Seth & Chris Dreyer: Law Firm SEO Inside & Out

BluShark Digital

Welcome to the SEO insider with your host, Seth Price, founder of BluShark, taking you inside the world of legal marketing and all things digital.

Seth Price

Welcome, everybody. We're thrilled today to have Chris Dreier, the founder and CEO of Rankings.io. Welcome, Chris.

Chris Dreyer

Thanks for having me, Seth.

Seth Price

You know, we play in a very similar fishbowl and, you know, I love to compare notes, you know, for me, you know, my story is slightly different, but the same, you know, we've ended up in a similar place. You know, let's talk a little bit about where we see things. Currently, we are in a usual crossroads of time with local service ads coming up and a whole jet, you know, we both have worked heavily in the organic space, and the, you know, the predominance of paid with LSA. Talk to me about where you see things currently, right now, in the state of legal search.

Chris Dreyer

Yeah, when it comes to you know, dominating that first-page result, you've got even less real estate when it comes to organic now due to the local service ads, and there's some debate there on, you know, how much value they provide. And in some markets, I'm in them, where there's not a ton of competition, the clients are doing really well. And there's all different strategies with, you know, what you're going to dispute, maybe pain and sufferings, not on there, because it's a little subjective. But yeah, when it comes to the state, you've got local service ads, you get your Google Maps and, and paid, of course, and Google organic, and it just looks like I know, they're making adjustments, but organic, their real estate shrunk just a little bit more again, every time I write ads.

Seth Price

I saw a picture of a speech I gave probably, like seven years ago, and he took the photo and he quoted me, oh, if you're playing organic, you're starting at number nine, whatever it was at that moment in time, and it just seems like every year, it's just one further down. But you know, having conversation internally this morning, the organic traffic compared to the cost of paid clicks, there's nothing like it, and the ability to create content, you know, collaborating with links, you know, that there are things you just can't get, or likely afford to pay for in the paid arena.

Chris Dreyer

I totally agree. You could write one landing page, and it ranks for 2000 keywords and how much traffic can that one page bring in? And how much is that worth compared to pay-per-click? Its pay per clicks is so saturated with competition, they drive up that option, you know, those cost-per-click? And there's just a lot of opportunity for organic still.

Seth Price

You know, I love your thoughts on this. Because something I've sort of thought about over the years, do you see certain areas? I'll share with you what I mean? SSDI to me, and I'm generalizing, is one of those areas that paid seems to be almost advantageous to organic. I know, there are examples, and I'm sure you have a client that's done well with organic, but across the board to get the meaningful numbers. Are you seeing that there are certain practice areas where, you know, we're certain ones, the majority of which I see on the B2C space search dominating, but certain ones where it may not be the place for first dollar of input?

Chris Dreyer

Yeah, definitely. And I think SSD is a great example, long term disability. There's also even from the other practice areas like criminal Family Law, compared to say, personal injury, where it's going to be 200 $300 a click No matter how you're manipulating the system, unless you're going after these extreme long tails, or, or shoulder type keywords. Yeah, so I see SSDI is a perfect example that you could get a low cost per click low cost per hour per acquisition. And I think many companies have that. So process size there where they can still get value off of those low cases.

Seth Price

Yeah, and one of the things I guess I sort of looking at it from the legal end, when I see the people who are calling in, I mean, right, that the people calling in, I don't want to call them less rational actors, because I don't want to be harsh. But there are people that are in different states, so that you know, somebody in family law, while they could click on an ad that you want people and I've always said this for criminal and family and other fee for services. And now you primarily focus on PCI, but the idea of fee for service areas, you need somebody who has the smarts to accumulate the money or know somebody with money to pay for services. And so that there's, I think the sort of inherent advantage to organic in that you're getting people who can discern not that they're making harder and harder, right? Like if the shading of the ad and the size of ad. Don't be, you know, do no evil and yet those ad nomenclature is getting smaller and smaller. Pie is one of those interesting areas where you get both, right. You have people that have nothing and you also have very smart savvy people. You know, what are your thoughts there, you know, you've done a really good job in a lot of very difficult markets. You know, getting the organic space, and then all of a sudden you're like getting pushed further and further down, how do you balance that out? And how do you play to the person who's not just getting there? Because you're there and hitting the phone number, which I love. But actually getting somebody who's looking at the words on the page?

Chris Dreyer

I think it's a great, great question. I think that copywriting is more important than ever. A lot of times you hear people that, oh, they're never going to read this long-form article, it will of course, they're not. But they may transition to the middle of the page to a particular section that they care about. And I think that in some cases, I think if you're a soft tissue, you're taking soft tissue, any injuries, well, probably the individual isn't going to do their research, they're probably going to think up, they're going to think more about a level of convenience. And think about, you know, who's available, who can I go to, that's close. But if we're talking about you lost a limb, and that individual is probably going to do their research and really read the reviews and take the time to hire the right attorney to get maximum value.

Seth Price

Yeah, and like not all, some won't, but a good percentage will where you can get your piece and it's funny, as you say that, it makes me think of something that I'm sure is the bane of both of our existence. It is content, right? It needs to be high quality, it needs to be great. But I started this with a law partner, who, if I gave him a brief he wrote last year he rewrite it himself, like he take his own stuff and rip it apart. So I certainly am not going to get anybody on the outside that's going to write something to their liking. How do you balance? So for me, again, going back to the early days, I could write something that was so keyword stuffed, it made no sense. It was nonsensical, but it rank really, really well. Obviously, those days are behind us. But how do you balance out the need to get volume, both, you know, both in paid production as well as length, and at the same time get through attorneys? Who sensibility is, hey, this isn't I don't love it, even though it may be quote/unquote, high-quality content for the purpose of Google.

Chris Dreyer

That's a great question. And that's a pretty, pretty loaded one.

Seth Price

Live it every day.

Seth Price

More than putting you on the spot, because I don't have an answer to it. So I'm throwing Yeah, and how you balance it?

Chris Dreyer

Well, you know, several years ago, a 500-word article, you could throw it up and target a keyword properly and rank on the first page of Google. And now you've got so much competition. And I think that there, there is a balance, where through a proper content marketing strategy, you need to hit all areas of the funnel, top, middle, and bottom, where those top, you know, that's drawn them in there, there's a broader audience and middle you're answering questions, you're that it's that like, phase know, like and trust. And the bottom is the practice area pages. And the thing that I've seen is the shorter the query, it's really difficult to define intent. So if someone types car accidents, and we don't know what they want, they can want any number of things. So you need to write a longer form piece of content to cover multiple their area of intent. So that you just happen to capture that the person's needs versus if it's a longtail query and that intense defined in the query, what are the steps I need to take after a car accident? Well, we know what that person wants. So there, I think there's a balancing act, I think that you can, there's a combination of the long-form content and the short content, I also think that any link acquisition strategy, a lot of times you need to have content that's topically related to the sites that you're reaching out to, if it's a tech site, you need to have a tech blog on your site, or else you're never going to have the opportunity to acquire that link. Same for health, fitness, whatever it is. And so it's just a very rounded strategy. That's it's very difficult, very, it requires an expertise, for sure. And so and like, there's also this back and forth between.

Seth Price

Yes, you're writing for all those different possible meanings of car accidents, at the same time, you just want to come up. That's it at the end of day, if you don't come up, you don't even have to be heard. And there's that back and forth between I think Google's done objectively a good job in this space of pushing the users interests with the algorithm like that, that seems to be contrary, we pivot to this, it seems they've really shat the bed on local where they just have not dealt with spam, and that all these awful techniques are working. And then for people who are, Look, I know your team and you guys put a lot of time and effort in. And then some schmuck comes along with an exact match spammy listing. It's beyond frustrating to sort of, you know, you're dealing with the largest wealthiest organization in the world. And they haven't figured out a way to get rid of local spam. It's just, you know, beyond frustrating.

Chris Dreyer

It is so frustrating. And you know, a few years ago, we had the exact match domain kind of rush where everyone was buying a keyword domain and Google came in and they throttled it back. It's that was an interesting, though, to be fair.

Seth Price

Let you go with this. But that was an interesting one, because they did throttle it back, right. But then like two weeks later, they realize they throttle the too far because some legitimate and so they're like, okay, we're Getting rid of one page domains with exact match. But if you have a real domain, which I had a bunch of these, like one of my first second PC, was the criminal law DC. They like for two weeks was bad. No, oh, no, this is an authoritative site, we went back. Why is there not a five-review minimum, something that sort of says, Hey, we're not going to allow this nonsense to to sort of permeate. And again, I know that legal is one 10th of 1% of their overall world, but they know where the revenue is, they're making real bucks from this space, and then allowing that spam to stay just seems criminal.

Chris Dreyer

I wish I had the answer. And they everyone talks about all of these fake, GMB listings, right. So it'll be the trash dumpster, and it'll be a law firm right with a keyword. And then that's how these lead gen companies are operating? Well, the quickest way to fix that is to fix the benefit of the keyword into the entity name, you reduce that, then a lot of those lead gen sites have to go the legitimate route and have to get reviews have to have a good website. So I don't know why it's taken so long, maybe it's, I just have no clue. And I wish I had the answer. But it's just unnecessary. It's unfortunate that if you're a legitimate law firm, you now have to play the game, you have to file a DBA, you have to follow a fictitious name. And if you really want to compete in these really major markets.

Seth Price

Could we've seen one in a major market where we represent somebody who's not at the top, this is not a was not at the top of that food chain. And other people that I know are paying 30,000 plus a month in resources we've been able to knock out and again, this is just how they built their business. It wasn't like a malicious thing. They happen to have just, you know, who would have thunk that that nomenclature would have that much of an influence. And, like, like, and in one sense, I get it may be hard, because in certain areas, those terms mean something, but at least have something that that is least a legitimate business that's competing, what I see the, the flux of spam, and that they really, you know, again, there's been articles written about it. So it's not like it's not on their radar, to me, you know, be given beginning of our conversation about how you have paid, and you have organic, this Middle Land is so so valuable. And you know, people spend their time with posts and reviews and photos and videos, you've done all this hard work. And then you get some numb nuts who come in. And it seems like it's the ocean is faster, you get rid of it just keeps coming back.

Chris Dreyer

Yeah, I couldn't agree more in it. And it's unfortunate, I think you're and I, you know, BluShark and now rankings, we're not only having to do things the proper way, we're also having to combat spam, or having to go into our market and figure out who's violating the terms of service. And it's a, it's even a different level of tactics. That's a necessity now. So yeah, it's unfortunate. And you know, the local map packs the best, organic below the page, it's the best position and drives a tremendous amount of search volume. And it's super high intent. Those individuals that go their request directions and make a call are more likely to hire an attorney than just going directly to the website, many cases, have anything.

Seth Price

That you sort of have seen, like, it's so funny, I go back, like a mike Ramsey talk, I think was at Moz, a couple years back, he was doing experiments by hitting driving directions to a to a Google My Business just to see if that would drive it. Anything you've been playing with where you're like, you know, that sort of moving the needle these days? What are you liking?

Chris Dreyer

Yeah, the biggest thing that we've been playing around with right now is our copywriting. For our title. I know that sounds a little age old, but we've really been experimenting with copywriting and in the title, and then the meta descriptions, and anything that can manipulate a click-through. And so that's why I'm a huge fan of working with firms that do a lot of TV and media spin to have those brands because if they rank in the second or third position, it can influence that click-through. And I just think that those UX signals, they're just waiting much more heavily. I also think that that's why individuals are writing longer form content, because Google can't see if the consumers happy and has a smile on their face, about what they read. What they're going to measure is the time on the page versus another page for the similar query. So anything that's manipulating user activity is something that we're really interested in.

Seth Price

That's fascinating. Just, you know, Google can't tell whether you're happy, they can't tell how long you're on the page. It's, you know, with all of that user experience piece, we're likely to see some big changes next year. Let's everything we've done signal. Well, if you were to bet on 2021 user experiences, what they seem to be seem to be looking at pretty heavily right now.

Chris Dreyer

Absolutely. The content length continues to go up and, and I just think that they're going to have to change something and at the end of the day, one of the frustrations for for for us is is having as identified unique selling proposition for the firm or however they are different, because if we write an article for Car Accident Lawyer, and everyone's citing from the same source or structuring it the same way, well, who's gonna win who separates the gap? So it's like, how can we be different? I know it may pass a copyscape or plagiarism tool. But is it truly unique? Because it's Google's job to filter out duplicate content?

Seth Price

Right? And then the question is, but to a certain extent, that's what somebody wants. And that's sort of that, that pull and tug. Now, again, with all sorts of stuff, you can layer on top with internal linking and External links and all of that. But that's sort of the irony that if you are giving somebody what they want, and it sort of filtered down, it may not be that much different, at least at the highest level from others, you just isn't doing more, is it? You know, over the years, you know, we started with blogs, you know, reduce the regurgitated news blog, the higher quality blogs, um, you know, what, what are you? What are you liking these days, as far as if somebody said, I've X amount to spend, do you do the elevator pages skyscraper page, whatever you want to call them? Or do you put like, larger page counts in what are you? What are you favoring?

Chris Dreyer

Yeah, and I know, he was listening, he would be saying links.

Seth Price

Links to links, we're talking.

Chris Dreyer

So for content, I would say, if I had a limited budget, what I would do is I would approach their existing content and just improve it. That's what I would do with a limited budget.

Seth Price

Right? And I'm saying like, Okay, if you, you could either create X number of 1000 word pages, or you could make, you know, 2500 word pages, do you think that there's a number that like, enough's enough, add that like, it's it, we pound our chest as SEOs. But at some point, it doesn't matter? Because I always look at the numbers like X number of paid things that rank have these non-500 word pages on them? Is that is a cause or effect? Like, is it because those people are doing all the other things? Or is it because those pages are so long? Is there a point where like, nobody's really reading that whole page? Anyway, Google's got to know that if they see the scrolls, does it makes sense to have that?

Chris Dreyer

Yeah, I definitely think there's diminishing returns. At some point, if it's a particular, you know, if you're going after a car accident, lawyer stain in the PA space, and everyone, all your competitors as a 4k word page, I mean, well, you probably need a 4000-word page to really compete. But if it's a longtail query, that's, you know, the intense really defined, then I think, 1000 words. And I do think that if you don't target keyword unique keyword segments, and you continue to create content, that's low value, and then it can actually hurt your overall performance, it's going to dilute that equity. So I think everything is going to circle back around the quality. And that's also why, you know, if I had a limited budget on the content side, I would take the pages that are already ranking, and I would add that 1000 words.

Seth Price

I make those better, couldn't agree more, although I'm always torn, because if it was working don't fix, you know, don't break with. Yeah, let's fix but at the same time, I get it. And that's to me, I think more and more, there's a diminishing point of return, but not just per page length, but page count. Yeah, you know, again, it's like pruning the tree. And every time you prune, you seem to to improve it. You admit you touched on something? You know, I wish that every one of my clients had a TV budget that was bringing that in? Because you're right, the recent core algorithm updates clearly gave an advantage of TV advertisers. That said, not all of our clients will be on TV. Are there things that you have seen, whether it be paid social, or other techniques that can be used to offset it? Because there's certainly an advantage to brand? How can somebody who's not on TV, try to at least ameliorate that advantage for the TV players?

Chris Dreyer

Yeah, I think at the end of the day, it's anything that you're doing for advertising at the end of the day is you're trying to attract attention. And I think being consistent with your brand identity is important. In my opinion, I think YouTube advertising, it's very low cost you can you can be very specific with your targeting social media, because that's where individuals congregate. And it's really understanding it really depends on what area of the law you are, if you're a divorce attorney or a criminal attorney or a personal injury attorney like you want to get in front of those individuals and where they're congregating. At the end of the day, I think that brand is just incredibly important. You have to have a brand whether you're doing that for with TV or you're doing a billboards or you have a different tactic, a thought leadership, your education, maybe a podcast, I think it's going to be more and more important.

Seth Price

I get that but let's say there's an IRA, ironic twist based on the prior part of our conversation, right? You create a brand, which is generally the law based on names again, maybe generation 2.0 they are getting the keywords into it, but then all of a sudden, that brand is Now what's winning the day in the three pack? So you're sort of like, you know, to go two steps forward one step back. Again, you can place there. But it is it is just one of those great ironies of the space that there's no doubt that Bran wins the day. But unless you're over that hump, and for clients that are stuck in the middle, that can be the most painful place because you have a brand, but it's not as established as others. And you don't have the keywords.

Chris Dreyer

I 100% agree with what you're saying, because you got to play the SEO game if you really want to compete in it with a digital strategy. And, yeah, it's an unfortunate consequence that you have to do this to really compete with local SEO, if it's in a competitive saturated market. And in some areas, you don't. And that's great. But and again, I think it ties back to the name thing that you said, you mentioned, right, it's most firms will will have the individual the ownership, the name and the firm. And it's it's harder to advertise, you know, and utilize those keywords if especially if the firm incorporates multiple partners. You know, what's the what's the firm in New York, Gare Garr, something, I can't they're long, their names is extremely long. And I couldn't imagine an incorporating accident injury lawyer, or attorney or law in those to get that benefit, just because they're, it takes up so many characters, right.

Seth Price

Um, you know, that is that cut that sort of pull and chug along those lines as far as balancing. So they have talked to prior guests about, you know, if you were around long enough ago, you sort of got smacked down by the sort of overseas link exact match domain concept, right? That was that was exact match anchor text that was all the rage got struck down very effectively by Google, right, there was no mistake about it, it was bad thing. So for those of us that have lived through that you're scarred from that you saw the damage that could take place, and therefore, we've morphed into a much more, there you go, we've morphed into a much more conservative approach, knowing that the people you work with have ftu assets, it's their baby, they can't just burn it, if you screw it up. I always use the analogy of a contractor you might hire for your house, if it's your house, and they're unlicensed, and they do some electric. So what but if you do it for somebody, and you're paying somebody paying you, and then you put the unlicensed guy in the house burns down, it's on you it falls on your head, it's never worth it. Right. So you have to do it clean. That said, if you have if you're competing against people that are using the unlicensed contractor who can do it for pennies on the dollar, because they can come in and quickly wireless, they don't need to pay for a licensed electrician, that that sort of pull and tug. How do you you know, look at when you see, for example, take let's let's use the concept of percentage of anchor text, we went show white hat or so, you know, branded that I now seeing daylight where upstarts who didn't live through that first generation are sort of like diversifying anchor texts enough that it works. So it's like a lot of things. How do you balance out that knowledge that you can't go over the line at the same time, there are people now pushing further and further?

Chris Dreyer

Well, I saw the penguin algorithm that you're referring to is hit hardest in 2011. And I learned firsthand I was holding up a coffee mug for easing articles, which was a site that many individuals utilize to manipulate anchor text. And, you know, the interesting thing is, it's it comes down to if the anchor is justified in my opinion. And what I mean by that is, if somebody is referring to the company, you could expect that the name of the firm would be linked to the homepage. If you're talking about Amazon, for example, you probably wouldn't link to an internal page, you've probably linked to the homepage. But if you're talking about shoes that you're buying on Amazon, you probably talk about the name of the shoes. So I think that there's all these strategies that come into place in terms of anchor text, and the same for a firm. So you're talking about the firm, you're probably linking the homepage or the about page, you're talking about maybe the service, maybe you do talk about, you know, Wrongful Death attorney. Um, so I think there's a balancing act. And I also think that a big change is occurring. It's Google's job to filter out crap and duplicate content. So even from your external directories, whatever you want to call it. editorials, guest posts at the end of the day, all that is no matter what name you call it is external content. That's all it is. You can call it a a directory, a guest post and editor. It's just putting content on somebody else's website. And now it's it's even, it's even more important for that content that that external to be high quality and to have those links justified so that there isn't this weird activity that when they come to your site, They completely bounced because it's not relevant. So I think that all these things are coming into play and anchor text and doing the white hat link building is so much better from a long-term perspective.

Seth Price

Understood, I guess it's it's the pull and tug between, you know, you know that like, Look, if you do it one way, you're bullet proofed, right? No, right, no doubt. But I guess every once in a while, I wake up and say, Whoa, this turn should be ours based on authority, maybe a second tier term. And then you're like, why is this upstart getting success? And then trying to figure out like, back in the day, there was a 5% rule, right? You could have 5%, anchor text or keywords in your page of content. So I'll go down to 1%. I've sort of used a once per paragraph max. You know, Google knows what you're talking about. You haven't you know, you talked about title tags and descriptions and things like that. Those can sort of reinforce what, you know, the question is, you know, Google has, you know, geek talking about geek talks, spam works. That's what short of links, that's his second catchphrase. And it is the frustrating part, I think is SEO is one of our responsibilities may be, you know, you look at all the things that are spammed, and if you go back to like Matt Cutts, and you look at guest bloggers, right, go back one generation ago, where he said, You know, there was a guest bloggers, and there was sort of signals don't do it. And that's because no, you can do be a guest blogger, just it can't be crap. And it's sort of like commenting on blogs, you can comment on things, it just better be real irrelevant. And so I feel that many of the things that it's like anything else, if it's done in moderation, and legitimately, but it's if you when you abuse it or extend it, the problem is the market doesn't know how to stop

Chris Dreyer

100% agree and it's about the consumer, Google wants to serve up the best results for the consumer, you know, the good comments, the good quality, it's everything, I think it's Google's job to serve the best result for the consumer, and all their algorithm updates that they make. That's what they're trying to, fix is to get rid of the spam. And so I think I 100% agree with you, if you go the longer term route, well, you're. So that's why when everyone's freaking out with algorithm updates, if you're doing things the right way, I don't care that there's an algorithm, I do like it to me.

Seth Price

Every time that happens, except for that one crazy one where they dumped everything upside down overnight, and it came back the next day. Other than that, you know, with these updates, if you're building the fundamentals, and I've seen your stuff, you're doing it like if you if you take that stuff, and you have the high-quality content, and you're not playing the game, those will theoretically each time it filters out somebody who's playing the game. And that , to me has been the only positive of all those ups and downs, I used to fear algorithm updates. And now I sort of appreciate them because if I see something wrong, like I'm not doing as well, for something as I think I should, the next update generally resets it if you sort of have a sense of the market.

Chris Dreyer

Yeah, I completely agree.

Seth Price

Let me so the new sort of, sort of trend if you're checking your emails and your LinkedIn is the incessant guest, guest blog posting, nonsense, it's the new, hottest, you know, it's everywhere, at least in our little myopic world. You know, your thoughts? Because it seems that look, links are still important. But it's like anything else? If these guys are selling to you, they're selling to everybody? How do you sort of like navigate the world? Because you know, you want to make sure your clients keep up with high-quality links from relevant places. At the same time, when you see these mass emails coming from every corner of the globe, which is kind of reminding me of 2011 again, yeah, that Google, you know, if I'm getting this email, and you're getting this email, Google's getting the email, and what, you know, what, what do you you know, how do you sort of make sure that you're keeping people in play, while at the same time not adding additional risk to what are these massive networks? It's a great question.

Chris Dreyer

The biggest thing that I've seen, and I kind of touched on it earlier, was not the even the quality of the content on the external site, the guest posts when you're guest posting for someone, we've had to make huge adjustments, and it's driven up our costs dramatically. Because we want the content that we produce on an external site to have the ability to rank drive traffic and be crawled. So I think that, you know, even if you've got a site from a high authority site at Dr. 90, or do da 90, and everyone would love that. But if the article on that page is 200 words, and it's real thin, and it doesn't get crawled, I don't think it's going to pass that authority back. So basically-

Seth Price

What you're saying is it's a double, if you're doing it legit, it's a double whammy. You can't just say post whatever you want, put my link on, right. It's like I'm now creating content, not just for my own properties, but for those properties coming in. Are you going so far now? As to this is something people talked about, but then link building to the third party site to get back or is that you know, if something is a Dr. 90, are God willing, let's say it's a 70 or 80, that you're like what leave well enough alone, it's getting enough internal juice, how far back do you find that you need to go to get value.

Chris Dreyer

So I know a lot of SEO specialists will do the kind of tiered link-building approach. And at the end of the day, it's just so, so costly to do those types of strategies that we're really just trying to do when we do an external directory, if they allow eight videos, we do eight videos, they allow 20 pictures, we do 20 pictures, we're trying to make them do that extra 1% to make them high quality. And we're, we're hoping that if that external content is really high quality, that maybe it will attract some natural inbound links or get some crawling activity. So that's where we're really focusing. It's, it's challenging in the legal vertical to create, you know, linkable assets, that everyone loves saying that word, these linkable assets Field of Dreams, if you build it, they will come on their reality is you still got to do the outreach, you still got to find the consumer that would care about that piece of content.

Seth Price

They look at that, and then is the juice worth the squeeze. Because if you took that, again, this is sort of the piece and I'll go back like a mike Ramsey whose business model has historically been he's been very transparent on like an hourly model, internally, which is not mine, I assume is not yours, um, that you know, when you look at something like that, and while you could theoretically hit pay dirt, you're now looking at things where you're sort of working on spec, which again, goes back to if it's an internal asset, if you have, if a law firm has a paralegal, and they're writing stuff, and it's their own internal piece, then it works or doesn't work great. But for companies like yours, and mine were being looked at by it for ROI. And all of a sudden, the stuff that really is awesome. And if you do it is the most elegant and sustainable link building that be given the risk that you're sort of looking almost like a like a TikTok video, you can make 20 of them that goes nowhere. And that 21st hits, you just don't know where it is, when you're doing it at scale. To me, that's one of the great frustrations as an agency owner is that there's no you're not credited for a really solid attempt that doesn't work. Because if somebody wants those pay dirt places, it's going to take multiple swings and misses before you hit the right one.

Chris Dreyer

Yeah, I absolutely agree. And creating those linkable assets are very, very costly of what goes into whether you're getting the data from the Department of Transportation or whatever data source you're getting it from. And I think this statistic posts are probably one of the best assets that you can create for a law firm. And so one of the things that we've been doing is we've been hitting those with a little bit of paid traffic. So we'll create a statistics post and not go the organic route actually pay for traffic to them. And we got the strategy from it from Tim solo over at a refs. And to have them work as a link-building mechanism. But it's all cost. It's, it's where you're gonna apply it, whether you're going to build a linkable asset and do the outreach, whether you're going to do the outreach to guest post or put in the time for a robust directory, not just a, you know, that has a name and address. It's it's all time costs.

Seth Price

I'm sure it has, you know, you've looked at stuff and you said, Man, it'd be a lot easier if I just owned this asset and controlled it. And then you're like, you know, sort of like a company deciding whether they want to, you know, build a business or buy a business, you know, it's the same type of thing. Yeah, yeah, pay one way or the other.

Chris Dreyer

Absolutely. Roland Frazier. Frazier has a he's, you know, partner with Ryan Seiss, and has done all these acquisitions. And he, he teaches a course called the epic challenge, and it's all about acquisitions. And it's really made me reconsider my approach to SEO, it's like, well, this site already ranks for that phrase, instead of me trying to write an article and try to hope that it ranks by doing link building by creating this high-quality piece, well, this, this one already ranks, I wonder what they would pay to sell that asset, or what it would cost to buy that asset as a strategy itself, too. Because it's just virtual real estate. And it's really challenging in the legal verticals, particularly those bottom of the funnel, everyone wants, once those, but from a link building from a marketing component. You can look at those top and middle of the funnel, blogs or associations or things like that, that you could potentially purchase to use as leverage for your marketing strategy.

Seth Price

It's fascinating. And you know, and you go back and forth, right, because you're like, well, it's easier to do it and you're like, well, I really don't want to put all my eggs because then all of a sudden you have all your eggs in One basket. And that does you know, you know, so that it's there's the you know, but you also look at, like what feilong has done, and the fact that they are, you know, love him hate him what have you, it's amazing how much they've been able to shave off of a single site, you know, moving the needle for enough people, because if they want to, you know, they have a customer, they want to retain for some reason, there and it's off a single domain, which, you know, is counterintuitive, right? If you were teaching a class to a bunch of college students, you'd be like, okay, don't don't count on too much from a single domain, but they really have done a pretty remarkable job of sculpting, and get, you know, when they wish to really moving the needle for people.

Chris Dreyer

Yeah, and I did a study recently, and I saw, I think that at the time, the highest amount of referring domains, I think was Morgan and Morgan, they had like 6000 referring domains at their site, then you look at like, avo and find law and justice. And justice and find laws got like millions of referring domains. I'm not sure the exact total whatever it is, but it's it's significantly larger than any, any firm owner. Well, that really highlights the fact that Google still heavily weighting those of those link building signals for the search results.

Seth Price

You're right, because that's been the sort of as we sort of come come to a close here. I mean, that's been the most frustrating thing. I think, as you know, we go from paid to or to local to organic, okay, you're down to organic, right? You're the right answer, you're the number one player in the market or top three player, you want them to be number one, if you take that asset, and you've done everything you're talking about, you should be playing for one of the top two spots. And the idea that fine law super lawyer is just the know, whatever it is that all of these other directory sites, which not a great user experience, people are going around, right? It's terrible user experience, but that we're still And to me, that's always how I know I'm doing a good job is that when those directories are pushed down, like when I have like, right, I think then directories then competition, that's that, that that's as good a day as I'm going to have. So to put the detour, you scratch your head again, which is you're right, it's links that, you know, avo and Conrad were genius back in the day, to include the link in the badge. I mean, I just thought that was like one of those, you know, why don't we just slice the bread? I mean, they're genius, genius moves. And that's how you end up with, you know, 1220 x the number of links of anybody else? Yeah, and you see expertise doing it, you see fine law, just doing all the acquisitions and utilizing their Thomson Reuters, you know, their legal hub to acquire all those links natural from those citations. It's, it's, it's hard to compete if you're a small business owner, for sure. And that, and again, that is sort of one of those. Now, as a law firm owner, you know, you always look at like, the, this is one of the things I've never quite come down on the side of, yes, but it's frustrating when you look at, you know, their directories, right, no shortage of records you can go to, and a lot of people talk about those, but then you have sort of the paid directory. And the idea that, you know, in theory, if you're getting case value from a great, but that's becoming less like sophisticated people, especially out of the plane of space, you know, the Smart Money who's going to be able to afford somebody is likely not going directory, you know, likely again, there exceptions every rule, no plaintiffs work, we don't need the revenue up front, little bit better. But then you end up in situations where the directory costs when charged on a monthly basis, which is great for the Thomson Reuters business model makes it so that you want the links, but that it doesn't make you then it keeps us employed. Because if it was easier to just pay Thomson Reuters, it'd be done. But if you if you're paying that much, and you're not getting ROI, and you have to justify it for links, you're like, Well, yeah, it's a good link. And I would love it, but I could emulate that in seven other places for attempt the cost, because they're not pretending to be lead gen, and be able to sort of sculpt and I think that that is sort of one of those areas that I think has been sort of the most fulfilling is that there are it's like a puzzle that we have to put together, which is how do you not just get the links they need, but add a resource, whether it forget about not buying links, but just as you talked about the resources take it takes to get a link and figuring out are you allocating it towards these amazing assets and then sell and then pushing those other people? You know, how do you do that? I wish you could just write a check. But I guess if you could then we'd be out of business.

Chris Dreyer

Right? It's a challenge. It takes it and it's different for every market as you know, I mean, in some markets, fine lawn, Avenue those directories are dominating. It's a different level of competitiveness versus maybe a smaller market, a smaller DMA. The other thing that's interesting too, is when you look at these third party directories, and you compare them directly just to paid ads, let's just compare into paid ads. We'll find law they'll sell you a year agreement for a fixed rate. Well, what if They don't rank anymore. You're still paying that fixed rate?

Seth Price

No, I hear you. And then tthe opposite is some stuff on the comm. You know, you see certain stuff where you can get in early, I found this, like, I got some early super lawyer listings. Right. And they were like, forget links, I'm sure are fine. They may not be as good as final, but they're still solid, solid legs, but I was able to justify some lead gen from it. So I'm like, Okay, and then the combination is great. But then the moment they get any juice, then the price goes to the sky. And it's sort of like it's, it becomes the de permutations that you almost feel like you have to be like a Vegas odds maker to figure out, you know, what is the thing because every lawyer has been locked into a fine law agreement of some sort at some point. And it there's nothing worse than like buying into something and then not having any love from it later in the contract.

Chris Dreyer

Yeah, I completely agree. It's, they handcuff you. And the other thing is those sites that they sell, and they slap the fine line, the footer, and they're just building their network up. And it's all the work that you know, that firm owner buys a fine law website, and then they hire an SEO agency that does great work. Well, they're just filtering all that equity over to find lost properties. It's yeah, it takes a requires a significantly greater amount of expertise than it did in the past. It's because of competition and all these things going on. And tools like hrs as you know, and sem rush just being in this city to accurately scope a project.

Seth Price

No, absolutely. Well, this is great. I think we could go on for hours. I hope to have you back because this is a lot of fun. And I am sure that none of this stuff is going anywhere. And they'll just be some new challenges in 2021.

Chris Dreyer

Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me, Seth.

Seth Price

It was great.

BluShark Digital

Thank you for tuning in to the SEO insider with Seth Price. Be sure to check back next week for fresh insights into building your brand's online presence. Episodes are available to stream directly on BluShark Digital's website.