Maximum Lawyer

Watch the YouTube version of this episode HERE


This episode gives you a clear, practical picture of how law firm SEO is changing right now so you can make smarter, more informed decisions about where to invest your time and money. Tyson sits down with Vaidas and Travis from RiseUp to unpack Google’s latest updates, how AI content is being treated, and what actually moves the needle for firms that want cases instead of vanity rankings.


You’ll hear how Google is cracking down on scaled, low‑value AI content while rewarding original, human‑edited pages that deliver real information gain, and what that means for your current content library. The guys explain why “set it and forget it” SEO is dead, why they are going back to update a significant chunk of old content for long‑time clients, and how often you really need to revisit key pages. They also share a cautionary story about a firm that dumped 100 AI‑generated pages on their site and watched traffic drop by about 80% in two weeks, giving you a real‑world example of what not to do.


Beyond Google’s core update, you’ll get a better understanding of where LLMs and search engines are actually looking: robust attorney bios, detailed case results, local signals, Yelp profiles, and consistent social content. That context helps you see SEO less as “just my website” and more as an ecosystem you can deliberately shape, instead of leaving it to chance.


The episode also dives into PPC, showing how Google’s own “smart” recommendations can tank your click‑through rate and why pay‑per‑click only works when you know your cost per click, conversion rate, and case value. By the end, you’ll have a much clearer lens for deciding whether to put dollars into SEO, PPC, or cleaning up your broader online presence, and you’ll know which questions to ask any marketing vendor before you sign the next contract.


Episode Highlights
  • 00:00 – What’s going on with the latest Google algorithm updates and how they impact law firm SEO.
  • 02:00 – Why “set it and forget it” content strategies are failing and how often you should update pages.
  • 04:00 – The firm that added 100 AI‑written pages and lost 80% of its traffic in two weeks.
  • 07:30 – How stats, FAQs, robust bios, case results, Yelp, and social posts feed Google and LLMs.
  • 10:00 – Tyson’s CTR drop after following Google’s “smart” ad recommendations and what to learn from it.
  • 15:45 – Travis’s deck‑of‑cards analogy for PPC budgets and what “too little” spend really looks like.
  • 26:12 – Why most firms don’t truly know their numbers and how that leads to bad SEO and ad investment decisions

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Creators and Guests

Host
Tyson Mutrux
Tyson is the founder of Mutrux Firm Injury Lawyers and the co-founder of Maximum Lawyer.

What is Maximum Lawyer?

Maximum Lawyer is the podcast for law firm owners who want to scale with intention and build a business that works for their life.

Hosted by Tyson Mutrux, each weekly episode features candid conversations with law firm owners, business experts, and industry leaders sharing real strategies and lessons learned in the trenches.

If you're ready to grow your firm with less stress and more support, this is your next must listen. Subscribe today.

Tyson Mutrux (00:00)
All right, Vaidas and Travis, both from RiseUp. I understand there is a new update when it comes to Google. Let’s start there. What is going on with the Google algorithm?
Vaidas (00:12)
Yeah. Google does algorithm changes and updates throughout the year, but typically some are more relevant than others. In just the last couple of days, there has been a huge algorithm update going on. One is actually a short one and one is a much longer one.
The first one rolled out March 25th and was done in under 20 hours, which apparently is the fastest ever. It is a standard enforcement update that targets cloaking, doorway pages, and mass AI content with no value being penalized. It did not touch anything to do with link spam or site reputation. If you got hit with that algorithm change, it was probably a spam violation.
Then there is a core update that rolled out March 27th, which is still in progress. It looks like it should be completed somewhere around April 10th or 11th. That is a broad quality recalibration. It focuses on rewarding original content, verifying certain signals, and real information gain. It penalizes scaled AI content with no editorial oversight or vetting, and thin pages built to rank rather than to help.
Those two updates are running simultaneously. They are saying there could be massive effects to Google Business Profiles as well. The whole point is that they are trying to make sure their search engine is not being manipulated by AI tools. They are putting an enormous amount of effort into excluding or penalizing people who are trying to circumvent the process.
Tyson Mutrux (01:40)
Let me ask you something, because this may seem like a really stupid question. When you say they are punishing people for scaling to rank, is not that the point of SEO? You are basically trying to rank, so you are trying to produce as much content as possible to help rank on the web. Is not that the whole point?
Vaidas (01:58)
Travis, you want to take that one or you want me to?
Travis Hoechlin (01:59)
Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, yes, the goal is to rank. But what a lot of folks did with AI, where they are probably going to get their hand slapped, is around the velocity of content that AI lets you produce now.
Whether it is relevant or not, whether it is being searched or not, and whether it is even being seen or ranking is a totally different question. A lot of this comes down to making sure it is relevant content.
One of the things we are seeing is that you have to make sure you are updating your content. For years, it was “we write content for firms over and over and it just compounds.” Now, we have the thrill of going back and updating content we wrote years ago. We might have had it right. It has been ranking on the first page for a long time. But now we have to figure out how to go back to every single page we have ever written, for some clients that is seven years of content, every single month, and update that.
Those are the fun things we get to do on our end.
Tyson Mutrux (03:05)
When you say rewrite it, are you talking about rewriting from scratch or just making small changes? What percentage do you need to rewrite?
Travis Hoechlin (03:13)
Roughly about 25 percent. That is a broad comment, but generally we are updating with current stats, different things that tie into E E A T signals, and so on. The point is to show that the content is being touched again. It is not a set it and forget it thing anymore.
Tyson Mutrux (03:33)
All right, this is interesting, because we were talking before we started about how, at the beginning of all this, Google was punishing AI content and now, in some ways, it is outperforming human content. I know there are basic ways of telling. You can look at the ampersands and bolded words and you are like, “that is clearly AI.” Are there some other dead giveaways that people do not know about?
Travis Hoechlin (04:04)
Vaidas, you want to grab that one?
Vaidas (04:06)
I am sure there are, but I cannot sit and read a page and say, “Oh, I know that is AI.” There are tools that can analyze content and say, “Hey, 50 percent of this page is AI driven, but the rest was edited,” and therefore it qualifies as edited by a person.
We have had examples where a firm we were advising, we were not even running their SEO, was told, “Just have AI write 100 pages of content for your website and throw it on there. There will not be any issue.” We immediately told them that was a bad idea, but they did not take our advice. Within a two week period, their traffic dropped by 80 percent.
So there is the flood of content piece. I think Travis used the word velocity, how quickly you put it out. We have some clients where we are writing 40, 50, 60 pages of content a month. We do not just put it all up in one day. We drip it out to feed it slowly.
It is just like anything else. If you add 100 backlinks in one fell swoop, that sends a signal that something shaky is going on. There is a process that has a benefit, versus people who do not know what to do and just throw everything out there and hope it falls into place. That is what Google picks up as content that is not relevant and is just meant to rank.
I will add to what Travis said about meant to rank. Yes, content is meant to rank, but it is also meant to inform. There is a balance between the two. Go back 15 or 20 years, when websites would load the word personal injury into a page 150 times or ghost it so you could not see it. They slammed the page with rank content, but there was nothing useful on it.
So yes, the whole point is to rank, because if you do not rank, no one sees the page, but you also have to have content so that if a person lands on it, it actually explains what they are looking for. It is always about finding that balance, and that is the challenge.
Tyson Mutrux (06:21)
What can you add to a website page to make sure it is actually adding value? Is it questions? Quotes? What can you do so that when Google’s spiders scrape it, they say, “Hey, this is actually giving value,” and it is not just trying to rank?
Vaidas (06:44)
Go ahead, Trav.
Travis Hoechlin (06:44)
Stats are a big one. They want to see data. This goes hand in hand with not only ranking on Google, but also ranking in LLMs and tools like ChatGPT.
Make sure you have stats. Make sure you have relevant content. Frequently asked questions definitely help. Historically, you could put everything on one page. Now, you really want to separate that into different pages and go thoroughly through each topic.
The goal is to answer the questions people are actually asking. That has always been the case, but now it needs to be structured a little differently so you show up in Google and in the different LLMs.
Vaidas (07:30)
On top of that, it is also about the detail of the information. We are seeing LLMs really benefit from attorney profiles that are robust, not just a resume. Case results, locations where things happened, those details matter.
Another thing we see a huge benefit from is Yelp. ChatGPT pulls a lot of information from Yelp. Most attorneys do not even have a Yelp page, or if they do, they have one review from seven years ago. All of those things that are external to your website send signals.
Social media is another huge one. If you are running social media properly and you are posting three or four times a month on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube, that is consistent new information that LLMs can pick up. Compare that to a stagnant page with reviews or content that is months or years old. The more of those external signals that are being fed out, consistently and frequently, the more benefit you get.
Tyson Mutrux (08:32)
So does that mean you should have all of your social profiles open, where people do not have to request to follow you? On Instagram, you can choose who can follow you. On Facebook, you can choose who can connect, friends or not friends. Should you keep it more open if you want ranking benefits?
Vaidas (08:55)
With Facebook, we obviously recommend a Facebook business page. You tie it to a personal page to have a business page, but I would leave the personal page separate. You do not need that connected. It has nothing to do with the law practice.
In some respects, you do not want people commenting on personal stuff because there are always haters, and that does not help anybody. As far as visibility goes, we are seeing a huge benefit from running social media ads because Facebook’s algorithm has enormous reach. And the cost is a fraction of what it costs on Google or other platforms.
So whether you leave things open depends on what you are trying to accomplish. If it is just announcing that the firm participated in a charity event, that is one thing. If you are posting about the types of cases you handle and trying to reach a specific audience, that is another.
Tyson Mutrux (09:57)
I want to ask you about AdWords. We run our own AdWords, and our click through rate was really good. I was looking at our numbers the other day, it was about 8 percent. Then we started tweaking things using some of the AI tools they have implemented. They will say, “Do this and you will get this much of an increase,” and so on. Once we did that, our click through rate plummeted to around 3 percent.
It is interesting how trying to use their internal tools actually hurt our numbers. Are you seeing anything similar in your world?
Vaidas (10:34)
I am going to let you take that one.
Travis Hoechlin (10:35)
Yeah. If we are talking click through rate, Google will tell you 10 percent is the benchmark. Depending on the practice area, you can see it higher. We typically try to aim for 20 percent across the board. That is a broad brush, but across the board that is our goal. Obviously, car accidents and other highly competitive areas can be lower.
The tools are helpful, but we have a team of PPC strategists because someone needs to be in there. I have not seen any tool where you just set it and forget it. A lot of times those tools do more harm than good, exactly like you described.
Tyson Mutrux (11:34)
Yeah, it did not benefit us at all. And it is funny how they set it up. I have my account open right now. They give you these recommendations and say, “Top recommendation, get more conversions at similar or better ROI by adding broad match versions of your existing keywords.” We applied that and our numbers plummeted, so we removed it.
Once we did that, they lowered our optimization score, even though we were getting better results our way. That is absurd to me. It just tells me it is a money game at this point.
Travis Hoechlin (12:14)
It is. You are not wrong.
Tyson Mutrux (12:18)
To me, broad search is going to cost more. Those are not tailored keywords. Broad searches like “personal injury attorney” are the more expensive keywords. So if I really want to optimize this, it makes no sense for me to use broad keywords. Then I am fishing in the same pond as everyone else. If I can get clever with it and optimize, I would rather squeeze more out of the right searches.
Vaidas (12:30)
Exactly. You want to dial in the search phrases.
Tyson Mutrux (12:48)
You all are doing amazing at 20 percent. That is incredible. I did not know that. That is awesome.
Travis Hoechlin (12:55)
It depends on the practice. Niche areas can be even higher. We will sometimes see Spanish campaigns with higher conversion ratios just because there is less competition. But yeah, Google will tell you 10 percent is the number you should be looking at. I would argue that in many practice areas, criminal, family, things like that, you can get real close to 20 percent or exceed it if it is managed well.
Tyson Mutrux (13:27)
Does AdWords have anything similar to the algorithm changes with SEO? Do they do anything like that, or has it stayed pretty consistent?
Vaidas (13:35)
That is kind of why Travis said you want somebody in there paying attention. You should always be looking at conversions and trying to get the lowest cost per click and not waste money. I will give you an example. We will take over a client’s pay per click campaign and realize they are spending money on the word lawyer. Not a specific type of lawyer, just lawyer plus location. That is an absolute waste of money.
There are best practices out there. I am not aware of algorithmic adjustments the way we see with organic, because for Google Ads it is a money game for them. They want to generate as much revenue as possible. It is up to the strategist to implement best practices and go after less frequent but more valuable searches.
An example that comes to mind, we had a firm in San Francisco that was adamant about ranking at the top for “San Francisco personal injury attorney.” That was his litmus test of success. It was not the phone ringing or cases; it was, “If I just get there, everything will be okay.” We could not get through to him.
It turned out one of our clients at the time actually was number one in Google for that search. We looked at the traffic that search was driving and it was minimal. I asked this other lawyer, “How many searches do you think that generates?” He said, “Hundreds, if not thousands, a month.” It was more like four or five. Those were probably other attorneys checking that vanity term.
The key is what you mentioned earlier. It is not “personal injury attorney” or “criminal attorney.” It is “Who is the best injury attorney for a car wreck that happened in Sacramento on I 80,” or whatever the actual scenario is. Those long tail searches are how people ask questions into voice commands and LLMs. That is a better strategy to implement.
Travis Hoechlin (15:45)
To piggyback and change it up a little, one of the biggest mistakes I see when clients come to us is just not spending the right amount of money. I am not talking about the money that goes to us. I am talking about the money that goes straight to Google. We put people’s cards on file and they pay Google directly.
Where I see people say “I tried that and it did not work,” you can absolutely spend too little on pay per click. I probably get a call weekly from someone, I am in Southern California, and they will say, “I have got 10 grand and I want to go after car accidents in Southern California.” My response is always, “Do you have a hobby? Go put it on red or black in Vegas; you will get a better return.” It is 350 to 500 dollars a click out here.
The silly analogy I use is a deck of cards. If the cases are the aces, we know there are four aces in the deck and we want to get as deep into that deck as possible. If you only have 10 grand and it is 500 dollars a click, it is like buying five cards off the top of the deck and crossing your fingers. You want to flip over as many cards as possible to find two, three, four aces so you get a positive return on investment.
Too many people say, “I tried it. I spent five grand and it is 500 dollars a click,” and I am like, “You bought 10 clicks.” Ten percent of those people are going to pick up the phone and call, so you are getting one call. God forbid you miss that call because you are on the other line or in court. You want to make sure you have a big enough budget.
Different markets have different costs per click. Different practice areas are vastly different. If you are doing estate planning in The Woodlands, Texas, you can get away with a couple thousand dollar budget. You are not going to be able to do that with car accidents in Los Angeles. Knowing what the cost per click is, using realistic ratios, and having the appropriate budget is crucial.
Typically, it takes about 90 days to get a full picture of what is going on. If someone is managing it correctly, eliminating keywords, adding negative keywords, and really dialing in your campaign, you avoid getting lost in the weeds. But first things first is having the right budget. Again, I am talking about the budget that goes to Google, not the agency.
Tyson Mutrux (18:54)
How big is choosing the right negative keywords when it comes to the overall strategy? How does that factor into the overall equation?
Travis Hoechlin (19:04)
I do not know the exact percentage off the top of my head, but it is absolutely part of it. Really, it means someone is actually looking at your campaign and watching which calls are coming in.
You are listening to calls and seeing what certain keywords are delivering. Are they bringing in the right types of calls and right types of cases or not? Then you add negative keywords or eliminate keywords that are just eating up your budget without producing the kind of clients you are trying to find.
Tyson Mutrux (19:45)
Something that is interesting with our marketing people is I struggle with encouraging them that it is okay to spend more money on ads. Our average case is worth 25,000 bucks. I am okay with spending a couple thousand to acquire a client. It is really interesting how they try to pull back. I am like, “No, I am willing to spend more money.” This is not a slot machine. This is more like putting money into an ATM.
If I am putting in 2,000 dollars and I can get 25,000 out, I will do that math every day. How do you all get people to see it that way? I am sure you fight that all the time.
Travis Hoechlin (20:16)
Yes.
Vaidas (20:18)
Yeah.
Travis Hoechlin (20:26)
Are you talking about our clients or our PPC?
Tyson Mutrux (20:27)
Your clients. Yeah, your clients.
Travis Hoechlin (20:49)
First is setting the right expectations and saying no to clients who just do not have the right budget. Then it is getting them focused on whether they are picking up quarters for nickels. Are they getting a five to one to ten to one return on their money? I think that is the sweet spot.
Across the board, what I tell everyone is this, if you are picking up quarters for nickels, you are in the right spot. If you are saying, “It is paying for itself,” I tell them to go do something else with that money. Take your spouse out to a nice dinner or use it elsewhere.
On the other side, we are not selling lottery tickets. You are not going to spend a dollar and make 10 million. That is not how this works. But if you are in that five to ten times return sweet spot and you are seeing that consistently, that is the time to scale.
To your point, if you put a dollar into the slot machine and consistently get five dollars out, next step is to put in two dollars and see if you get ten. Scale that way and do not get lost in the weeds of a particular keyword. We welcome clients digging into that detail if they want, but it really comes down to return on investment. Are you getting that ROI, no matter what you are doing?
Tyson Mutrux (21:59)
All right. So we are all old enough to remember the Yellow Pages. I wonder if there is something firms are still spending money on right now that just is not hitting, but they are still dumping money into it. Is there anything like that you can think of that is similar to the Yellow Pages? I remember in 2011, a guy tried to sell me his full page in the Yellow Pages, like I could just take it over. I was thinking, “Dude, it is 2011. No one is looking at the Yellow Pages.” He was adamant it was going to make me money. I did not buy it. Is there anything like that today?
Travis Hoechlin (22:44)
Nothing jumps out that is exactly like the Yellow Pages, where it is dead and gone. But what we do see is firms being hesitant to put tracking numbers on everything. As a business owner, I cannot imagine spending one dollar on anything I could not track.
There are directory listings that might have worked in the past but are not working now. If you are not putting a tracking number on those and tracking what you are getting, you might be wasting money. Whether it is PPC, LSAs, SEO, directory listings, whatever it is, you should have a tracking number on it. Then you will know which calls are coming from where and you can get your cost per acquisition for each channel.
If you do not do that, you might be spending on something that effectively does not exist anymore or is not working because algorithms and visibility change all the time. I tell people, let us not judge things based on how we feel. My feelings and your feelings do not matter here. It is how much money is going into your bank account that matters. Data matters. So track everything you spend money on.
Vaidas (24:15)
Yeah, I agree with Travis. Let me give a few examples. There are directories out there like YellowPages.com that used to have value. It was, “Hey, buy a spot on YellowPages.com.” There are other placements that had value years ago but just do not anymore. Some attorneys have those on auto pay. It worked at one point, so they just keep paying for it.
When I talk to clients who are in these directories, we absolutely want to put a call tracking number on there to show them what kind of calls they are getting. It is usually very eye opening, because it is not the positive result they were hoping for.
You can also analyze year over year, are you getting fewer calls while they charge you more? Is the listing still on the first page of Google, or is it buried on page seven now? A lot of firms are holding onto these things because they worked five or six years ago. Without somebody stepping in and saying, “Hey, we should really look at this,” they just keep paying.
If you have got 10 of these things, maybe two are worth keeping and the other eight we should ditch. You can put that money to use somewhere else and get a much better return. So it is not as simple as “Yellow Pages are dead,” but there are definitely legacy products that are not delivering, and a lot of firms do not know how to measure the return or whether those things are worth keeping.
I have those conversations all the time, even with people who are not clients. They will say, “I am spending money here. What are your thoughts?” I am happy to do that kind of analysis and give them my honest take.
Tyson Mutrux (26:12)
How much of your job is teaching lawyers how to do their numbers and understand their numbers? I imagine that is a big part of what you do.
Travis Hoechlin (26:19)
I joke with our salespeople, and I am not really joking, that half the money we earn is from walking people off ledges and keeping them from making bad business decisions because they do not know their numbers. It truly is.
We have had clients we lost who later came back and said, “I did not know my numbers. I know you told me to look at this.” The only piece of information we do not know is who actually gets signed.
We can record all the calls and we can hear fantastic calls. You will hear something like “FedEx truck T boned a school bus,” and you know that is probably a good call. But whether that person gets signed is on the firm.
We work with over 600 clients across the country. I could probably count on a couple of hands how many really know their numbers inside and out. And it is understandable. This is not what they focus on day to day. It is not what makes them money in their legal work, so they trust us.
But it is important. I was just talking to one of our reps and said, “I do not even know if we should work with clients anymore who will not be open to tracking everything.” How do we help them if we do not know what is happening? The more information we get from them, the better we can perform. We do not want to unplug something that is working or have them continue to spend money on things that are not.
I have no dog in the fight beyond what works. Whatever is working for our clients, we want to pour gas on that and scale it, if that is their goal.
Vaidas (28:14)
And it is sometimes surprising how few of them pay attention to anything unless we are basically holding their hand. We send all our clients a monthly report that shows everything we are tracking. I can think of maybe one who actually looks at it on their own.
Unless I am on a Zoom call with them going through it, “Here are your calls, here are your intake forms, this one came from Google, this one from here,” they are not looking. They are busy doing law work.
We need to help them understand the business side. That is where the partnership comes in. Most of the firms I work with have almost no relationship with whoever is doing their marketing now. They get a report they cannot read and maybe a call once a year. There is no partnership in the success. It is all on cruise control.
Versus a real partnership where the more involved people are, the happier everyone is, because we all understand what is actually working.
Tyson Mutrux (29:17)
I love that. All right, I am going to wrap things up. I want to make sure people know how to reach out to you all. You are our title sponsor for MaxLawCon 2026, and I want to give you props for that. Thank you. This is our second year in a row with you as title sponsor. We have had a great partnership over the last few years, and I really appreciate that.
How do people get in touch with you if they are interested in RiseUp? You are month to month, which is different from, I think, every other SEO company out there. That is amazing. It means you have to deliver results.
So how do people reach you if they are interested in your SEO services, your AdWords services, digital marketing in general?
Travis Hoechlin (29:57)
They can go to our website, riseupmedia.com. There is a form there they can fill out and we will get right back to them. It is RiseUp Media, “Rise” is spelled with a Z. We obviously do not know how to spell over here. So riseupmedia.com is our website.
Vaidas (30:15)
If they prefer a quicker option, they can call or text me. My phone number is 704 953 7051, and I will be happy to get back to them whichever way works.
Tyson Mutrux (30:26)
And Vaidas will respond any hour of the day. It does not matter if it is three in the morning or eight at night. Weekends, whatever. He will respond right away.
Travis Hoechlin (30:33)
Have a good trip.
Vaidas (30:39)
One of the biggest things we offer is just a free look under the hood. A lot of people just do not know what is really going on. We are the least pushy people you are going to talk to. We have no problem spending an hour going through everything you are doing.
Some of it might be, “You are doing great here.” Some might be, “You can do this better.” Some might be, “This whole thing is not working.” But we are happy to offer that with no obligation, just helping people understand what they could be doing better.
Tyson Mutrux (31:08)
I can vouch for that. You all usually come to dinner, say hello, and then leave. You can always stay, but you rarely do. You usually hit the road because you do not want to be perceived as pushy. I can vouch that you are not pushy at all.
That is great. Vaidas, Travis, thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it. I learned some things I did not know about SEO and AdWords. Appreciate you doing this, guys.