Ep. 60 - Your SEO Plan Is Probably Too Complicated

In this episode of The Law Firm Growth Professor podcast, I break down one of the biggest mistakes law firms make with SEO: over planning instead of actually taking action.

Too many firms get stuck waiting for the “perfect” SEO strategy, the perfect agency, or the perfect roadmap before they ever publish content, engage online, or build momentum. The problem? Waiting is often the very thing slowing your growth down.

I explain why simple, consistent action almost always beats endless strategizing — especially when you’re trying to grow your visibility, authority, and trust online.

If your law firm has been spinning its wheels with SEO planning but not seeing movement, this episode is for you.

In this episode, I discuss:

• Why overplanning creates analysis paralysis in SEO
• The difference between strategy and execution
• Simple SEO actions law firms can start today
• Why engagement matters more than perfection early on
• How social media activity helps build SEO momentum
• Why many SEO agencies overcomplicate the process
• The importance of consistency over complexity
• How to build trust and visibility online faster
• Why imperfect action beats doing nothing at all
• The low-cost SEO opportunities most firms ignore

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 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 Curl Springs. It may be the simplest and most basic mistake most people in the SEO sphere are making right now. And it's a mistake because it can actually slow your progress and make people gun shy about going to the next level with their SEO. The problem is a lot of people get so hung up on strategy and how we're going to do X, Y, and Z that X, Y, and Z don't actually get done at all. You spend so much time mapping it out, and then you wind up not achieving your ultimate goals. Why? Because you're tied up in the weeds on strategizing. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's great to have a strategy. It's important to have a strategy, but there comes a point where strategy has to be pushed into action. Because until then, all you have is a plan, and nothing wrong with having a plan, but that plan has to motivate someone to do something on the other end. Otherwise, your plan doesn't work. And that's the one mistake you can't afford to make. Now you may be thinking, well, you know, I haven't signed with an SEO firm yet. I'm not doing anything with my SEO at this time. So why would this matter? Well, that's actually quite simple. If you're too consumed with trying to figure out what you're going to do, you're not focusing on what you're doing. For example, if you have social media channels, you're already in good shape with your SEO, but you need to be engaged with the people who engage with your content. The same applies to your firm. If it has a blog, read the comments and reply to at least a couple of them. You don't have to reply to all of them. I mean, especially if you're talking about a larger firm, you may need a full communications team just to be able to keep up with the comments that you're getting. But you don't need to reply to every single comment. You don't have to engage with every single user. You just need to engage with enough of them proportionally that afterwards they keep coming back to see what you've said. This is where strategy is not greater than doing because you're working on SEO strategy just by engaging with your audience. Likewise, if you haven't put something on your blog in a while, okay, maybe it's time to start thinking about that, even if it's just a brief 500-word blurb about something you're working on. Like say next week, I'll be presenting a white paper about what whatever the topic is. Okay, that's perfectly reasonable. That's perfectly fair. And there's nothing whatsoever stopping you from doing that. And your strategy doesn't all have to be keywords and backlinks and blah, blah, blah. Having that stuff in place is great. Knowing what you're going to do with this piece of content before you begin is helpful. And I absolutely don't want to discourage anybody from acting on that when it's appropriate. But what I do want you to do is not get stuck in the weeds of the strategy aspect. If you can think of something that needs to be done right now, or something you haven't done in a while, or something you haven't done at all, then give yourself maybe five minutes or 10 minutes or whatever to plan. And then just do it and see what comes out of it. Because you can actually plan so rigidly that you wind up painting yourself into a corner and you have nowhere to go. I've done that many times myself, and it's frustrating when it happens. So we try to keep in mind that anything you do with your SEO or on your website is probably going to be better than doing nothing at all. Now, a lot of SEO specialists may not agree with that. They may want to argue the point. They may say, oh no, we can't do anything until we have a 101-point plan or some ridiculous uh aspect like that. That's too much. And if you're trying to work off a 101-point plan, I can just about guarantee you that it's going to be three to six months before any of your SEO strategy even starts to be implemented, if it even gets there. Why would you want to do that to yourself? There are small low-cost things that you can do with your firm's SEO right now, even if you don't have an SEO specialist in mind yet, even if you're not hiring somebody or contracting with an agency to conduct your SEO for you. You can do these things yourself. It doesn't take any time at all to jump on X or Instagram or type out just a quick blurb. Something like, hey, good morning, y'all. How about that new case that the Supreme Court's hearing this week? It doesn't matter as much what you do as long as you're seen to be doing something. This is especially true at the beginning where you're when you're just getting started. There's nothing wrong with not knowing exactly where you're going to end up at the start. In fact, sometimes that can be a lot of fun. You can learn things about yourself and you can learn things about the topical subject matter when you're in that situation. This is not a bad thing, and I want to really stress that. But sitting there uh going well, we have 61 points of a 101-point plan. Fine. So start working on numbers one through 61. And then you layer these things in later, adding more steps and more points in the process. And when it you do it when it's appropriate to do so. But when it comes to your SEO, the best time to get started was yesterday. The second best time is now. So if you have an idea, if you have a plan, if you woke up in the middle of the night and you thought, hey, you know what? I haven't posted on X lately. Or hey, you know what? Maybe I need to do another Instagram. Yes, go ahead and do that. The worst thing that can happen is that you do nothing. Even if you espouse a point of view that maybe is a little controversial, or that a lot of attorneys in your field of law would not agree with. That may be even better. There's nothing wrong with sprinkling in a little controversy. This is why I think it's a good call. It's a perfectly fair place to begin a piece of content, and then you just let it run. You let it percolate and cook. You let people talk to you and find out what they think about it. It could be you wind up persuading people to your side of an issue where maybe the majority opinion doesn't agree. And that begets discussion, which begets conversion, and which begets interest, which means suddenly you find you have a client base that you didn't have before. Wonderful. This is good news. And this is exactly the kind of result you want when you're doing SEO. Uh so don't get so hung up on the nuts and bolts of SEO that you forget about your humanity and the humanity of your readers. I've said this before and I'm going to say it again. Uh, write for people and not machines. Yes, there's a time and place to worry about keywords and backlinks and white hat SEO. But especially if you're just starting out, your best bet is to literally do anything but plan. Hey, I should start an X account today for the firm. Yes, you should. Hey, I should start an Instagram. Yes, you should. Hey, I'm gonna go on Quera and answer some questions. Yes, you should. All of these things are important, and you don't have to worry about getting the keywords right immediately. You don't have to worry about hitting those 14,500 signals that Google is looking at when they rank content. You don't have to worry about that right away. Now, most SEO consultants would tell you, oh no, it's really important that you have all of your SEO ready before you type a keystroke. That's not true. And in fact, this is probably a good indication that your SEO consultant is more interested in making money than they are in making your firm more visible on the internet. Why? Because they're going to insist on selling you a process instead of letting you move forward and get results. Well, anybody can do a process, but the results are what count here. The results are what you're looking for. And a process that never gets off the ground isn't going to get you results. So why in the world would you want to have a process that doesn't take you anywhere? Basically, you're paying for a roadmap that you're not going to use. And that's not beneficial. So do anything, accept anything in the world, except not moving forward on your ideas. If you think, oh yeah, I want to get that white paper out, well, get it out. Oh, hey, I want to write this case study on why I think this particular action or law was inappropriate. Okay. There's nothing stopping you from doing that. In fact, I strongly encourage it, even if the SEO is a little bit rough starting out. You can't you can fix bad SEO, but what you can't fix is a blank slate. The only way to fix a blank slate is to write on it. So write on it. Think about it and then talk about it. Do something. Do it on your website, do it on your social media channels. Go on other attorneys' social media channels and engage with them there. Start a conversation. You know, obviously observe professional decorum. Uh and for God's sake, don't give legal advice uh on specific facts online. Most people know that without being told, but some people uh have to hear it, which is why I'm saying it again. I don't want anybody getting in trouble with their state bar because they weren't uh careful and started giving opinions or ideas or forgot to say that this is a hypothetical situation uh and make clear that you're not giving legal advice. Of course, there's always somebody who doesn't read the disclaimer, and there's not so much you can do with that, but as long as the disclaimer is in place, you're probably much, much more uh okay. That's the the most I can say. What you really want then is to get started. Type one word, type 10 words, and then those will become a hundred and let them flow. One of the most critical points that people overlook, and SEO agencies are notorious for this, is they like to get into nuts and bolts and throwing around a bunch of jargon. And as we've discussed before, there's a time and place for that. There's reasons for that uh vocabulary, and there's reasons uh that eventually you do need to address. That being said, it's not essential to have a fully nailed down plan. Plans are going to change over time. You're gonna start out with a situation where the complex of SEO needs you and your firm won't apply six months down the line, and the needs that you'll have then aren't going to look anything like what you're looking at today. Okay, fair enough. So keep your plans flexible enough that you have some wiggle room if something goes off the rails. If your website crashes because your designer messed up and all of a sudden threw the website into a random loading loop, your SEO isn't ready, it's got nowhere to go because your website isn't working correctly. Okay, but that's fine. You could still go on X or Instagram or what have you and say, hey, so we're launching the site today and a funny thing happened. Now you're telling people that you're being proactive, you're aware of the situation, you're taking steps to get around it, and you're keeping them apprised of what to expect next. That's great. That's good communication, and good communication builds trust, which builds strong relationships, which is what you're after in the first place. So don't sleep on the low cost or low effort SEO, because that low cost, low effort SEO can often pay you out better than a lot of the work you would get from the majority of SEO agencies. Now, please don't think that I'm down on SEO agencies. I'm not. I have one of my own, but I recognize that they tend to fall down when it comes to properly assessing where somebody's SEO is. Instead of selling them a fix, they sell a plan for a fix, something that takes six months just to get off the ground. Well, if your SEO is already established, you need to be moving faster than that. You don't have six months to implement a plan. You need to say, okay, what can I implement now, today? What should I implement 30 days from now? What should I implement 60 days from now? And so on. If you do it that way, you're constantly making progress, even if it's small progress. You know, if you put up one web page today, or if you put out one social media blurb a day until you're done with laying the groundwork for your SEO, that's great. Then maybe you scale back your blogging to once a week or once a month, whatever schedule works best for you and your law firm and your field of law. From that point, you can start building and developing a more robust SEO plan that doesn't just involve throwing things at a screen and seeing what sticks, but throwing things at the screen and seeing what sticks can be a very useful tool when you're just starting out. It gives you an idea not only of what you're doing and how you're doing relative to your competition, but it tells you what your competition is doing that you maybe need to consider uh getting on board with. And I say that, and a lot of people freak out. Oh God, why would I want to follow what the competition's doing? I'm carving my own path. Yes, you are. However, because SEO is such a machine-dominated system, the machines are the gatekeepers. And they're standing between you and your potential clients. So you want to make sure that what you're doing is attractive enough that that the gatekeepers get out of the way and bring you and your potential client together. That's why I say waiting on your SEO until you have all the pieces in place and you know exactly what happens on day one, day 30, day 60, day 90. Well, that's great. But you can't account for a ton of factors. You can't account for somebody getting sick or something going wrong. Uh the dog eats the programmer's homework or whatever. Doesn't matter what the problem is. What matters is that problems like this do crop up and you'll have to deal with them. And it may be at the expense of that elaborate 101-point plan that the SEO agency was so proud of. You don't want to wait for someone else to tell you we're ready to start with the SEO. SEO starts the minute you start your branding, the minute you start a concept for a website. SEO should be topmost in your mind. But it should also be something that you're doing now, something that you're working on now and you're constantly moving forward with. Yes, there's incremental returns and incremental gains. You're doing a little bit day by day, by week, by month, and that ultimately gets you where you want to be. So don't get married to a hard and fast plan and don't think that you have to have all these steps and all these processes in place before you can start on your SEO, because that's not true. It's not accurate, and it's not right. And every minute that you hesitate, you're hurting yourself, your firm, and your entire brand. So take your time with the plan, but get something out there now. Worry about building in the SEO and the nuts and bolts as you go rather than waiting for your SEO agency to tell you, oh yeah, by the way, we're ready to start putting in the SEO. No, that should have been happening from the jump. But there are quick, easy, low-cost ways to implement it. And there's more technical, expensive ways which you'll want to let your agency handle. That's fine again. There's no problem there. But do something for your SEO today. Do something else tomorrow. It can be a blurb on Twitter or X, that's fine. It can be a throwaway tweet. It can be a comment on LinkedIn. It doesn't matter. Start getting your name out there and worry about the SEO as and when it is appropriate to do so. That's how you're going to combat the analysis paralysis that overplanning and underplanning can cause for you. And you're going to continuously have your SEO moving forward and working for your brand, even before your agency steps on the scene. Again, I'm John Rizvey, the Law Firm Growth Professor. Before you leave today, I'd appreciate it if you could click the like button. Make sure you describe, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any updates from this channel. And don't forget to share with your friends and colleagues who may find this podcast helpful. Thank you so much for stopping by today, and make 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 next week.