Chris Dreyer:
Hey, everyone. Chris Dreyer here, CEO of Rankings.io. Welcome to the Webinar Replay. At Rankings, we go deep on what's working right now to help personal injury law firms sign more cases. In today's webinar, Shawn and Logan walk through exactly how these models decide who gets recommended, which directories matter, and what you need to build so your firm gets picked up more often. Join us for the next webinar. Sign up at rankings.io/webinars. Let's get into it.
Ken Mafli:
Well, hello, everyone, and welcome to Rankings' live virtual event, where we'll be discussing how you can build the right content in directories to get found in AI and advance your lead generation efforts for your law firm. I'm Ken Mafli, a VP of marketing here at Rankings, and I'll be your host for today.
I'd like to introduce to you our speakers. First up, we have Shawn Denney. Shawn is the vice president of digital here at Rankings, where he leads the agency's evolution into a generative engine optimization powerhouse beyond just traditional SEO. With over 15 years of marketing experience, spanning traditional, digital, and data-driven strategies, he oversees fulfillment across SEO, paid media, content marketing, and technology. Shawn's expertise includes cross-channel strategy, advanced analytics, reporting and innovation, helping law firms maximize visibility and growth in competitive markets. Welcome, Shawn.
Next up, we have Logan Mosby. Logan is the director of SEO here at Rankings, where he oversees the SEO department and helps drive high-impact strategies for some of the most competitive law firms in the country. With over a decade of experience in technical SEO, content strategy, and local search optimization, Logan specializes in data-driven SEO that maximizes visibility and revenue. His expertise in AI SEO and enterprise level SEO makes him a key player in helping law firms dominate search rankings. Welcome, Logan.
All right. Well, today, we'll be exploring how AI decides which law firms rise to the top. Large language models aren't just pulling from general information. They tap into both structured and unstructured sources where terms like best, top, and super carry serious influence. We'll show you how to optimize the directories AI trust most so you become the firm it recommends. I am going to go ahead and exit stage right and let you folks take it from here.
Shawn Denney:
So before we get too far, I want to talk about why we're even talking on this topic to begin with. Why do directories matter? In a way, directories are functioning like user-generated content. Whether that's from social platforms, whether that's from forums, whether that's on an outside blog post, whatever it may be, user-generated content is meaningful to these LLMs because you don't control it 100%. It still has some outside other influence related to it. That outside influence is really powerful and meaningful for these LLMs because they don't want just the biggest, best business to say, "I'm the most optimized, and I've done everything I can, and I control this," they want to know what other people think about you, what other people are saying about you. These citations, these platforms, exist somewhere in between full user-generated content platforms and fully-owned platforms. It's offsite. It's something you can control. It's also areas where you can get reviews. You can get information about your brand out there without it directly being you controlling 100% of that narrative.
Why legal directories increase AI authority signals and improve law firm LLM visibility in searches
Logan Mosby:
So how does AI determine the best? As Shawn mentioned, AI is leaning heavily on these user-generated content platforms, including directories and offsite. They pull from structured, semi-structured, and unstructured sources, as well as mentions that may not have a link. Of course, the selfish SEO in all of us, we want that link too. But even having your firm being mentioned in places that may not be linked is also good for these AI citations. One of the big things too is they lean on the superlatives that we maybe can't necessarily say on our websites, but we can leverage them. Best, top, super, all hold disproportionate weight. These directories act, again, as authority amplifiers. If your firm's not present or fully built out and optimized, you may not be getting seen in AI as much as you could be. Your presence or absence would definitely determine whether the AI can see your firm.
I was doing a quick poke round on this and some things like Super Lawyers. For example, there were over 50 mentions of top-rated car accident lawyer on these pages, so these LLMs are referencing that and seeing it. It's important to be in there, be optimized as many as you possibly can. It's not only the industry-legal specific ones, but other ones too that are more traditional. It leverages them all to determine, quote, unquote, "the best" when it's looking to share the results and the citations.
Shawn, anything to add to that one?
Shawn Denney:
Yeah. These AI platforms, these LLMs, they're trying to replicate human behavior as best they can when they're responding to things. Think about how you describe something as the best. Now, I'm going to use a slightly off-topic example here, but I think it will illustrate the point. If you have a singer who just goes out on stage and says, "I'm the best singer on planet Earth," that's going to come off as arrogant to almost everyone who hears that. But if someone's writing a review that said, "That singer put on the best show I've ever seen," now we're saying like, "Oh, I trust that. That sounds awesome. I want to experience that." So when we, as these firms, say, "I'm the best," that's going to be off-putting to users. But when third-party platforms say you're the best, that's validating, that's reinforcing, that is helping people to actually believe in your premier status. Some of these, like Logan mentioned, Super Lawyers, Justia, that say the best, top rated, super, all of these superlatives help reinforce how we would talk as humans and where trust is coming from, which leads into social proof.
When someone is looking to contact a firm, whether it's a lawyer or even outside of the legal space, when someone says, "Should I go with option A or option B?" they're looking for some sort of validation, some sort of promise, some sort of review, something that says, "You're the right choice for me." All of these different citation platforms give the option for additional social proof, additional validation that you are the right person they should be talking to, you are the right person to help them. You can get reviews on these platforms, so it's not just Google reviews, it's not just Facebook reviews, it's also Justia reviews, Super Lawyers reviews. All of these matter to help everyone understand who you are and just how prominent you actually are.
How personal injury law firms can use Super Lawyers, Best Lawyers, and Best Law Firms listings to strengthen AI trust without overspending
Logan Mosby:
Yeah, and important thing here too is the consistency of the information as well. Making sure that anytime, any place that the firm is showing up, it's consistent information with the right DBA, address information, biography info, all your attorneys are associated with it. So it just helps bolster up that entity even more for these LLMs.
All right. First tip is using Super Lawyers strategically. As I mentioned, Super Lawyers uses these superlatives quite heavily, more than 50 times of top rated car accident lawyer, and that's going to be for any of the practice areas that are being shown. It's important to have these Super Lawyer distinctions and also leverage the premium attorney and the firm profiles, which will give you a little bit of an added edge too. Those are also being shown more in the AI citations. You can contact... If you don't have one already, your find a rep to make sure you can see who's already listed at your firm. It's important to have a specific attorney profile as well as for the firm. And then of course, ask for bold discounts where you can. The more attorneys that you list, the more rotations that your firm earns. Each attorney's going to be associated back to the firm, and it's just going to continue to build that entity, as I mentioned.
Again, optimize too DBAs, address, phone numbers, descriptions, making sure that's consistent. If one of them changes, you change it everywhere. It's quite a bit to keep up with, but it's important for relevant, consistent information across all of these.
Shawn, anything to add on that?
Shawn Denney:
Yep, just going a little bit deeper on the amount of lawyers you're listing under Super Lawyers. Now, if you're a small law firm and you only have one lawyer, only list one lawyer. But if you're a larger firm and you have multiple, it is absolutely worth it to list all of them that you can in there. Not only does this show the size of your firm and reaffirm confidence to the LLMs, to users, it also helps connect the dots of who works where and who I'm going to be talking to. The more that they can understand that journey, even before they've talked to you, the more trust you are building and the more likely that conversation is actually going to become a case for you.
Nominate it for Best Lawyers and Best Law Firms. This is an important aspect that you have to take some additional action on. As it says on the screen, you cannot appear on Best Law Firms unless at least one attorney is in Best Lawyers. Also, you have to have nominations that get pushed through, i.e., you as lawyers can nominate. We, as outsiders, cannot. This is like a special little club for lawyers to make the most out of it. It is an award. Why awards matter is because of EEAT, which impacts both SEO and these AI engines, which stands for experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness, i. e., you are showing you are an expert, you are an authority, you deserve the trust because you won this award against competitors in that same legal space.
As this says, there is a deadline to nominate the attorneys by. You have to get those nominations in by December 12th, and then you should email for eligibility. Email info@bestlawyers.com and bestlawfirms@bestlawwyers.com are where you would want to reach out to. These emails will be in the checklist that we will be including later.
How to optimize Justia, Yelp, and other directory profiles so both AI tools and real clients trust and recommend your PI firm
Logan Mosby:
Tip number 3 here is optimizing your Justia profile fully. So again, fully filled out profiles get preferred in the synthesis and having at least one peer rating that can help trigger that 10 out of 10 badge. It's all about the peer reviews as well as the customer reviews too. All fields, that includes your biography, the jurisdictions, any fees, awards that you've earned, they all work together here. We can leverage them across these profiles too. Practice areas that are served, all education, and then, like I said, at least one peer rating, and then add videos too, so leveraging your firm's YouTube channel and any videos that you already have. If you have bios for each attorney, leveraging them on those profiles. We are so inundated with content, and of course we need the content, and we're also very busy. Having a video helps the user experience, but it also can feed into these LLMs as well as traditional search too, with YouTube being the second largest search engine out there.
We really want to make sure that these are fully filled out profiles and leverage every option that they each have. Now, they may vary between them, but the core here is having all of the information updated and optimized fully, linking back into the website, linking to appointment links, offering, "Hey, we're available 24/7, whatever the case is." Some of them will also have slogans or taglines that you can leverage too that are usually a lot shorter than big descriptions. Use that strategically too to say, "Hey, this is going to be one of the first things that a user sees on this profile. How do I catch their attention as quickly as possible?"
So yeah, Shawn, anything else on Justia?
Shawn Denney:
Just to dive in a little further on the video aspect... There's different studies that have been done about this, but when a video is present on a page, it will increase engagement somewhere between 25 to 100%. Usually, it's around a 50% bump in engagement because that page has a video. This isn't just for Justia, but it does still apply to Justia that having good videos across everywhere you want to be not only helps LLMs, not only helps AI, not only helps SEO, you actually get more out of the traffic that's making it to that page. I need to start off by prefacing I am not a fan of Yelp. It's just not my cup of tea. However, just because I'm not a big fan of it doesn't mean I can't recognize its value that it brings. Yelp is becoming more and more a big source of information for these LLMs. It becomes a place where it pulls that information and helps contextualize who you are, what your brand is, and where it should be shown.
It is used by OpenAI and Apple Maps. It is in increasingly being cited by best lawyer in insert location-type queries or best lawyers for insert service-type queries. But with this, you have to get reviews to stick on Yelp, and this comes with a couple pain points that make it more difficult. First off, if someone just created a Yelp account to leave you a review and you are the first and only review they leave, not going to stick. They have to leave more reviews in order for the reviews to actually show up as legitimate and helpful. Second, you want to have more reviews coming in on a frequent basis. This isn't a sprint and then done. This is a marathon for continually getting reviews on the platform. Third, and this really helps, having people check in on Yelp while they're at your office helps legitimize the reviews that they are leaving for you, and thus more likely to make them stick.
Yelp does have some pay-to-play aspects for getting those reviews to show up for enhancing your profile. Again, I'm not the biggest fan of this, but it does have a meaningful impact when you pay to play on Yelp.
Logan Mosby:
Yeah, and Yelp too, as I'm sure you've seen in your searches, pops up heavily in traditional search too for brand names as well as their category pages for attorneys in X, Y city. So yeah, it's important to leverage these. I'm the same as Shawn of not the biggest personal user of Yelp, but it's very, very, very important to ensure that brand consistency, leverage it in the AI citations. I was doing the search this morning actually, and Yelp was one of the top ones that popped up. I'll definitely leverage that.
Shawn Denney:
I want to give a just quick example. Last week, we were actually talking to someone and they said, "Yeah, I started my journey for a personal injury lawyer. On ChatGPT, it brought me to Yelp, and I ended up contacting them and becoming a lead and finding my lawyer through Yelp." I'm paraphrasing. They didn't say they became a lead, but paraphrasing that user's journey of ChatGPT to Yelp because that's what was cited on ChatGPT and then ultimately became a client because of it. This is a powerful tool that a lot of people aren't leveraging to its full extent.
How to structure and scale law firm case result pages so AI systems can detect, rank, and surface your major verdicts and settlements
Logan Mosby:
And then our next tip here is building structured case results database on your website. Anywhere where we have large settlements or positive outcomes, having those on the website and then building out specific pages dedicated to each result, leveraging more content, giving a little bit more information about what it was, how was it impacted. I know there's, of course, only so much we can say, but having the settlement amount and then have them built as their own individual pages on the website feeds right into these LLMs.
I did a test on this here within the last 10 days or so where we launched all of the case results on our website as their own individual pages. Within under a week, one, Google had already picked them up and indexed all of them, 40-plus individual case results. But then in the results in AI, when asking about the firm, when looking for a lawyer in their location, it was pulling those specific snippets in too of like, "Hey, here's why you should. They have high settlements," or whatever the case was, and it was linking directly to those. So it helps build that trust and show, "Hey, not only do we have these profiles that say, 'Yes, we are the best,' but here's the proof behind it too." The proof is very, very important. If we're not leveraging case results already on the website, make sure to incorporate those.
And then of course, as frequently as you can update the website with new ones, the better off you are as well. We want to make sure we have... Recency and frequency is really the name of the game there. So yeah, leveraging individual case result pages and then structuring the field. What was the amount? What was the case type? What city did it happen in? What was the outcome? And then some added description and information. They allow the LLMs to anchor these snippets directly from your firm, and you can control that text a little bit in there too, providing more information about that specific case.
Shawn, anything to add on the case results?
Shawn Denney:
Yep. Earlier I mentioned the EEAT, the experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness, and that's exactly what this is reinforcing. This is saying, "We are capable and giving you proof of what we say we can do. Here's the validation." Think about it from a consumer standpoint, "I want to feel confident in my choice. I want to understand what I'm getting." So the more that you can set realistic expectations with your case results and your case studies and you can validate that you are the right choice to help them, the better people are going to perceive that and the more that it's going to be referenced in these AI answers, like Logan mentioned, where it might say, "Here's the specific result based off of a certain type of case in a certain location," because that's way more valuable to us than, "They want a case," okay. The more that it can give specificity to that, the more likely it's going to pull that in.
And then we've talked about a couple directories, but there are a lot more directories out there. Up on the screen, we have an example of FindLaw and what it was being pulled in from for ChatGPT, but there is a lot more than just FindLaw. Some of these include expertise.com, consumershield.com, forbes.com, avvo.com, trustanalytica.org, lawyers.com, justgreatlawyers.com, elitelitigators.com, attorneys.org. All of these are additional examples of more directories where you can be present and get some more of those superlatives and get reinforcement for your brand entity. As is said, this is included in the bonus resource that we will be sharing, so you don't need to remember all those URLs that I just spouted off, but it's still valuable for you to hear them.
Logan Mosby:
Why this strategy works, one, we have structured source of information across the web that is specific and consistent to the firm and to the attorney. These are static. These static pages, they're not changing frequently. Once you basically optimize them, once you have big changes that come to the firm, these aren't being updated frequently. LLMs love the static content because it rarely changes. It's faster for them to absorb and then give back to the user. And then links, linking between these entities and your entity just helps bolster out the entire firm and the brand even more. As Shawn mentioned on the last slide, there's a lot of other citations out there that are not necessarily legal-specific, that all help not only in the traditional SEO strategy, but also for these LLMs and the AI. We want consistency, and as much as we possibly can get, about the firm, back it up with case results, and structure that information everywhere we possibly can.
What's important too is you get new attorneys to add them to all of these profiles and link them with the firm itself too. Yeah, I think that's all I had.
Shawn, do you have anything on that one?
Shawn Denney:
I did not have anything else to add.
Logan Mosby:
Cool.
Ken Mafli:
Love it. All right. I want to make sure that we have plenty of time to get into Q&A because, man, the questions have been pouring in. We've got four or five questions. I'll call it out and I'll just have one of you answer because I think both of you are equally qualified to do so.
So let's start. Nicole asked, "The firm where I work is a Best Law Firm and has 14 lawyers on the Best Lawyers or the ones to watch. Should we pay for those profiles? Would we have to pay for all of them?
Logan Mosby:
Yes.
Ken Mafli:
Maybe Shawn, I'll... Oh, go ahead, Logan. Go ahead.
Logan Mosby:
Yeah, I was thinking... I believe so. As I mentioned earlier, you may be able to get with a rep and sometimes they'll have bulk discounts for you too. If you have 15 lawyers plus the firm page, you may be able to negotiate some different pricing. I believe they're annual as well, versus monthly, so that can definitely help.
Shawn, did I miss anything on that?
Shawn Denney:
Nope. I would've said the same thing of reach out to a rep. Yes, I would recommend try and get all 14 lawyers and pay for them, but try and get a bulk discount and see what rep will work with you on that.
Ken Mafli:
Awesome. Okay. This next one is from Michelle and she says, "Is it true that paying heavily for directory listings is often not cost-effective?"
Shawn Denney:
That really depends on what you're trying to achieve and how you're defining cost-effectiveness. If you're going to do this as a way to help inform your social proof, help inform AIs and LLMs, and help bolster your presence across these AI platforms, then that cost likely isn't as big as if you're just looking at it as, "How many leads did I get from the citation directory itself?" If you're just looking at the straight citation directory to lead or case ratio, yeah, that's probably going to be very expensive to the point where you're not going to want to do it. So what you have to ask yourself is, "Ultimately, are we looking for a strict cost per lead per channel basis, or are we looking at a holistic marketing? And how are we raising to where we're getting more cost-effective leads, total?"
Ken Mafli:
Okay, got you. Thank you.
Logan, I'll pose this one to you. "Regarding case studies on your website, is it better to have more case results with details or higher amount of money saved? What kind of signals do you want to put in those case studies?"
Logan Mosby:
Yeah, a combination of that all. You don't necessarily want to say, "Hey, I'm just going to post my largest ones," a $35 million settlement here that can be potentially misleading to users too if you... "Hey, we're not always going to get these types of results, nor is everything warranted that." But having a good, strong variation of those larger ones with the more run-of-the-mill or the medium ones all help, and you don't ignore any case or anything like that. Try to get... One, focus on your primary, your core, whether that's car accident, what do you want to be known for, and where do you thrive, and then two, having a good amount of them as well. I don't know if that necessarily answered your question, but combination. I try to do... Anything that you can give us, we can put on the website, we'll use it. You don't want to ignore any of that either.
Ken Mafli:
Okay. Shawn, anything you want to add there?
Shawn Denney:
Not on that one, no.
Ken Mafli:
Okay, perfect. All right. Well, let's see here.
Shawn, then I will pass this one to you. Oh, and actually, I think I might answer this one. Sorry. The question is, "Do you have a resource for how to add structured schema for a case results page?" I'll let you both answer this too, but the answer is... We actually tackled this on last month's webinar, and I'm going to go ahead and put the on-demand link to that right now in the chat pane so that everyone has a chance to click it and watch that. It's a power-packed little 45-minute webinar that kind of deals with all the schema that you would ever want and more. That is now in your chat pane. Please, go ahead and click on that so that you have that to watch at your leisure.
I'll give this to the experts as well. Any quick tips that you might want to add on what to look out for in schema markup when it comes to adding things to your website?
Shawn Denney:
A couple resources... If you're not overly familiar with this, schema.org is going to be your single point of truth. It'll have a lot of information on there. The second one is some of these AI engines themselves, just ask them about schema as it relates to your case study page, and it will give you some basic understanding of it if you're feeling out of your depth. That's not to say that the AI engine is the perfect source and it will give you everything you need right out the gate, but it can be a helpful tool if you're feeling a little lost or don't know where to go next.
Ken Mafli:
Awesome. Okay.
Logan, let me pass this one over to you. It says, "Are there any tools to measure how well we are ranking for common searches with the LLMs? Any way to know that we're doing better or doing worse?"
Logan Mosby:
Yes. Yeah, there's quite a few tools out there right now that are somewhat hit or miss, and the reason I say that is because the LLMs and GPT are using our habits too. We may get different results for asking the same question, honestly. Ahrefs has an AI overview that'll look at AI overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity. It monitors those. There's some other ranking tools, like AWR Cloud that also does it. Semrush does it as well. But one thing I'm looking at too is, and I've been working with our data team and reporting team of... Okay, building out a dedicated report in Google Analytics, it can let me see also traffic that comes from these sources too.
Now, of course, not everyone's going to click, but it does give you a good idea of, "Okay, what content's are being shown and what are people clicking on coming into the website?" So a combination of both. It's not as... easy is not the right word. It's not as historically easy, I guess, as tracking in traditional search results on Google or Bing. It add a layer of complexity, but some tools are rolling that out, and they're still working through the bugs, but we do have the access to monitor that visibility. I like seeing, "Okay, what is actually producing traffic to the site from these LLMs?"
Ken Mafli:
Love it. Okay. We did have Kim come back and ask just a follow-up, talking about paying for placement and directory. And then the question is, "Are you recommending that we pay for all these directories versus just having a profile completed in all of them?" How might you weigh that out?
Shawn Denney:
No, we are not recommending you pay for all of these directories. We are recommending for some of the most important ones, you do pay for that premium service to make sure you're getting it. While on others, just having it filled out is enough. Earlier, we were talking about Justia, we were talking about Super Lawyers, we were talking about Best Lawyers. Those are some of the ones Yelp where paying for a profile is valuable, but some of the other ones in that bonus checklist, you don't need to pay for them. Just having your profile completed is valuable enough.
Ken Mafli:
Love it. Okay.
All right. Well, man, I think we jetted through all these questions. That was a lot to get through, but I think we're actually good. Because I was looking at some of the questions that came in before the webinar started and, man, we actually hit it. It's almost as if you knew the questions that people would be asking and answer them in advanced.
Oh, well, you know what? We have one last question, and I'll cap it at this one. It kind of went out a little bit to social media. Since we're talking about directories and building that social proof, the question did come in. "Do LLMs pull from social media for those trust metrics?" I'll throw that out as a little bonus.
Would either of you like to answer that?
Shawn Denney:
Yeah, I'll run with it.
Ken Mafli:
Okay.
Shawn Denney:
Short answer, yes. Longer answer, yes, it does. However, social media, because of the volume of content that is posted at any given time, it is harder for these LLMs to keep up with all the new posts, all the new sentiment. So while it does influence it, it is not going to influence it as much as some of these other more static-type pieces. For example, forums are generally more of a static post rather than a feed cycle that is constantly refreshing, and therefore it is easier for the LLMs to crawl, so that can be weighted more heavily. That does not mean you can skip social media. It does still play into LLM's sentiment around user-generated content and what your brand stands for and who you are and whether you're trustworthy or the best or where that stands. It absolutely should be part of your ongoing strategy for organic social media and getting reviews on those platforms.
Ken Mafli:
Okay. Well, thank you, Shawn and Logan, for that presentation and especially the Q&A time. It certainly was a jam-packed session.
If you are able, please let us know how you've enjoyed today's session in the chat pane right now. We always want to bring you great content, and your feedback helps. As the slide mentions, we're going to keep bringing you the freshest insights on how you can continue to be at the top of your marketing game, so be on the lookout for next month's webinar in your email inbox.
As we wrap things up, it's worth mentioning, finding the right marketing partner to supercharge your AI optimization efforts is essential. They can help you outline your goals, construct the right strategy, build the right content, and make sure you're hitting your intake goals.
As always, Rankings is here to help you get the most out of your lead generation efforts. Our expertise and understanding of the legal market puts you, our clients, in the winning position. So contact us today to see how you can get the most out of your marketing campaigns. You won't be disappointed. Bye for now.
Chris Dreyer:
Thanks for watching. If this session helped you understand how AI chooses which firms it recommends, don't miss your chance to join the next live webinar. That's where we share new frameworks, updated checklists, and take questions directly from the audience. Sign up at rankings.io/webinars to get the latest training and the bonus resources that only go live to these attendees. We'll see you there.
