Digital marketing is one of those exciting-yet-frustrating fields in which any technique you master is virtually guaranteed to need an update as soon as you have gotten comfortable with it. The upside for those of us working in the industry is that we never have a chance to get bored! The challenge for our clients is that, no matter how recently we have answered a question about the “best” way to get views and clicks online, we are probably going to find ourselves answering again almost before we have a chance to catch our breath.
For the past several months, many of the most pressing questions I have been hearing from clients have come from GEO: What is it, should I be worried about it, how can I make sure my law firm is actually visible in all these AI answers? Here’s what your law firm needs to know to stay relevant as the search landscape evolves.
What Is GEO, Anyway?
GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimization, and the term is one of several competing names for the set of techniques that, depending on whom you ask, may be thought of as a successor to SEO (search engine optimization) or its natural continuation. GEO builds on many of the same principles as SEO, but adapts their implementation to account for differences in the ways “answer engines” leverage generative AI access and present information when compared to the familiar operations of established search engines (e.g., Google).
How Do AI Search Tools Source Information?
The first thing you probably need to know, if you are developing a law firm GEO strategy, is that AI search tools (at least for now) overwhelmingly source their information from “traditional” search engines. The dominant player in the search engine space is still Google, but ChatGPT has been known to prioritize results from Bing. Even accounting for the differences between the various search engines currently managing a share of total search traffic, these tools operate on essentially similar principles. This means they also tend to use closely related criteria for evaluating topical relevance when determining which sources to return in response to a query.
Longevity of SEO
People sometimes lose sight of one of the “big picture” implications of the information-sourcing behavior used by answer engines. If the AI search tools are getting the information they compile and synthesize to provide their users with concise answers to direct questions (rather than lists of relevant links for the users to review on their own) by running searches themselves, then SEO cannot logically go anywhere if you want your law firm website to show up in those answers. It doesn’t matter whether the search is initiated by a human being or a large language model (LLM): If your page is not in the search results, nobody will be seeing it, much less visiting it.
Multi-Query Search
That does not mean that there are no differences between an AI tool’s search behavior and what you or I would do if we sat down to enter a Google query. The exact protocols tend to be closely guarded secrets, but one common theme across all of the generative engine search tools currently in widespread consumer use is that they use a technique similar to what Google calls the “query fan-out” method. You can find several detailed explanations of how query fan-out works online, but for the sake of simplifying a complex topic with a lot of caveats, let’s just say that the way LLMs handle requests for search-based answers is that they take the question the user has asked, and then they generate a set of additional questions that are intended to be subsidiary to the original query.
When the method works well, these sub-queries are one or both of the following:
- Questions the user would need the answers to in order to understand the answer to their original query
- Questions from whose answers a reasonable person could infer the answer to the original query
Some tools, like Perplexity, will be so obliging as to show the sub-queries generated in order to locate the information they will use to answer the original user query.
Implications for Law Firm GEO Strategy
At this point, we can begin to draw some inferences of our own. Let’s walk them out together.
#1. Content Pillars Are More Important Than Ever
If you are familiar with the structure and function of content pillars, you know that these treasure troves of content work by creating a large set of interrelated articles/pages, each rich in keywords, and cross-linking them. Usually you will find that pillars follow something of a pyramidal structure: A very long central “pillar” that aims to provide comprehensive coverage of a topic, 3-4 somewhat shorter pages covering different aspects of that topic in greater detail, and then 3-4 smaller articles for each of these “subtopic” pages. This structure is absolutely phenomenal for creating the sub-query relevance that helps to place a page within a generative answer engine’s list of reviewed sources.
#2. Keyword Gap Strategy Still Works
Traditional content pillars are often based on the concept of “keyword gap” coverage. Keyword gap analysis is a mainstay of SEO strategy that works by identifying keywords for which your competitors are ranking well in search results, but your site is not. One of the main functions of content pillars is to “plug” the keyword gap, to make sure that your website is effectively covering high-value keywords for which your competitors are consistently out-performing you. The kind of coverage this exercise creates lends itself naturally to a spread that captures a wide range of possible subqueries for the pillar’s “core” keyword.
A content pillar is usually a single, massive project (that may sometimes get updates, as needed), so to build on the foundation it establishes many SEOs will also use keyword gap analysis in establishing a set of content “buckets” that will be used to define topics you want to target going forward. This same technique can be deployed very effectively in modern GEO: Adjust your “buckets” to align with questions and their likely subqueries related to your practice area(s).
#3. Comprehensiveness Is Key
The bad news, for law firms seeking to upgrade their GEO strategy, is that the subquery generation technique used by LLMs, in all their multiple variations, strongly privileges comprehensive topical coverage. If you want your individual pages to stay “on-topic” (a key factor in demonstrating page relevance for the search engines on whose results the answer tools will be drawing), then the need to cover any topic you want to “rank” for (”list” might be a better word than “rank” when it comes to GEO) will likely mean that you need to increase the number of individual pieces of content on your law firm website, and in some cases the rate at which you are adding to your website content (the current frequency of your website updates will obviously matter here).
The good news, if you are worried about how to adapt your law firm content marketing strategy for the new era of GEO, is that almost any legal topic can be covered from many different angles. The fact that LLM-based answer engines will be examining several of them every time they review sources to generate an answer in response to a user’s request means that these AI search tools actually give your law firm more, not fewer, chances to be recognized as relevant and therefore show up in the results eventually displayed to users. To take advantage of the multiplying opportunities, what you will want to do is work with a digital marketing professional (or agency) who can help you round out a truly comprehensive GEO content creation strategy that starts with the keyword “classics” familiar from SEO and builds outward to answer an ever wider set of thematically-related questions.
Take GEO as an Opportunity, Not Just a Challenge
Generative answer engines’ use of traditional search engines to source information in response to user requests will continue to keep SEO relevant, even as the digital marketing industry continues to evolve alongside customers’ behavior. If your law firm has an effective SEO strategy already: Build on it! If your law firm’s SEO game has been weak, now is the time to address the underlying issues that are keeping your site from ranking. In either case, rather than moving away from SEO toward GEO you will want to look at ways to enhance your total content strategy based on the way answer engines select their sources and present their responses. Work with an experienced digital marketing specialist to identify high-value topics and subqueries in your practice area, and start working to build your comprehensive suite of answers to the real questions people really ask about the type of cases your firm handles.
Annette Choti, Esq., has over two decades of legal experience and is the Founder & CEO of Law Quill, a concierge legal marketing agency for law firms. Annette authored the bestselling book Click Magnet: The Ultimate Guide To Digital Marketing For Law Firms, hosts the popular Legal Marketing Lounge podcast, and founded Click Magnet Academy where she teaches professionals to leverage the powerful LinkedIn platform. As a sought after speaker for Bar Associations, Legal Associations, and Marketing Conferences, Annette provides legal marketing insight along with an entertaining twist. Annette used to do theatre and professional comedy, which is not so different from the legal field if we are all being honest. Annette can be found on LinkedIn or directly through email at Annette@LawQuill.com
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