B (3:10)

Let me ask you something, because that this may seem like a really stupid question, but when you say they're punished for scaling to rank, isn't that the point of SEO is you are basically trying to rank, so you're trying to produce as much content as possible to help rank the web. Isn't that the whole point of things?

D (3:28)

Trav, you want to take that one or you want me to?

C (3:30)

Yeah, I mean, at the end of the. Yes. Really, what AI, a lot of folks did with AI, where they're probably going to get their hand slapped is basically what they're talking about right now is just the velocity of content that is now being able to be produced by AI, whether it's relevant or not, whether it's being searched or not, or whether it's being seen or not in ranking is something totally different. So a lot of that has to do with just making sure it's relevant content. Make sure you're, you know, one of the things is that we're seeing is that make sure you're updating your content. For years and years and years, it's been like just, we write content for firms over and over and over again and continues to compound. Now it's, you know, we have the thrill of the having to go back and update content that we wrote years and years and years ago because we had it, it's been ranking on the first page for a long time. And now we gotta figure that out. How do we go back to every single page that we ever wrote for somebody that we might have been writing for seven years in a row now, every single month, and having to update that? So those are all the fun things that we get to do on our end.

B (4:35)

When you say rewrite it, I mean, are you talking about rewrite it from scratch or do you just make in small? Like what percentage of it do you need to rewrite?

C (4:42)

Roughly, roughly about 25% of it. That's a broad comment, but just updating it with current stats, different things, eat signals, things of that nature, just see that's being touched. Again, it's not a set it and forget it, set it and forget it type of Thing.

B (5:03)

All right, so this is interesting because like we were talking before we started about how at the beginning of all this, you know, Google was punishing AI content and now, now in some ways it's outperforming human content. But like, how does I know? There's like basic ways of telling. You can look at the ampersand and there's other, like, other ways you can tell, like by bolded words, you're like, oh, that's clearly content that's been created by AI. But like, are there some like, other just like dead giveaways that people don't know about?

C (5:34)

Vitis, you want to grab that one?

D (5:37)

The answer is I sure there is. I'm sure. But I can't sit there and read a page and go, oh well I know that's AI. There's tools that can analyze content and say, hey, you know, 50% of this page is AI driven, but the rest was actually edited and therefore it qualifies as edited by a person page. I know we've had examples and one comes to mind specifically where a firm that we were just advising, we weren't even running their SEO, but they were told like, oh, just have some AI write 100 pages of content to your website and just throw it on there and there won't be any issue. And we immediately told them that was a bad idea. But they didn't take our advice and within a two week period, their traffic dropped by 80%. So there's the flood of content. Like I think Travis used the word velocity. Like how quickly do you put it out? We have some clients where we're writing 40, 50, 60 pages of content a month. We don't just put it on in one day. There's a drip to it to sort of feed it slowly versus you know, it's just like anything else. If you add 100 backlinks in one fail swoop, that sends a signal that some shaky is going on. Right? So, so there's a process of how you do it that actually has a benefit versus a lot of people don't know what to do. They just all throw it out there and hope that it falls in the right place. And that's the things that Google picks up on that shows that it's not relevant content. It's just meant to rank. I'll add on to something Travis said about meant to rank. Yes, content is meant to rank, but it's also meant to inform. And there's a balance between the two. You go back to 15, 20 years where these websites would Load the word personal injury into one page like 150 times or they'd have it sort of ghosted where you couldn't even see it. So they're trying to, you know, slam that page with quote to rank content, but there's nothing on the page. So there's that balance of. Yes, the whole point is to rank because if you don't rank, no one's going to see the page. But you also have to have relevant visibility to it or content to it that if the person lands on it, it actually expands, explains what they're looking for. So it's always about finding that balance. That's, that's the challenge.

B (7:51)

What can you add to a website page to make sure that it is adding value? I mean like, is it adding questions? Is it adding quotes from. I mean like what, what are the things you can do to actually bolster it so that whenever it's being scraped by Google, the spiders say, hey, this thing is actually adding value. It's not just, you know, not trying to just rank.

C (8:14)

Stats are a big one. Stats are a big one they want to see. And this is, and this goes hand in hand with not only ranking on Google, but also ranking in the, in the LLMs and the chat GP chapiti, chat GPTs and so forth is making sure you have stats, make sure you're having relevant content. Frequently asked questions, certainly asking. And now what changed? You could, you typically could do that all on one page. Now you really want to separate those into different pages and making sure you're going thoroughly through, making sure you're asking, answering the questions that at the end of the day people are asking. I mean, that's always been kind of the case, but it just needs to be structured a little bit different. So you make sure you're showing up in Google and these different LLMs.

D (9:00)

And on top of that, it's also the detail of information we're seeing. The LLMs really benefit from attorney profiles that are really robust, not just their resume, for example, case results, locations where things happened. Another thing we're seeing a huge benefit from is things like yelp. For example, ChatGPT pulls a lot of their information from Yelp. Most attorneys don't even have a Yelp page. Or if they do, there's maybe a review from seven years ago. So all those things that are external from your website send signals. Social media is another huge one because if you're running social media properly, think about that. You know, if you're posting three or four times a month on Facebook or Instagram or YouTube, that's consistent new information that the LLMs can go and pick up versus maybe looking at a stagnant page that has, has reviews or content that's months or years old. So the more of those things that are, that are, that are being fed out and the more consistently and, and frequently it's being presented, that's all a benefit.

B (10:02)

So does that mean that you should have your, all of your social profiles like open where you can't, it's not like follow only or whatever that's called. Where like you like on Instagram you can choose like if someone can follow you or not. If you are like on Facebook you can choose like who can connect with you, friends or not friends. Should you keep it more open?

D (10:21)

If you want to.

B (10:22)

Like you actually have the benefit of ranking.

D (10:25)

So with Facebook we recommend obviously a Facebook business page. You tie it to a Facebook personal page to have a business page. But I would leave the personal page separate because you don't need that. That has nothing to do with the law practice. In some aspects there's a level of you don't want people to be able to comment because there's always the haters out there that, oh you're this and that lawyer, that doesn't help anybody. And as far as visibility goes, we're seeing a huge benefit from running social media ads because the algorithms that Facebook has enormous reach and they're fractions of pennies of what it costs to run on Google or some of these other platforms. So as far as leaving it open, I think it really depends on what you're trying to accomplish. If it's just announcing to the world that hey, the firm participated in a charity thing, this event that's different than you know, you're posting about the type of cases that you do and looking for specific audience.

B (11:27)

I want to ask you about AdWords. So I have noticed that because we run our own AdWords and we are, I mean our click through rate was really, I think whatever they call it. I was looking at numbers of the day, it was like 8, something like 8% or something like that. But then we started tweaking using some of the AI tools that they have implemented and they're like, do this and you'll get this, this much of an increase and do this. And it plummeted to like 3%. And I'm like, it's interesting how you like trying to use their internal tools actually hurt our numbers. And so I just, I wonder if you're seeing anything similar in Your old's

D (12:03)

end, Trav, I'll let you take that one.

C (12:06)

Yeah, no, there's, I mean Google will tell you the conversion rate if that's what you're talking about. Clicksta.

B (12:13)

Yeah, I'm pulling it up to make sure I get the. What I'm talking about. Right. Yeah, it's, it was actually clicked the click through rate. So the two rates. Yeah.

C (12:20)

You know, Google will tell you 10% I would say depending on practice area. You can see it as high as, you know, we typically try to aim for 20% across the board. Brush across the board. Obviously car accidents and so forth. Can be a little, little because it's so competitive. Can be, can be a little bit less. But yeah, it's the tool. There's, it's just not. The tools are helpful. We have a team of, of SEO strategists or excuse me, PPC strategists on our end because someone needs to be in there. I don't see any tools. We have not stumbled across any tools where it's just a setup. Forget it. And because a lot of times. Yes, exactly. That they do more harm than good in some instances.

B (13:04)

Yeah, I mean it didn't benefit at all. It was like, and it was funny because the way they have it set up, like I've got my account open up right now where like it has these recommendations. Right. And then it says oh, you know, top recommendation for you get more conversions at a similar or better ROI by adding select broad match versions of your existing keywords. Right. Which we had originally applied that and then it. Our numbers plummeted so we removed it. But then, so they, they by us doing that, they changed our optimization score. Even though we're getting better results by doing it our way. There are in their eyes our optimization score went down. Which is like it's absurd to be now that just tells me it's just a money game at the this point.

C (13:44)

Is it? It is. You're not wrong. You're not wrong.

B (13:48)

Yeah. Well it's like the way it like, like to me, broad search is going to cost it. What it's to me, those aren't very tailored. Those aren't tailored. Like a broad search is even more like the personal injury attorney. Those are the more expensive keywords. Those are not search rates.

D (14:02)

Yeah.

B (14:02)

Yeah. So it's like, okay, that's, that's. Yeah, I know that I can spend more money, but if I really want to optimize this thing, it makes no sense for me to use those broad keywords because then you are, then I am fishing in the pond with everyone else. But if I can get clever with it and actually really optimize and squeeze it. You all are doing amazing at 20%. That's incredible. I didn't know that. That's awesome.

C (14:25)

Yeah, it just depends the practice niche areas you can get. Or a lot of times we'll see Spanish ads. Some of the campaigns are running in Spanish will get a higher conversion rate ratio just because of the lack of competition and so on and so forth. But yeah, Google will tell you across the board, I mean, their number they always rely on is 10% is what the conversion ratio you should be looking at. But I would argue many practice areas, criminal law, family law, things of that nature, you can get it real close to, if not exceed 20%.

B (14:57)

Does AdWords have anything similar, like the algorithm changes with SEO, do they do anything similar with that? Or has it stayed pretty consistent?

D (15:05)

I mean, that's kind of why Travis said you want somebody in there paying attention. Right. Because you should always be looking at conversions and trying to get the lowest cost per click and not waste money on. I'll give you an example. We'll take over a client's pay per click campaign and realize that they're spending money on the word lawyer. Not a specific time to lawyer, just lawyer and location. Right. I mean, that's an absolute waste of money. So there's best practices that go on out there. I'm not aware of sort of algorithmic adjustments that they do as far as. Because it is a money game for them, they just want to generate as much revenue as possible. But it's really up to the strategist to implement the best practices and really go for the not so frequent searches, but the more valuable searches. And I'll give you an example of that. That rings a bell for me. For a conversation I had, we had a firm in San Francisco that was adamant. And this is SEO. Ppc, doesn't matter. Right. Adamant about ranking at the top for San Francisco personal injury attorney. Like that was his litmus test of success. Right. It wasn't the phone ringing, it wasn't cases. It was like, if I just get there, that's gonna make everything okay. And it just didn't make. You couldn't get through to him. And it turned out that one of our clients at the time actually was ranking at the top number one in Google for that search. And we took a look at sort of the traffic that that search was driving, and it was so minimal. And so I had a conversation with Him I said well, how many searches do you think this, that that generates? Oh, it must be hundreds if not thousands, you know, a month. And it was something around the, you know, four or five. And those are probably other attorneys that were, you know, using that sort of vanity search race to look. So the key to kind of what you said, it's not the personal injury, criminal attorney, whatever, it's the who's the best injury attorney for a car wreck that happened in Sacramento on Iowa, whatever. Right. So the long tail searches, that's how people ask questions to voice command things as well as well as the LLMs. So it's always, that's a better strategy I guess to implement and kind of

C (17:16)

piggyback to change, change it a little bit. One of the biggest mistakes that I see that our clients come to us with is just not spending the right amount of money, right? I'm not talking about money that goes to us, but like straight to Google. We put people's cars on file and go and, and they pay directly to Google. But where I see people, I tried that, it didn't work, right. And you can spend too little bit of money when it comes to pay per click. Like we probably get a call weekly at this point from I'm here in Southern California, so I'll get this used personal injury because that's the most competitive. You know, we'll get a call a week saying hey, I got ten grand to spend and I want to go after car accidents in California, in Southern California. And my response every time is like, do you have a hobby? You know, go put it on red or black in Vegas. You'll get better return on your money because it's 350 to $500 a click out here, right? And if you use a silly analogy that I always give them is like if you have a deck of cards, right, like these are business cards. But if you have a deck of cards and you only have 10 grand, it's 500 bucks a click. It's like buying like and in this analogy it's like if the cases are the aces, we want to get as deep, we know there's four aces and we want to get as deep into this deck as possible. And if you spend too little bit of money, it's like buying like five cards off the top, top of the deck and crossing your fingers and hoping you find the ace, right? So you need to make sure that it's just a math equation. So make sure you have enough budget to flip over as many of those cards. As possible to find, you know, two, three, four of the aces to where you get a positive return on investment. I see too many people, you know, come, come to us and go, yeah, I tried it, I spent five grand and it's $500 a click. I'm like, you bought 10 clicks and using the same analogies like okay, 10% of those are going to actually pick up the phone to call. So you're getting one call and God forbid you miss that call or you're on the other line or whatever may happen. So you want to make sure you have a big enough budget. Now, as you know, different markets, the cost per click is different, different practice areas, it's vastly different. So you know, if you're doing estate planning and I just looked at this in the Woodlands, Texas, you can get away with a couple thousand dollar budget. Right. You're not going to be able to do that with car accidents. So knowing what the cost per click is, using the right ratios of what that math equation looks like and having the appropriate budget and typically it takes about 90 days to get a full picture of what's going on. If someone's managing it correctly and they're eliminating keywords, they're adding negative keywords, things of that nature to really dial in your campaign and not get lost in the weeds. Of all those things we were talking about is really first things first is having the right budget. And I'm not talking about, once again not talking about the budget that goes to the agency that's managing it, but just the Google. That's the first thing that I see where people fail at pay per click.

B (20:25)

How big is it when it comes to the overall strategy is choosing the right negative keywords. How does that factor in when it comes to overall equation?

C (20:35)

I don't know if I know the, I don't know the percentage off the top of my head of what that looks like, but it's part of it. It's certainly part of it because really what that means is that someone is actually looking at your campaign and watch what calls are coming in, listening to the calls and seeing what those certain keywords are delivering and are they bringing in the right type of calls that is right type of cases or are they not? And then eliminating, adding negative keywords or eliminating keywords, the ones that are just eating up your budget and not producing the type of clients you're trying to, trying to find.

B (21:15)

Yeah, something's interesting with our marketing people is I, I struggle with, when it comes to them is like encouraging them. It's okay to spend more money when it comes to the ads because, like, our average cases were 25,000 bucks. So, like, I'm okay with spending a couple thousand dollars to couple to acquire a client. You're like, it's really kind of interesting how they, like, they really try to like, pull back on it. I'm like, no, I'm willing to spend more money. This is, this is not a slot machine. This one's more. Putting it into an ATM. I'm putting in $2,000 and I can get 25,000 out. That's a pretty. I'll do that math every single day. But it's like, it's like, how do you all get people to do that? I mean, I'm sure you all probably fight that all the time.

C (21:55)

Are you talking about for our clients or.

B (21:57)

Your clients? Yeah, your clients.

C (21:59)

Yeah. I mean, first, first things first is setting the right expectation, like saying no to clients that just don't have the right, the right budget and then having them focus on what are they picking. To your point, are they picking up quarters for nickels? Right. Are they getting a 5 to 10 to 1 return on their money? I think that's a sweet spot and using a broad brush again, so I need to be careful. But across the board, what I tell every person I've ever sat with is like, if I could give you one piece of advice, if you're picking up quarters for nickels, you're in the right spot. Right. If you're saying things to me like, ah, it's paying for itself, I'm like, go do something else. You know what I mean? You got, you know, take the wife or husband out to a nice dinner or something. Like, use that money elsewhere. But also on the other end of it, it's like, we're not selling, they're not selling lottery tickets, you know what I mean? And it's like, if you're not going to spend a dollar and make 10 million bucks, that's not how it works. But if you're in that sweet spot and you're seeing that consistently, then that's the time to scale.

B (23:00)

Right?

C (23:00)

And you know, to, to your point, if you put a buck into the slot machine, you get five bucks out. You might, you see that consistently put two bucks in. See if you can get ten and scale it that way. Not get lost in the detail in the weeds of, of a particular keyword necessarily. I mean, we, we invite that. If they want to get involved in that, that's, that's fine. But it really comes down to return on investment. Are you get. Are you getting that no matter what you're doing?

B (23:29)

All right, so you. All of us are old enough to remember the Yellow Pages, and I wonder if there's something that firms are still spending money on right now that it just isn't hitting, but they're still dumping money into it. Is there anything like that that you can think of that's similar to what the Yellow Pages were back when. I remember whenever I was. It was. This was 2011. I remember this guy trying to sell me his. He had this full page in the Yellow Pages. Hey, like, I can actually sell this to you. I think he was trying to pawn it off of me is what he's trying to do. But this is like in 2011. And I'm thinking, like, dude, this is the yellow pages in 2011. No one's buying the yellow. No one's looking at the Yellow Pages. But he. He was adamant that it was gonna. It was gonna get me money if I bought it, and I did not. But is there anything like that these days?

C (24:14)

Well, I don't know if there's. You can piggyback on this vitus, but I. Nothing comes to mind necessarily to the example, like, Yellow Pages, where it's just like the dodo bird and it just doesn't. It's not around anymore. But what we do see is firms hesitant to put tracking numbers on everything. As a business owner myself, I can't imagine spending $1 on anything that I couldn't track. Right. And so there are certain directory listings, for example, that may have worked in the past, but aren't working now. But if you're not putting a tracking number and tracking what you're getting from that, you might be wasting money. So whether it goes For PPC or LSAs or SEO or directory listings or whatever, have a tracking number on there so you. And it'll tell you and be able to know which calls are coming from what. And getting your cost per acquisition, understanding your cost per acquisition for each of these things that you're doing. So you're not, you know, without you knowing it, spending something that isn't around anymore isn't working because the algorithms are changing all the time. And you're not going to know. You know, I tell people, let's not judge things off of how you feel. My feelings. And your feelings don't mean a hill of beans at this point. It's how much money is going into your bank account that matters. Data matters. So make sure you're doing it. Tracking Everything that you're spending money on.

D (25:52)

Yeah. And I'll basically agree with Travis said, and I'll give you some examples. There's directories out there. There's areas like, I mean, yellowpages.com used to be, you know, hey, buy a spot on yellowpages.com there's other placements that, you know, years ago may have had some value, but they just don't exist anymore. And some attorneys just have stuff on like autopay. Right. Like, oh, it worked at one point. I just kind of keep paying for it. You know what I do when I talk to one of my clients that is in some of these directories that they're talking about, we absolutely want to put a call tracking number on there so we can show them what kind of calls they're getting. And that's usually very eye opening to them because it's not the positive results that they were hoping for. And then there's ways to actually analyze, you know, year over year, like, are you getting less and they're charging you more? Is the visibility what it used to be or is that listing still on the first page of Google or is it now on page seven, in other words? So there's certain things that I think they're holding onto for purposes of it worked five or six years ago. And without somebody sort of schooling them on like, hey, we should really take a look at this because if you've got 10 of these things, maybe two of them are worth keeping. The other eight we should ditch. You can put that money to use somewhere else and get a much better return on that. So it's not as simple as just the yellow pages are dead. But there's still places where firms are spending money that's legacy products that are not delivering. And a lot of them don't know how to see the return on it or if it's actually worth keeping. So I actually have those conversations all the time with people, even if they're not clients of mine. They're like, hey, I'm spending this money here. Do you mind? What are your thoughts on this? And so I'll be happy to do that kind of analysis for them and just give them my thoughts.

B (27:42)

How much of your jobs is teaching lawyers, like how to do their numbers and understand their numbers? I can imagine it's like a big part of what you do.

C (27:50)

I make the joke, and I'm not joking to our sales reps. You get half the money you earn is walking people off ledges and keeping them from making bad business decisions. Because they don't know their numbers. It truly, there are clients that we've lost and have come back and was like, I didn't know my numbers. I know you told me to. To look at that. Because the only piece of information we don't know is who actually gets signed. Right? I mean, we can. We record calls. We can hear fantastic calls and, you know, FedEx truck T boned a school bus and, you know, whatever. Right. Like, there's probably a good call there. But yes, a lot. A ton of it is. I would. I probably can count on 95%. Yeah. We work with. We work with over 600 clients across the country. Right. And I could probably count on a couple hands how many really, really know their numbers inside and out. And it's just, listen, this is not what they focus on. This is not what makes. Makes them money in their day job necessarily. So they trust us to do it. But it's important that we, that we. I mean, we. I was just talking to one of our reps the other day. I was like, I don't even know if we should work with clients anymore that won't be open to tracking everything, because what do we. What do we. How do we help them if we don't know what's. What's happening? You know, the more information we gather from them, the better we can perform. Right? Because we don't want to unplug something that's working or have them continue to spend money on things that aren't. I have no dog in the fight. Whatever's working for our clients, we want to pour gas on that and scale it. If that's indeed their goal.

B (29:44)

Yeah, I bet that. Go ahead, Vitus.

D (29:46)

And on top of that, it sometimes is really surprising how few of them even pay attention to anything unless we're holding their hand to go through it with them. We send all of our clients a monthly report. Here's all the stuff that we're tracking for you.

B (30:01)

You.

D (30:02)

I can think one of them actually looks at it, unless I'm on a zoom call, going through it with them, showing them, here's your calls. Here's your intake forms. You're getting stuff from here. You're getting stuff. Oh, okay. That call came from Google. Great. You know, like, they're busy doing law stuff. They, they. We need to help them understand the business side of things. And that's really where the partnership comes in. Most of the firms I work with have almost no relationship with whoever. Whoever's doing it. Now, they get a report, they can't read. They, they have a call once every year to kind of talk about whatever, but there's no partnership in the success. They're kind of just on cruise control versus a partnership that, like, the more involved people are, the happier everybody's going to be because we're going to have an understanding of what's working.

B (30:46)

Yeah, Love that. All right, I'm going to wrap things up. I want to make sure people know how to reach out to you all. You all are our title sponsor for Maxlock on 2026 and so want to give you all props for that. Thank you. That's our second year in a row that you all are title sponsor. We've had a great partnership. Partnerships. We've had a great partnership over the last few years. So let you know. I really appreciate that. But how, how do people get in touch with you if they're interested in Rise Up? You all are month to month, which is different than I think every other SEO company out there, which is. That's what's amazing. So that means you all have to deliver results. That's great. So how do people get in touch with you all if they're interested in reaching out to you all for your SEO services, your AdWords services? So digital marketing in general.

C (31:27)

Yeah. Then you go to our website, riseupmedia.com you can, there's a form fill there where they can fill it out and we'll get right back to them. It's Rise up Media. Rise is spelled with a Z. We obviously don't know how to spell over here. So RiseUpMedia.com is our website and on

D (31:45)

that note, if they prefer a quicker version, they can call or text me. My Phone number is 704-953-7051 and be happy to get back to them whichever way works for them.

B (31:57)

And Vitals will respond any hour of the day. Doesn't matter if it's three in the morning, doesn't matter if it's eight o' clock at night, it doesn't matter. Just at any point on the weekends, just feel free. He'll respond to you right away.

D (32:08)

And on that note as well, like we, one of the biggest things that we offer is just a free look under the hood. A lot of people just don't know. So we are the least pushy people you're going to talk to. We have no problem spending an hour of time going through everything you're doing. And some of it may be you're doing great. Some of it maybe you can do this better. Some of it may be this whole thing sucks, right? But more than happy to offer that with no obligation, just helping people understand what they could be doing better.

B (32:38)

I can vouch for that. You all usually will come to dinner and just say hello and leave. You all can always stay, but you rarely do. You usually just hit the road but because you all don't ever want to be perceived that way. So I can vouch for that. You're not pushy at all. So that's great. But Vitus Travis, thank you so much for doing this. Really appreciate I I learned some things that I didn't know about SEO and AdWords, so I appreciate you doing this. Guys.

E (33:13)

Max.com is this October in Atlanta and Early Bird tickets are live right now. If you've ever wondered what we actually cover at this event, it's nearly everything that goes into the business of running a law firm. Because at this level, it's about putting all the pieces together the right way. If you've got a vision for your firm that's bigger or just better, better systems, more organized, more profitable, or more self sufficient, this is the room that helps you make those shifts and build momentum in the right direction. Go to maxlockcon.com and grab your ticket today.