Dead See Scrolls: Do Search Engine Results Pages Exist If No One Views Them?

Artificial intelligence has affected so many aspects of life, by now: in good, bad & ugly ways.  One of the more dramatic measures in which AI has impacted law firms is with respect to legal consumers’ online behavior around finding legal practitioners. 

 

The bedrock of SEO (search engine optimization) is to increase visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) for law firms, with the idea being that you’re performing best when your law firm is elevated to topmost ranking among the combination of organic (non-advertisement) search results (though you would be paying – in this example – a digital marketing agency, to help you with organic search results appearances) & paid advertisements (pay-per-click ads, verified profiles).  In the common era BAI period (Before Artificial Intelligence), that was about as high as you could get.  Now, however, search engines (most prominently Google) feature so-called ‘AI Overviews’ that appear at the very top of search results pages, and don’t include advertisements (at least, not yet).  This turns search on its head, because the most valuable real estate in modern search engines are these overviews (with which you can interact using chatbots) – that means (in practice, not in theory) that the majority of searchers never move past the AI overview, when selecting a law firm. 

 


Given that information, you need to be thinking about how your business gets into the AI overviews.  So, it’s time to analyze the content on your website, and in other webspaces, so that you can get it to comport with what AI chatbots are looking for.  So, you’ll want to incorporate things like FAQs and process-related information.  You can also start to focus on ‘information gain’ in content production, which AI tools are always looking for, rather than solely addressing the same ideas in the same way.  Answering questions on platforms like Quora and Reddit also become essential to appearing in AI overview features.  And, that’s the short list.  Understand that each frontier AI tool favors different datasets. 

 

At the very least, you should be asking your digital marketing agency – if you have one – about what strategies you need to deploy, to meet this new reality.  If you’re doing this on your own, scrutinize your existing, personal strategy. 

 

This does not mean that ‘SEO is dead’ – because legal consumers have not abandoned SERPs entirely & certain SEO strategies still work for AEO – but, it does mean that you need to gain a better understanding of what the new world of online search looks like (if this was all news to you). 

 

. . . 

 

If you want to discuss what it means to get found on Google now, just look us up! 

Through a unique partnership between the bar association and Jared Correia's Red Cave Law Firm Consulting, National Creditors' Bar Association members have access to experienced law practice management consultants at a special discount rate.

To get started, visit Red Cave's NCBA landing page, and start running your law practice like a business.

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