July 25, 2025 • 22 mins
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🧠What happens when your next client skips Google and asks ChatGPT who the best lawyer in town is? In this episode, Mike and Danny break down how AI tools are already influencing client decisions — and exactly what law firms can do to stay visible. You’ll learn the SEO tactics that actually help you get recommended by tools like ChatGPT and Gemini, plus practical steps to future-proof your firm’s online presence.
đź“Ś Key Takeaways
- ChatGPT is already recommending law firms — and clients are listening.
- “Trust signals” like content quality, reviews, and site structure matter more than ever.
- Formatting your blogs for AI can give you a major visibility edge.
📆 Schedule Your Strategy Session
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Referrals are still the best place to get clients,
but if somebody did not knowsomeone, right, if there was not
a referral to be had, the nextthing most people were doing was
going to Google that is what'schanging.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Welcome to the Law Firm Marketing Minute, the go-to
podcast for solo and small lawfirms who want to level up.
We're excited for you to joinus this episode.
And remember if your law firmneeds more clients and better
clients, be sure to go togrowmylawfirmfastcom.
That's growmylawfirmfastcom,All right, let's get right into
(00:35):
the episode.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Hello everyone, welcome back to the Law Firm
Marketing Minute.
As always, I'm your host, mike,and I'm here with Danny, danny
Decker.
I know you guys are veryfamiliar with Danny.
Welcome back to the podcast.
Always good to be here and talkmarketing, mike.
Yes sir, yes sir, we're goingto get into some really cool
stuff, stuff that lawyers loveto talk about, stuff that they
(00:56):
might actually be a littleskeptical on, to be honest, and
it's AI.
I know that's such a buzzwordnowadays.
This is AI, oh, this is AI,everything's AI nowadays.
But very specifically, beforewe get into the first main kind
of point here that we want tomake, can you just kind of speak
to the audience about AI interms of why there's skepticism?
(01:19):
Obviously, a couple years agoor a year ago, there was that
big case where someone a lawyerused AI to help with their case,
and it quoted cases.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Yeah, it made something up, yeah it made stuff
up.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
So it hallucinated as we say yeah, so can you kind of
just speak to what you've seento kind of maybe ease their
minds a little bit.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Yeah, all right.
Well, let's do this, mike.
Let's distinguish between usingai for your practice, yeah, and
like using ai to, you know,create content or research,
whatever that's.
There's a whole conversation tobe had there.
That's good, um, and and,honestly, like that's probably
beyond the scope of what we cancover on this episode.
(02:01):
Sure, but the but the secondpiece of it is how people are
using tools like ChatGPT andGemini and Grok to find lawyers
and, as a marketing company,that's kind of the first place,
my mind goes.
So let's focus thisconversation around how AI is
(02:23):
changing the way people hirelawyers.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Does that sound good?
No, absolutely, and I thinkthat actually might give our
audience that kind of breath offresh air that they need.
You know, because now we'rekind of almost like flipping the
script.
Now it's not about like, hey,we're not saying to use AI with
your work, but we're saying, hey, here's how people are using AI
to find you.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Like clearly there are opportunities to use AI in
your practice.
Clearly, and also clearly thereare things to be cautious about
.
But you know the reality andthis is more where I spend my
time, you know, as I'm thinkingabout marketing and helping law
firms grow is there has beenthis like pretty radical change
in how people find lawyers withthe emergence of chat, gpt and
(03:04):
Gemini, and and and like.
The really short version is youknow people were going to
Google Yep If they didn't like.
Let's start here First off, theway everyone prefers to hire a
lawyer is is through a referral.
Sure, right, like best casescenario, if I have to go hire a
lawyer, I want somebody that Ialready know, like and trust to
(03:25):
refer me to somebody, somebodythat you know, gets it done
which?
by the way, is the reason why weaim a lot of the marketing we
do for law firms at helping themgenerate referrals, because
referrals are the way to go.
Sure, and guess what?
I don't think ChatGPT or Grokor really any of these AI
platforms are going to changethat.
Referrals are still the bestplace to get clients, but if
(03:47):
somebody did not know someoneright, if there was not a
referral to be had, the nextthing most people were doing was
going to Google.
That is what's changing.
There is a lot of data all overthe map on this.
I was just at a conference lastweek and we did a pretty deep
dive into this, but, dependingon what studies you listen to,
(04:08):
anywhere from like 10% to maybeas high as 50% of what used to
be Google search traffic is nowgoing to AI tools like ChatGPT
or Google Gemini or Grok orwhatever else.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
That's significant.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
That's huge.
That's huge, it's massive.
And listen, even if it's only10% or 15%, it's still massive.
Sure, but it's also onlygrowing as people adapt and
start using ChatGPT.
And so what that looks likepractically is, if I'm looking
for an estate planning attorneyand I don't already know
somebody right, I can't get areferral attorney and I don't
(04:47):
already know somebody right, Ican't get a referral, instead of
me going to Google and typingin you know, estate planning
attorney in Charlotte, what I'mprobably going to do is open up
the ChatGPT app and ask what'sthe best estate planning
attorney in Charlotte?
Who is the best estate planningattorney in Charlotte?
And guess what?
Chatgpt is going to spit out ananswer, and it's usually you
(05:09):
know.
In my experience, it's usuallygive you maybe like three or so
names and then it'll say do youwant more?
But like, obviously, if you canbe in that top three that is
named by ChatGPT, that ismassive, huge.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
Yeah, there are two things that you really need to
know about legal marketing.
One you probably already knowif you've been a longtime
listener of the Law forMarketing Minute, which is that
there's so much that goes intomarketing.
There's so many differentchannels, so many different
strategies it can be a headache,I get it.
The second thing you need toknow is that our listeners
actually get an exclusive offerwith our services.
(05:50):
It's one free month, completelyfree of marketing services.
What you got to do to claimthis offer is to check the
description of the podcast,click on the link and book your
call.
Just let them know that you area fan of the show and you can
type us up and all that.
I won't mind that.
Or you can go togrowmylawfirmfastcom that's
(06:12):
growmylawfirmfastcom and sign upthat way.
All right, let's get right backto the episode.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Even on an internal level, law firms are starting to
contact us at SpotlightMarketing and Branding and say,
hey, I was looking for amarketing company and I used
ChatGPT and it recommended youguys.
So, like we're seeing it, I'mhaving conversations with law
firms that are seeing it.
It is a massive change in howpeople find a law firm.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Sure, yeah, I mean, like you said, like we've seen
it internally ourselves andspeak to kind of like what's
going through, like what do youthink someone's going in and
saying like obviously, like hey,give me the three best lawyers
in Charlotte.
What is ChatGPT kind of givingthem?
(07:02):
Is it just giving them a listor is it explaining why, at the
best you know, it'll typicallygive a list and it will often
depending on and like.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
The funny thing about ChatGPT is it could give you a
different answer to the samequestion two days later, right?
So like honestly, I guess firsttakeaway here is, if you are
listening to this, like go onChatGPT right now and ask the
question, like let's say you'rea divorce attorney in San
Antonio, like pull up chat GPTright now and say who are the
(07:32):
you know, the top five divorceattorneys in San Antonio and run
that search a few times overthe next few days just to kind
of see what's out there.
Because it will sometimes, mike, it will sometimes just give
you a list and other times itwill kind of give you some more
context.
It'll maybe say, well, the mostaffordable option is this and
the highest reviewed option isthis, and so sometimes it will
(07:52):
give you more context.
But the bottom line is it isrecommending, it is giving you
names, and sometimes it willgive you the phone number or the
link to the website.
Or sometimes you have to scrolldown and there's usually a
little like a citations box thatyou can click on.
But like you can get trafficdirectly to your website from
ChatGPT.
(08:13):
So like here's the thing, likeokay, this is interesting.
But like what really matters tolaw firms is like, well, how do
we get recommended?
Sure, right, and so I want tospend a little bit of time
talking about that.
Again, we were just you know.
So the last few months we'vereally been doing a deep dive
into this at Spotlight Marketingand Branding.
(08:34):
For obvious reasons, this is amassive, really fast moving
change that's happening in thisindustry.
But we also were at aconference last week and a good
portion of it was kind of a deepdive into how this is all
working and so, like, thefundamental question is like,
how do you make sure chat gpt isrecommending your law firm?
Yeah, um, and I've got, I'vegot a few answers here, right,
because, um, for one thing, likeopen ai and and and google and
(09:00):
um, you know, elon musk, are notexactly revealing exactly how
the algorithm works, but therehas been a lot of research put
into this and the short versionis it uses something called
trust signals, right, so ChatGPTand the others work similarly,
but I'll just use ChatGPT that'swhat I personally use the most
has access to just abouteverything on the internet,
(09:21):
including social media sites,including forums like Reddit,
including blogs, websites,youtube, right, and so there's a
huge amount of information outthere and ChatGPT is crawling
that information and sort ofassimilating it.
But it also knows that not allcontent is equal right, and so
(09:43):
it has its process of kind ofdetermining what is more
trustworthy content.
So the idea is not only creatingcontent that ChatGPT is going
to index, but doing it in a waythat shows ChatGPT that your
content is reliable.
So there's something calledtrust signals and I'm just just
gonna run through I know thisisn't quite like our normal
(10:04):
format of a podcast, but I'mjust gonna kind of blast through
a few of these items and, ifyou're listening to this as a
law firm, think of this as alittle checklist.
And how are you doing on eachof these things?
So the first thing is your siteneeds to have high quality,
original content that lives onyour site and that really is
(10:27):
going to be in the form ofeither static pages on your
website or your blog or maybelike a video library.
But you need to haveauthoritative, high quality
content that you didn't justcopy paste and also just isn't
SEO spam, right?
It's actual content, written ina way that's going to be useful
(10:48):
for humans.
You put that information onyour website and now chat GPT is
going to consider that, like inits response.
The next thing is you reallywant to create thought
leadership.
Like chat GPT is very good atanalyzing, you know writing
patterns, speaking patterns andpulling in authoritative content
(11:08):
, and so when you're, whenyou're creating this content on
your website, um, you need to bedoing it from the perspective
of, like, positioning yourselfas a thought leader, right?
Not just like some guy who'sputting his thoughts out on the
internet, but like, speak, speakwith authority, write with
authority, like you guys arelawyers and you're great at what
you do and you want to write insuch a way because that matters
(11:30):
to ChatGPT.
Does that make sense so far?
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Yeah, it's funny because now it seems like the
huge shift here seems thatbefore you know, some people
would go to Google and theywould type in their questions to
get the answers.
Before you know, some peoplewould go to Google and they
would type in their questions toget the answers, but now it's
not only giving like.
Chatgpt is not only giving youthe answers to the questions
with the you know the contentcited, sourced, but it's also
(11:54):
reviewing that content itself.
So it's not just giving you alist of all these things, it's
actually giving you stuff that'slike no, this actually answers
your question.
Bingo, yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Correct, correct, correct.
So it's important that you havefresh content.
Chatgpt and the other AIplatforms you know are kind of
constantly updating, you know,pulling from new source material
, and it scores more highlyfresh content, right.
So something from five yearsago, even though and this is
(12:22):
interesting because it's alittle different for the search
engines right, you know you mayhave a blog that's killing it on
Google, but it's from fiveyears ago and that lack of
freshness really doesn't hurtyou all that much on Google.
But it does appear to be muchmore important to chat, gpt and
other AI platforms, that isfresh content, which makes sense
(12:45):
, right, because they'reconstantly trying to give you
the most up-to-date, accurateinformation.
And so it's important that youdon't just have content, but
that you have fresh content.
And that's why you know again,whether we do this for you or
you're doing it on your own oryou're doing it with another
agency.
It's important that you haveregular content coming on your
website new content, new, newvideos, new blogs.
It needs to be fresh content.
(13:05):
It also goes without sayingthat it needs to be accurate.
You don't want to putinformation that later turns out
to be factually incorrect.
That will hurt your trustsignals with these AI platforms.
So that's kind of I don't know,Call that some sort of like
foundational ideas.
You need to have good content,fresh content, original content.
(13:27):
But then I'm going to get intothe weeds a little bit and and
um, you know, this is, this iswhere it really gets fun, right?
Um?
So, for example, at spotlight,we create, you know, hundreds of
blogs every single month forfor law firms, and one of the
things we are doing now istweaking the formatting a little
bit, because the way you formatyour blogs again, if you're
(13:48):
working with us, we're going tobe doing this for you.
If not, you can do this on yourown.
But there's a few little likeformat tweaks you can make, and
the first is make the headlineof your blog a question, not a
statement Interesting.
So, for example, let's saywe're talking about estate
planning, instead of somethinglike three ways to get started
(14:13):
with estate planning in NorthCarolina, phrase it as a
question and say what are thethree first steps to building my
estate plan in North Carolina?
Question mark.
That, for whatever reason atthis point in time, is going to
get you more traction with theseAI search bots, which again
makes sense because, like,that's how people are typically
(14:36):
searching on ChatGPT.
So they're asking a question.
So you want to make your blogtitle, you want to format it
like a question, and then don'tjust go into your full like 500
word article.
Instead put sort of a littlesummary at the very top.
So, like you know, I like tolike put it in italics so it
like feels like a littleexecutive summary, but you're
(14:57):
basically giving the little TLDRright Too long, didn't read.
Like give like a two or threesentence summary of everything
you're going to say in your blog.
Again, chat gpt values thatsummary probably more than it
actually values all of thecontent in the blog.
So start with a question, give aquick little executive summary
and then, you know, include therest of your content.
(15:19):
Yeah and when.
What's cool about this?
Mike is like, not only is thisthe whole point of this
conversation is helping you getfound on ChatGPT, but this is
also just helpful for realhumans that happen to be on your
website, right, why make themread the entire 600 words if
they don't want to Give them theshort answer?
And then, for those that dowant all the details, cool, now
(15:41):
they can read the rest of theblog entry.
So what I like about this is,as we're optimizing content to
help lawyers get found onChatGPT, we're also just
creating a better userexperience, which is awesome.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Yeah, now, that reminds me so much because
obviously I spend a lot of timein social media, so what you're
saying is happening across theboard.
So if you're listening to this,you can't escape this.
This is happening across theboard, where you go onto any
social media platform right nowand type in a question and the
results you're going to get aregoing to try to match up your
(16:16):
question there and it's going totry to give you okay, this is
the question you're looking for.
Here's a specific video, orwhatever it is, that answers
that question.
Yeah, and, and I'm just verycurious to see, like, how
customer reviews come into play.
Yeah, right, because if it'scrawling the entire internet
like, wouldn't it go in findingthe best?
(16:38):
Wouldn't it go to the customerreviews and and and look there
yep, and, and that's perfect.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
That's.
Next item on the list here isChatGPT is looking for reviews?
Yeah, and they're looking for.
They want you to have not onlylike a good number of reviews,
but obviously they're lookingfor positive reviews.
If you have, you know, anaverage of 1.8 stars on Google,
that's gonna hurt yourlikelihood of ChatGPT
(17:03):
recommending you.
So it is important, as always,to ask for reviews to make it
easy for your clients to leavereviews as an important part of
the equation, along with havingverified listings on the major
platforms, namely Google, right,like, everybody should have
their GMB, google, my Businessprofile, you know, accurate,
(17:24):
with your correct phone number,correct website, correct address
and all of that.
And like, again, chatgpt isjust doing sort of you know,
doing its due diligence andmaking sure that, like, the
information on your profilematches the information on your
website, just to improve thechances of giving people like
accurate information.
So those are.
So, customer reviews is a bigone.
(17:45):
Um, making sure you have, uh,accurate information on on your
Google, my business platform andyour other social channels is a
big one.
A few more sort of liketechnical things here it's
important to have, um, you know,a secure protocol on your
website.
You know the HTTPS piece ofthis, which most law firms at
this point probably do.
Certainly all the clients we,you know, work with.
(18:06):
We create that level ofsecurity.
But if you don't have the SSLcertificate on your website,
chatgpt is going to considerthat a pretty significant strike
against you.
So again, hopefully everybodylistening to this already does.
But you know, if you want tocheck this, just go to your
website, go to your homepage andmake sure when you look in the
address bar that it says HTTPS,colon backslash.
(18:29):
You need that S to be there.
If not, it means you don't havean SSL certificate on your
website, which is going to hurtyour reliability as far as
ChatGPT is concerned.
A couple other technical piecesof this there's something called
a schema markup, which isbasically and I'm not a tech
person, I'm not a programmer,but it's basically, it is a
(18:50):
think of it as just sort of likean index that makes it easier
for search engines and chat GPTand others to quickly skim your
website, make sense of thecontent, make sense of the
structure.
It's something that happensbehind the scenes, but schema
markup is an extremely importantsort of technical piece that
(19:12):
needs to be there if you wantChatGPT to index your website,
so you want to make sure youhave schema markups on your
website.
If you're not sure how to checkthat, you know for our
listeners out there, I'd behappy to.
If you guys send us your URL,I'll have our ops team take a
quick look at your website.
We'll make sure that we've gotthe SSL certificate on there.
(19:33):
We can make sure that you'vegot schema on there and if not,
we'll tell you that and you know, then you can take it from
there.
But those are just a coupleboxes you need to check, and
then the sort of last big onethat I'll get into today is your
website loading time right.
You need your load time to be Idon't remember what the exact
number is, but basically yoursite needs to load quickly, sure
, and it also needs to bemobile-friendly.
(19:55):
If your site's notmobile-friendly, if it takes
forever to load, it may not beindexed at all by ChatGPT and
these other platforms.
So I'm going to just real quick, I'll just breeze through this
just to give you know, kind ofgive it all in one place.
But you need to have highquality, original on-site
content.
You need to create content thatpositions you as a thought
leader.
You need to be sure you haveaccurate information.
(20:17):
You need to be sure you havefresh content, like once a month
at minimum, you should beputting new content onto your
website.
You want to format your blogentries with a question in the
headline, phrase it as aquestion and then lead with a
short executive summary beforeyou get into your body content.
You want to make sure, asalways, you're going after
client reviews.
(20:37):
You want to be sure yourbusiness listings on GMB and on
your social media platforms areaccurate.
You got the correct mailingaddress, correct phone number,
correct website URL.
You need to be sure you havethe SSL security protocol on
your domain.
You want to have the schemamarkup capabilities on your
website and you want to makesure that your load time and
(21:00):
your site is mobile friendly.
If you do all that, you giveyourself a much, much better
chance of being recommended byChatGPT.
And I'm telling you, if you'rea business attorney in Charlotte
and you're showing up whensomeone goes to ChatGPT and says
who's the best businessattorney in Charlotte, it's
going to be worth a lot right?
We have clients that arealready reporting to us that
(21:21):
people are finding them throughChatGPT.
It's a big deal, um.
So you know whoever's listeningto this you know you've got
this opportunity right now.
Um, this is like the very, veryearly days.
Um, you know this opportunityhappened when google came out
right and it was like wow, if wecan find a way to, to, to get
on the top of google, um, youknow, it's going to be worth so
(21:41):
much money over time, and we'rekind of in a similar situation
right now.
So I just encourage everyonelistening to this to jump on it,
take it seriously and reach outto us if you want our help.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, like I said before,this is happening everywhere.
I know we were just talkingabout it with ChatGPT, but I'm
seeing it all over social media.
It's happening everywhere.
This is the shift.
You got to get on the trainbecause it's taking off real
fast.
But, danny, I appreciate allthat insight on the AI.
I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Yeah, great conversation.
Mike, thanks for having me,absolutely.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
All right, everyone listening.
Have a terrific day and we'llsee you next time.
Referrals are still the best place to get clients,
but if somebody did not knowsomeone, right, if there was not
a referral to be had, the nextthing most people were doing was
going to Google that is what'schanging.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Welcome to the Law Firm Marketing Minute, the go-to
podcast for solo and small lawfirms who want to level up.
We're excited for you to joinus this episode.
And remember if your law firmneeds more clients and better
clients, be sure to go togrowmylawfirmfastcom.
That's growmylawfirmfastcom,All right, let's get right into
(00:35):
the episode.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Hello everyone, welcome back to the Law Firm
Marketing Minute.
As always, I'm your host, mike,and I'm here with Danny, danny
Decker.
I know you guys are veryfamiliar with Danny.
Welcome back to the podcast.
Always good to be here and talkmarketing, mike.
Yes sir, yes sir, we're goingto get into some really cool
stuff, stuff that lawyers loveto talk about, stuff that they
(00:56):
might actually be a littleskeptical on, to be honest, and
it's AI.
I know that's such a buzzwordnowadays.
This is AI, oh, this is AI,everything's AI nowadays.
But very specifically, beforewe get into the first main kind
of point here that we want tomake, can you just kind of speak
to the audience about AI interms of why there's skepticism?
(01:19):
Obviously, a couple years agoor a year ago, there was that
big case where someone a lawyerused AI to help with their case,
and it quoted cases.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Yeah, it made something up, yeah it made stuff
up.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
So it hallucinated as we say yeah, so can you kind of
just speak to what you've seento kind of maybe ease their
minds a little bit.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Yeah, all right.
Well, let's do this, mike.
Let's distinguish between usingai for your practice, yeah, and
like using ai to, you know,create content or research,
whatever that's.
There's a whole conversation tobe had there.
That's good, um, and and,honestly, like that's probably
beyond the scope of what we cancover on this episode.
(02:01):
Sure, but the but the secondpiece of it is how people are
using tools like ChatGPT andGemini and Grok to find lawyers
and, as a marketing company,that's kind of the first place,
my mind goes.
So let's focus thisconversation around how AI is
(02:23):
changing the way people hirelawyers.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Does that sound good?
No, absolutely, and I thinkthat actually might give our
audience that kind of breath offresh air that they need.
You know, because now we'rekind of almost like flipping the
script.
Now it's not about like, hey,we're not saying to use AI with
your work, but we're saying, hey, here's how people are using AI
to find you.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Like clearly there are opportunities to use AI in
your practice.
Clearly, and also clearly thereare things to be cautious about
.
But you know the reality andthis is more where I spend my
time, you know, as I'm thinkingabout marketing and helping law
firms grow is there has beenthis like pretty radical change
in how people find lawyers withthe emergence of chat, gpt and
(03:04):
Gemini, and and and like.
The really short version is youknow people were going to
Google Yep If they didn't like.
Let's start here First off, theway everyone prefers to hire a
lawyer is is through a referral.
Sure, right, like best casescenario, if I have to go hire a
lawyer, I want somebody that Ialready know, like and trust to
(03:25):
refer me to somebody, somebodythat you know, gets it done
which?
by the way, is the reason why weaim a lot of the marketing we
do for law firms at helping themgenerate referrals, because
referrals are the way to go.
Sure, and guess what?
I don't think ChatGPT or Grokor really any of these AI
platforms are going to changethat.
Referrals are still the bestplace to get clients, but if
(03:47):
somebody did not know someoneright, if there was not a
referral to be had, the nextthing most people were doing was
going to Google.
That is what's changing.
There is a lot of data all overthe map on this.
I was just at a conference lastweek and we did a pretty deep
dive into this, but, dependingon what studies you listen to,
(04:08):
anywhere from like 10% to maybeas high as 50% of what used to
be Google search traffic is nowgoing to AI tools like ChatGPT
or Google Gemini or Grok orwhatever else.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
That's significant.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
That's huge.
That's huge, it's massive.
And listen, even if it's only10% or 15%, it's still massive.
Sure, but it's also onlygrowing as people adapt and
start using ChatGPT.
And so what that looks likepractically is, if I'm looking
for an estate planning attorneyand I don't already know
somebody right, I can't get areferral attorney and I don't
(04:47):
already know somebody right, Ican't get a referral, instead of
me going to Google and typingin you know, estate planning
attorney in Charlotte, what I'mprobably going to do is open up
the ChatGPT app and ask what'sthe best estate planning
attorney in Charlotte?
Who is the best estate planningattorney in Charlotte?
And guess what?
Chatgpt is going to spit out ananswer, and it's usually you
(05:09):
know.
In my experience, it's usuallygive you maybe like three or so
names and then it'll say do youwant more?
But like, obviously, if you canbe in that top three that is
named by ChatGPT, that ismassive, huge.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
Yeah, there are two things that you really need to
know about legal marketing.
One you probably already knowif you've been a longtime
listener of the Law forMarketing Minute, which is that
there's so much that goes intomarketing.
There's so many differentchannels, so many different
strategies it can be a headache,I get it.
The second thing you need toknow is that our listeners
actually get an exclusive offerwith our services.
(05:50):
It's one free month, completelyfree of marketing services.
What you got to do to claimthis offer is to check the
description of the podcast,click on the link and book your
call.
Just let them know that you area fan of the show and you can
type us up and all that.
I won't mind that.
Or you can go togrowmylawfirmfastcom that's
(06:12):
growmylawfirmfastcom and sign upthat way.
All right, let's get right backto the episode.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Even on an internal level, law firms are starting to
contact us at SpotlightMarketing and Branding and say,
hey, I was looking for amarketing company and I used
ChatGPT and it recommended youguys.
So, like we're seeing it, I'mhaving conversations with law
firms that are seeing it.
It is a massive change in howpeople find a law firm.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Sure, yeah, I mean, like you said, like we've seen
it internally ourselves andspeak to kind of like what's
going through, like what do youthink someone's going in and
saying like obviously, like hey,give me the three best lawyers
in Charlotte.
What is ChatGPT kind of givingthem?
(07:02):
Is it just giving them a listor is it explaining why, at the
best you know, it'll typicallygive a list and it will often
depending on and like.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
The funny thing about ChatGPT is it could give you a
different answer to the samequestion two days later, right?
So like honestly, I guess firsttakeaway here is, if you are
listening to this, like go onChatGPT right now and ask the
question, like let's say you'rea divorce attorney in San
Antonio, like pull up chat GPTright now and say who are the
(07:32):
you know, the top five divorceattorneys in San Antonio and run
that search a few times overthe next few days just to kind
of see what's out there.
Because it will sometimes, mike, it will sometimes just give
you a list and other times itwill kind of give you some more
context.
It'll maybe say, well, the mostaffordable option is this and
the highest reviewed option isthis, and so sometimes it will
(07:52):
give you more context.
But the bottom line is it isrecommending, it is giving you
names, and sometimes it willgive you the phone number or the
link to the website.
Or sometimes you have to scrolldown and there's usually a
little like a citations box thatyou can click on.
But like you can get trafficdirectly to your website from
ChatGPT.
(08:13):
So like here's the thing, likeokay, this is interesting.
But like what really matters tolaw firms is like, well, how do
we get recommended?
Sure, right, and so I want tospend a little bit of time
talking about that.
Again, we were just you know.
So the last few months we'vereally been doing a deep dive
into this at Spotlight Marketingand Branding.
(08:34):
For obvious reasons, this is amassive, really fast moving
change that's happening in thisindustry.
But we also were at aconference last week and a good
portion of it was kind of a deepdive into how this is all
working and so, like, thefundamental question is like,
how do you make sure chat gpt isrecommending your law firm?
Yeah, um, and I've got, I'vegot a few answers here, right,
because, um, for one thing, likeopen ai and and and google and
(09:00):
um, you know, elon musk, are notexactly revealing exactly how
the algorithm works, but therehas been a lot of research put
into this and the short versionis it uses something called
trust signals, right, so ChatGPTand the others work similarly,
but I'll just use ChatGPT that'swhat I personally use the most
has access to just abouteverything on the internet,
(09:21):
including social media sites,including forums like Reddit,
including blogs, websites,youtube, right, and so there's a
huge amount of information outthere and ChatGPT is crawling
that information and sort ofassimilating it.
But it also knows that not allcontent is equal right, and so
(09:43):
it has its process of kind ofdetermining what is more
trustworthy content.
So the idea is not only creatingcontent that ChatGPT is going
to index, but doing it in a waythat shows ChatGPT that your
content is reliable.
So there's something calledtrust signals and I'm just just
gonna run through I know thisisn't quite like our normal
(10:04):
format of a podcast, but I'mjust gonna kind of blast through
a few of these items and, ifyou're listening to this as a
law firm, think of this as alittle checklist.
And how are you doing on eachof these things?
So the first thing is your siteneeds to have high quality,
original content that lives onyour site and that really is
(10:27):
going to be in the form ofeither static pages on your
website or your blog or maybelike a video library.
But you need to haveauthoritative, high quality
content that you didn't justcopy paste and also just isn't
SEO spam, right?
It's actual content, written ina way that's going to be useful
(10:48):
for humans.
You put that information onyour website and now chat GPT is
going to consider that, like inits response.
The next thing is you reallywant to create thought
leadership.
Like chat GPT is very good atanalyzing, you know writing
patterns, speaking patterns andpulling in authoritative content
(11:08):
, and so when you're, whenyou're creating this content on
your website, um, you need to bedoing it from the perspective
of, like, positioning yourselfas a thought leader, right?
Not just like some guy who'sputting his thoughts out on the
internet, but like, speak, speakwith authority, write with
authority, like you guys arelawyers and you're great at what
you do and you want to write insuch a way because that matters
(11:30):
to ChatGPT.
Does that make sense so far?
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Yeah, it's funny because now it seems like the
huge shift here seems thatbefore you know, some people
would go to Google and theywould type in their questions to
get the answers.
Before you know, some peoplewould go to Google and they
would type in their questions toget the answers, but now it's
not only giving like.
Chatgpt is not only giving youthe answers to the questions
with the you know the contentcited, sourced, but it's also
(11:54):
reviewing that content itself.
So it's not just giving you alist of all these things, it's
actually giving you stuff that'slike no, this actually answers
your question.
Bingo, yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Correct, correct, correct.
So it's important that you havefresh content.
Chatgpt and the other AIplatforms you know are kind of
constantly updating, you know,pulling from new source material
, and it scores more highlyfresh content, right.
So something from five yearsago, even though and this is
(12:22):
interesting because it's alittle different for the search
engines right, you know you mayhave a blog that's killing it on
Google, but it's from fiveyears ago and that lack of
freshness really doesn't hurtyou all that much on Google.
But it does appear to be muchmore important to chat, gpt and
other AI platforms, that isfresh content, which makes sense
(12:45):
, right, because they'reconstantly trying to give you
the most up-to-date, accurateinformation.
And so it's important that youdon't just have content, but
that you have fresh content.
And that's why you know again,whether we do this for you or
you're doing it on your own oryou're doing it with another
agency.
It's important that you haveregular content coming on your
website new content, new, newvideos, new blogs.
It needs to be fresh content.
(13:05):
It also goes without sayingthat it needs to be accurate.
You don't want to putinformation that later turns out
to be factually incorrect.
That will hurt your trustsignals with these AI platforms.
So that's kind of I don't know,Call that some sort of like
foundational ideas.
You need to have good content,fresh content, original content.
(13:27):
But then I'm going to get intothe weeds a little bit and and
um, you know, this is, this iswhere it really gets fun, right?
Um?
So, for example, at spotlight,we create, you know, hundreds of
blogs every single month forfor law firms, and one of the
things we are doing now istweaking the formatting a little
bit, because the way you formatyour blogs again, if you're
(13:48):
working with us, we're going tobe doing this for you.
If not, you can do this on yourown.
But there's a few little likeformat tweaks you can make, and
the first is make the headlineof your blog a question, not a
statement Interesting.
So, for example, let's saywe're talking about estate
planning, instead of somethinglike three ways to get started
(14:13):
with estate planning in NorthCarolina, phrase it as a
question and say what are thethree first steps to building my
estate plan in North Carolina?
Question mark.
That, for whatever reason atthis point in time, is going to
get you more traction with theseAI search bots, which again
makes sense because, like,that's how people are typically
(14:36):
searching on ChatGPT.
So they're asking a question.
So you want to make your blogtitle, you want to format it
like a question, and then don'tjust go into your full like 500
word article.
Instead put sort of a littlesummary at the very top.
So, like you know, I like tolike put it in italics so it
like feels like a littleexecutive summary, but you're
(14:57):
basically giving the little TLDRright Too long, didn't read.
Like give like a two or threesentence summary of everything
you're going to say in your blog.
Again, chat gpt values thatsummary probably more than it
actually values all of thecontent in the blog.
So start with a question, give aquick little executive summary
and then, you know, include therest of your content.
(15:19):
Yeah and when.
What's cool about this?
Mike is like, not only is thisthe whole point of this
conversation is helping you getfound on ChatGPT, but this is
also just helpful for realhumans that happen to be on your
website, right, why make themread the entire 600 words if
they don't want to Give them theshort answer?
And then, for those that dowant all the details, cool, now
(15:41):
they can read the rest of theblog entry.
So what I like about this is,as we're optimizing content to
help lawyers get found onChatGPT, we're also just
creating a better userexperience, which is awesome.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Yeah, now, that reminds me so much because
obviously I spend a lot of timein social media, so what you're
saying is happening across theboard.
So if you're listening to this,you can't escape this.
This is happening across theboard, where you go onto any
social media platform right nowand type in a question and the
results you're going to get aregoing to try to match up your
(16:16):
question there and it's going totry to give you okay, this is
the question you're looking for.
Here's a specific video, orwhatever it is, that answers
that question.
Yeah, and, and I'm just verycurious to see, like, how
customer reviews come into play.
Yeah, right, because if it'scrawling the entire internet
like, wouldn't it go in findingthe best?
(16:38):
Wouldn't it go to the customerreviews and and and look there
yep, and, and that's perfect.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
That's.
Next item on the list here isChatGPT is looking for reviews?
Yeah, and they're looking for.
They want you to have not onlylike a good number of reviews,
but obviously they're lookingfor positive reviews.
If you have, you know, anaverage of 1.8 stars on Google,
that's gonna hurt yourlikelihood of ChatGPT
(17:03):
recommending you.
So it is important, as always,to ask for reviews to make it
easy for your clients to leavereviews as an important part of
the equation, along with havingverified listings on the major
platforms, namely Google, right,like, everybody should have
their GMB, google, my Businessprofile, you know, accurate,
(17:24):
with your correct phone number,correct website, correct address
and all of that.
And like, again, chatgpt isjust doing sort of you know,
doing its due diligence andmaking sure that, like, the
information on your profilematches the information on your
website, just to improve thechances of giving people like
accurate information.
So those are.
So, customer reviews is a bigone.
(17:45):
Um, making sure you have, uh,accurate information on on your
Google, my business platform andyour other social channels is a
big one.
A few more sort of liketechnical things here it's
important to have, um, you know,a secure protocol on your
website.
You know the HTTPS piece ofthis, which most law firms at
this point probably do.
Certainly all the clients we,you know, work with.
(18:06):
We create that level ofsecurity.
But if you don't have the SSLcertificate on your website,
chatgpt is going to considerthat a pretty significant strike
against you.
So again, hopefully everybodylistening to this already does.
But you know, if you want tocheck this, just go to your
website, go to your homepage andmake sure when you look in the
address bar that it says HTTPS,colon backslash.
(18:29):
You need that S to be there.
If not, it means you don't havean SSL certificate on your
website, which is going to hurtyour reliability as far as
ChatGPT is concerned.
A couple other technical piecesof this there's something called
a schema markup, which isbasically and I'm not a tech
person, I'm not a programmer,but it's basically, it is a
(18:50):
think of it as just sort of likean index that makes it easier
for search engines and chat GPTand others to quickly skim your
website, make sense of thecontent, make sense of the
structure.
It's something that happensbehind the scenes, but schema
markup is an extremely importantsort of technical piece that
(19:12):
needs to be there if you wantChatGPT to index your website,
so you want to make sure youhave schema markups on your
website.
If you're not sure how to checkthat, you know for our
listeners out there, I'd behappy to.
If you guys send us your URL,I'll have our ops team take a
quick look at your website.
We'll make sure that we've gotthe SSL certificate on there.
(19:33):
We can make sure that you'vegot schema on there and if not,
we'll tell you that and you know, then you can take it from
there.
But those are just a coupleboxes you need to check, and
then the sort of last big onethat I'll get into today is your
website loading time right.
You need your load time to be Idon't remember what the exact
number is, but basically yoursite needs to load quickly, sure
, and it also needs to bemobile-friendly.
(19:55):
If your site's notmobile-friendly, if it takes
forever to load, it may not beindexed at all by ChatGPT and
these other platforms.
So I'm going to just real quick, I'll just breeze through this
just to give you know, kind ofgive it all in one place.
But you need to have highquality, original on-site
content.
You need to create content thatpositions you as a thought
leader.
You need to be sure you haveaccurate information.
(20:17):
You need to be sure you havefresh content, like once a month
at minimum, you should beputting new content onto your
website.
You want to format your blogentries with a question in the
headline, phrase it as aquestion and then lead with a
short executive summary beforeyou get into your body content.
You want to make sure, asalways, you're going after
client reviews.
(20:37):
You want to be sure yourbusiness listings on GMB and on
your social media platforms areaccurate.
You got the correct mailingaddress, correct phone number,
correct website URL.
You need to be sure you havethe SSL security protocol on
your domain.
You want to have the schemamarkup capabilities on your
website and you want to makesure that your load time and
(21:00):
your site is mobile friendly.
If you do all that, you giveyourself a much, much better
chance of being recommended byChatGPT.
And I'm telling you, if you'rea business attorney in Charlotte
and you're showing up whensomeone goes to ChatGPT and says
who's the best businessattorney in Charlotte, it's
going to be worth a lot right?
We have clients that arealready reporting to us that
(21:21):
people are finding them throughChatGPT.
It's a big deal, um.
So you know whoever's listeningto this you know you've got
this opportunity right now.
Um, this is like the very, veryearly days.
Um, you know this opportunityhappened when google came out
right and it was like wow, if wecan find a way to, to, to get
on the top of google, um, youknow, it's going to be worth so
(21:41):
much money over time, and we'rekind of in a similar situation
right now.
So I just encourage everyonelistening to this to jump on it,
take it seriously and reach outto us if you want our help.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, like I said before,this is happening everywhere.
I know we were just talkingabout it with ChatGPT, but I'm
seeing it all over social media.
It's happening everywhere.
This is the shift.
You got to get on the trainbecause it's taking off real
fast.
But, danny, I appreciate allthat insight on the AI.
I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Yeah, great conversation.
Mike, thanks for having me,absolutely.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
All right, everyone listening.
Have a terrific day and we'llsee you next time.
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