little bit of a maverick, and that may be a reason for that. They may have a different approach that actually works better for what you're trying to get done than this person who's been doing it for uh 20 years, and they've got every cert on demand, but they can't explain to you concisely what a URL is or why it matters when you're uh coming up with titles for your content. So I'm absolutely not saying that you don't uh that you completely disregard certifications or degrees altogether. Don't ignore or overlook their importance. However, uh also don't give them more importance than they really deserve because ultimately it doesn't matter if they graduated from a moose snout city college or if they graduated from MIT. If they can't do the job that you're paying them to do, they're not somebody you need working on your website. They're not somebody you need working uh on your marketing, and they're certainly not somebody you need communicating your brand message to the masses. So take that into account when you're dealing with an SEO agency. Sometimes the maverick can be a good thing because people who are more established often tend to, dare I say, get a little hidebound. They tend to go, well, we've done it this way for X years, and it's always worked for us in the past. So we're going to continue doing that, and then what happens? They get stale, they fossilize, and they become so rigid and set in this is the way we do it, and there's no other way, because this way has always worked for us in the past. I could just about guarantee you that anybody that says we've always done it this way and it has never failed is lying because there's always been that one time where the way we've always done it went completely off the rails. So, how much emphasis should you put on Google certifications, for example? The answer is probably not as much as you think. Yes, it's great if your SEO contact has them, and it's certainly something they should be encouraged to pursue if they don't have it. But some people don't see the need. They don't want to invest the money, they don't want to incur that kind of expense for a certification, which you know uh isn't going to carry them as far as a bachelor's degree. And these days, it's like saying I have a high school diploma anyway. What you do want to ask instead of what certifications do you carry is what's your resume? What have you done in the real world that will tell me that you know what you're doing here and that you're going to get me the results that I and my law firm are looking for? And trust me, they'll be happy to tell you. Uh, they'll be happy to show you if they can. Now, of course, there's always going to be some of these projects that people can't talk about because they signed a non-disclosure agreement or they did some ghostwriting for you or whatever. So a great place to ask and start instead of asking what are your certs or what are your degrees or where'd you go to school, ask this. Can I see a couple of examples of your work? And they'll show you what they've got. And you can say, okay, I like this, or yes, this doesn't quite look right to me. But seeing what they can do in the real world is going to count for a lot more than what kind of paper they're carrying in their pocket. You know, just because you have a shingle and you have all these cert stapled to it doesn't necessarily mean that they know what to do when the rubber meets the road. But in my opinion, the absolute best way to find out whether a specific SEO agency or a specific SEO agency provider is going to be right for you is to give them some hypotheticals, the same way we do when they're we're taking uh talking to a new client for the first time. What would you do in this situation? Maybe it's the situation that you've got a problem uh with in the past. Maybe it's something that occurred to you at three o'clock in the morning while the power was out and you realize you're out of Cheetos. It doesn't matter. I'm not here to judge. But if you ask them how would you deal with this situation, one question I like to ask is what shade of red am I going to use on this website? Now, somebody who knows what they're doing will be able to find out fairly quickly. Somebody who doesn't know what they're doing will look at me and say, uh, you know, some kind of maroon, which is not in fact the color that I happen to use on my website. So if you want to know what it is, feel free to go to my website and check it out for yourself. But the key here is not to give you the answer. Just like when you're dealing with a new SEO provider, you don't want to give them the information. You want to find out if they can find the information and apply it. That's important. That's going to get you a lot further down the road in terms of getting people to actually contact your firm to represent their needs than a stack of certs that don't tell you anything about how this person works when they're down to a time crunch. So while I strongly advocate to make sure this person does have experience and does have the search and the credentials, uh, that they do have a track record and a resume, it's the track record and the resume that's the most important. However, again, don't sleep on the underdogs, don't sleep on the firms and the people who are just starting out. These people probably have new ways of looking at things that might actually work better for your purposes. And anything a uh a cert from Google could prove that they can do. So if you have a choice, ask for both. But a resume without certs is always going to be stronger than certs without a resume. But again, everybody has to start somewhere. So there's nothing wrong with saying, okay, I'll give this person a chance for three months and see where it goes, or I'll give this person this one particular project to work on and I'll see what they come up with. I formed a couple of very strong relationships with very good content writers that way. So there's no one size fits all answer to this conundrum. And people who are paper snobs are going to be paper snobs regardless. Please note, I'm not calling anybody a snob because they insist on credentials or the top of a resume to be on top of a resume or whatever. What I am saying is allow yourself to be surprised. Give that person the opportunity to show you what they can do before you dismiss them out of hand. You're probably going to get surprisingly good results and you're going to get a fresh voice, a fresh set of eyes, and a fresh way of looking at things that may solve problems. Now you've already got and you should anticipate problems that you don't even have yet. And they're already things that you can do to start making sure that things are going as planned and going the way you wanted. And you anticipate problems that you hadn't even thought of and that they're already working on solving them. That's going to be worth a whole lot more to you and your law firm in the long run than any amount of pricey paper from prestigious universities or certifications from Google. One last item that I want to address real quick. Ideally, you'll find the total package, whether it's an entire SEO agency or just one person who can take an idea from concept to full execution. They can be the art department and the communication department and the tech department and the programming department all in one. That's rare, but occasionally it does happen. I have seen it. And just because they can't do all of these things doesn't necessarily mean they don't have contacts who can and do and actually do these things just as well. Your content creator may be able to program a website, but they can't tell you the difference between Teal and Sky Blue. But they've got an artist friend who can, or they may have a network that uh they can leverage and give you access to. These are just some points to ponder when it comes to weighing out just how much weight you really want to put behind certifications when it comes to your SEO. Because ultimately, if the job gets done and it gets done well and it gets done to your specifications, the paper isn't going to matter. Again, I'm John Rizve, the Law Firm Growth Professor. Before you leave today, I'd appreciate it if you could click the like button. Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss any updates from this channel. And don't forget to share with your friends and colleagues, other attorneys who may find this podcast helpful. Thank you so much for stopping by today. And be sure to tune in next week for more tips and ideas for making your firm's digital presence stronger and more durable. I look forward to seeing you all next time. Thank you.