Mastering Digital Marketing for Trial Lawyers | Kelly Gordon (SEO + Digital Marketing Specialist)

You can't rank for what doesn't exist.

The world of online marketing can seem overwhelming, complicated and exploitive: as lawyers, we know that we're targets for agencies and consultants who see our profession and think $$$.

Nevertheless, digital marketing is an area you can't ignore. Fortunately, it's also one where you can hit the ground running and quickly start punching above your weight.

But you have to get started.

Kelly Gordon is founder & CEO of Dapper Codes, a digital marketing strategy firm. She joins us today to give us direction on how to find your niche as a trial lawyer, the importance of leaning into that niche, having clarity and consistency in your message, what works for SEO in 2026, and how it's all being impacted by AI.

Just like with trial lawyers helping those hurt from no fault of their own, the work Kelly and her firm do for small businesses has tremendous, meaningful impact: helping one business owner can impact an entire family. 

Make sure the people who need your help know that you're out there.

"You can get a lot of people's attention, but if that attention doesn't resonate, then they're not going to buy, and then none of it makes sense. So, 'Who are you? Why do you do what you do? And what is it that you do exactly right?'" - Kelly Gordon

In this episode, we discuss:

◼️ The distinction between marketing and visibility.
◼️ Why search engine optimization is just scratching the surface.
◼️ How AI has impacted traditional search results.
◼️ How to make sure that people know you are an option for what they need.
◼️ Why FAQ sections are more important than ever.
◼️ Identifying your unfair advantage and leaning into it.

Chapters

00:00 The Importance of Digital Marketing for Small Businesses
06:11 Building a Strong Online Presence
09:05 Understanding Marketing vs. Visibility
11:56 Choosing the Right Digital Marketing Agency
15:10 Leveraging Free Tools for Visibility
18:05 Content Creation and SEO Strategies
21:08 The Role of AI in Digital Marketing
24:00 Finding Your Unfair Advantage
27:04 Navigating the Digital Marketing Landscape
30:06 Long-Term Strategies for Success

Courtroom Stories & Tactics | RVA Trial Lawyers
Available on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, and at RVATrialLawyers.com 

Based out of Richmond, Virginia, Courtroom Stories & Tactics by RVA Trial Lawyers exists for lawyers who try cases to juries on behalf of people. Through our podcast, we hope to learn from them, support them, connect them, inspire them, and preserve their work for future trial lawyers.

If you are willing, we would greatly appreciate it if you left us a 5-Star Google Review by clicking here. Your review will help people find us.

Thank you!

Sharif Gray and Nael Abouzaki

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

As you've gotten more into your career, what you're going to realize whether you want to admit it or not is there is a certain type of case that you nail for whatever reason. There is a certain set of things that align that you kill it on. That's what you build it around. Because it's not that you can't help the others, but you know with almost without a shadow of a doubt that you can nail this thing, that's what you go after.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

This is Courtroom Stories and Tactics by RVA trial lawyers, hosted by Sharif Gray and Niall Abuzaki. Gray and Niall Abuzaki.

SPEAKER_03 0:39

All right, before we get into the podcast episode, I want to take a minute or two and introduce you to a friend and colleague, Jenny Shadini. Jenny is a former prosecutor from Baltimore City, and now she works as a settlement consultant. We work with her often on helping our clients really maximize their results. Jenny, it's really great working with you and having you as a supporter of the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

Thank you, Sharif. Hi everyone. My name is Jenny Shadini, and I work as a settlement consultant, which means I work with attorneys and their clients in various settlement planning needs, such as structured settlements, whether or not to utilize a trust, how to protect government benefits, and overall providing financial security to your clients.

SPEAKER_03 1:20

And Jenny, how can people get a hold of you?

SPEAKER_01 1:22

The best way to reach me would be my cell, which is 301-332-1031. Again, that's 301-332-1031.

SPEAKER_03 1:35

All right, we're back. And today I am super excited to have Kelly Gordon with Dapper Codes join us. Kelly and I have worked together for a few years now, and Kelly does a lot of digital marketing work, has certainly helped our podcast, has certainly helped our firm at times create that digital presence in a meaningful way that allows for prospective clients to not just see the work that we do, but see kind of who we are. And so Kelly, I'm super excited to have you. One thing I want to share before we kind of dive into it is I remember when you and I first started working, I was like, wait, how does she do this all by herself? Like I didn't, I hadn't know I looked at your website and I was like, is it just Kelly? Because I mean, the work was happening, there's a lot of stuff going on. And it wasn't for months until I realized, I think you slip somewhere and you're like, oh yeah, I've got a team of like 16 people, right? And I'm sure it's probably more now, right? So, anyways, for the longest time I thought you were just like doing this on your own, which is to me was insane. But before we get into it, why don't you take 30 seconds, a minute or so, introduce yourself.

SPEAKER_02 2:42

Absolutely. So Kelly Gordon, CEO, founder of Dabra Codes, uh, been doing this for almost 20 years now, which is a little crazy, but here we are. And uh originally got into it. So this was before ads was a thing, this was before Facebook, all of that. Web design development, SEO. We got into all of the ads for a long period of time, and now we are doing the one thing that we've done the longest and we're the best at, which is SEO, how to get businesses found online and get those customers connected.

SPEAKER_03 3:07

Let me take you back to the decision point that you had when it came to deciding to pursue this type of work. Can you share that story with us?

SPEAKER_02 3:16

Yeah, that takes me back. I remember I was 16, I was working on a horse farm. I was competing very heavily my entire life with horses. And for anybody that knows what that life is like, it's incredibly physically demanding. I it was incredibly lucky, all of that, but it was very physically demanding. And my dad said to me, he was at a carpenter, he did construction, and then he moved when he couldn't do that kind of stuff anymore to antique restoration and then custom cabinet creation. And he said to me, I want for you to work with your mind and not your body. And I'm not gonna lie, it took me about a decade to really come around to that, but it still sticks with me today of what that truly means and the changes of your in your life, what that could be. And for me, that changed the trajectory of where I went to school and what I did after and you know, kind of how I got here. His business ultimately failed when we moved. I was young at the time, and I know that I at this point in my life I could have helped that not happen. And like for me, that's such a big driving factor of like helping small businesses get found. If you're not found, you don't have customers, and if you don't have customers, you can't support your families, and that can mean all sorts of things. So for me, that that one phrase, this was I was 16, uh many years ago, I'm gonna do the math in my head, but it still sticks with me today of like why I choose to do the thing that I do.

SPEAKER_03 4:37

And what is it about small businesses that gets you going?

SPEAKER_02 4:41

The cool thing to me is the impact, right? So, you know, when you work with a a business, we have worked with businesses of all sizes, but I love small business because if I help one business owner, I've helped their whole family, right? I've helped put their kids through college, I've helped the life that they have learned to live and grow up and then their children, the spider web of all the people that they employ, all of the contractors that everybody. Like you can truly help so many people through one entity, through helping a small business. And to me, that it doesn't get better than that.

SPEAKER_03 5:12

A couple things on that. So what I look at, when I look at like digital marketing and SEO and all that, in some respects, and I know there's I don't know how true what I'm about to say is, but it's a great equalizer, right? Like the biggest law firm in the world gets a line on Google. Well, guess what? They only get one line, right? The next line can be a small mom and pop type law firm. So in some ways, I granted there's a lot more that of course goes into that, uh, but in some ways, helping people, or especially people in our profession, trial lawyers, get seen from that digital front is is massive. One other thing I want to mention before I forget is I think you do more than just help the family and the employees, right? You're also helping the prospective clients. And at least with the work that our firm does, I mean, we're talking about people who've been hurt and no fault of their own. They've never been through anything like this in their life before, and now they are suddenly faced with an insurance company that's not treating them up fairly, or at least that's how they perceive it, which and I I mean to be candid, I mean it's damn near always true. It's very it's probably true. I wouldn't be a have a job if insurance companies paid full and fair value right off the bat, right? So but you're helping connect them with hopefully qualified counsel who cares. And there's a lot to that, right? Because, I mean, personal injury, I mean, you can't get in your car and drive around any sort of major highway or city and not get bombarded with stuff on the radio, billboards, all that. It's everywhere. And how does somebody distinguish or differentiate between the law firm with the lawyers who care and are gonna make a difference for them, and then the settlement mill that's gonna take their file and just churn it, right? And so you're helping connect those people with hopefully competent counsel that cares. And I think that's massive. It's incredibly, incredibly important.

SPEAKER_02 7:10

Yeah, like we want to work with and have made choices to either be if we did not realize it at the time, to let clients go or not get involved if they are not the best. You know what I mean? Like, I want to work with clients and especially lawyers as a whole situation that literally have the individual that they represent's best interest at heart. That can be, it's such a predatory field in general, that it it is of course up to the law firm and the people that are a part of it to put out in the world who they are and why they serve, which is a whole thing we'll kind of get into of the difference of the bridge of marketing and messaging into sales, right? Like, how do we make that work in any sort of way and actually communicate who we are? But, you know, wanting to work with people who have a really strong moral compass, like yourself, who are like, you know, we are doing this for a specific reason, and it is the people that we can connect with you, right? Like that's essentially the goal.

SPEAKER_03 8:08

A few years ago, there was a good friend of mine, well, still is a good friend of mine. He I remember him talking to me about marketing, which is a word I don't really care for, but it's a word that we use and it makes sense. And what I typically prefer instead of marketing is making yourself an option for people. And I remember my friend saying, Shereef, like, if you aren't willing to put yourself out there to market, to make yourself an option, and you believe you provide a good service, and you're not out there, right? People can't find you. Well, then shame on you. He said, because that means that there are people who need you, but they're stuck calling the 1888, who knows when when whatever the uh the slogan is, right? Like, and so I've embraced that, and I think at least I've tried to really kind of follow your advice and present myself. I don't say, look at me, I'm the best. At least I hope that's not my message. It's this is who I am. I think we do a good job, we care about what we do, we do get good results, we're honest, we're compassionate and hardworking, and we're not saying you need to hire us, but we just want you to know that if you need us, we're here and we're happy to chat with you. We're an option. And I understand that you guys, that's what we're gonna talk about in large part today is it's not just rankings for SEO, right? Just because you show up, number one, doesn't mean that the prospective client is going to one, even click, right? And two, actually be interested enough to actually call, send a message, send an email for a consultation to even occur. So let's get into that.

SPEAKER_02 9:44

There's a very big difference in visibility and actual conversions of market share. That is the difference and the bridge of what marketing or visibility can do. There's a lot of misconception of what marketing's job is, which we can get into. Marketing's job is visibility. You said it right. Like I am an option, I am here. How many platforms has that happened on? And then the messaging, who I am, why I do what I do, and the benefits that I've helped people with, especially in your case, right? Those case studies, the every single day I'm here to help, especially in your industry, and then saying, how do we actually close that? All three of those are very different things. Most people think that's just quote marketing, but it is three very distinct pieces.

SPEAKER_03 10:29

For the personal injury lawyer, and I've heard lawyers say what I'm about to say, who they know that the digital marketing is important, right? And then I I think it's incredibly important, especially nowadays. We're all on our phones, we're on our computers, right? Your website is your front door, right? Like it has to be there. And if you don't have that, well then you're you're missing out. But there are a lot of lawyers, and I certainly have peers who say, you know what, I'm not even gonna dip my toe in that water because it's just too expensive. What do you tell those people?

SPEAKER_02 10:59

That's a little too pronged when you talk to somebody like me in the industry, right? So I think you and I have talked a little bit about this. Is there are, I'm gonna get really in a lot of trouble with other agencies about this, but there there are digital agencies that go into certain industries because you can charge them more, right? Lawyers and personal injury lawyers are one of them. They are seen as they make a lot of money for this, which means if I can get them more visibility, the upside is huge, they should pay me more. I don't believe that that is true. I believe that the work is the work, and what goes into the work is what should be paid, right? That is very, very different. Like I said, it can get me in trouble in the marketing space, but that is what's true. And so if it is costing an arm and a leg, talk to other people. Literally. Like it shouldn't, in my opinion. There are certain things that have to happen. In my world, we're talking about web design development and design and SEO, which are very tangible things. There's a certain amount of work that goes into it for the things that come out of it. So that's really my we can get into that more if you want, but that's my recommendation is start shopping around.

SPEAKER_03 12:03

So that's kind of the same problem that even people have trying to find us, right? It's or find a doctor, right? You don't know if they're any good. That's right. How do you figure that out? Like, how do you figure out, like, okay, what SEO company should I be looking for? Like, oh, how do I make the decision and differentiate between all the different competing agencies? Because especially in the legal space, I mean, they're tons and they're all wildly expensive.

SPEAKER_02 12:28

Right. And there's tons of options. I actually recently found myself in this situation trying to find a bookkeeper, and it really made me like figure out like I don't have the background of a bookkeeper or accountant to understand when I look at something to say, hey, this is a problem, right? Like you could probably look at um, or anybody listening to this, you know, a personal injury attorney or lawsuit or file and say, these are the missing pieces. Right. We can look at that. I can look at digital marketing and say, these are the missing pieces. But you're asking, what do we do if we don't have that knowledge? The best advice that I can give you is A, look around, okay? B, look at the case studies. Look at the age of the case studies, look at the date ranges of the case studies, see if there is any sort of video of the owner that is talking about the results of those case studies. It can be very easy, especially in digital marketing. This happens a lot in agency world, of having a really strong three to six months and then it falls off. Their attention's gone elsewhere, it's really hard to maintain, that kind of thing. We want people that have a very consistent track record over that period of time. We want a very large retention base of the agency. And agency world is just me being honest. They're the churn is insane for most agencies because they are quote churning and burning. You've got really, really exaggerated advertising on the front, which brings in large amounts of people. They have a whole set or sales process, they close a percentage of them, they close them on a retainer at first. We don't do any of that, we do projects at first because you can't go into a retainer until you know certain things, right? But that's like being able to poke holes in it. If the first thing that somebody wants to sell you is a very, very expensive retainer, go talk to other people.

SPEAKER_03 14:11

No, uh, that makes sense. And and I mean, I'll be candid, like I've dabbled in the SEO world for years now, and it's it's not easy. Like it's really not easy. I mean, you were introduced to me by a different provider, and I'm glad that happened because otherwise, like in the legal world, I I have been, and I'm sure many other lawyers, especially in the personal injury space, are bombarded by it's constantly. Yeah, just it's bombarded and it's expensive. Like you can't, I don't think you can get in with any of these other firms for less than 10 grand a month. Yeah, which is just wild. And it's and coming back to what the question that prompted this, like it just doesn't, it's not feasible, especially for the two, three lawyer shop, right? It just doesn't make sense. Right. But anyways, well let's where do we want to dig into a little bit more? I mean, sh let's talk about the visibility piece. As a personal injury lawyer, how does one start to make traction in the visibility space in spite of the massive, huge budget, kind of um 800-pound gorilla in the room, personal injury firms in their market?

SPEAKER_02 15:17

Absolutely. So if I woke up tomorrow as a personal injury lawyer, well, what I do, I have in that realm zero understanding. Like, you can't Google me in there and I'm a personal injury lawyer. What do I do? The first thing that I'm going to do doesn't actually cost money, it costs time. That's where you're gonna start building your social profiles. You're looking at Facebook, you're looking at LinkedIn, you're looking at Instagram. Okay, you can post the same thing across those to get started. Don't make it complicated. So creative repositioning, so this goes into a little bit that we talked about before. We do more than just SEO. So the idea is you can get a lot of people's attention, but if that attention doesn't resonate, then they're not going to buy, and then none of it makes sense. Okay. So there is an idea of branding and messaging being very specific. And the branding and messaging around you would be very different than say if I was a personal engineer lawyer or somebody else. And it should be. It shouldn't just be, you know, I'm the car accident attorney. It shouldn't just be on the motorcycle. Like it has to be more in depth than that. Who are you? Why do you do what you do? And what is it that you do exactly? Right? So that's that niche within a niche. I would head that direction with organic written content, very similarly to what you do on LinkedIn every day. Like I see that. If anybody needs to follow anything for quote free, of course, time, follow what he's doing on LinkedIn. All right, like that's a visibility piece on organic. You can do the same thing on Instagram, you can do the same thing on Facebook. All right, we can get into like logistics of finding people, adding people, and all that kind of stuff, but that's where I would start. As far as what am I gonna do organic-wise, absolutely your Google Business profile, and I would start working on my SEO on the site. If I don't have that, so the way that this works is the website itself is like the anchor. Okay, that's where AI, GBP, all of that is getting its information of who and what to share. The website is the anchor. The information has to be there in a way that makes sense. You can Google these things, you can whatever, or you work with somebody, right? Who am I? What do I do? And then how do you get in touch with me? Those are the best key pieces. Keep it simple at first. Then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go over to GBP. I'm literally gonna take, say what you've posted on LinkedIn, I'm gonna put it on GBP every single day as well. Just gonna put it on GPT.

SPEAKER_03 17:24

You explain what GBP is?

SPEAKER_02 17:25

Sorry, GBP is Google Business Profile. So that's the maps pack that everybody hears about, right? Like, so if I Google personal injury attorney near me on mobile, it's gonna come up and I can click it and then it goes on the maps desktop. I think it shows up just below PPC, right?

SPEAKER_03 17:40

So that's it's huge, right? I mean, I when I well, actually, you know what's crazy? I told this to my wife the other day. I like don't really Google stuff anymore. Now it's all chat GPT. Like I'm finding myself doing that, but before that, I mean, where do I want to go to eat? Well, restaurants near me, and what are my eyes going towards are going towards those first three results under the map, right? And I'm looking for the reviews and all that stuff, right?

SPEAKER_02 18:05

Yep. And so the website is the anchor. The Google Business Profile in AI is visibility of the organic rankings. That's where AI is getting its information from, which is why we start there. There's no, this is a really good thing to talk about. There's no quote optimizing for AI. So, like, you know, companies that are like, we are SEO companies and we now have this package for AI, they're taking you for a ride. It's the same thing.

SPEAKER_03 18:32

It's the E-A-T, right? What is that? That's the expertise. What does that acronym stand for? Is that still relevant?

SPEAKER_02 18:39

It's still relevant in a sense. I think it complicates it a little bit. Um literally, what you have to think about is visibility. So it's where can people find me? We're taking your LinkedIn, we're looking at the website as an anchor, and we're looking at the GBP profile. That's gonna be the start of your visibility. And remember, guys, Instagram now is SEOable. It ranks. So we want that content also in a perfect world to be written in that way. So there's an SEO piece as well, it can be. But we take that information, and what Google does is if you put it in AI or if you put it in Google, the same type of thing is happening. It's just discerning where those signals are coming from. It's getting a little bit more smart, in my opinion, on how it's determining those signals. So there was a very beginning AI period of time where you could, and people did, spam backlinks, right? That's been going on for a long time. But if you spammed backlinks into your site now, AI is was counting how many backlinks it was, which it was seeing as how many people, quote, think this is relevant, and then ranking that better. We are seeing that die off and the AI platforms realizing what Google realized a long time ago. So they're just essentially catching up.

SPEAKER_03 19:51

Can AI differentiate between good and bad? And that's not a great question, but like, can it see through the quality trial lawyer versus the mill? And again, and that's still also not a great question because I imagine in large part it's gonna be dependent on well, what organic content is there?

SPEAKER_02 20:11

It's the content, right? I think it's getting smarter now. I don't think that we're completely there, but my my future hope is guess that that's gonna be a thing. But I think that it has to do with a how you word the query and what you're asking it really to look at. So it is smart enough to look at reviews and to look at you know the GVP pro if you ask it to. So I think a lot of it is how is it being prompted? At this point, most people, again, there's some fluctuation, but most people are just treating Chat GPT or Perplexy or whatever, ask Google. Right. So it's the same thing that's happening.

SPEAKER_03 20:44

Yeah, definitely and now can it so like what we talked about earlier about how like I can evaluate another, for example, personal injury law firm probably fairly easily. Like I can see through the nonsense, right? Right? Like if I see, for example, top 40 under 40, super this, or all that, I know the awards that are nonsense that you just pay for, and then I know the stuff that actually like makes a difference. Can AI do that now?

SPEAKER_02 21:08

I believe that it could if you asked it right.

SPEAKER_03 21:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 21:11

I think it has to do with how it's being prompted.

SPEAKER_03 21:14

That makes sense. That makes because that's that that's the issue, and that's not just for lawyers. I mean, right?

SPEAKER_02 21:18

That's for everybody, right? Right? Like, how do we get, you know, even best plumber near me, best for model learning, you know, it's the same issue across the board, which is again why we can serve just local businesses, but the because the fundamentals are the same. And so that's where really feeding in. So if we imagine that the issue is the front end and how that is being queried, that is human behavior that will change over time. Those people will get smarter and how they're dealing with it, with AI in general. Our job is to make sure that the anchor is there, that the right content is there, and how that it's pulling it, so that when they do get smarter, the right things come up. One of the bigger things that we are seeing, so FAQs have been a big thing for a website. For a long time, but I would say they are getting a massive resurgence. So anytime that we come in and are redoing websites or rebuilding them or whatever, every service page has a very robust FAQ section. AI loves it.

SPEAKER_03 22:14

That makes sense. Because then that also leads into the Google searches and all that stuff, too. Okay. So the new lawyer who's done nothing with digital marketing, right? Or maybe not the new lawyer, but just the lawyer who's getting into that. First, take advantage of the free stuff. So your Instagram, your LinkedIn, your social. I mean, I actually YouTube also is big too. I mean, videos.

SPEAKER_02 22:34

Oh, my Google.

unknown 22:35

Right.

SPEAKER_03 22:36

Well, you know what's crazy, Kelly? It's like I actually learned not long ago that YouTube, I think, is the second largest platform for podcasting, which I'll blew my mind, right?

SPEAKER_02 22:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:47

But it makes sense. So start with the free stuff, then work on the GDP, which is also free, right?

SPEAKER_02 22:54

And you can do it for free, right? Can it age you to do it better? Probably, right?

SPEAKER_03 22:58

But but at least to get one going, right?

SPEAKER_02 23:00

Like start doing it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:02

I mean, at a minimum, create one. Like I have a buddy who I've introduced to you, and and I'm like, dude, like you at a minimum, you've got to at least just create the thing so people can find you, right? Right.

SPEAKER_02 23:12

People can't rank what isn't doesn't exist.

SPEAKER_03 23:14

No, exactly. Because if you're not an option on the internet, then it's not an option. You don't exist. And then the next thing is, well, let's focus on content. When you're looking at uh, let's say a personal injury lawyer, what guidance are you giving them for what content they should be typing?

SPEAKER_02 23:30

This is a big one. So this is that bridge, right, from the visibility of marketing into converting the right people. So I did a post the other day that the people that we bring on as customers define how the business feels. Like what type of businesses do we want, what type of people do we want to work with, is going to come down to the words that you use that they saw that made them call you, right? You can write certain content and get really horrible cheap clients. You can write content and get amazing clients. It comes down to the words that you use, which really is going to come down to messaging and the branding of that messaging, right? That says, who is it that I want to work with? So as a personal injury lawyer, the hard part when I work with clients about this is actually defining it. They don't really know, right? And this is just small businesses, it's not just you guys, right? Like this is just in general. It's like, well, I have a skill, I want to use my skill, and I'm like, I get that. So does everyone else. So why you? What is it that you bring to the table that makes what you do special? If you look at and you Google any personal energy lawyer across the United States, they all look and feel about the same because they are very, very focused on I do this thing for anyone.

SPEAKER_03 24:42

Right.

SPEAKER_02 24:43

That's not it. It's I do this specific thing for this very specific human. That's how Google starts understanding who you are. The visibility is there, but the messaging around that starts prepping your sales department in a much better way.

SPEAKER_03 24:59

I'm sure there's got to be some concern, at least from our standpoint. Like, and actually, I dealt with this the other day. Like, we're working with a video group, and part of that was what is the avatar, your ideal client, and all that. And it was somewhat limited, and I remember pushing back and I was like, Well, I want to help anybody, like anybody who's got a viable case, and because they had set segmented it and said, Well, we we help military veterans because three of our four lawyers are are military, and a couple of other things. And I remember being concerned about that, right? But then I also had to remind myself, well, like, if I try and be everything to everyone, then that's far less effective than being enough for a specific group, right?

SPEAKER_02 25:41

Right. It kind of goes back to there's a saying that it's it's for anyone, but it's not for everyone. Like, think about that, right? So think about how that actually pulls through and say, okay, now there isn't even a world, and we work with businesses where there are multiple online entities to make that easier and say, okay, we are personal injury lawyers for veterans, we are personal injury lawyers for X, for Y. And then that entire online existence is built around that. The only reason to do that, and we get this question a lot, if you guys see people doing that, literally the only thing is visibility. It is a faster way to rank for certain things because Google is not confused. I personally don't think it is the best long-term strategy. Those will eventually have to be absorbed, but it depends on the company, and this is where you know, really talking to somebody about what's best for the your business, which is going to be different for everyone, makes sense. But that's why you would see something like that done.

SPEAKER_03 26:43

That's interesting. That makes a lot of sense. And I have seen that.

SPEAKER_02 26:47

Yeah. It also depends if you're gonna sell it, right? Like, do we have an exit strategy? And what is that? Are you selling, you know, if you go into this and you say, hey, I want to build this side of the business, but I'm gonna let it go eventually, separate it, right? That's gonna keep everybody's life easier. But there's a lot of reasons why that would be the case.

SPEAKER_03 27:04

Have you ever heard of the phrase like find your unfair advantage? And I'm sure you and which is something that occurred to me not long ago, and like it actually forced us as a firm to sit down and say, All right, well, what is our unfair advantage? What is it that distinguishes us from other personal injury law firms? Because to your point, I mean, you Google personal injury and you see a hundred different law firms that all have five-star reviews and all say we get million-dollar results, and all say we're trialers and we we care and we'll never give up and we'll get you justice. And you name five other things that you see on every case.

SPEAKER_02 27:38

Every single one of them, yeah, right?

SPEAKER_03 27:40

And so that unfair advantage piece I think is huge. And I think a part of that, and correct me if I'm wrong, is also like well who are you? Because I mean, at least in our profession, people are looking, at least I expect they're not just I mean, they're looking for someone they can trust, right? This is not a commodity, this is not I'm buying a widget, this is buying a service, and ultimately for this transaction, if we want to call it that, to be successful, both sides have to trust each other.

SPEAKER_02 28:09

Right. There has to be a thing that you've shown up for me in in some way. That is like what we kind of call that creative brand positioning, which is who am I, who's the business, and and why us. Those are separate things. Who the business is and who you are are different. And so we can say, okay, how can we attract that? Now, one of the things that this leads to, when you're trying to figure out what is my unfair advantage or what is my lane or niche or however, you know, whatever vocabulary you want to put around it, if you're just starting out, this is going to be a hard thing to do. You're probably going to take a vast variety of different kinds of cases. You're trying to figure things out, you're trying to figure out what you're good at, you know, things like that. As you've gotten more into your career, what you're going to realize, whether you want to admit it or not, is there is a certain type of case that you nail for whatever reason, right? There is a certain set of things that align that you kill it on. That's your unfit, like that's what you build it around. Because it's not that you can't help the others, but you know almost without a shadow of a doubt that you can nail this thing, that's what you go after. Period.

SPEAKER_03 29:19

And then you double down on it, right?

SPEAKER_02 29:20

Right. And then if you're growing your firm, you find somebody whose lane is different than that, and then you guys start stacking those things, right? It's like you're not going to know it in the beginning. You're going to have a wish. I want to do this thing. I want to be the person known for this. It's not going to be many years until you actually figure out what that is, but that's where you start honing in on.

SPEAKER_03 29:38

You know what's funny? Um, at least in our field, right? Like, I'd like to think I'm a generalist and I kind of like it in the sun in the personal injury space. Like, I like the creativity and the variety and all that. But there are lawyers who really do specialize. I mean, there are lawyers who do nothing but like plane crash cases. There are lawyers who do nothing but car wreck cases, there's med mal lawyers, there's all that. What's been funny, at least it in what I've looked back the last few years, is I have this weird knack of getting these bouncer assault cases. There you go. It doesn't, I mean, it makes no sense to me, but I got one and we got a really amazing result. And I guess maybe that's led to others. And so suddenly I'm an assault lawyer, right?

SPEAKER_02 30:19

You're the bouncer guy.

SPEAKER_03 30:20

Yeah, I'm the bouncer. And I and I mean I like the cases, I think it's purposeful work. I think the whole, like a lot of our cases, it's the betrayal of trust, right? We have a business that is asking people to come to it to spend money, yet with the businesses that we have these cases against, they're not taking their patron safety seriously, and they're putting people out there who can cause some real harm. And we've had multiple cases now where I mean the harm that these bouncers have caused is it's gruesome. I mean, I we have a case going on right now that I think we're following suit on it today or maybe tomorrow, and I haven't seen a worse video. Like it is horrendous. Like at one point, Kelly, the bouncer is stomping on the guy's head, right? Like it's it's horrendous.

SPEAKER_02 31:08

Yeah, like somebody's gonna put a stop and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_03 31:11

You can't do that. You really, really, really can't. Okay. All right, so we take advantage of the free stuff, the social profiles, we do GBP, we start working on our content. Is the next step then, if you're at least trying to take the least expensive route, is it then to start engaging an agency? Granted, in a perfect world, you would want an agency from the very start, right? Because then you're not wasting time and at least you Right.

SPEAKER_02 31:35

It's a time, it's a time money thing, right? And and so, you know, I want people to be able to help themselves to some capacity and get the ball rolling. Of course, an agency can do it faster, which means that you'll probably make money sooner, right? But that's not always the goal. And it it's always interesting to me like where people are in the journey. The next piece is that anchor, which is the website. There are easy ways to do that at this point. Some are way worse than others, but at this point, you know, if you're just getting started, get something up there. It's, you know, who am I, what do I do, and why am I doing this, and how to contact me. And so get that out there, and that is going to be obviously if we're starting our online presence, then we're new in some capacity, right? So just get that up there. It will more than likely be completely overhauled just with different technology and content and all that kind of stuff from an agency who can do that probably better, but get it up and get it working for you.

unknown 32:26

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 32:27

Is the timing thing a myth? And what I mean by that is for the longest time I've heard, well, listen, like SEO, you're not gonna see anything for 10 months. Is that a myth now? And you can start seeing results sooner? I recognize the answer in some in large part is an it depends, right? It depends on what the agency is working with.

SPEAKER_02 32:48

It does depend, and there's gonna be different factors. One, is this brand new? Two, did you do something or did an agency do something that made Google hate you, which is a harder thing to clean up and generally takes a lot longer? And then is it are we kind of status quo and just you know reorganizing and moving forward? That scenario is gonna be the fastest. The second fastest is gonna be the brand new, and then the third fastest is gonna be you've made Google really mad, or the agency before you did, and now we've got to clean stuff up, right? So, either way, the idea is in general, SEO is the slowest game that there is, but it is also the longest profitability that you will ever have.

SPEAKER_03 33:32

That's right. Like in comparison to an ad. You spend the money on an ad, but that ad is gone.

SPEAKER_02 33:38

Turn on turn off. And that's great.

SPEAKER_03 33:40

Right.

SPEAKER_02 33:40

Do that, that's fine. But imagine my whole thing against I think PPC, PPC is I'm not gonna say that it's dying, but it's absolutely getting worse from a quality standpoint. And the reason why I love organic is because people who are searching organic are searching education, in my opinion, and lots of data to back it up. You can Google it, they are a more discerning person. But it also depends on how much time you have. If you need leads today, then ads are gonna be what you gotta do, right? But if you turn it off, it's gonna stop, and it's gonna cost you way more short-term and long term to do ads than SEO ever thought about. So the next question we get is well, if I do SEO and the AI comes in and Google doesn't rank stuff, what do we do? Well, I I honestly I truly don't believe that Google's gonna say, hey, the game has changed, I'm out. I think they're gonna change with it, right?

SPEAKER_03 34:29

Yeah, they're making good money. They're not they're not turning out of the way.

SPEAKER_02 34:31

There's no way Google steps away. You know what I mean? They're figuring it out, you know, everybody is and how this actually works. I mean, chat GPT also just came out with ads. So really, these are just different search engines that are trying to learn what Google has known for decades. So at some point it's gonna come down to quality. If I Google something here, what do I get? If I chat GPT something, what do I get? Are they the same? If they are not, usually you're gonna start figuring that out and which one was better quality, and that's gonna happen fast.

SPEAKER_03 34:58

Yeah, absolutely. Kelly, I've got two more questions for you.

SPEAKER_02 35:01

Let's do it.

SPEAKER_03 35:03

What's the one thing that you want trial lawyers to take away from this when it comes to SEO and digital marketing? And I recognize how difficult of a question that is.

SPEAKER_02 35:12

Yeah, I think the first part is, and you and I have talked about this before, and you bought it up on the call, is that are there situations that you know a marketing package costs an absolute ton of money? Yes. Like we work with a billion-dollar company. I promise it's not cheap, right? Not gonna lie about it. However, the idea is it shouldn't in certain situations. Okay, so generally what happens is they start piling on too many things. So if you go to an agency, right, and they say we're gonna do SEO, we're gonna do SEO for AI, because they've added that on, we're gonna do G VP, we're gonna do Meta, we're gonna do PPC, and your bill is 15 grand a month plus ad spend. The question should be on your part, what is actually necessary? From my position, as who you are as a personal injury lawyer, there's four different stages of business pre-validation, validation, leverage, and scale. The marketing packages for each one of those are vastly different. So it's understanding which one of those are you in so that the marketing package can serve you best. We can always add more, but if we add it all today, we actually don't know it's working. Not really. And anybody who's ever paid for ads understands that the tracking is very difficult. So if all of a sudden we turn on five or six different traffic sources paid and organic, you are probably unaware of where it's coming from. Very few companies get that right.

SPEAKER_03 36:40

And you don't need everything.

SPEAKER_02 36:43

You don't need everything.

unknown 36:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:44

You need to pick the, I imagine you need to pick the things that have the, I guess, most bang for their buck at the present moment.

SPEAKER_02 36:53

Correct. Right. And we stay in our lane, right? Web design development and SEO, that's our thing. I've you know recommended a social organic person to you before, right? Yeah, which is very tailored to who you are. Any sort of, you know, there's going to be anybody listens to this, you know, as far as social goes, some people are great on camera, some people aren't, right? We know who we are, we do our thing. If you're great on camera, there's somebody that can do this thing. If you're not, we got to go on another route. But if we start shoving you know round pegs into square holes, you're literally just bleeding money monthly.

SPEAKER_03 37:26

Last question, Kelly. If you could go back to when you started your career, when you made that decision to get into the digital marketing world, SEO, knowing what you know now, what would you tell yourself?

SPEAKER_02 37:39

Knowing what I know now? That's I would say, right?

SPEAKER_03 37:43

No, I'm joking.

SPEAKER_02 37:44

Yeah, no, that's hard. Um, so many things. I think that you know, the the journey is what turns us into who we are, but I would never have done ads. I would have always stayed with organic as our number one focus as a company. It is by far the single best way to help a company live for decades than anything that I've seen.

SPEAKER_03 38:06

Kelly, this has been a lot of fun. So thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I'm super grateful we connected. I'm excited to continue working for you, and I'm super excited that you guys are gonna come out to Why do you're divert here in October?

SPEAKER_02 38:19

Yeah, it's gonna be awesome.

SPEAKER_03 38:21

Well, thank you so, so much.

SPEAKER_02 38:22

Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. I love this, it's great.