Chris Dreyer:
Should your law firm optimize for Google or for AI? The good news is you don't have to choose.
Austin Hunt:
I'm not just tooting my own horn. This is just the truth. The people who are the best at working with language models right now are SEO people.
Chris Dreyer:
If you structure content correctly for traditional SEO using the right structure and the right trusted signals, you aren't just ranking in Google search. You're automatically optimizing for visibility inside AI tools like ChatGPT. In this episode, we break down exactly how to make that happen before your competitors know the game has changed.
Austin Hunt:
The law firms that don't do this right now, they are going to fall behind, and that's just the truth.
Chris Dreyer:
This is Personal Injury Mastermind. I'm Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io. We help elite law firms dominate the first page of Google and be discovered on the LLMs.
Today, I'm sitting down with Austin Hunt, founder of Legal Guardian Digital. In this episode, we break down why firms that think they're late to AI might already be ahead and what actually determines whether your content shows up in Google, ChatGPT, or not at all. Then we go deeper, structure, summaries, and the technical details most firms skips. This episode gets technical on purpose because the firms that understand how this works are now the ones that won't be scrambling later. Let's get into it.
Austin Hunt:
The first news that most people heard about AI was a lot of fearmongering, and I went through that just as much as probably the person that's listening right now, just as much as you did. So, let's start with understanding that there's a lot of fear around this, and that's okay. Fear is just stepping into a space that we don't know.
And my first approach to it was to look for excuses, look for outs, look for, "Maybe this isn't going to happen." And for better or worse, this is the direction that the planet is going in, and we should view it as an opportunity, not as a negative. And I'm going to explain how I got to the space that I don't really have fear around this anymore. I just have a lot of excitement and opportunity, and that if you're listening right now, you should have that, as well. And this is not a new construct.
Chris Dreyer:
First, transparently, of course, did I have fear in the beginning? I think when people don't understand things, and not to say that I have an understanding, even to your degree, on the AI search, discovery, this whole movement, but I'm certainly in it, and I talked on the stage at PIMCON. If anyone has motivation to learn this, I have a lot of incentive to learn this, right?
Austin Hunt:
Yeah.
Chris Dreyer:
So, it kind of forced me to do that. And look, and I think, during that uncertainty period where we didn't know where this was going to kind of shake out, at least from an SEO agency perspective, there were a lot of people in the agency space that sold their business or got acquired. I think if they were being open and honest, I would say many of them, not all of them, made that decision to get out because of that uncertainty.
Austin Hunt:
I agree.
Chris Dreyer:
I've started to see, even from the lawyer perspective, the sentiment change. I think, even on their side, there was fear even working with an agency. And I think people are starting to understand, especially when you look in analytics, the amount of traffic these LLMs are delivering now, and they're getting cases from AI. So, it has kind of changed. So I agree with all that.
Austin Hunt:
So, the first and foremost thing that I would say is hire an SEO expert today. The people who have been working with language models and AI the longest are SEOs. We've been working with one, specifically, really closely since 2018 and every iteration thereof. So, the people who are most aptly... And I'm not just tooting my own horn, this is just the truth. The people who are the best at working with language models right now are SEO people. We've been working with it, even though we weren't aware of it at the time to the level that we are today. So, I think that, first and foremost, get yourself an ally in the space, if you don't have one, because the law firms that don't do this right now, they are going to fall behind. And that's just the truth. It's going to get really difficult.
Really, why these other brands sold was because they understand how difficult it's going to get to actually show up in search visibility, AI visibility. So, talk to an expert in your field. Most experts that are really kind and loving will have a meeting with you to talk about what's going on, and they're not going to try and throw a retainer down your mouth. I know Chris operates the same way that I do. We don't take every client on. We want to work with people that we love, like, and trust and that we know that we can do a good job for. A portion sometimes is just sitting into like a 45-minute meeting, hearing what's going on. And maybe it's not the right time, but you might get some answers, and you can start doing research, so stepping into a space of learning.
But you have to remember that there's a bunch of scammers out there. There's a bunch of people who are not in the best interest of people who have real legal problems, and they can clone a website and throw it out there within five minutes and have a fully vamped up site that's going to be not the truth. And it's not an expert, and it's not someone in the space that should be writing about it. And that has been happening for a while.
Chris Dreyer:
You touched on a lot of things. To your point, some people have been... There's the big joke of like, is it SEO, AIO, GEO, search everywhere optimization? But the reality is 90% of traditional SEO can impact discovery on the LLMs. It's the 10% and your focus of like... I'll give you an example, just from my perspective, and would love to hear this. For example, Microsoft has their investment in OpenAI, which it's a conflicting investment because... I don't want to go in too deep a rabbit hole there, but they also have Bing, and well, Bing licensed Yelp for the review platform.
Austin Hunt:
I know.
Chris Dreyer:
And there's a lot of scenarios where now we're seeing Yelp start to pop up on the organic search results. It's traffic has skyrocketed. So, then you got to put emphasis on getting reviews from Yelp. Well, you know you can't solicit reviews. That's against their terms of service, so you got to do Yelp check-ins and to rank in these listicles. And that right there, today you got to talk about Yelp. It just is what it is. If you're going to try to be discovered in LLMs, especially for legal-
How AI Tools Like ChatGPT Choose Which Law Firms to Recommend in Search Results
Austin Hunt:
Directories, we should talk about it. Guest posting, I know a lot of people do it, not as effective unless it's a natural guest post right now. Your site will probably get penalized if you rely only on guest posting.
What Chris is talking about right now, which is a great thing to talk about, is some of these bigger companies are signing multimillion dollar agreements to get authority on their website, in exchange for the data that they have on their website, to train language models. Google signed a $60 million a year deal with Reddit because Google is trying to compete against Grok. And Grok is trained on Twitter information or X information, which is conversational in tone. And Reddit is conversational in tone. I think it's the biggest forum in the world. What's going to happen is we're going to see the rise of Reddit, and then we're going to see the fall of Reddit. And Google is going to drop them just like they do with everyone else, once they get what they need. So, that's kind of what's happening with Yelp.
It would be really smart and advantageous for you to do research on legal directory niches. Search volume and HRS traffic, I can only imagine what their Google search console data looks like right now, are getting a lot more authority in the space. So, something that I'm doing for my clients is I'm looking up every legal niche directory in their niche, like personal injury, for example, or brain injury, and getting listed in those for either free or pennies on the dollar and seeing my rankings and my search visibility, but more importantly, my AI visibility increasing.
And the cool thing is you can just look to the right when you do a search in your area. It's like, "Who are the best attorneys for car accidents in St. Louis?" And it will show you, "Oh, we checked Avvo, we checked super lawyers, and we checked top100caraccidentlawyers.com." And you, me, your audience, person listening right now knows those are all just pay to play, but you need to look at where the money is flowing. I think that's really what it comes down to is there's money flowing between companies right now. And if you just follow that pattern, you'll find some really interesting results.
Chris Dreyer:
On the same line of the directory approach, everybody emphasizes the Google business profile reviews. And we understand the importance from an LSA and local maps perspective, and then we talked about Yelp, but the other thing that isn't mentioned as much is like Facebook, you have the, "Do you recommend this business or not?" You have the either or option. Well, their recommendations are then aggregated to expertise and Trustpilot. So then Trustpilot and expertise, they both have listicles.
So, it's understanding the shifts and how the web, what's being cited, what's not being cited, I think, has changed in terms of emphasis, just like what you said. Like, hey, for a period of time, and I still think there's a lot of value in doing it the correct way, guest posting was like the best form of link building, a contextual body link, a high directory page. Relevancy wasn't even a thing, the groupings, but now it's just shifted. And it's like, even before this, things that we weren't capable of doing. So, we downloaded every competitor website we could find, thousands of them, and we plug them into an LLM to analyze their performance.
Austin Hunt:
Yeah, yeah.
Chris Dreyer:
And why, then-
Austin Hunt:
And then you just read the data and you're like, "What's going on here? Let's find some patterns."
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. It's wild. As opposed to doing a traditional competitive analysis report, like plug it into Ahrefs or Semrush, it's like the capabilities there compared to the large language models and their competitive analysis on thousands of URLs, and getting deep with Screaming Frog, it's so wild.
So, we just covered how AI uses traditional SEO signals to recommend your practice. Now, Austin is going to get into the details of exactly how to do that. Here's what you need to keep in mind as Austin goes through this. For your content to rank in AI search, it has to do two things at once. It must appeal to actual humans and it must signal to the AI that the answer can be easily found by a human. That means that the days of the longest article writing in the SEO battle might be over. Let's dive in as Austin unpacks that for us.
So, talk to me about the content side.
Why Structuring Legal Content Clearly Helps AI Summarize and Rank Law Firm Websites
Austin Hunt:
Yeah. Informational content is still incredibly valid. It just might not lead to traffic and clicks. And that's okay because we want to become an authority in a space, and we want to see people see your brand name, make sure your OG titles... I know that's crazy to talk about. That's a very small metafield inside of your head file. It's getting a little complex, but make sure your brand is correctly referenced across your entire website.
And for all these people who are doing really broad brand name, law, personal injury attorneys, I would be really careful of using that too much because you're diluting your brand name. I get it. It works for Google listicles. Figure out how to make a middle ground between your brand name and a DBA that gets you the exposure you want without diluting who you are.
Your name becomes important as an attorney. The associates and the partners and the managing partners become important. Make those pages really, really good. The best pages on your website should be your brand page, which is your homepage, and your actual attorney bio pages, and make them beautiful.
For content on the informational side, you can increase your exposure as a brand significantly by targeting AI overviews, and we can do this really strategically. So, make sure you're still making content each month and transactional content obviously still works. Informational transactional content, like with some purchase intent, becomes really valuable, but we need to kind of reorganize the way that we do content just a little bit, which is really nice. You can think of it as like a layering.
We can go back to first principles, which is the concept... Oh, what we need to do is let's say we take a really complex idea of how to negotiate after you get denied a settlement from a car accident, a insurance company. That's a really good concept. And what we've seen in content before and is, "Well, you've come to the right page. And if you ever wanted to learn about denials, we can't give you a direct answer, but this is kind of what we might talk about in this content." And you have to go like 100, 500, 1,000 words to find one little tiny piece of information that might be an answer. What type of experience is that providing for people?
Instead, what we need to do is we need to realize and act accordingly to how we act, as individuals, when we use search. We're looking for an answer, and we're looking for an answer from an expert in that field. So, what I would do is, at the top of your... This is all tested, and it is working, and I'm going to be disseminating a lot of this information freely on my site over time. What we need to do is build authority, build a hook, build authority within 30 seconds. They need to know they're at the right spot and that you're an expert in this field.
And then practice first principles and break things down into its most basic and fundamental parts. Take all of that content and condense it down into a summary. And this summary must be really easy to understand and clean. And you have to think about who your audience is, and it needs to speak directly to them. And it doesn't have to be... I know there's so much nuance to each individual idea, but that's how people work on the internet.
And then once you provide that really clean summary of an idea towards the top, after you've introduced yourself, what you've done is you've built a significant amount of trust. They understand that you have an answer. That summary is what's going to be pulled up into the AI overview, if you do a really good job. And then have all your traditional content that you would normally have underneath that, because sometimes some readers want to go further into the content.
This is a perfect example. Google a recipe for something and how hard it is to get to the point that you actually get to the recipe. Think of that and just do the opposite. I know that you guys are still creating content for all your clients because that's how you build authority on the internet. You can build content on Instagram now. It'll get pulled up on language models and on Google search. They did a deal with Google. You can build it on YouTube. YouTube is an underused search engine. It's the second-largest search engine. I know it's a hassle to do video content, but make it easy.
And then I guess the last idea is, let's say you get really good content that comes out from your agency or what you've written. What we need to think about is workflows and frameworks. Let's say you build a really good first draft, and then on the top of it, you show that you're an expert in the field. And then you provide a summary of that idea, and then you introduce the content.
Chris Dreyer:
All right. I'm back because Austin and I have covered a lot of ground, but this is a really simple but important tip. The summary is what gets pulled. This is the new above the fold. If you bear the lead or force the user to scroll past 800 words of fluff to find the answer, the AI will ignore you. Remember, imagine reading a recipe online, and then do the opposite. Give the summary upfront.
Before we move on, Austin and I are about to geek out on something called Markdown files and how hyper-local references like pointing out the building next door to your office can signal relevance to Google in a way generic content never will.
Austin Hunt:
What I would do is I would build a framework. A framework can be done through an .md file, which is a markdown file on like Cursor, Windsurf, you can use it. Markdown is the language. There's two languages that these language models and AIs understand very well, which is JSON... Don't learn JSON. You're going to shoot yourself in the foot. Markdown. And Markdown, you can actually ask your language model to do Markdown, and you create a framework. And it's like, "I want to put my local and knowledge, my expertise, my unique insights into this article without changing the format. Please, do this for me." And I guarantee the output will be 10, 20, 30 times better for the user, for the person that's reading your site.
And then in addition, if you're working, if you're one of Chris's clients, reach out to your account manager and start sending them unique insight about your field. They need this and they want this. And they might not ask for it directly out of respect to your practice, but I guarantee if you reach out to someone that's managing your SEO and you say, "You know what? This is what I wish people would know about car accident claims in my state. And this is what's happening with the government. This is how..." Get really specific.
And then another language that's really helpful is when you call... Let's just call it Dreyer Law Firm because now you own a law firm, Dreyer Law Firm. When you reach out to Dreyer Law Firm, talk to the direct issue. We understand that you're stressed and that you were probably stressed when you got into the accident and probably before, because let's be honest, you're in traffic, and now you have medical bills that are stacking up, and you don't know how to pay for them. One of the first things that we do for you is walk you through, step by step, how you can get your medical bills paid, one of the first things that we do for you.
Think about the person on the other side of the screen and what they're going through and what they need to hear. And not from a manipulative standpoint, it's just from an honesty standpoint. That's what I've been doing with my content. And I know, for example, it's not personal injury, but one of my employment law firms got 500 organic leads last month. Pick and chose the ones that they wanted, and then they referred out the other cases. They've been having to hire associates at a rate that they can't keep up. So, it's better to speak to the individual than it is to speak to the algorithm.
I know it's a repeated message, but I'd love to hear what you guys are doing at Rankings and some of the thoughts that you have on content. I know that you guys have internal content writing team now, and you guys have always been such a positive light in the digital marketing world for legal. Honestly, you guys do great.
Chris Dreyer:
Thank you.
Austin Hunt:
Yeah.
How Legal Directories and Client Reviews Influence Which Firms AI Systems Trust
Chris Dreyer:
Thank you. Well, a few of the things you touched on, like we're doing the summaries in content. We've seen that be very effective. One of our services is actually a bio optimization service, to continually optimize for that person, that individual. There's a lot of components to it, more so than just the bio on the page, but it's the external sites that also need that bio information.
You talked about the YouTube stuff, but a lot of times, the self-made, the default transcript just isn't good enough. It's not structured properly, optimizing playlists, things like that, so we're doing a ton of that.
But to your point, one of the things I speak to a lot is when Google is trying to index things, it's looking for relationships. It could be of something very simple where maybe your office is near a historic building. That should be in your content. You should link to that building and reference and name that building, or like we're talking St. Louis, it's like, okay, are you a couple blocks away from the Arch? Are you near this museum or that? So, when your people are giving their driving directions, it's very common for people to incorporate the ERs and the hospitals, but I would go a step further and say, "My office is next to this restaurant that was founded by..." blah blah blah.
Because to your point, it not only is helpful for the consumer because some people are just bad directionally, but they're like, "Oh, I know where that restaurant is," but it creates a geotagged reference, like, "Oh, we're talking about Frazer's in Soulard, and that means you're a St. Louis business.
I think all of that is incredibly important because the other thing, too, is, now, anybody can just go to GPT or Claude. I think Claude is a little bit better writer to create content, and it doesn't have those personal elements of your own experiences. I'm going deep in just some theories and stuff here, too. It's like when you think about what canonicalization was designed for and what they're going to choose to index or not to choose to index, I mean, how many times has, "What are the steps do you need to take after a car accident?" been written? If you're just going to do the basic and not incorporate any personalization, or custom, or current thoughts that are different, good luck getting that indexed. Why would Google? It shouldn't index it because, your point, it costs money for Google to crawl that page. So, I think a lot of those things, are just it's just changing how we do things. I think going deeper on pages, getting that personalization into it, it's just more important than ever.
So, I was at Lawyer Growth Summit. I had the audience do a GPT search on, who's the best car accident lawyer in Las Vegas? And I wanted to see what the results were. And like...
Austin Hunt:
To choose a client out there?
Chris Dreyer:
We do not. We do not.
Austin Hunt:
Oh, okay, cool.
Chris Dreyer:
The-
Austin Hunt:
They're taking one, though. If you call Chris, they'll take one.
Chris Dreyer:
Well, the case results were mentioned, and it's like, okay, how many firms don't update their case results? And I know there's certain states that have, especially with California and the whole SB 37 that's going on right now, but if your jurisdiction allows it, you should be updating your website with case results because they're custom to you. They're personalized to you.
And I also just think the belly-to-belly stuff, the human nature, the personal stuff, to me, I don't think any firm should mail out settlement checks or wire out the payment. I think the consumer should come to the office for a number of reasons. It's to really understand their experience. And if you could do better, it's to activate it from a marketing perspective. You can get that Yelp check-in that's going to be geotagged as opposed to you can't solicit reviews, but the geotag will actually, when they leave the office, ask them about their experience.
And to me, I just think it's a fail. I understand from a simplicity perspective and you get a lot of volume, maybe it's just easy to wire, so send the checks out, but I think that a lot of firms are losing a big opportunity to market themselves, not only from a search perspective, but just in general and in the environment we're in. Batch it. Pick up your check. Maybe it's a Wednesday where everybody comes and picks up their checks, and you can orchestrate an amazing experience, maybe even get some referrals, but that's going down a rabbit hole in a different direction.
Let's talk about Legal Guardian. So we've talked shop. We've got in the weeds. Talk to me about Legal Guardian, what you guys do, how you can help firms. Talk to me about Legal Guardian.
Austin Hunt:
Yeah. We're actually not taking on any new business in 2026, so we're doing a 30% reduction in our current client load, actually talking with Steve and Willie, sending some of those to you guys.
Chris Dreyer:
Thank you.
Austin Hunt:
Yeah. For those of you that don't know that Rankings has never had like a referral partner, they've always just been really kind and sent stuff out, so I'd love to return the favor. Chris used to be my... I mean, he's actually my best boss I've ever had, former employer...
Chris Dreyer:
Thank you.
What PI Firms Need to Change Now to Stay Discoverable as AI-Driven Search Expands
Austin Hunt:
... a really kind man. I sat down and I, honestly, thought about what I want to do in 2026 for Legal Guardian Digital, and I don't want to grow my client load.
The message that I'd like to share that's really happening is search is going to change a lot, and it won't look the same next year, and it won't look the same the year after, and it will look very alien to us in three years. There's still the same number of cases that exist out there, if not more. There's more people on the planet. It's just how we're going to get there is going to be different.
So, what Legal Guardian Digital is doing is we are having eight clients only next year. We'll be good. We already have our finances set up. It's actually going to be a better year than year prior, just reducing down to the people I love, like, and trust. And we will become the gold standard in AI visibility and how to do it. And then what we're going to do, and I have a contract in agreement with all of these law firms, is all of the information and education on how to do this in an effective, ethical and honest way will be disseminated for free each week on my website.
And I'd recommend that you sign up for my newsletter because... And that will start in January of 2026. And what will happen is the level of attention that we will be giving our clients is at a level that most people just won't ever receive, and we need a consistent blueprint for AI visibility. And it's based off of current data. The generative engine market will be a $1 trillion market, which is three times over the top of what SEO was expected to be in 2034. It will be three times more valuable to be in AI over time than it will be in SEO.
And what we're going to do is we're going to position ourselves to provide that information for free because this information needs to be found, and we need a better understanding of how to track these things, how to consistently get visibility in AI.
So, I'm not looking for clients. If you reach out, I'm just going to refer you to Rankings. So, reach out and I'll refer you to Rankings. What Legal Guardian is going to be next year is the source of truth on AI visibility.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, that's amazing. Austin, thank you so much for coming on the show, guys. That's legalguardian.io. Go there, check it out. And Austin, it has been a pleasure having you on the show.
Austin Hunt:
Pleasure is all mine, Chris. Thank you.
Chris Dreyer:
Adapt or die. Austin is all in on AI visibility, and he's giving away his findings for free. Make sure you get the latest from him at legalguardian.io.
Executing an AI search strategy takes time. If you want to dominate the search results, whether it's Google, ChatGPT, or whatever comes next, you need a partner who isn't just guessing. Visit Rankings.io and find out how we can help you own legal search and win the best cases. That's Rankings.io. I'm Chris Dreyer, and we'll see you next time on Personal Injury Mastermind.
