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The Law Firm Marketing Minute
Keeping Up With SGE – Google's SEO AI Tool
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📢 Staying Ahead of Google’s AI Search Revolution!
🔍 Google’s SGE (Search Generative Experience) is transforming how people find information—especially legal services. Smike and Eddie break down what this means for law firms, why traditional SEO tactics are losing effectiveness, and how to adapt your marketing strategy to stay visible.
📌 Key Takeaways:
- Why keyword-stuffing is dead and what Google actually values now.
- How AI-driven search impacts law firm visibility (and what to do about it).
- Why high-quality, niche content is more powerful than ever.
📆 Schedule Your Strategy Session
📱You can check out the video component by following us here on
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The keywords are so simple. That's why you shouldn't do them. It's because everyone's doing them. So if you're in Tampa and you're an estate planning attorney, how many other people are estate planning attorneys in Tampa? You're fighting for either that one SGE spot, which might set a couple of websites, or you're fighting for one of those three organic results that are unpaid, so that the spot, the limited space, versus the people competing for them, the numbers, just simply don't work.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Law Firm Marketing Minute, the go-to podcast for solo and small law firms who want to level up. I'm your host, smyke, and I'm excited for you to join me this episode. All right, without further ado, for you to join me this episode. All right, without further ado, let's dive in. Welcome everybody. We are here to talk about SGE. If you have used Google in the past year or so, you most likely have experienced SGE, even if you don't know what it is, and I think one of the things that we're going to kind of talk about express is that, even though here at spotlight branding we're not really big on seo, we definitely recognize the potential of, of this ai and, and we want to make sure that our audience stays on top of it, that they stay, uh, you know, in the know yeah and uh, let's get rocking and rolling yeah, I mean, you're ready to rock and roll?
Speaker 1:yeah, let's go all right, here we go.
Speaker 2:You want to start it off yeah.
Speaker 1:So I mean in plain language I mean we've already mentioned this that you already know what sge is? Um, again, we're. It's an abbreviation for search generative experience. Uh, if you don't know what it is, you probably already do. It's just google's new. It's an abbreviation for search generative experience. If you don't know what it is, you probably already do. It's just Google's new AI-powered search tool. It's basically integrating conversation, like conversational way you speak with AI, and it's taking that and turning into search results.
Speaker 1:So, regardless of I mean think of a prospective client of yours a prospective client is looking for, maybe, the difference between wills versus trust. I'm being intentionally broad and vague about this. They're not necessarily going to need to go to a website anymore to figure out the difference between a will and a trust, because SGE is just enhancing the experience and they're delivering synthesized answers based on a wide variety of websites. They're pulling websites and they're giving that short answer. You've seen it on top of the Google search. It's going to say AI generating and it's going to populate.
Speaker 1:I mean you know, here's what it looks like. I mean it's going to summarize answers at the top of your search results. It's going to give you citations and links to specific sources where Google is pulling it from. I mean, even crazier, you can actually have interactive follow-up questions to deeper explore the question you're getting here. So, again, all SGE is doing is synthesizing answers for anyone that's searching for it and in your world, that's people searching for legal solutions and instead of searching through websites to find their answer, they're going to get it immediately front and center on top of Google. So as we're going to go into is how that impacts Google's rankings, google search results, and whether or not it's going to change the way people search for information on the internet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and honestly it's. We're seeing it already, right, with the rapid rise of TikTok, you know where it was like short form video, right, Rapid rise of short form video, and I think, I think what we're starting to see is that that shift of of just time-saving tools, you know, everything becomes super, super. You know, quick, like we're not going to talk about this today, but there's something in the AI space called AI agents, right, and they're starting to emerge and this is basically like huge time-saving tools for almost anything, right, yeah, um, and and this is just, I wouldn't say the tip of the iceberg, because it's definitely a little bit more than the tip of the iceberg, but it's, it's, it's something that's um is only going to continue, you know, on and on. Also, how does sge impact seo?
Speaker 1:yeah. So I mean seo and I apologize for being overly simplistic and it's a search engine optimization where people normally equate to getting their website on the first page of google. I mean, nobody and we've talked about this before nobody really wants to go viral. Nobody really wants the first page of google. What they want is more quality leads. I mean they, they want more people in the door and a lot of people were trying to shortcut the system, especially in the last 10 years. I mean, they're trying to figure out what is Google looking for? How do I pad my website with as many things that Google is looking for? So when Google tries to tabulate or formulate search results, what are they pulling from? They want their website to be seen. I mean, we also know that Google's never actually specifically outright stated what their pure algorithm is.
Speaker 1:There's some speculation. They give a lot of tips at SEO, which we will go over straight from Google, but a lot of people equate this to keywords, words. I was saying if I put real estate, if I put Tampa, if I put Washington DC, I put best attorney, it's going to populate the results that my potential clients want. So the thing is, because users are going to get direct answers from the search results, they may no longer need to click through websites to pull the answers. Now the ironic part, which is the thing that's one of the biggest things I've seen in marketing, in marketing last couple of years now SGE isn't focusing on those keywords, isn't focusing on the backlinks, isn't focusing a lot of the I'll say gimmicks or shortcuts that SEO companies employ.
Speaker 1:What they're actually looking for is authoritative content that directly answers the person's question. I mean, you can be featured in an SGE boost. I mean it's going to boost your visibility, it's going to boost your credibility. I mean, granted, we are going to point out how this is ultimately unnecessary because, again, what we really want is qualified leads, and I always point out that someone contacted Spotlight Branding and said their name was I think was Chicken Nugget, and they want us to be a family law attorney. I mean, that's a lead, that is an actual lead, but obviously we cannot work with Chicken Nugget, I mean. So what I'm seeing here is now SEO is shifting away from ranking pages based on the gimmicks and tricks and looking for content that's worthy of being cited in an AI-generated answer, and so it's definitely impacting the SEO game. Maybe, unless SEO is completely pivoting toward qualitative content, versus the 20 or so things that SEO companies technically do on a SEO basis.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think you covered, really covered. I don't think I have anything else to add to to to this slide here. So weird Otherwise, other than we're definitely seeing the shift already. Yeah, and here's the thing is that we're talking about it now, but this has been something that's been going on for about a year, and just kind of slowly working its way into it.
Speaker 2:So it's it's. It's only been a year of this right Now. Think about, in, like 10 years, where it's going to be. So it's good that we're getting this information out now. For sure, if you own a small law firm, then you must know how necessary marketing is to the growth of your law firm. Even if you were to just get all of your business, or most of your business, from word of mouth or referrals, that's still a form of marketing, right? You're talking to your audience in some sort of way. It could be indirect or direct.
Speaker 2:What is not necessary, though, is you having to do everything yourself. Even if you have somebody in the firm who helps you out. You still have to take, you know, careful consideration of all those minute, those fine details that could affect the overall marketing plan, whether positively or negatively. So here's what we want to do. We have a strategy team who wants to sit down with you. They want to talk about where you are, where you want to be, what you've done, what you have done, what you're doing right now, what you haven't even considered doing, and they want to flesh out everything right. We want to talk about all the solutions that we know have helped small law firms grow, and we want to do it very strategically, very specifically for your law firm. So check the podcast description. There's a link there. You can pick the date that works for you, schedule a call with our strategy team and we'd be happy to help. All right, let's get right back to the episode. All right, what Google does look for.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So eat. It sounds like something I'm going to be doing in a couple hours.
Speaker 1:And the thing about eat, and this is not something that we carry out. This is not something I came up with. It's not a spot like Brandon came up with. I'm pulling this directly up what Google advises people to do to generate higher search rankings. This is not from us. This is not an acronym that we created, but I mean it is speaking to what Google is now looking for. You want to go over the E principles, mikey.
Speaker 2:Sure. So, first of all, the first E is experience, right? How can you show your expertise through personal or professional insight? Um, I mean, I think, and correct me if I'm wrong this also ties back into your website, right? Because? Oh yeah how sge works.
Speaker 2:I believe we're going to talk about it later on, but I might be getting ahead of myself, um, but I believe that how the way sge works is that it actually quickly looks through the uh, the websites themselves of of the um, the content that it wants to promote or to uh to show its answer. So it's it's going through not only the blog itself to answer the question that's being Googled, but it's also going through the website to make sure that you know you actually are credible and you have, you know, expertise shown. And then secondly, expertise. I can E's for expertise. This is through your content, you know, your blogs, video, faqs. This is the way that you know you're really going to even have a chance getting featured in the sge is is by having quality blogs, quality faqs that answer the questions.
Speaker 2:They don't. They're not full of fluff, um, and they, they get to the point. Right, because, at the end of the day, sge is meant to get to the point. Right, it's. It's just everything's supposed to be right there, uh, and almost instantly, um, authoritativeness.
Speaker 2:So this kind of goes back to your website, right? Um, you know how can you show your authority? Um, you know your credentials. If you have your credentials on a quality website, if your website is looking 2006, looking like 2006, and you still have a great blog, the odds will probably go down about it showing your blog Drastic. Yeah, because it's going to go through your website, it's going to make sure. Hey, this is someone that's credible and, honestly, it sounds almost like vanity. Right, because you're like, oh, I'm worried about an updated website because, you know, I just need the credible information, I just need the valuable information. At the end of the day, like you know, you want to be with the times, right, you don't want to be stuck in the past. Everything's moving so fast. We got to make sure that you're moving with it. And then trustworthiness you know everything that you say is accurate, everything that you say is backed, you know, by facts, and that you're not just kind of trying to pull a wool over the eyes.
Speaker 1:So look beyond keywords. Yeah, look beyond the keywords, because you can't spell eat with a K, so and we get so many calls from because we do. We create blogs. One thing, one of the marketing tools we use here and I have a lot of conversations with people they want to pack it with words. Um, uh, very, they're trying to game the system. They're trying it. They're saying, if I pack it up with with where I am, what type of practice I am, um, different subsets in my practice areas, it it's going to draw people. But the thing is, I mean, if you put yourself in Boston, put yourself in New York and you're a real estate attorney or you're an estate planning attorney, anything with estate really.
Speaker 2:Well, let's give an example here, because I have someone in the chat. Justin is estate planning from Tampa.
Speaker 1:Estate planning from Tampa. I don't know what the population of Tampa is, but I guarantee you it's large and I'm telling you what I mean. So if you look at the first page of Google, what you're going to see is a search generator response. You're going to see three or four sponsored pay-per-click ads pay-per-click spots. I mean people are paying for those spots. The more competition, the higher the cost. And underneath that you're going to see organic results people searching.
Speaker 1:In the heyday of SEO, 60% of people went to one of those first three organic results. If you were on the bottom of the first page of Google, I think it was about 2% people 2% of people that landed would click on it based on that page itself. So if the keywords are so simple, that's why you shouldn't do them. It's because everyone's doing them. So if the keywords are so simple, that's why you shouldn't do them. It's because everyone's doing them. So if you're in Tampa and you're an estate planning attorney, how many other people are estate planning attorneys in Tampa? You're fighting for either that one SGE spot, which might set a couple of websites, or you're fighting for one of those three organic results that are unpaid, so that the spot, the limited space versus the people competing for them. The numbers just simply don't work.
Speaker 1:So instead of looking at the keywords, you're trying to take content that addresses your users needs directly. It's covering topics that are in depth, without the necessary keyword stuffing. That makes you sound robotic, that we always say we talk to people, we don't talk to robots. And when you use the precise language, I mean we hire writers here. I mean, I'm one of them. But if you have language and logical structure and headings with bullet points that clarify your point and make it easier to read, you're actually that's the better way of gaming the system, if you would want to do it. There are no shortcuts anymore. I mean the previous point alone, which is getting you to focus on quality content over keywords, and I mean the keywords that set our practice areas and geographic locations.
Speaker 1:And the other thing, too, is the consistency matters the pace at which you put content out on a consistent basis. This content has to be updated regularly to stay relevant and accurate, especially in rapidly changing fields, so the consistency here is part of it. So if you take anything away from what Google is looking for, don't see it as a shortcut. I hate the word, but it is relevant here, a hack, one of those things that I can hack it. I can figure it out Because if you're in Tampa, there's too many people using keywords for one of those three spaces, so again, massive people fighting for very limited space and there's just no guarantee you're going to land in there. And even if you do land in there, you're only landing in there in certain searches. So when people say I'm on the first page, this is what you search and this is when you're on the first page.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you said something that I kind of want to expand on a little bit.
Speaker 1:when you're on the first page.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you said something that I kind of want to expand on a little bit. Get it. You said that keywords are the simple way.
Speaker 2:So that's why everyone's doing it right, or everyone was doing it before, and that's the thing is that we're seeing a lot of these simple things being taken over by like AI functions right, and we say it time and time again we don't believe that AI is going to replace lawyers.
Speaker 2:So it's now is not the time to do the simple things anymore. Now is the time to take. I mean, you know the people watching this webinar. Right now, you are taking the time out of your day to expand your, your, your knowledge on this matter, which is great. This is a terrific step because we're going to we're going to need, as collectively as a human civilization, we are going to need to level up our learning, our expertise in AI so that we are not driven out. Basically, we talk about humans and staying in the pack, humans, that kind of going back to our ancient ancestors here, but how they used to, like you know, be in like groups, right, and you don't want to be driven out of the group, and an AI could do that if you're not keeping up with it. So this is good, good step for everyone.
Speaker 1:AI is a flavor enhancer, an assistant, not a dictator, that's right.
Speaker 2:All right Strategies.
Speaker 1:Essentially, you already touched on it. When we talk about optimizing, and again, this is not what we do the ironic part here is we're actually against this in terms of optimizing your stuff for Google, there's a handful I mean several other profitable ways and reasons why you should be enhancing content far outside the realm of Google. I mean, you can be a highly successful law firm and never touch the first page of Google, but yeah, I think let's make sure we emphasize that we're not necessarily totally against optimizing for search engine.
Speaker 2:I think that's just a byproduct of what we do. We're just saying that, hey, your focus, if it's on the quality content, high quality content it's going to indirectly optimize yourself for this. We're not saying, hey, you should make your content to negate this. We're just saying that it's there with the focus in the right spot and do both.
Speaker 1:So you're focusing on high quality content. I mean it's we throw that word around like what is high quality content? It's like comparing Stephen King, david Foster, wallace. What is high quality content I mean we're talking about and it's not that difficult, but we're talking about is addressing common questions. What are the questions that people have every day, on a daily basis, that come into your office when people find out you're an attorney at a party and they corner you in a corner. What are the types of questions they're asking you to get free advice from?
Speaker 1:These are the questions you should be answering through your content, through your video FAQs, through your long form guides, through your social media posts, through your blogs, even in your email newsletters. I mean you can make them even better by including statistics, you can include visuals, you can include examples that make your content engaging. And again, anything that's engaging is something that answers a problem we're not here to entertain. So when I go to lawyers' websites and I was looking at information, that's all I wanted. That's engaging content for a lawyer. So don't mistakenly think that engaging content has to be anything like what an influencer does. I mean. So you're always writing with your user or your prospective client's needs in mind. It doesn't matter whether they're seeking general information, comparisons, solutions to specific problems.
Speaker 1:This is all things you should be doing, regardless of where you land on SGE. Sge can be a bonus, the Google page could be a bonus, but simply diversifying the types of content you put out like again, I talk about videos, podcasts, infographics, text, et cetera that's what you should be focusing on taking those mediums and answering questions. Not only will that grab you better content and get more clients where they read you and they begin to build the trust gap, getting them one step closer to booking a consultation and trusting you, and closing that trust gap. Going from a name on Google to someone I'm actually willing to work with. Content does that, and it's also going to benefit SGE too your Google search results. So it's win-win in both categories.
Speaker 2:Yeah and we say it time and time again think of your content like a conversation, like a one-on-one conversation. You know, when creating content, you know you want to make sure that if you're having a conversation with somebody, you're not just if someone asks you hey, what can I do? I just got into a car accident, what can I do? And then you start saying, oh, I am a Tampa lawyer, personal injury lawyer from Tampa. Are you injured? I'm a personal injury lawyer. Like you wouldn't respond that way. Right, you would say, oh, okay, you have this question. All right, here are five things that you should do right after you get into a. If you get into a car accident or something like that.
Speaker 1:Do I need medical attention? Do I need to talk to a doctor? Is documentation important? What witnesses should I talk to? Do I need to get their names? What kind of reports do I file? These are the questions that people are pinned down with and these are commonplace. For you, depending on your law, I mean, these are the bottom level questions that people want that you have more than enough information to provide without giving away the farm. You can give away the farm, you don't need to, but it's just that's to give them the information they need. Yeah, Absolutely.
Speaker 2:So there are some upsides.
Speaker 1:There are.
Speaker 2:We've been talking kind of down a little bit on you know, Not down, but minimizing.
Speaker 1:I mean we don't need minimizing.
Speaker 2:Minimizing, yeah, sure, we've. Yeah, but there are upsides, you know. First and foremost, I mean, if your article, if your blog gets chosen to be featured yeah, eddie will do a dance, awesome, it will boost your credibility almost instantaneously, right? Because here's the thing is that I'm sure you guys saw it on the first slide and I'm sure that you've seen it in Google is that when it generates a response, it gives links, yeah, to to the sources so it could have. And this is actually.
Speaker 2:This is actually another upside of sge. That's different than, and it's much better than, seo. Normal seo is that, like eddie was saying, with normal seo you have, like, the top three results getting a huge majority of the traffic and the clicks, and that's only three spots. But with SGE, a lot of times it will give you six or seven different sources and a line from each. If you have a question, it'll just give you a quick line from six or seven different sources. So you have an opportunity not only to appear in the first area of the Google result, but also use six or seven opportunities within that, even before the first three results of Google are even shown. So that is definitely an upside, for sure.
Speaker 1:And the 60% I mentioned. That is before SGE. I mean this is, but before SGE. I mean this is so good, but before sge existed this is where the traffic went. So I mean I I don't have the numbers, but it's going to go down. There's. There's no way that more people aren't clicking on these links in the sge areas than they are scrolling past it. People don't like to scroll down I.
Speaker 2:I can only imagine what the numbers will be, for how many people actually go to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's going to take time to see the change in SGE, but I mean it's happening, yeah, and that percentage chance of organic search is going to drop Because now Google's touting you as the expert. It's like if Google's touting you as expert, I'm like whatever, yeah, yeah. But I mean yeah, they're going to cite you as reliable information. It builds credibility and that's what branding is in the legal game.
Speaker 1:Branding is not your logo. Branding is how trustworthy and credible you are. How quickly can you deliver credibility and expertise? That's your brand. Your brand I mean your logo is just something. That's something to recognize you. But that is what. That's the name of the game. When we say spotlight branding, that is what branding is. It's it's credibility, it's expertise. I mean I mean I also point out that even in the one of the benefits of sg is like in the same thing was like a newsletter is that even if no one clicks on your page being featured, sg still increases the awareness and your authority. I mean the same way newsletters do. I mean even someone doesn't open up your newsletter, but it shows up in their inbox. They're still remembering your name every time they see it. So, yeah, so you don't necessarily even need a click, but it does help.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, yeah, and, and also you see the, the, the other point there on the screen. You all are already in the best position to to really work this whole sge oh yeah because? Because if you, if you do personal injury, if you do estate planning, if you do entertainment, um, you're already niched down, niche, yeah, people say I think, it's niche, but anyways, you're already niched down to a very specific you know uh area.
Speaker 2:So if you're writing content, very specific content about a very specific area, niche content is more likely to appear. So you're already setting yourself up for success there. Yeah, but there are some challenges and future considerations, yep, I mean.
Speaker 1:so the even, like we said, the direct answers of sge, I mean, does not mean users are going to visit your site, which making traditional click-through metrics are going to be even less relevant, as we just highlighted. I mean there is a higher standard of quality content. That's going to make it harder to stand out, but it's not hard if you put the time into creating content and there's always going to be the same amount of people fighting for even less space, but we talked about earlier. There might be a little more space, given how sg, how many, how many links they're putting in there. So I mean, like market agencies that are going to focus on metrics like citations and user engagements, rather than just page visits. So shift your focus away from the gimmicks, the hacks, tricks, and focus on user focused content. Um, that over pure keyword.
Speaker 1:Mike did the two parallels of talking I'm a Tampa personal engineer attorney. Oh, that's great. I'm a Tampa personal engineer attorney. I'm a Tampa personal engineer. If you can help you, it's over pure keyword optimization. Again, the thing is so simple and so cursory that it doesn't merit your attention. Because it's so simple? Because if that's all it took to get on the first page of Google, we wouldn't exist. I mean, marketing agencies wouldn't exist, seo companies wouldn't exist. That's all it took. It was keywords. But AI advancement simply just means that SEO strategies are going to keep evolving and you have to stay evolving with them to stay relevant. So I mean the benefit here is that if you just keep focusing on quality content versus chasing trends, it's going to work in the areas that we've talked about and it will work in Google search.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the trending towards quality content is across the board, not just for SGE, it's across the board for all AI applications. You're going to see, I mean right now it's a little funky If I was to go in the chat GPT and say, hey, write me a blog about this. Right, it's going to produce something funky. I'm going to need to make sure that you know it's. It's written a certain way.
Speaker 2:I'm going to need to touch it up and that sort of thing. But it now uses sources, right, so it gives you sources, so you can see that trend towards quality content as ai advances in all kind of spaces.
Speaker 2:But also, just to kind of go back to what we talked about earlier, yes, there are challenges. Yes, there are, you know, future considerations. But if you're already, like we said before, if you're already creating that user-focused content, if you're already, like we said before, if you're already creating that user-focused content, if you're already putting that effort into the quality content rather than the keywords, you're going to feed into this already, you're going to just keep on doing what you're doing and it's only going to benefit you. You know, regardless, it already has upside, regardless of SGE. You know quality content does so much more than just gets you featured on SGE.
Speaker 2:Quality content does so much more than just gets you featured on SGE, but now you have a better opportunity of being featured on SGE, and that's just a little fluff. That's the frosting on the cake, even though I'm not big cake.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I disagree. I've seen you eat a lot of cake. Any questions, something pops up in your head when you're driving home. Shoot me an email. I'm happy to talk to you. No worries, I appreciate your time.
Speaker 2:Yes, we appreciate you guys and have a terrific day. Have a terrific weekend.