Jason Hennessey:
I never thought I would be asking my SEO guy, like what I should name my firm, because I'm thinking about SEO first before I've actually slapped this name on my building". You know what I mean? That's how powerful what you and I are talking about is right now.
Chris Dreyer:
SEO is an asset that you own. It compounds over time, every piece of content, every backlink, every optimization, it's all building your digital real estate. In a world where a single high-value case can mean millions, the ROI is off the charts. Without SEO, your firm might as well not exist.
Welcome to Personal Injury Mastermind, the show where ambitious cernies come to learn, implement, and get results. We break down the proven tactics that separate the best firms from the rest each week. I'm your host, Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io, an elite personal injury lawyer marketing agency.
In this episode, we dive deep into cutting-edge SEO strategies tailored for personal injury law firms with a man who's been in the game as long as I have, Jason Hennessey. In today's episode, we cover the value of AI with human oversight and content creation, technical SEO like how and when to prune content while maintaining traffic, and why getting reviews will directly affect your rankings on Google.
All right, let's get on with the show.
Jason Hennessey:
My story kind of dates back to 2001, is when I kind of accidentally stumbled upon this thing called SEO. I built a website, and I didn't know anything about driving traffic to it, and the developer is like, "Oh, you need to learn this SEO thing". And I'm like, "Oh, shit".
I just started tinkering with the stuff that I was learning in the book and then practicing, and then, I became really passionate about that and I started getting early results. And the next thing you know, I'm studying for the LSAT, I'm like this law stuff. I'm just going to become an SEO. You know what I mean?
And so, here I am now kind of married to both worlds. I did not become a lawyer, but for 24 years, I've been doing this SEO stuff.
Chris Dreyer:
You actually got in the game a little bit before me. So, you were, definitely, familiar with thearticle mugs, the...
Jason Hennessey:
Oh my God.
Chris Dreyer:
All of that kind of stuff.
Jason Hennessey:
Squidoo lenses, you name it, man. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Chris Dreyer:
Hub pages. Yeah. So, take me to the starting of Everspark Interactive to Hennessey. Take me through that journey.
Jason Hennessey:
Everspark Interactive was really founded upon me doing one presentation in Atlanta to a group of DUI lawyers. I was asked to speak about SEO. I told the person that was hosting the conference that I knew nothing about legal marketing. I had websites ranking number one and number two on Google for online poker. So, I was very transparent. I gave a presentation. And by the time I was done with that presentation, there was 50 lawyers, but seven that came up to me and said, do you do this for consulting basis? And I'm like, not really.
And one of those was our friend, Seth Price of BluShark, another friendly competitor of ours. He was one of my first clients at the time, and he'll tell you the same story. But he was in the room when I gave that presentation. And then, basically, that was the genesis of me starting Everspark Interactive, and how I got into the whole legal world, was just from one presentation and seven clients, which, then, became many others.
And then, in 2015, my business partner and I, who I had a great friendship, we were thinking about taking the company in two different directions at the time, and he offered to buy me out. And so, he bought my interest in Everspark Interactive. I moved out west, and it's been nine years, I guess, since we've been out here, so a pretty long time.
And I got bored, and I started another agency. I took all the lessons and mistakes that I learned from my first agency, and applied them to this one. And now, I'm making new mistakes, you know what I mean? As we do. You know?
Chris Dreyer:
That's the game. A lot of punches, but then, coming back from it. I was working for a few agencies, and then, I started my own. So, kind of a similar path in the agency space.
Jason Hennessey:
Mm-hmm.
Chris Dreyer:
Tell me, big picture, what does Hennessey Digital do, and then, the fun part is how are you different from those other legal SEO agencies?
Jason Hennessey:
But, usually, if I get on a call with somebody and it's like, "Hey, listen, it's between you guys and Rankings, and... I'm like, if you've narrowed it down to those five, I'm like, you've done a pretty good job of due diligence. You know what I mean?
Now, it really comes down to like preference, personality. And so, what makes us different? I think it's very similar to, probably, the stuff that makes you guys different. We learn from our mistakes. The mistakes that you guys make might be a little different from the mistakes that I've made. The clients that sign up with us, today, really benefit from 24 years of me doing SEO, and knowing what not to do, most importantly, and then, knowing what to do as kind of a second advantage.
That's the same from a pay-per-click perspective. Right? It's one thing if you just hire somebody that's never been in legal, and you're running a pay-per-click budget with them, you're going to spend a lot of money to learn which negative keywords that you need to add, right? Versus if you've been running millions and millions of dollars in pay-per-click and you're taking all of those negative keywords and the advantages, and you're applying it to a new client, boy, they're going to save a lot of money.
That's really it. I mean, we've got great people, we've got good systems and processes, and we get pretty good results. We're not perfect, right, but as long as we're honest and we have integrity, and that's another thing, too. I know you don't go to a lot of the conferences like I used to do. I don't go as much as more these days, but I can confidently walk around a conference and not have to hide behind a wall, because this person's coming and I ripped this person off. Right?
I don't even think there's one thing bad about me online. You know what I mean? And I take great pride in my character and my reputation.
Chris Dreyer:
There's so many nuances to SEO and to search engine marketing, and I appreciate you what you said about the negative keywords, but it's, also, just what keywords to bid on, too, that convert, right? After you have so much economies to scale.
Let's have a little fun. Let's go through some of these... It's not a Venn diagram style for me here with the three circles, but I've got a handful of categories. Let's just start with content.
The first part, AI, it's easier to produce content. Where's the content strategy lie with AI kind of eating up top of the funnel? Just overall thoughts on what's good content.
Jason Hennessey:
There's still so many people that's scared of AI. I'm not. I don't think you are either. I think if it helps satisfy the intent of a search, and it could be written in a little bit more sophisticated manner using real data, I don't think it's a bad thing.
We're doing a lot of experimentation with AI. I wouldn't say like we're a hundred percent AI. I think it's important to make sure that human beings are kind of doing a lot of the editing, but we are, certainly, using AI to try to get competitive advantages.
And AI is not a new thing. I mean, you've got tools like Surfer SEO and stuff that's kind of been using AI for a long time. I think I'm pretty shocked at the results of the experimentation that we're doing. I'll just say it, like I have a site called motorcycleaccidentlawyer.com, that is a hundred percent AI.
Now, I hope nobody from Google watches this and goes in and slaps that site, it's... We're building out a massive website that's going to have a motorcycle accident lawyer page for every small city in America. And we're going to drive strong links to it, and it's a hundred percent AI. Right? I'll just put that out there.
But then, I wouldn't be so bold to do that for all of my clients. You know what I mean? I wouldn't just kind of take that approach, like our clients, I think we're doing a little bit of it... It just depends on the comfort level of clients too. You know what I mean?
AI is a good tool when you have keywords that are not that competitive and there's not that much search volume, and you just want to kind of scatter a lot of content, I think that's a good strategy. But if you're, really, going after an Atlanta car accident lawyer phrase, I think that's a little different.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, I agree with that. I think it can be a great tool for efficiency and enhancing your leverage, your utilization. Let's take a different approach. Something that's not talked about a lot is when to prune content. Right? An article may have been written, it's an evergreen topic, and... But, maybe, the website's been around for several years, and it's not getting traffic, or it doesn't have links.
What's the balancing act of when to prune, when to refresh, like how do you approach that conversation?
Jason Hennessey:
It's all kind of like a unique case by case basis, because typically, like you, when we inherit a website, a lot of times there's a lot of content that we just inherit, right? And it could be random blog posts about all kinds of random things based on the strategy of the previous agency.
And then, as you come in and you do things the way you do it, like you start building strong links to it, you start fixing the technical aspects of it, you start building out the internal links and the silos, right? Well, guess what, all of the pages start to rise. Right?
And so, that happened with us recently where, all of a sudden, a client was getting all these random calls about something that, I think, it was like, what to do if a tree falls down and hits your car? You know what I mean? And it's like their client's getting mad at us, because they're getting all these calls, right, for that.
And I'm like, we didn't write this content. It's just because we're doing SEO well now, like all these legacy pages are starting to rank and you're getting these calls. And so, then, we have to go through and start to prune it and see which... So, really, I think there's informational pages, and there's transactional pages. Sometimes, you need those informational pages to boost and support the transactional pages. Right?
So, it is a very delicate balance, and sometimes, you just have to get the client to see that you need some of these FAQ pages that are real top of the funnel that will, probably, never convert just to support the transactional pages. But we definitely go through and we prune content all the time. You know what I mean? But it's just a case by case basis. Yeah.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. And I've seen, back in the day, when scholarship campaigns... Not to say there isn't a place for them if you do them right, but, back in the day, they were way more effective, and you could generate a substantial amount of traffic, you know, all those lazy college students coming in at the last minute to submit their essays and you get all this traffic.
And what I saw, was the traffic itself, even though it wasn't "relevant" to law, it had a very positive impact on the site and its rankings.
Jason Hennessey:
Sure.
Chris Dreyer:
So, it's like I think the challenge, and one of the reasons why I asked you the question is you get a tree falling on a car, and the question is, geez, I like the traffic, I like people interacting with my website, versus nuking that traffic or... And people could have said this from a torque that goes dead, now, I know Zantac's on a reemergence, but what do you think about that balancing act?
Jason Hennessey:
Yeah, so that kind of stuff, what I like to do, I'll always tell my clients, I'm like, I hate to lose the traffic. And so, what we'll do is we'll put a disclaimer at the top of the page, saying that we are no longer taking these cases any more, unless it really starts... And then, we'll maybe even pull the phone number from that page or whatever. Right?
But to your point, yeah, because the traffic is kind of a signal, right? And all of a sudden, if you start pruning a lot of content, and all of a sudden, you're losing a lot of this traffic, maybe, Google dings you and maybe the pages that are really driving the money and the leads start to fall, too, as a result. Right?
So, it is, definitely, a balancing act that you have to do. But I like to take the approach of, let's just put a disclaimer there, let's keep the traffic, let's remove the phone number, unless it's really creating a massive intake, and then, we'll take the page down. Yeah.
Chris Dreyer:
I kind of want to hit technical SEO just a little bit. To be honest, I'm really curious here because, on this and all this prefaces and I don't know, and I think in some scenarios when I ask this question, I think it depends or it's not always, it's like URL taxonomy, right? You'll get a Nathan Gotch or a Brian Dean that talks about flat architecture and being as close to the domains to the root as possible. And then, you have other scenarios where you've got these massive sites.
When does it make sense to use flat? When does it make sense to do the subfolders, or what's just your general thoughts there?
Jason Hennessey:
It's really a preference. Usually, back in the day, the closer it is to the root, the more of a priority page it is, right? And so, that was the way that... And Bruce Clay has been talking about this for 25 years, about building silos.
And so, it's not like it's a new thing, Right? But usually, if you have something that's part of the root, then, you're basically saying, "Hey, listen, now, after the root, here's another folder. I'm going to put less emphasis on this" Right? And so, you're able to tell Google the importance of these pages. Right?
If you have a personal injury page, that may be closest to the root, but then, afterwards, maybe, you have a slip and fall page that's part of the personal injury silo. Right? So, that's one way you can do that. But you can, also, kind of trump all of that with just the way in which you internally link things, too.
At this point, I wouldn't say it's really like you have to do it this way, you have to do it that way. It really is a preference, but making sure that the entire website is consistent based on what you decide to go with, I would say.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. I would completely agree with that. And I've seen success for our clients, I know you have, too, with both structures. And I will say, sometimes, they have the proper internal linking, sometimes, they don't, whether it's breadcrumbs or whatever.
Jason Hennessey:
But I will say this, Chris, though, sometimes, by having that, so if you have a blog and you're just keeping your blog closest to the root where every single URL is just like URL, and then, it's just the title of the blog post, that's where you can get into trouble, because, now, you're saying that this page kind of has the same emphasis as your main transactional pages.
And so, if somebody posts like a blog post about Atlanta, what to do if you're in an Atlanta car accident, that page could start to cannibalize your page if they're both closest to the root.
So, anytime you have a blog, I would definitely always put a blog in that folder. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Chris Dreyer:
I think that's definitely fair. And then, I'll say one other thing, too, and just, the thing I've seen on subfolders for cities, like, say, you take a multi-state firm and you take St. Louis, right, where you have site.com/st.louis, and sometimes, it won't say St. Louis personal injury, right, and the Google destination page will be it. And I know Seth Price over at BluShark, they do St. Louis injury, to work in that word injury.
Jason Hennessey:
It's so funny, we can totally tell. Yeah, I know when it's a BluShark website. Uh-huh. Yep.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. So, thoughts about, maybe, those keywords or those transactional phrases like lawyer or attorney being in the URL.
Jason Hennessey:
I'm a fan. You know what I mean? Most of the sites that we work on, you're probably going to see it that way, just because like the link building that you do to those pages will have those keywords in it. It's, also, another thing that gets bolded on Google when you start doing searches. You know what I mean?
So, Google is very telling. When you just start doing Google searches search, you can see like what's getting bolded and where they're putting more emphasis. And I want to have as much advantage as I can. And if I could put the word lawyer in there, I'm going to do it. Yeah.
Chris Dreyer:
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So, I want to make a fun transition that's driving, I think, most of the SEO community nuts. On the local side, you got these DBAs and fictitious names, where, now, every single law firm entity is something injury lawyers or something, accident injury lawyers, you know, it hits the relevancy component, but it stood the test of time for two years.
You look at Gursten in Michigan with Michigan Auto law. You type in Los Angeles personal injury lawyer, you're going to see something injury lawyer, like, when's this going to stop? What's your thoughts on this?
Jason Hennessey:
I don't think it's going to stop. I hope it stops. You know what I mean? Because it is kind of creating a really weird world. I even have a very prominent firm that makes a lot of money, and they, probably, have 200 staff. They bought a building, they need to know what they're going to put the name on the building.
He's like, "I never thought I would be asking you, Jason, my SEO guy, what I should name my firm, because I'm thinking about SEO first before I've actually slapped this name on my building". You know what I mean? That's how powerful what you and I are talking about is right now. It really is.
Chris Dreyer:
Morgan & Morgan, they do incredibly well in local services ads and organic, but I think one of the reasons it's hurting them on the map side is because they don't incorporate those keywords and transactional phrases in their name. But they're such a big entity that they just can't do that.
Jason Hennessey:
Yeah, they're not going to make a change like that. But it does hurt them, yeah, for sure. Yep. I agree with that.
Chris Dreyer:
Let's switch over to, just briefly, on link building, just your philosophy. The SEO community loves to church up some tactics, whether, it's not guest posting, it's blogger outreach, it's not this, it's that. So, what's your thoughts on what makes a good link in terms of how you guys evaluate links?
Jason Hennessey:
Link building has gotten a little bit more complex, but at the same time, it's gotten a little easier, too. I would say that the biggest thing is just to do things that real businesses do, and to incorporate everything that you do as a business or a firm, and to think about it from a link building perspective. How can I get an SEO benefit from what I'm doing right now? How do you incorporate your HR team to be a link building team? You know what I mean?
Meaning, hey, we need to hire somebody. Okay, great. Instead of just publishing it on Indeed, let's all publish it on monster.com. Let's find 20 other websites that we can publish this job opportunity on, because we're going to get strong links as a result of our HR team. Right?
That's one of the things that I do now, is whenever we get a new client, we spend a couple of hours training them on how they and their team can, also, contribute to the success of their SEO as well as I do how powerful like a better business bureau link is, right? You know what I mean? Stuff like that.
A lot of times, clients don't realize that, right? And so, the more that you can kind of train them and that they contribute to the success of your SEO campaign, and they're not just pointing fingers at you, as like, why... What you do is part of SEO, right? You have to get them to see that.
Chris Dreyer:
For our audience, right, we want to provide value, we want to generate more business. Right? So there are joint accountabilities, and it gets awkward, sometimes, to talk about them.
So, let's talk about one of the big ones that would help an SEO agency succeed because of its impact on local services ads and Google Maps.
Let's talk about reviews, top of the dome, some of the things that you think, really, have an impact when it comes to review acquisition.
Jason Hennessey:
What gets measured gets improved, and I think the firms that actually take that more seriously and they incentivize their teams to try to get more reviews are the firms that, usually, do better from a local perspective.
I know that we, probably, can't say this publicly, but incentivizing your team with Starbucks gift cards for every review that they're able to generate, it's against the Google guidelines, but is it really? No. I mean, you're just trying to kind of incentivize your team to make sure that they're following up with their clients.
And the other side, too, is I think people wait. You think you have to wait until the end after you've settled a case, and they hand them a check that you get a review, heck, man, start at the beginning. You know what I mean? If somebody actually calls up and you sign them up and they got a great experience, say, "Hey, by the way, the experience so far has been great, do you mind if I just send you a clink to my review?" And start at the beginning, instead of waiting until the end.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. I completely agree with any point of delight, right? It's an opportunity to get that review. Because they may have had a good experience with that individual, with, the correct incentives gets the correct behaviors and all of that.
The other one that I've always wondered about, and I'll get your take on this, is throughout time, we've heard, oh, no remote workstations in the firm, to get reviews. And to me, that's always been really weird. And I'll explain why.
If I go to a restaurant, and I eat at the restaurant, I would think that the person leaving a review at the restaurant is more legitimate than someone in a different state. Where is the line of that individual like establishing, you could do it via mobile, different IP address, like, what's your thoughts on that? Because that's like an age-old thing that's been said.
Jason Hennessey:
Yeah, I think that, the thing is, if you just have an iPad that is connected to the wifi that's on the IP address of that firm, and you constantly leave reviews, that's the stuff that can actually seen as Google being manipulated. Right? You know what I mean?
However, if somebody's in a restaurant and they have a great meal, and they're on their own phone, and maybe, they're not connected to wifi of that restaurant, you know what I mean? And they leave a review, that seems a little bit more natural. So, I think the big thing is don't just set up an iPad at the firm and make everybody use that same iPad that's connected to your wifi to leave a review. Right?
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. Good feedback. Yeah, I agree with that.
Reddit is, now, the fifth most visited website, and you've heard this saying, anytime anywhere people congregate is an opportunity to advertise.
Are you guys thinking about a Reddit strategy? Where does that fit in for attorneys? Is this something exploring? What's just your general thoughts on that?
Jason Hennessey:
Yeah, and we know what's happening. Right? So, there's a partnership with Google, and they're using that data to train AI, right? So there's a whole behind the scenes stuff that kind of surfaced, right? But we didn't know that, until they kind of told us that. We kind of just thought.
And it's funny, because Google is saying, Hey, helpful content update, making sure that there's a lot of trust and that the content is truly satisfying, the intent of, like what people are searching for, and it's coming from a trusted source, right? But who is to believe a 17-year-old kid that posts a comment on Reddit that's also ranking now, and now, is that the default answer to this just because it's Reddit? You know what I mean?
So, there is that kind of catch to this. I wouldn't say we have a Reddit strategy per se, but if we see Reddit ranking on the first page of Google for some of the terms that we're trying to compete for, you bet your butt, we're going to go in there and comment and leave a link for our client.
Chris Dreyer:
There were a lot of solid insights in today's episode. Let's review the takeaways. It's time for the PIM points. PIM point number one. Prune content with a scalpel. Don't just ask pages because they're off-topic. Before you hit delete, ask, is it bringing traffic? Are people engaging?
Sometimes, that random article is doing more heavy lifting than you think. Slap a disclaimer on top, maybe, ditch the phone number, but keep the content. It's about smart pruning, not scorched earth.
Jason Hennessey:
You start pruning a lot of content, and all of a sudden, you're losing a lot of this traffic. Maybe, Google dings you and maybe the pages that are really driving the money, right, and the leads start to fall, too, as a result, right? So, it is definitely a balancing act that you have to do.
Chris Dreyer:
PIM point number two, what's in a name? Everything when it comes to URL structure is not one size fits all. Flat architecture works for some, but for others, not so much. The key is consistency in hierarchy.
Your URL structure could scream, this is important to Google, make every character count.
Jason Hennessey:
So, if you have a personal injury page, right, that may be closest to the root, but then, afterwards, maybe, you have a slip and fall page that's part of the personal injury silo, right? So, that's one way you can do that.
But you can also kind of trump all that with just the way in which you internally link things, too, but making sure that the entire website is consistent based on what we decide to go with, I would say.
Chris Dreyer:
PIM point number three, SEO isn't just another marketing channel. It's the lifeblood of your firm's growth. It's the bottom of the funnel.
At Rankings, we're seeing firms massively increase their caseloads through strategic SEO. Why? Because when someone's injured, they're not flipping through the Yellow pages, and despite what you hear, they're not using TikTok as a search engine. They're Googling best injury lawyer near me.
And if you're not at the top of those results, you might as well be invisible.
Jason Hennessey:
I never thought I would be asking my SEO guy like what I should name my firm, because I'm thinking about SEO first before I've actually slapped this name on my building. You know what I mean? That's how powerful what you and I are talking about is right now.
Chris Dreyer:
That wraps up this episode of PIM with Jason Hennessey. As our conversation revealed, there's a lot that goes into a winning SEO strategy.
Most agencies talk a big game about the latest SEO trends, but at Rankings, we're actually implementing these strategies, testing them, and refining them specifically for PI firms. We're not guessing. We know what works because we're doing it every day.
You can learn more about Rankings and the resources mentioned today in the show notes. While you're there, pick up a copy of my new book, Personal Injury Lawyer Marketing, from Good to GOAT. It's available at Amazon. And if you like what you hear, leave me a five star review.
All right, everybody, thanks for hanging out. See you next time. I'm out.
