Wade Carlson is an expert in SEO and digital marketing, known for delivering impressive ROI on hundreds of campaigns. With a focus on data-driven strategies, Wade consistently develops tailored solutions that produce measurable results. A proud veteran of the US Coast Guard, he has served in diverse locations including Alaska, the Great Lakes, the Florida Keys, and California. Outside of his professional work, Wade enjoys fatherhood and spends his free time writing and recording music.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wade-l-carlson/
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Interview Transcript
Casey
Today I am thrilled to welcome Wade Carlson to the podcast. Wade is a seasoned leader in the world of SEO in digital marketing. He’s known for his ability to help clients achieve a significant return on investment through tailored strategies that deliver measurable results. His expertise is in crafting successful campaigns and has made a substantial impact for a lot of attorneys in the us. So thank you for joining me today, Wade. It’s a pleasure to have you here.
Wade
Yeah, thanks for having me, Casey.
Casey
Of course. Yeah. And today we’re going to be diving into Mastering Law Firm, SEO and strategies for Growth and Success. So you work with quite a few law firms right now, is that correct?
Wade
Yes, about 25 of ’em personally in my group.
Casey
Okay, that’s awesome. And so just real quickly, it’s 2024, and how long have you been an SEO?
Wade
I’ve been an SEO for about seven years.
Casey
Okay. So over the past seven years, how have things changed in your opinion?
Wade
Well, I mean a lot. I think Google’s gotten very, I hate to use the word picky, but with the algorithm and ranking content that’s helpful for other people. So they become very strict on who’s writing it and what sort of authority they have would be a big one. Another big one, and this is more recently, is AI search results. And I know that Google’s kind of peeled back away from that one a little bit, but when they were first testing it and rolling it out, we definitely did notice that was definitely making things a little bit challenging with the search.
Casey
And what do you mean by challenging?
Wade
So if you have a query, especially some of those informational keywords, how much jail time can I do for shoplifting? Let’s just say for an example. So it might be a common question that people ask. What’ll happen is Google will generate their own featured snippet or their own result for you to look at pushing everyone else down a couple positions, basically what we saw in maybe a little bit less traffic.
Casey
Got it. As those AI overviews are coming out, you were seeing a little bit of less traffic. And I know I talked to an attorney recently who was kind of curious about some of his ranking fluctuation, something that people tend to pay close attention to, which we’ll talk about later. But do you think that’s mostly due to AI or those overviews, or are there other factors at play?
Wade
Definitely that would be the main factor would just be Google and the AI overviews for one of them. And then going back to Google, getting more picky about the, or stricter about the ranking factors. I should say. There’s something called Google e Experience, expertise, authority and trust. Or what they’re looking for is those law firms with the experience in the trust in order to push those rankings up.
Casey
Okay, got it. So a lot of different attorneys I speak with, they’re involved in different types of marketing, and that could be anything from billboards to radio ads, could be SEO or paid. How does SEO fit into the overall marketing for law firms and is it still important in 2024?
Wade
Absolutely. It’s not going anywhere. First of all, there’s traditional marketing, the traditional marketing that we know, or for me, not to date myself, but growing up, but it was those things like the signage, but when I kind of grew up in the marketing world, it was kind of just when digital ads became a thing in paid search. And those are all very important things. So I think that where SEO plays in, if you’re hip on your SEO game, that is the way to show users that you are the expert. If you can rank on the top and you have a lot of digital authority, I would say.
Casey
Okay.
Wade
Yeah. So being at the top of the rank. So SEO is definitely important for that because when you see, for example, when you’re just doing a query, it’s one thing if you see the ads, a lot of times if I’m just querying something and I see an ad, a lot of times I just skip right past through it. So we can’t be successful just putting ads up by showing that we do have ads up for our clients or for a law firm. And then also showing the rank that’s even more powerful. So SEO works together with those other channels.
Casey
Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. You had touched a little bit about ranking factors, and this is a question that probably comes up in a lot of your discussions, or at least I think it would. What are the most important ranking factors? We saw this Google algorithm leak, we saw all this stuff going on, but what are you finding is making the biggest impact for your clients?
Wade
Several of ’em. One big one for local is definitely your reviews. That’s a huge one. And I know the last time I checked, I think I read there was like 400 and something different ones, but there are some that are more important for others. So definitely having good Google reviews, that’s a huge one. Site speed, your overall, the user experience, that’s the one that gets, I think, overlooked a lot because if you have a good user experience, that will send a good signal to Google because people, when they’re on your site, if they’re on desktop or if they’re on mobile, they want to be able to look at the site and they want to be able to easily navigate. So if a user is on there and they’re clicking multiple pages, they’re scrolling and they’re doing all these things that we’ll send good signals over to Google. So it’s more than just for SEO, the keywords that are put on the website, that’s about the functionality and user experience.
Casey
Sure. And that makes a lot of sense. At the end of the day, if your website’s slow, people are not going to wait for it to load. We’re too impatient these days. And I think over the years too, I’ve seen products like Elementor we use not to get technical or anything or too in the weeds, but that’s an interactive thing that people can use to design their websites. And you can do it, but it’s bulky and it slows down your website. And so the return on that might be Google might spend less time on your website crawling it, or people may not convert. It takes too long to load, right,
Wade
Right. Yeah, exactly. People lose interest and then they bounce. We want to get people into the website and we want them to engage with the content.
Casey
And when we’re talking about content, are you finding specific types of content that are driving quality leads? Because one of the biggest complaints I hear is I’m paying for SEO, or I was reading about this on red, say I’m paying for SEO, but I’m just getting junk leads, for example. There’s a lot of factors that could be in play there, but what’s just some of your top of mind thoughts?
Wade
I have some insight on that. If someone’s saying that they’re not getting quality leads, I think that would suggest that they have the incorrect content. What I like about with Juris Digital and what we do, every strategy, every content plan that we do for our clients are specifically tailored to the types of cases that they want. So for instance, if they want more wrongful death cases, well definitely what I’m working on is new interesting content pieces, informational blogs, transactional pages to try to connect that user with the law firm and get them a new case. So I would say, just to sum that up, some agencies use a one size fits all strategy and that’s the complete opposite of what we do.
Casey
Okay. And then for types of content, do you see practice area pages or review pages or city, tell me types of content that you’ve seen generate those higher quality leads?
Wade
Yeah, I’ve seen a lot with pages because when someone has a question socially a common question, we can put that on the site and apply the correct markup to it on the technical side, and that should rank high in search results, and then they get the traffic for that. A lot of blogs too, we’ve seen clients that gets someone that’s just like, oh yeah, I was reading the blog. How long should I wait to contact a lawyer after a car accident? And that’s a very good question. That’s one of those types of questions we address in our blogs, and people do contact the law firm and they do become cases
Casey
That makes sense. I want to touch back to something that you said a little bit earlier because it kind of stuck in my mind and it’s going back to those irrelevant leads and the type of content. I think you’re absolutely right. The general business model for agencies is especially law firm SEO O agencies, it’s like, let’s raise that traffic number every month. And what happens if that turns into your goal versus a number of cases and quality cases is that you start creating content that is outside of that very specific niche that you’re servicing and that’s going to harm your site overall, right?
Wade
Yeah, absolutely. Traffic is good. Of course, you want people in the website, but it’s got to be the correct traffic, the types of people that would provide the clients with the type of case that they want.
Casey
Exactly, yeah, because if you’re targeting high net worth divorce cases, you’re probably going to have a different website than if your business model is churn and burn. I need $1,000 divorce cases a month,
Wade
And that’s not feasible to do. You know what I mean? So it’s quality over quantity. So we’re looking for, so what we’re doing is we’re not just saying, Hey, we’re getting 1000 people a month over to your pages. What we’re saying is we’re giving you X amount of people, and those are people that are ready and interested in working with your law firm.
Casey
Got it. And so why do you think that just so many agencies then automatically default to rankings and traffic as metrics?
Wade
Yeah, number one is easy. So one strategy I know that maybe some agencies do is they’ll say, Hey, we can get you to rank number one in one month. Okay. And yeah, you can definitely do it, but it’ll be something that people are not searching for. So something very long tail, and what I mean by long tail or something that’s like aqua, that’s five or six words, a longer phrase or something that bear maybe 30 people a month search for it. It’s easy to compete for. So we do a little SEO to get the rank up. So cool. They might be ranking number one, but it’s just not enough people per month. Yeah,
Casey
Yeah. You’re absolutely right. And speaking of agencies, another trend that I see as well is I’ve been hearing a lot of law firms who are getting vastly different quotes for what might seem like the same service on the outside. So for a website for a hundred thousand dollars, a website for $20,000, a website for a thousand dollars, do you have any concept on why those would be vastly different, what attorneys should consider when they’re building a website? Is it important from the design perspective as well?
Wade
Right. Well, I think with some of those more expensive ones, the agency’s going to build them that website that just might be very unnecessary features on the website that they don’t need. Number one, what we know is we know exactly what kind of website it takes to do it, and we can do it very efficiently doing it for a long time. So I’m talking about a nice blog roll page with all your blogs all sorted out so you can easily find them. Practice area pages that tell the user the type of service that they offer and the location that they service at. I think a lot of people definitely overcharge for websites for sure. If you can get away with it, I guess people do it.
Casey
I guess going back to what you said, it depends on their need too. If you are truly wanting to stand out in a crowded market and really differentiate yourself and only take a few very highend cases a month or a year, that would probably be a totally different marketing approach than it would be for a smaller firm.
Wade
Absolutely. Because when you’re a smaller firm, especially, I think it’s very offputting, for lack of a better word, if you say, okay, here’s a new websites, $15,000 or something like that.
Casey
I think the important part is that I’d like you to touch on is something that I’ve seen and that’s when people have maybe decided, Hey, I found this creative and I love what they do, and it’s totally fine to use them for that, especially if you found a style that’s going to resonate with your brand and you’ve checked all the boxes, but the problem I’ve seen, and I don’t know if you’ve encountered it, but it’s where they don’t consult the SEO agency, and so they launched this new website without the consideration of work that’s been put in. Do you have any background or horror stories on something like that?
Wade
Absolutely. Yeah, that’s the thing is I think to find, first of all, the qualities of a really good agency is somebody that can do it all right, so an agency that has your SEO department working closely with the dev department so you can work together. But yes, I’ve had a couple of friends that had startup businesses and they hired some other X, Y, Z company, and then they go and then I look on the site and there’s literally word count on each page is like a hundred words. So very thin on content. Number one, focus on design and design is a great thing, but for SEO, we need the text copy. We need content on the page to signal Google that we have things to say and they’re important to people. So definitely SEO is overlooked. Not a lot of people. The thing that’s weird about SEO is, and maybe the reason why I wanted to do it is because not a lot of people know what it’s, so I think if you do, it’s kind of interesting and it gives you some sort of advantage, like, hey, that’s kind of a niche. Definitely.
Casey
I guess you could go the other way though too, where you just have people that only know about SEO and you obviously see those, you’ve come across websites that are over optimized, right?
Wade
Yes. Then on the complete polar opposite that you get the websites that have kind of a subpar design, let’s just say with a terrible user experience that loads slow, but you got all the key words on there, you know what I mean? So you need more than one thing. There’s multiple, there’s a lot of different things happening, a lot of moving parts, let’s just say. So you have the website design with the user experience and easy navigation and so forth, and then you also have the SEO part of it, the keywords that you’re putting and they work together to help the website rank.
Casey
Do you think you’re shooting yourself in the foot if you’re just focusing on only SEO or only design?
Wade
Yeah, absolutely. It’s a happy medium and it’s hard to get it perfect. Think about it. So if you’re a new attorney or something like that just starting out and you just branched off on your own, and it can be a little overwhelming, it’s like, well, I need all of these different things. So it is a balance. So number one thing is I think you have to know what you want to put on the website, and the good thing about us is we know with research and stuff, we can know what to put on their website and develop a content plan. You also have to have a pretty good idea of having some idea of what your brand is. But again, the two work together.
Casey
Okay, got it. Let’s talk about long-term SEO success. What does that look like? Is it something that you should just kind of do one time, set it and forget it, or what’s your experience with that?
Wade
So SEO definitely needs a lot of TLC. So eyes on the website and on the analytics on at least a monthly basis and readjusting your strategy because what happens is there’s algorithm updates from Google, things happen, there’s different shifts in the business. So it’s part of, it’s switching things up because okay, you lost R for some sort of some keyword. Okay, well why did I lose it? And who’s winning on that keyword? And then there’s competitor analysis that goes into it, and then there’s SEO adjustments, so you might be able to regain position for that keyword. But other than that, we’re constantly measuring, we’re constantly adapting the clients themselves, the attorneys, they might have a shift in their business too, where maybe they don’t want to do wrongful death cases anymore, or maybe they don’t want those broken arm personal injury cases anymore. So then that’s where we communicate with the client and understand what kind of cases are valuable to you. And that’s always changing too. So when that changes, then we have to change our SEO strategy as well.
Casey
And I think that feedback is super important on whatever cadence you do at weekly, monthly, quarterly, whatever. But to hear that, because otherwise you keep executing in a direction that doesn’t align with the business objectives. And that’s something that I’ve seen and I’ve had back and forth with where we’ve built out these huge content, basically silos because they wanted to rank for slip and fall lawyers. So we build out all this thing and then a month later it’s like, Hey, you know what? We’re getting these leads, but we don’t like the cases. We’re only going to take one out of a hundred of these, and it’s tying up our phone lines. Let’s kill the content.
Wade
Yeah. See, and that’s the thing too, is you don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket. It’s kind of sort of like a stock market in a sense. I mean, you have a diverse portfolio. It’s the same thing with SEO. There’s law firms that have very, very specific niches like intellectual property, trademark, that sort of thing. So that’d be niche. So you’d have content all about that, but many of our clients have multiple practice areas, criminal defense to personal injury or employment. So either way, you want to build out content for each of them, just want to do one at a time because something tanks with one, then you have other things to ring for.
Casey
Yeah, you’re absolutely right. And just like with any marketing strategy as a part of your firm, you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket anyways. And I don’t know if what you’ve seen, but a lot of the most successful firms I’ve seen might have a strong referral program that they’ve enhanced over time, and they’re doing SEO and they’re doing ads, and they’re staying top of mind from everybody that’s kind of ever contacted their firm as well through email marketing. But there’s a thousand channels, you could name it, podcast, whatever. But I just totally agree and resonate with you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket even with just only doing SEO, because the reality is, as SEOs, we don’t own Google, do we?
Wade
Right, exactly. Yeah. So there’s forces that can be unavoidable, you know what I mean?
Casey
Yeah, definitely. And I think historically what we found is that that hasn’t been a problem because we do things ethically and we do things with paying close attention and making sure that it’s exceptional. But outside of that, in the SEO part of it, we touched on the design and maybe focusing a little bit here or a little bit over there, we’re kind of splitting those efforts, but do you have any experience on how important messaging is or design in terms of conversions?
Wade
Yes. One of the things that we’ve noticed is people don’t always take that next step. They visit the website, they scroll around a little bit, and they don’t take that next step. And what we found out is people need to be comfortable and they need to be able to trust. So messaging, using that brand voice, let’s just say this, X, Y, Z law firm, they’re all about personalization and care and great support. You’re not treated like you’re a case number. You’re treated like a person. A lot of our clients have that plasticity, smaller boutique type law firms, and they want to have that kind of personalization with them. So yeah, I would say that the messaging is really going to make or break whether they’re taking that next step in contenting or making that phone call to the attorney with design as well. And especially if you’re on mobile and you’re flipping through and you go and you click on something and all that you see is this giant button that says, call us.
And then that’s all you see. And then it’s like, it’s a big red button too, and it just looks very ominous when they first look at that. They’re on their landing page and they look at the law firm’s page there. It’s like, what do they do and how can they help me if you can get, because most of it should be above the fold, right? Because people just want to get the information quickly and make a decision. And if you don’t have that right away showing on your desktop or on your mobile right above the fold, then chances are you’re going to lose them.
Casey
Sure. Yeah. I mean, you have to be quick. We already talked about short attention spans, and I think all of this ties in together like messaging. If you were being very thoughtful, let’s say that you’re starting a firm and six months from now, or you just want to do the project the right way, what’s kind of the right way to integrate messaging and design and SEO and all that? Is there a certain process that you would follow if you could have a magic wand, paint that masterpiece?
Wade
Well, again, so in my experience working with every client’s a little bit different. We communicate more often than with others. So sometimes it’s tough to tell. Sometimes I kind have to look at what’s already on the website and what they already have to have an idea of how I’m going to improve conversions. Sometimes it’s getting on a call with them and understanding, hey, so what do you tell people? Do you offer free consultations? And not everyone does, and there might be a good reason for it, but a lot of people like to see that there’s things that we got to do to discover how we can best serve them.
Casey
Sure. Okay. Awesome. Well, so far you’ve shared a lot of good nuggets of information, Wade. I appreciate that. I was also hoping that you would be up for kind of a rapid fire q and a round where I just ask you some questions and get some top of mind answers from you.
Wade
I’m at the edge of my seat.
Casey
It’s exciting. Yeah, it’s going to be about those red contact us now buttons,
Wade
Right? You get those big, those buttons.
Casey
So first of all, just from a law firm perspective, how does SEO differ from other agencies or other types of businesses?
Wade
Other businesses, a lot of times, especially people that are selling a product like a physical product, you can easily showcases with law firms, it’s hard to show that it can be a challenge. It’s hard to show that to people. So we really rely on our content and our written logs and practice areas to show, Hey, if this is your problem, this is what we can do for you and help resolve your case.
Casey
Should law firms use ai?
Wade
Yes, I think everyone should, but I want to be clear about this though. Okay. Don’t let it run you. Okay. You got to work alongside of it and treat it like it’s your copilot. Think about Maverick and Top Gun, Maverick and Goose for those top Gun fans, but you got air copilot, navigator, whatever. It’s something that I use and a lot of people do, is not to rely on, Hey, I’m going to have AI do the job for me, but I want to generate some ideas. So I think using AI with human intervention is perfectly acceptable. And if you’re not doing that now, then you’re already behind because now AI isn’t everything. It’s in a lot of our softwares and systems, and honestly, I use it to plan my groceries, plan my meals, and plan a date night.
Casey
Awesome.
Wade
She doesn’t know that though, but I won’t
Casey
Tell her. Don’t worry, it’s, it’s going to be in the mail after this, a postcard that says that. Just kidding. What’s more important? Mobile or desktop or tablet?
Wade
Well, that’s interesting. Okay. In tablet too. Definitely. I would say from what I’ve seen, most users are on mobile, and Google does that is a huge ranking factor too, and something I didn’t mention before, but mobile rendering is a huge factor. So when we optimize everything, we’re optimizing for mobile and tablet and desktop. They’re all important because people do use the mobile. We can’t forget everything gets designed for all aspect ratios.
Casey
And you mentioned it already, but I think when you were talking about the mobile, you’re basically seeing the Google’s crawling and looking at the mobile version of your website too, right?
Wade
Absolutely. And the site and the mobile speed as well.
Casey
Awesome. Okay. Well, I won’t bore you, and I just have one more question for you, and that is, what advice would you give to law firms that are just starting to focus on their online presence?
Wade
Find an agency that’s attentive and that can discover what you’re doing and where you can improve. And an agency that has a staff of legal writers, like people that are in the legal industry that actually know about the topic that they’re writing about. Don’t look for an agency that’s just going to go and just generate 20 blogs with aiche bt, okay. Work with an agency that’s willing to sit and talk with you and open up conversation and discover new things and work with an agency that doesn’t just look at it like SEO and keywords, but you got to work with an agency that has a marketing hat in general, and that can help tell your story.
Casey
Okay. Love it. Well, Wade, thank you so much, much for joining us today. You provided a lot of insightful information. And for those people that are interested in technical SEO or learning a little bit more about the nuts and bolts of it, I think there’s some great information in here. If people want to find out more about you, what’s the best way? Can we follow you or find you online? Oh
Wade
Yeah, yeah. You can find me on LinkedIn. So LinkedIn would be slash wade dash l dash carlson.
Casey
Awesome. Yeah, we’ll put that in the description as well. So again, thank you so much for joining me today, Wade. I appreciate it and best of luck.
Wade
Yeah, you too. Thanks a lot, Casey. Thanks for having me. That was fun. Thanks.
