Page 24 - Dallas Vol 5 No 3

“SIRI, FIND
THE TOP
PERSONAL INJURY LAWYER NEAR ME.”
BY TOM DESMOND
Astechnology changes, online mar- keting strategies must change with it. While voice search through smartphones and smart speakers might not have mattered much even a year or two ago, it’s becoming a more and more popular way
to nd law rms online.
Law rm SEO has long been a text-based
game, for which the objective is to appear at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs) when potential clients search for an attorney in your location and practice area. Now, voice search facilitated by arti cial in- telligence (AI) assistants like Alexa and Siri is changing the way people search for attorneys.
An estimated 16 percent of Americans own smart speakers, according to data from NPR and Edison Research – and millions more own smartphones that are capable of voice search. ese gadgets and their charming AI assistants are changing the SEO landscape, and your rm could be a ected.
e good news is you can make some simple changes to your website today to help ensure that you don’t miss out on tech-savvy
clients tomorrow.
HOW DOES VOICE SEARCH WORK?
“Siri, nd the top personal injury law- yer near me.”
When you give your device a simple command like this, Siri, Alexa, or an- other AI will try to provide you with the most accurate and helpful top results.
But where do the answers come from? When Internet users search for a speci c term in Google, they might type “car accident lawyer near me” and search through the top results – per- haps even the rst two or three SERPs. ey’ll look for the rm that appears to best t their needs and likely go with one that ranks near the top of the rst page. Voice search takes some of this work out of the con-
sumer’s hands.
AI assistants process the spoken search
query and use it to locate useful results. If you asked Siri the above question, she would use your keywords and location to identify a per- sonal injury law rm near you.
Typically, AIs only pull the top result or two, and some read text directly from that re- sult out loud to the searcher. While the meth- od varies from AI to AI, the search results are o en limited. For example, Alexa will only provide results that have been proven accu- rate. Google Assistant, however, provides the top results but only the top spots — ranking lower on the rst page or on page two isn’t likely to help your rm get clients through voice search.
NATURAL LANGUAGE HELPS VOICE SEARCHES
AI-assisted voice search makes it easier to search for full sentences or longtail keyword phrases that you might not search for other- wise. It’s much more natural to ask Siri where the best personal injury lawyer near you is, rather than typing “personal injury lawyer Miami” into Google. is goes for speci c queries, too, such as, “How will a family law- yer help with my divorce?”
at means smartphone and smart speaker users are likely to search for products and ser- vices using full sentences and questions. is makes longtail keyword phrases and exact- match question phrases more important than traditional searching might have made them.
ese longer search terms are important for leads, too. If an AI picks up on phrases in your website content that are similar to the phras- ing of the question it’s trying to answer, your content is likely to be delivered to the poten- tial client who asked his or her Amazon Echo or iPhone the question.
at highlights the ever-increasing impor- tance of frequently asked questions pages for
THROUGH VOICE SEARCH, SIRI AND ALEXA ARE CHANGING LAW FIRM SEO
ATTORNEY AT LAW MAGAZINE · DALLAS· VOL. 5 NO. 3 24