2176 - Why Accurate Content Matters in Legal Marketing with Optimize My Firm's Lindsey Busfield

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1:05with us right now it's lindsey busfield lindsey you are the vice president of optimize my firm you're found on the web at optimize my firm.com lindsey it's great to have you thank you so much it's great to be here before we start talking about what you do and who you work with do you mind sharing just a little bit about what do you do like what do you do for fun what do you know So in terms of hobbies, I know you play pickleball. And according to your bio, you also invent board games and you raise chickens. Anything outside of that? Because I'm happy to talk about those. I don't mean to steal your thunder.

1:44No, no, no thunder stolen at all. It's important to have a life outside of the search engine optimization world. But yeah, I mean, I love pickleball. It's one of my absolute favorite things to do in my free time. So I actually do. I've got a big tournament coming up with the pickleball professional, the PPA tournament. Oh, goodness. You're serious. Yeah. Oh, yeah. How did you get so good? You know, I just, it's one of those things where you find yourself in the flow of things. And there's a book all about flow that I forget the title of. is probably flow, where you find something that really engages all of your mental energy and your physical energy.

2:27And you really are able to just get into the state of being present in something. And I find for myself that pickleball is that for me. And so it's easy to make sure that I carve out time for that passion. And I just, I just love it. It's a lot of fun. Um, so that's, that's my big hobby. I also have two beautiful little girls, a three-year-old and a six-year-old. So they, they have a way of taking up a lot of time, but with lots of fun things. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So on the pickleball thing, for someone who's never played it and they're considering trying it for the first time, why, I mean, I've heard this, I'll let you explain.

3:10Why is pickleball kind of an easy sport to get into? It is fairly easy to get into, especially if you have any background with tennis or ping pong. Those are kind of the things that translate best into it. But it's a really low barrier for entry. Yeah. Pickleball paddle is, you know, 50 bucks. And typically there are a lot of parks that have pickleball set up now. And it's one of those things where you don't need to organize a group of four to go and do it. You can just go in, put your paddle in the rack, and whoever's there will play with you. And it's a really nice community. Yeah. What if they're really good and I'm not that good?

3:54And that's actually the really cool thing about it. It's not like tennis where it's been around for hundreds of years. Pickleball is a relatively new sport. So even for those of us who are a little bit more competitive and have some skill with it, we are not so far removed that we've been doing this all of our lives. We remember what it's like to be a beginner. So we are typically a very welcoming community for people who are just getting into it and just want to play. Because when we wanted to start playing, somebody had to do that for us. That's right. That's right. That's right. Okay. Well, tell us about Optimize My Firms.

4:27So you work with law firms and SEO and content marketing. What is your world like lately in the world of AI? So that's a really great question. And we get that a lot because everybody's starting to see the use of AI and see how you can really quickly develop content using AI. But when it comes to search engine optimization, especially in the legal world, AI just isn't there yet in order to develop that content. So all of the content that we write is still very human written and has, you know, for a couple of different purposes. One is to make sure that the information going on a law firm's website is accurate.

5:10But also there needs to be that human empathy component into developing content. So we aren't using AI to actually develop content. So that's piece one. The second piece is why. I'm sorry. What? So why not using AI to develop content? Because when it comes to legal content, you need to make sure the information that's going up there is accurate. And AI just doesn't have the capacity yet to create accurate information and to have it be 100%. How can that? And I'm sorry, I'm not pushing back on here, but I'm dumbfounded. How can that be? So the way that AI works is it's scraping information from all across the internet.

5:52And it's compiling information from a little bit of column A, a little bit of column B, and putting that together into content and into answers. And there is no way with the Internet to filter out what is true and what is false. So that's a really big problem because it'll pull from bad information and put it together and present this fact. The other piece is that AI in its current state right now is notorious for hallucinating. So it doesn't necessarily have the answers and it'll generate just random stuff, random information and put it together. And it is well documented and it'll even admit to hallucinating information.

6:37So it's just not credible. Okay. Well, hopefully that's evolving quickly because as someone who spends hours and hours in AI a day, I understand that these are some complaints that were lodged maybe last year or the year before. This continues to improve. Well, and what's interesting, there have been a lot of lawsuits against law firms that have been pulling information, not just for their websites, but for cases that they're representing. And they will use AI to generate documents or to pull from precedent. And the AI will spit out precedent that doesn't actually exist. And there's one very big person.

7:21That's dangerous. Yeah, you got to fact check. Yeah. And there's one very large personal injury firm that I won't mention by name that is in the middle of a giant lawsuit because they - Oh, I hope they're one that's based in Orlando. They are one that's based in Orlando. Okay. That's all you have to say. Yeah. Yeah. You would have some of the biggest ones for whatever reason. They're all based out of Orlando. You ought to see our billboards here. Orlando, Tampa. But they they took a case to trial and presented information in front of a judge saying, you know, here is our here's our case. Here's the precedent that we're using with, you know, like Johnson versus the state of Florida.

8:02And this case never existed. And it turned out that one of their paralegals or one of their junior lawyers had used AI to generate case information. And AI hallucinated this case and brought it in front of a judge and jury and completely bombed their case and then had to deal with a separate lawsuit on top of it. Whoops. That's a mistake. So in terms of like how law firms invest their marketing budget for client acquisition or whatever their goals are, why should SEO be a big portion of that? What is the, I guess, what's the return on investment argument? Sure. So when somebody is looking for an attorney, especially when it comes to personal injury law, people tend to turn to Google.

8:59I myself don't know a whole lot of people who have been involved in slip and fall accidents or car accidents or dog bites. And so there are, I don't have a large network that I can turn to and just ask, you know, Hey, who did you use for this? So typically I'm going to go to Google and look for a personal injury attorney or car accident attorney, or try to find additional information about what should I do if I have this type of case. And the only way for a law firm to get found online to be on that first page of Google is to invest in SEO. So if they want to get clients and clients are going to Google, they really need to be investing in their Google presence.

9:43Sure. So right now, like when you go to Google, more so than search results, you're getting information that's basically just, you know, Google is answering your questions with AI now. Or, you know, I know for me, I use perplexity a lot and I never see that content. And so, you know, in terms of like creating original content and, you know, where consumers are looking, how does this protect a law firm who's thinking more kind of like future focused on how information, like how is search being done? Like, I think we all know what the trends are in search and it's not the traditional, you know, search results that we were used to in years past.

10:29And you're right. AI is coming up with a lot of the answers. So like if I were to Google, what is the statute of limitations for a car accident in North Carolina? Google can pretty readily pull that information with a decent amount of accuracy. However, Google is getting that information from content that exists on the internet. And so it'll show the sources that it's using for that answer. And typically, if I were in a car accident, I was looking for this answer, and then I wanted to go and find a lawyer, right there next to that answer, you see a law firm's, their logo or their website listed as a credible source.

11:08And so in order to show up as part of the AI generated answer, You need to have that content in place on your website for Google to be able to pull from. And Google isn't going to pull from something, A, that doesn't exist typically, or B, that doesn't have credibility behind it. So those backlinks that are giving you some more domain authority and authority over that particular topic. So Google is really relying on SEO to create those AI-generated responses. And another piece of this is that people, if they find the answer they're looking for, or if they're specifically looking to find a car accident attorney, they'll scroll down past the ads, past the AI generated response, and look at the map.

11:55So if I'm looking for a car accident attorney near me, then I'm going to have, you know, three or four answers on that local pack, on that local map, that Google is saying, here's somebody that you can look into. And in order to get onto that local path, you need to have a website that's showing up on the first couple pages of Google, as well as having your reviews in place. Yeah. So, Lindsay, how does Optimize My Firm compare to, I mean, obviously, you know, you're designed for law firms. So those sensitivities that you mentioned earlier, you know, are pretty critical. But, you know, why might a law firm hire you as opposed to hiring somebody else that specializes in this work?

12:46Yeah, and that's a really great question because there are so many SEO agencies out there. There are some that specialize in working with law firms. There are some that don't. There are some that are full service. There are some that are niche. And so there's a lot of options out there. But one of the things that really sets us apart from the competition is that we are aware of some of the bigger problems in the industry. So, for example, there are some SEO agencies out there that have, well, most of them have long-term contracts that are a year or two years, et cetera. And that is a challenge if an attorney isn't seeing that ROI.

13:24And there are also issues with other SEO agencies having proprietary software for websites. So if an attorney wanted to leave, they would have to hire somebody else to build a website for them from scratch. So we've developed our business model to really meet the needs of attorneys and really invest in their success. And one of the ways that we do that is we have a no contract model. So attorneys can work with us for three months, six months, a year. Most of them stay with us for five, 10 plus years, just because we do provide them a really great ROI. life. And because we have the no contract model, we have to be extra careful in who we accept as clients.

14:06So we don't have salespeople. We don't have a process in place where we're trying to like grow past our capacity. We're very selective on the law firms that we work with because we want it to work for them. We want to have those long-term relationships that are not based on a contract, but are actually based on results. So when you put those pieces together, our attorneys stay with us forever. They're happy. They're making lots of money and getting lots of clients. We're happy. We get to work with great attorneys and really build those long-term relationships. Yeah. You, or Optimize My Firm, has a podcast.

14:43It's Personal Injury Marketing Minute. Do you mind sharing a little bit about the show? Sure. So yeah, I'm actually the host of the personal injury marketing. And we, we quickly cover the hot topics in the legal marketing world. Um, and on that show, um, there are some episodes where I'm on there talking about SEO for law firms, talking about different types of marketing campaigns, but a lot of the podcasts, uh, I'm actually interviewing other people, just very similar to this kind of format, um, where I, I talked to other attorneys who have handled really great cases or talk to, um, other businesses that provide services and support for law firms.

15:24And really, I talk to anybody and cover topics that have to do with legal marketing, legal operations, anything having to do with getting more clients and serving them well. Yeah. So to our friend that's listening, really simple. Just do a quick search in your podcast app and you can search for Personal Injury Marketing Minute hosted by the one, the only, Lindsay Busfield. So Lindsay, where do your clients come from? Like, what are your goals for growth? Or like, how do you get most of your clients? Word of mouth, I'm certain. But what else do you do? Yeah, so word of mouth is really a big component for us.

16:03But the biggest thing that draws in clients is kind of practicing what we preach. So we make sure that our website ranks well on Google because we're really good at SEO. so if a personal injury attorney is looking for an SEO agency for personal injury attorneys we had better be showing up right at the top and practicing what we preach so really we invest in our own SEO as kind of a showcase for what we can do for the other law firms out there that we want to work with and I mean our clients are always happy to refer us out to anybody that they know who's looking for an SEO agency the other thing that we do is we attend a few conferences so I'm going to be going out to the Pilma conference out in Denver later this year.

16:49I also am teaching a CLE course at the Maryland State Bar Association later this year, talking about marketing ethics. So getting out and doing a little bit of networking. I'm a fairly social person, so I would do that for fun anyway. But that's really where most of our clients are coming from. Your idea of fun, Lindsay. I like the pickleball idea better. So, Lindsay, in terms of resources to our friend that's listening, we mentioned the podcast. Your website is optimizemyfirm.com. What would you recommend to our friend that's listening to us right now? What should they do after this conversation?

17:34So, after this conversation, If they're interested in learning some more about SEO, you're welcome to reach out to me directly if you have any questions. But we also have resources on our website with our blog, and that answers a lot of really common questions and problems, especially for attorneys who are struggling with different parts of their marketing campaigns. We have some case studies out there that walk through some other pretty common problems and show how we can help out with that. but definitely check out the podcast and reach out to me. Awesome. Lindsay Busfield, again, vice president of Optimize My Firm and podcast host with the name of the show, again, like a personal injury marketing minute.

18:20But again, Lindsay, your website, optimizemyfirm.com. Lindsay, it's been a great conversation. Thank you for joining us. Thank you so much for having me.

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