Chris Dreyer:
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Kat Taylor:
Ah, my bread and butter, launching a monthly digital PR campaign. There's so many awesome tools to help you all. I'm assuming you've all heard of HARO, which is Help a Reporter Out. There's also Qwoted and then the Cision for press releases, but I'll get into all of these. So you want to launch a monthly digital PR campaign so that the AI models look at you as an expert, right? Like I said in the beginning, this is brand-building. You could be the greatest optimized website for a personal injury lawyer in the world, but you still gotta get your brand looked at as an expert, and one of the ways we do this is by digital PR.
So how do these platforms really work? And they're really great for people that might not be working with marketing. So you can go onto the platform, right? You basically set up an alert. It's really easy. It's very intuitive. It'd be like, "What kind of journalist do you want to pitch? What's your niche?" So you can set up alerts for keywords like personal injury, whatever law you're in, divorce law, liability, et cetera, and then you can set up to do daily emails. So every morning it'll send you, "Here's a bunch of different new journalists looking for expert comments," and you can go in there and figure out which ones you want to pitch, and then you go right in, and what you can do is take your bio.
So you create a bio profile with an expert quote with your name, a really nice photo of you, an explanation of your law firm. Make it super personable, because again, if the journalist takes that content, the AIs really look into conversational content more so than super awesome marketing. So you want to make sure that your bio is super conversational and personal, but even one solid quote from a national outlet. So you're going to be basically finding journalists that are from Forbes and New York Times and all these amazing sites. Even one solid quote in one of these publications can boost your authority so much in not only just AI with the chances of them talking about you, but people in general, if they see you. "Oh, wow, there's that lawyer." If I've got five different personal injury lawyers down the road, I'm going to choose the one that was on Forbes. That's just the way of life, but it also boosts your authority and SEO as well.
So it's a huge, huge game changer if you're able to get your mention and link in one of these, and that's another thing I wanted to say as well, is in this AI digital market space, yes, unlinked mentions are becoming more and more important than they once were before, because the LLMs can basically find you even if it's unlinked. So even if you get mentioned and you don't have a link, that's still going to be pretty useful in getting your brand out there, so super important.
Be proactive. Make sure that you're going out there and pitching. I try to pitch every day for our clients. Even if it's something adjacent, so it doesn't have to be legal. It can be about finance. If you find something that's in that same niche, try to get in there. Keep your pitch short and relevant. Focus on how you can add value to their coverage. Don't do a long song and dance. A lot of times journalists are just going to delete that email. Even though it looks awesome and you're explaining everything you've ever done, they get a lot of emails a day. They're not going to be excited about a massive email. They'll just delete it. So make sure it's very relevant, short, to the point, concise. Why does this matter to your AI strategy? Trusted third party signals that boost your brand's visibility across platforms, making AI models and humans alike look at you as legit. So yeah, super important stuff.
Chris Dreyer:
The other thing too is, look, backlinks are one of the main factors that Google's used. Let's think about Google specifically, right, because it still has the lion's share of the market when we're talking about AI overviews. 25% of the AI overviews are driven by the number one-ranked search result in the organic search results. So these good backlinks, not only if they drive you up in the rankings, you also have a higher possibility of being referenced. It's a trust signal and that's ultimately what they're trying to do, so this is just a big component of it. It's one of the top tactics for link-building and getting on these source-based sites that are super authoritative.
Kat Taylor:
100%. All right. So legal directories, and I'm sure you've heard of many of them. There's Best Lawyers, there's Avvo, there's Martindale. These are super important to AI models because AI models look for structured data, and I know Chris was earlier talking about schema and markup. They look for super easy-to-digest content. So these directories not only are super aged, but they're super niche down. It's basically, I mean, my friend just had ... unfortunately, she's going through a divorce and I was like, "Where'd you find your lawyer?" Because there are a bunch out here. And she's like, "Oh, I went to Avvo." So I feel almost like AI is a person as well, and it's going to these high authoritative platforms that are super easy to find what you're looking for and easy to scrape. And so it's super important to get into at least one of these, if you're not already. I bet you might already be in one.
So I'm going to explain to you what I would do in optimizing a directory listing. So there's two platforms you can do free or paid. Get on there for free. I mean, just being on these platforms is super important, but then if you decide to up your game and try to get a preeminent, these little badges that you can get, that shows your authority even more to LLMs, so this is what I would say. First thing is complete every field thoroughly. Include your full name, your firm name and your practice areas, all of your practice areas.
Make sure your firm name and your name match your GBP profile. You should have one. It's Google Business Profile. Any citation out on the internet should be exact, so that not only the AI models can understand who you are and what your expertise lies in, it also is fantastic for SEO and people too. I mean, I'm going to be really confused if I'm looking for you and you've got a business name that's different across every platform, so super important. That's the number one thing. Make sure that you're making sure your NAP consistency is there.
Write a client-focused bio. Again, I said this earlier for the HARO thing. You want to make sure it looks super conversational and personable. So just even add stories, things that are unique, not something that is just derivative or just drabble, like marketing dribble. Make your message unique and conversational. Then you want to use some relevant keywords. Don't do the stuffing. This is a directory listing. You don't want to look like a big spam page. So if you're in Chicago, maybe trickle in like Chicago personal injury lawyer, but then maybe that's it. Just make sure that it's at least there, so that the relevancy context is there. And then mention your key services. Think, "What would a client or AI ask to find someone like me?" That's really ... put that in the back of your brain.
Then I would also do this. This is something I don't think anyone normally does. There usually is a field in these directory listings where you can add links to external resources. So what I would do is, if I had multiple badges or awards or citations across a bunch of different platforms, I'd make sure I link to those, because there's a web of relevance that AIs rely on to understand who you are, what you're relevant in in your niche. So cross-linking to these other badges, to the badge on your site. Make sure the badge is on your site and linking back to all these different platforms. It's huge for AI models.
So just remember to link out to all these platforms, but it also helps in tiered link-building for the SEO side of this, where you're boosting those backlinks from your site. So anytime you add a link to another link, that actually boosts the authority to that backlink. So it's awesome for SEO and it's awesome for AIO as well.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. I would just point out one other thing too. The lawyers have a lot of restrictions on their use of superlatives, saying you're the best, you specialize, so you want to take every advantage to be listed in a site like Best Lawyers or Super Lawyers. I know you get bombarded by the sales reps for some of these listings, but they're more important than ever. Because if you look at the top sources for many of these, especially you Perplexity users, they're going to be very common, so be cognizant of that. Try to get in those superlative named directories too.
Kat Taylor:
For sure. Reddit is prime real estate for LLM training. I'm pretty sure they have a partnership, possibly, with OpenAI. It's conversational, super easy for LLMs to understand. It's frequently used to train the LLMs due to its rich, diverse and conversational content, and that means your comments and contributions there may influence what AI models recommend and reference in the future. So it's important to get in there, but it's a little harder to get in there. There's a lot of moderators, and if they think that you're being too salesy or you've got CTAs in your comment threads, they'll just delete it immediately. It won't even have a chance to get indexed.
And so what I found is the best way to do this is create a brand page first and kind of warm it up. You can use a branded, consistent Reddit account. So it'd be like I'll use me, Taylor Injury Law, to build long-term credibility. Common history is publicly visible and indexable, so every interaction is part of your firm's digital footprint, so create that first and then start going into these subreddits like Legal Advice. There's one that's Personal Finance which is adjacent, but you can educate on how legal issues intersect with your money. Just try to find a bunch of different ones to comment on. But again, comment in a way that doesn't include a bunch of CTRs or call to action, CTAs, and explain things. Help people out. The more you're able to keep your footprint, and obviously you can put your brand in there, but I just wouldn't say, "Come visit my site," right after you try to help somebody out.
And then, yeah, so once you warm these accounts up, trust over time equals a huge GEO or generative engine optimization advantage. Your participation will boost your offsite credibility. It enhances your AI presence, because again, they're learning from this platform. The more you're able to be on Reddit and be helpful and add your brand across that channel in different subreddits, the better for you. So I would even go every morning, maybe set up an alert, "Hey, I'm going to go into Reddit." It doesn't matter. Don't get discouraged if your comments get removed or things get deleted, because if you do ten in a day and you keep two, and it stays and it gets indexed and no one ever removes it, then you've got two awesome comments on Reddit. So yeah, just keep in the game, and I promise this is going to be super helpful for you.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I'd say for the most part, don't use commercial handles. I would say go with the Reddit guidelines. Keep the anonymous profiles, but the key here is to be active, engaged, provide value. So answer questions. Don't act with just complete commercial intent, and go in and answer questions. And there will be questions about your firm or your practice or what have you, and you can answer them without trying to give a call to action, right, and those are going to be referenced. Those are going to stick. They're going to be stickier.
One other thing, Google had a deal with Reddit, right? It's what powered their model, a lot of Gemini, a lot of the AI overviews, OpenAI. And between Reddit and Wikipedia, these are two of the most popular cited sources where they're pulling the information from. So the more that you can participate on these sites and get your content to stick, the better.
Kat Taylor:
Yeah. And I just wanted to say that I've had luck getting brands on Reddit, but yeah. What you were saying before, don't actively put your brand everywhere, yes, but every so often, make sure you at least mention your brand so that it can get picked up by LLMs as well, just so you're not just a random anonymous. I mean, anonymous is great, but just make sure your brand is there somewhere.
Okay, Wikipedia. Yay. Another notoriously somewhat hard to get into type of platform, but it is doable. I've had pretty great success, so I'll explain why you want to be on there and how to do it. So it's another staple in training for almost all major language models out there, so that's the ChatGPTs, Gemini, Perplexity, pretty much all of them. That's because the structure of it, the neutrality and the depth of information, and it's also a very aged marketplace. I mean, Wikipedia goes back to basically the dawn of the internet, so it's basically as authoritative as you can get. Having a Wikipedia page can meaningfully help the models really understand your brand.
So to qualify for a Wikipedia page, your law firm has to meet the strictest notability standards. It's almost like trying to get your law firm in Encyclopedia Britannica. So obviously you're not seeing a lot of law firms in Encyclopedia Britannica, so now you understand what their notability guidelines are. So it's based on the quality and the independence of external resources, and what do I mean by that? All right. So basically what you do is you go in there, you can create a sandbox page and write up the details of your business, and usually try to keep it pretty simple. When it started, principal attorney, a couple other things in there because you're going to go back eventually, and the more you edit it, the more it gets patrolled, which means eventually it will get indexed, hopefully.
So you start off pretty basic, add your external resources in there, which is notable cases. I'm not saying you close the case and you maybe paid for a post about it or something. I mean one of the biggest cases in the state's history and you changed the law, or you did something really great community-wise for your local community and someone wrote about it, like someone in your local newspaper, a bigger publication like Times or something like that. It has to be a third-party reference. It can't be something from your website. It can't be a press release that you paid for. It can't be anything paid. And the thing is, with the patrollers on Wikipedia, they are very attuned with what is paid. Directories they know are paid. They know what is paid. You can't really pass anything by them, so there's not even a point in trying that.
So if you get at least five resources ready to go, submit that in, get your little sandbox page ready, you can then submit to the moderators. And that takes a while, because they get a lot of ... I mean, you can imagine. They're getting a lot of pages. Everybody wants to be in Wikipedia, especially nowadays with the LLMs, so it does sometimes take a while for a new page patroller to come through. You can speed the process up sometimes if you go in and make small little edits, which is why, again, I said earlier to make it very simple in the beginning, so that way you're able to get the new page patrollers to look at your page faster. If they accept your page, it takes about 90 days for it to be indexed in Google. And then once it's indexed, it's pretty much there.
So anyone can make a Wikipedia page, but to keep it up and index and new page patrollers to accept it, that's a whole different story, and I think it's funny. I was talking to my husband. He's like, "I thought anyone could make a page on Wikipedia." Yeah, you can, but it'll be gone in 24 hours, and what's the point of that? So this is a tried and true method. I've gotten a bunch of different law firms on Wikipedia. I'm proud of myself for that. And so this is what you gotta do.
So let's say you do everything you're supposed to do. You create a page. There's no promotional tone. Remember, never promote on these types of platforms. Everything looks good, but then the new page patroller says, "Eh, you don't have enough notable external resources," so the page gets removed. What do you do next? Well, there is a solution. It's Wikidata. Wikidata also feeds Google's knowledge panel, and also LLMs also learn off of Wikidata. It's basically a stripped-down Wikipedia page. So I call it WGP, so it's like Wikipedia Google Business Profile. It's basically just NAP data, the year your firm was created or launched and then the languages you speak, and it's basically just that, but they index pretty fast. Pretty much anyone can make one, and they're super ... they're still very ... I mean, obviously Wikipedia is a little bit more important to LLMs, but this is a way around it if you get denied a page.
So again, you don't need to meet strict notability guidelines, so you don't even have to bring external resources to the party for this. Just go in, create your business profile and submit it, and it should be fine. It's easier to create than the profile for Wikipedia. And again, it's good for Google knowledge panels. It's good for AI summaries and voice search answers as well. So if you're asking Alexa, it sometimes can feed to that as well. So it basically helps AI models connect the dots between your brand, the founders, locations, where, yeah, you can add multiple locations. You can add your awards and your industries as well, so yeah. It's what I would do if you go through. I would say start with Wikipedia, because again, it's a little bit more robust. It's a lot more content in there. You're going to have your external resources, so that's going to show the notability. But if you cannot get a Wikipedia page, then I would definitely say go for a Wikidata page.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. To be notable, you gotta do notable things. Write a book. Do out-of-the-box things that are out of normal. By the nature of doing things different, you automatically stand out.
Kat Taylor:
I completely brushed over the fact that it's 48.9%, ChatGPT utilizes it. So basically, 48.9% of the learning data is from Wikipedia, essentially, and that's where it's learning from. So it's very important for ChatGPT and everything else as well, but I want to at least underline that little percentage there since I just skipped over it.
So obviously you want to earn mentions and links. I mean, we already talked about the reputable news sources in the beginning when we were talking about HARO and Qwoted, but you want to ... I mean, I look at this slide as more of a local magazine type thing. So local government sites, local chambers of commerces, local magazine publications, so that you're very prevailing and prominent in your area. So you're not only getting the superlative mentions, but you're also getting the local mentions as well.
So I want to give you a little fun activity to find these opportunities. So what I would do is you go to Google Maps. Type in whatever city you're in, so we'll say Chicago. Boom, Chicago. So Chicago, if you see the word Chicago, that is what Google deems as the city center. So then go into Nearby and search for chamber of commerce, hit Enter. You're going to see all the little dots. The chambers that are closest to that city center are looked at as more geo-relevant than the ones further away, so create a list. The top of the list will be the ones closest to city center, and then go all the way down. Then once you're done with that list, go back to the search and then search for business association, do it again. And then the third one is going to be magazine publisher, do it again. Create those lists, and then you're going to basically, whoever runs outreach or if you want to do it yourself, just go ahead and contact.
There's usually going to be business listings in these publications, or at least the chambers and the business association. But then for the magazines, just look around and see if they have any legal content on there and then go ahead and create a simple outreach email. State, "I'd like to be featured in your publication. How can we work together?" But yeah, that's the easiest way to find geo-relevant authority mentions and links for this whole thing. So I would strongly advise doing that, but yeah, the reason you want to do this is to get that authority in your local area, so that the LLMs can understand that you are an authority in your local area, essentially. So yeah.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, that's great. Yeah. So it's relevance around a geography, right? That's the key thing you're looking for. It's a trust component as well. Again, if you're trying to rank in St. Louis and you're associated with St. Louis chamber of commerces, associations, those magazine publications, it's a better trust signal, but also just it creates that pairing and creates those relationships. So it works for organic SEO, but it also helps the LLMs as well. For more resources on how to dominate your market, visit us at rankings.io. I'm Chris Dreyer, and this has been Personal Injury Mastermind. I'll see you next time.
