GA4 Uncovered: The Ultimate Guide for Lawyers to Master SEO and AI Search with Pete Everitt

Pete Everitt (00:01.302)
Well, it’s great to be here again on the Council Cast Podcast. Thanks for having me back, Kerry.

Karin Conroy (00:06.292)
Thanks for being here, Pete. We are going to cover some really good stuff today. My background keeps moving around. It’s driving me nuts. So if you’re watching on YouTube, which you probably are, I apologize for that. I’m going to try to keep it steady, but the more important thing is that today we are going to talk about the exciting world of Google analytics and AI, of course, because that’s what everybody’s talking about. So I can’t be left out. And we’re going to talk about how to integrate.

Google Analytics, figure out what is going on in there and how to integrate that with your content plan and how to make that work so that your conversions work better. So the title for today’s show is GA4 Explained, The Ultimate Guide for Law Firms to Master SEO and AI Search. It’s a little bit of a long one, but there’s a lot of good keywords in there. And I figure we’re talking about SEO, so it’s all about keywords and good stuff like that. yeah, sort of.

Pete Everitt (01:02.284)
Yeah, pretty much, pretty much. can, we’ll touch on all of that.

Karin Conroy (01:05.831)
Yeah. All right. So Pete, let’s first start. Let’s start with a very softball. What is GA4?

Pete Everitt (01:15.338)
OK, so GA4 is Google’s atrocious attempt at its new Google Analytics platform. So GA is Google Analytics. Lots of people have heard of Google Analytics. It’s about tracking users when they’re on your website so that you know how much traffic you’re getting, what content people are seeing, where that traffic is coming from, and what actions those people are taking, so how they convert.

For most people, conversion would, you would class a conversion as a sale or an inquiry, but in GA4 terms, the conversion can be anything from a file download to time of amount of time on page or a scroll depth or something like that. And where GA4 really differs from Universal Analytics that it replaced is that GA4 you can use across multiple platforms. So it can be on your website, but if you have an app, it can be in there. If you have a web app, so a…

like a closed sort of application that is technically a website that you can install on your phone. It can work in there as well. It can have various streams. And that’s really the technical difference between the two. But the front end of it, I mean, when it went live, it really wasn’t a production ready piece of software. It was awful.

Karin Conroy (02:26.35)
Yes. I feel like this is sort of Google’s part of their overall approach and strategy in general. Like they just release sort of trashy half done products and walk away and sort of say like, let’s let the public figure this out and tell us where we went wrong. I feel like what was that horrible social platform that

Pete Everitt (02:48.514)
Yeah. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (02:55.504)
and only lasted for like six months that they did wave or something like that. Do you remember this? Like years and years? Well, you really missed out. It was one of these things they built up like crazy and there was like waiting lists and you could invite your friends to be on this waiting list and they launched it and it was a complete disaster. They shut it down in something like six months. It was so bad and it was…

Pete Everitt (03:01.398)
I don’t think we got that in the UK. That might’ve been like just special for you US folk. I don’t think we got that in the UK.

Pete Everitt (03:21.942)
Wow, that’s like epic fail.

Karin Conroy (03:25.414)
It was an epic fail. And it is the example I use all the time with the friend who I got the invite and then I invited him and we’re always like, okay, let’s just not let this be a Google wave. It was just such a disaster. So this isn’t the first time that Google has sort of done a thing that’s really not ready for prime time yet, put it out there and then people

Reek out!

Pete Everitt (03:55.682)
Well, yeah, and really, like I said, the core difference between the thing it replaced and the thing it now is, is this multi-stream data feed, basically. However, if you go and spool up a new account, a new property in GA4 today, it’s just like a blank canvas. that’s kind of where this whole thing went wrong, was that they enforced… GA4 was around for about…

14 or 15 months before they forced you to use it. And they forced you to use it by switching the old analytics off. And it was like, well, if you still want website data, you’ve got to use this. they went on so much about how customizable it was. And because you were getting the data from all these streams, you can generate this report and that report and the other report. But actually it’s all customizations in there. So when you load up the bare bones version of GA4, there’s really not a lot in it.

And data that was easy to get to, like bounce rate, which was in old analytics, it was literally a column next, you know, just alongside session numbers and time on site and that kind of thing. And that now is no longer a standard piece of information. You have to set up a customization in order to get to it. So they really did make you go around the houses and the people that, you know, people that…

have websites that manage their own analytics were kind of just left in the dark. those of us that work in this every day, all of a sudden got every client as a headache because we had to go and fix this stuff. Because people want to know what’s happening on the website. Of course they do. This thing just wasn’t fit for purpose. That’s my opinion, you know, but hey, there we are.

Karin Conroy (05:31.88)
Yeah, yeah.

Karin Conroy (05:36.018)
Yeah, yeah. And you’re not alone. so all of these things that people used to depend on and track and like the whole point of analytics is just for long-term tracking so that you can just kind of check these things. And then all of these things that were default on kind of understood numbers that you could look at and have some understanding of what’s happening were now gone. And if you are just a basic user,

which a lot of people are, they just install it they’re like, eh, it’s fine, it’s easy, can install it myself and just have a basic understanding. Now you can’t, now you need someone to go in there, get it set up and go through this whole process to get basically to where you were before.

Pete Everitt (06:18.702)
Well, exactly. And you’ve just hit one of the nails on the head with what you’ve said, which is it’s about long-term tracking. It’s about seeing users behavior over time. So even today, if you go and start a brand new GA4 property, the data length is set to two months and you have to go and physically change it to a longer period of time. This is, this is, I have a feeling this is how this episode is going to.

Karin Conroy (06:32.851)
Karin Conroy (06:36.837)
my gosh.

Yeah. Okay. So let’s start with, because we’re going to talk about GA4 and basically kind of some basic things to understand. But then I think we should also cover a brief checklist, like you just mentioned, of things that you should probably set up by default and then check. And then we’re going to transition that into conversions and things to check on your website there also, but also kind of

as a combination things to check on your website and your Google Analytics to make sure that number one, your conversions, like first of all, you’re thinking about conversions. Second of all, are they set up? And then third, is it working? And here’s some things you need to check. So let’s start first. What are you laughing about? Okay. Okay. First, first we covered what is GA4. Next.

Pete Everitt (07:23.886)
That’s the key one.

Pete Everitt (07:29.294)
We’ll talk about it when we get there. Let’s go with first.

Karin Conroy (07:38.896)
what should we be looking at and what things do we need to set up or double check that are there in order to make sure that we’ve kind of like got the basics.

Pete Everitt (07:50.232)
So it will do the key thing to do, but to make sure that has happened on your account is that the GA4 setup wizard, it has a thing that will walk you through the basic settings in GA4. And it is to make sure that that process has been completed. Cause for example, that thing that I’ve just told you about the data being stored for two months, that’s the default value.

Now you can store data in Google Analytics for up to 14 months, which of course the advantage of that is you get year on year comparisons. So just walking through, if you do nothing else, go and walk through the setup wizard. in one of the admin menus. even if your account’s been set up for a while, if it hasn’t gone through, can go through and do that. And even if parts of it have been skipped, you can go and fix this all at a later date. It’s all in the admin setup side of things. So you need to go and make sure that that’s been done.

You also need to make sure that if you use other Google services, so particularly Search Console or Google Ads or local service ads that they offer, that those things have been activated as external services within Google Analytics. Because that way you can then start to pool your data together in kind of a meaningful way if you’re using those services. If you’re not, that’s fine.

Karin Conroy (09:08.04)
Okay. So I’m just going to reiterate that just to be, to, make sure people understand how important that is. So if you’re doing Google ads, including local service ads, which I feel like we probably need to do a whole separate episode on local service ads, cause it’s something that I talk about multiple times a week to everyone. and if your practice area, I’m just going to put one little sub comment about this, but if your practice area is covered under local service ads, you should be doing them. Like it is just a

default, absolutely should be doing that. And you should be doing it before you think about pay per click. Okay, so if you’re doing ads of any version, and if you’re also using search console or any of these other Google things, you need to make sure they’re all talking to each other. And it doesn’t do that by default. So you have to, you or someone else has to be going in and making sure it’s all connected. Yeah.

Pete Everitt (09:59.182)
Absolutely, it does do that. There are also some other third party things like there’s a thing called BigQuery, is, I guess most of the people listening to this won’t use it. It’s a thing that’s mainly used for e-commerce type stores. there are some externals. There’s not many of them in there. The vast majority are Google services. But yeah, make sure that they are all hooked up, they’re all authorized, all into the data stream, and then you can start to query the stuff together.

Karin Conroy (10:11.213)
yeah.

Pete Everitt (10:25.536)
Otherwise, you’re just going to end up with your data in lots of separate pots. And it’s going to be up to you to go and then figure out what’s happening when.

Karin Conroy (10:30.886)
Yeah, it’s just going to be a mess and it’s not going to be easily translated. And the whole goal of this, because we’re going to keep coming back to this idea of the long-term looking at the numbers over time, the goal is that you shouldn’t, it shouldn’t take you much time each month to just glance at it and say, okay, yeah, we’re, you know, this is where we’re at. This is where we were last month. And I have just some bookmarked idea of, you know, what is a healthy place for my website.

Pete Everitt (11:00.3)
Yeah, absolutely. So that’s the key thing you need to do as part of the setup. And then the second half of your question is, what’s the sort of stuff you should be tracking? Well, everybody likes to know that they’ve got visitors on their website. Of course they do. Otherwise, what’s the point? But actually, traffic’s a bit of a vanity number. So I…

Karin Conroy (11:08.98)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (11:15.73)
Yeah. Right.

Karin Conroy (11:21.437)
Yeah.

Pete Everitt (11:23.266)
you want to look at that in line with the stuff that makes a difference to your business. you know, for the vast majority of your listeners here, that’s going to be inquiries. And particularly the right type of inquiries. If you’ve got, you know, if you’ve got a practice that only serves a couple of parts of law and you’re always getting probate inquiries, let’s say, and you don’t do any of that, then they’re no good either. So you need to make sure that it’s hooked into something real world. The, so you,

Karin Conroy (11:45.005)
Right.

Pete Everitt (11:52.822)
Yeah, make sure that you’re monitoring your traffic numbers, make sure you’re monitoring your traffic sources. And then you can then see by traffic sources, by traffic source, mean, like organic search or paid search or social media or paid social or email marketing, that referral. And then you have kind of other, is the anything else that’s not kind of categorized from from there, you can see next to each of those traffic sources, what the conversion numbers are.

Karin Conroy (11:58.185)
Yeah.

Pete Everitt (12:21.868)
be that form completions or downloads, like I mentioned earlier, or whatever it might be. And then obviously you need to know from inside your business what the quality of those inquiries are like. So if you feel like you’ve got a lot of tire kickers coming through the door and you’re pushing a lot of inquiries away, then that data will tell you, okay, well, I’m getting most of my inquiries from paid ads. My ads probably aren’t set up properly. need to look at the way they’re being targeted. you

Karin Conroy (12:50.194)
Yes. Okay, that’s a great example. And I’m going to go and kind of underline a little bit of it. Let’s talk. I want to go back to this idea of your overall top traffic number. And I can see that you’re laughing about my background again. It keeps flopping around.

Pete Everitt (12:51.094)
you can start to tie these things together.

Pete Everitt (13:10.498)
I’m trying to ignore it, you know?

Karin Conroy (13:12.898)
but it’s not happening. And so I feel like this is a lesson for all of you who are listening to just the audio version that you really need to check this out on YouTube. Like you are really missing a whole visual experience that you might not even realize how enjoyable this might be. But going back to the overall top traffic number, I have had countless people start conversations with me that go along the lines of,

kind of like the idea of all news is good news and all traffic is good traffic. It’s like, no, absolutely not. So one example that I use in to kind of contradict that idea is if you look at your traffic and you’ve got thousands of people coming in from the Ukraine and you don’t do law or service clients in the Ukraine,

there’s a good chance that that’s not good traffic. So we need to take a look at that and maybe there’s a security problem and maybe there’s something else going on where they have, you know, decided that your site is something to hit and you’ve got like malware or you’ve been hacked or something like that, but that is not good traffic. Good traffic is, in my definition is something that leads to a good, healthy, ideal client conversion. So.

that conversion most likely is either an email or a phone call for most firms. So all of that other stuff is a waste of time and a waste of your energy and a waste of maybe someone who’s picking up the phone and spending time talking to someone who doesn’t even live in your area or wants a type of law that doesn’t fall under your practice areas. So that’s a waste of time and money and we want to push that stuff away as much and focus in

So a lot of times that means like if you have a garbage site and you come to us and it’s been hacked and you’ve got all this traffic that is garbage, that means that maybe we’re gonna reduce that number of traffic and that’s a good healthy indicator. That’s not a negative.

Pete Everitt (15:16.568)
Yep. And this is why I talk about the importance of hooking it into something that’s real world in your business. one of the first, I’ve been doing SEO for a long time. Karen and I have worked together for a long time. And yeah, absolutely. Well, yeah, back when the peacocks had feathers like you’ve got going on behind you. And…

Karin Conroy (15:32.18)
for millions of years back in the dinosaurs. They were doing.

Pete Everitt (15:43.342)
One of the first SEO clients that I worked with was a company here in the UK that sold monitor arms and like power modules for desks, you things to hold your computer screen up on the desk. And in the first 12 months that we worked together, I only increased their traffic by one visit. I was gutted. I wanted it to be identical, but 12 months on 12 months, they had one more visit from working with me for 12 months. So you say that and people think, well, you must be rubbish at your job.

Karin Conroy (16:10.676)
That sucks. Woo.

Pete Everitt (16:11.726)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, you do SEO and you got one visit. Wow. Their sales were up by 523%. So they didn’t care. At that point, they couldn’t ship the monitor arms off the shelves fast enough. They didn’t give two hoots about what the traffic number was. They just wanted me to get them more sales. And we did, and we did, and we did, and we still work together today. So.

Karin Conroy (16:19.39)
There we go. That’s the number.

Karin Conroy (16:32.03)
Yeah. Right.

And I would bet that if there was a way to look at a pie chart of what that traffic was before they came to you, and then after, there was a giant slice of that pie that was garbage, and that was changed. And so if you kind of did look at those smaller numbers within the traffic, if there was a way to kind of measure the garbage versus the legitimate people who are

real inquiries that were ideal clients that were going to convert, even though the total number didn’t change, the quality of the numbers had to have changed. Otherwise, their revenue wouldn’t have gone up.

Pete Everitt (17:17.634)
That’s it. That’s it. It was all about, you know, the website that we inherited was far too generic. It was difficult for people to take actions on. It was difficult for Google to crawl. They had loads of issues that were stopping pages from being indexed in Google. They led every page with this section about their sales team. Nobody wants to know about the sleazy guy that’s going to sell me a monitor arm before you’ve told me about why I need this monitor arm. They just didn’t need to know it. So it was, it was all that kind of stuff that we built them in.

Karin Conroy (17:34.884)
Nobody cares!

Karin Conroy (17:42.27)
Yeah.

Pete Everitt (17:46.924)
Well, we started actually just by building new sections to the site, but we did end up replacing the whole thing. But yeah, we just took it piece by piece, time by, you know, page by page, section by section, and worked through it logically. the, after, I can’t remember the exact number of months, but it was well before the year was up. They just, they stopped even asking about whether they were getting traffic. It was, the traffic number itself, it’s important to know that Google is feeding people to your website.

Karin Conroy (18:08.584)
Yep. Yeah.

Pete Everitt (18:16.6)
But beyond that, the actual number is kind of irrelevant. And unless you are some multinational firm with teams in, you know, the far East and the far West and everywhere in between, most of the firms that we deal with, they have a capacity and that capacity can’t go grow to be too far because otherwise clients won’t wait that long. They’ll go and find somebody else. So you.

do have this kind of natural ceiling. And as long as we’re approaching that, as long as we’re approaching that, that’s great. And then the firm then gets the ability to say, OK, we’re approaching this level. Do we take on somebody new to improve capacity? Or are we happy with this? Do we raise prices? What do we do at this point? That is by far a more, we’re miles away from Google Analytics now, that’s by, go on.

Karin Conroy (18:50.954)
That’s great, yeah.

Karin Conroy (18:56.926)
Yeah, raise prices or yeah. Yep.

Karin Conroy (19:06.546)
Right, yeah, no, but this is, sorry, I was gonna say this is perfect. I feel like this is the perfect transition into the other thing we wanted to talk about, which is conversion optimization in light of the Google Analytics. So this is the perfect transition. So we talked about what you need to look at and maybe we should have reversed the conversation and started with this conversion optimization, because it’s a little bit bigger of a concept, more looser, I guess.

And then, but whatever, we did it this way and I’m not gonna, we’re not gonna rerecord. So this is where we’re at. So let’s talk about that though, because now what we’re talking about is not just the numbers and the analytics. Now we’re talking about stuff that’s a little bit, sometimes it’s a little bit harder to be really specific, well, as specific as a number, but all the stuff on your site that makes people actually do the thing you’re trying to do. So I say,

all the time, you can have the greatest traffic coming in. And even if it’s ideal client traffic coming into your site, but if your site is horrible or like some of my clients have had happen, the site shows a big flag of the Ukraine and I’m just going to keep going with the Ukraine, but, and like it’s been hacked and they can’t even get to your actual website content. that’s not going to convert. They’re going to go to the next one. so.

Pete Everitt (20:32.216)
No.

Karin Conroy (20:36.358)
It’s, that’s not the end of the story is, my, is my overall point about SEO. And so SEO will bring them to your site, but if your site is horrible and the conversions not set up, that’s not the end of the story. And you need to finish that story so that you can get that conversion. So let’s talk a little bit more about you kind of touched on it a little bit with your example of the client about how their site was leading with these like ridiculous ideas of the sales team and.

Honestly, I feel like this is where most firms get it wrong and it’s the hardest thing to get right. The SEO is a little bit, sometimes it’s a little bit easier. You can run reports, you can look at what’s not working and things that need to be fixed, but going in and figuring out how to get the messaging and the strategy and the conversions, that can be more complicated.

Pete Everitt (21:27.2)
It can absolutely. There’s a friend of mine that’s also an agency owner here in the UK and he builds financial services websites. I went and saw him, I went to support him speak at a conference a couple of years ago and he basically broke down the anatomy of a webpage into the features that you would have if somebody was

Karin Conroy (21:47.515)
Ooh.

Pete Everitt (21:55.038)
making a verbal referral to you. you know, the first thing that somebody wants to know is that, right, this is the right place. This person can help me. They’re talking my language. They understand my problem. And then they want, am I in the right place? Absolutely. Then they want to know that you’ve helped other people in their, you know, that they are not alone and that you are the solution. Yep. Yep.

Karin Conroy (22:06.248)
Yep. Am I in the right place? Yep. Yep.

Karin Conroy (22:17.13)
I don’t want to be the first one of this thing that you’ve ever done. I don’t want to be the test case.

Pete Everitt (22:21.644)
Yeah, no, I don’t want to be the test case. And I also don’t want to be the person that goes to the lawyer that loses 94 % of the cases that they take to court. so that’s that. Then they need to know, you know, what’s the next step? How do we progress from here? Is that book a call? it, you know, download this thing? Is it whatever? And then some people, yeah, absolutely. Some people might not be ready right now. Some people might be, you know,

Karin Conroy (22:28.132)
Yes. Yep.

Karin Conroy (22:41.332)
Send an email. Yep.

Karin Conroy (22:46.644)
Yes.

thinking about a divorce.

Pete Everitt (22:50.584)
thinking about, yeah, I was going that way, you they might be thinking about a divorce. it might be actually, if you’re not ready to take this full step right now, here’s this, here’s this other thing, you know, just, just download this, you know, PDF of top things to take when you’re leaving the house. don’t know, whatever it might be. Don’t, don’t ever produce that PDF. Nobody. but, you know, just go and, have, have some, would call them a micro conversion. And that also gives you something else to track.

because then that means that you can follow up with that person via email. And you you can, you can remain top of mind for that person when they are ready to act because we’re all living life and people aren’t always ready to jump ship at the time that I shouldn’t use jump ship when we’re talking about divorce, should I? That’s a bad, a bad turn of phrase. Yes.

Karin Conroy (23:38.654)
but you’ve captured them. So they are there and they’re not ready, but there’s a reason they’re there and you don’t want to let that get away. And you’ve captured some version of their email or something, usually the email.

Pete Everitt (23:51.82)
Yeah. So that’s the type of thing that you need to think about. Now, in all of that, who you are has really come very far down this page.

Karin Conroy (24:03.522)
Yes, yes. And where you went to law school, even farther down, nobody cares. Nobody cares where we went to law school. Nobody cares that you were on a certain fraternity. Nobody cares about most of your publications. And the number of attorneys and partners who still want a laundry list of all of their publications is still very high. They still feel very, very kind of

Pete Everitt (24:10.057)
Yeah. No.

Karin Conroy (24:31.258)
sentimentally wedded to these ideas of their publications. And maybe there are a couple that sort of relate, but this should be almost by the footer. Like this is your clients do not care about these publications.

Pete Everitt (24:43.404)
Well, and particularly with law firms, other than maybe we call it conveyancing in the UK, but you buying a house and the legalities around that. Other than that, people come to lawyers normally because something has gone wrong in their life or they’re planning for something to go wrong in their life, like a will. So when people are coming to you, they…

Karin Conroy (24:52.836)
yeah.

Karin Conroy (25:04.306)
Right, yeah.

Pete Everitt (25:12.058)
They’re not necessarily in a, I’m going to say rational frame of mind. I don’t quite mean it like that, yeah, absolutely. They’ve got other stuff going on. So they need to know, does this person understand me? Am I in the right place? Does this person understand me? And what the heck do I do next? Cause actually I probably need some direction. That’s really why I’m here. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (25:16.104)
Yeah, no, but they can be panicked. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Karin Conroy (25:29.16)
Yep. Right. And when they’re in that, what do I do next? Or am I in the right place? I guess is the right, place. They want to know that you have got their back so that if they contact you, it’s handled, they can hand it over to you and they’re going to feel like you’ve got it. So the things that are going to throw that off and feel like it’s not handled.

are messy little bits on your website that aren’t working. So the first thing I always look at, and this is just me and probably Pete because we are who we are and the work that we do, is your copyright date down in the bottom of the footer. And I am going to look and see if it says 2003. And I’m going to assume you haven’t touched the website since 2003. And then I am

Pete Everitt (26:10.805)
yeah, yeah.

Pete Everitt (26:16.814)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (26:23.134)
going to assume that you could be a great potential client for me. But if I am a potential client of yours, I’m moving on. I am going to assume that your, not only has your website not been touched, but what else in your office has not been touched since 2003? Like, is it piles of paper that are full of dust and, you know, God only knows where my secure information might be. And I’m just going to assume the worst. I’m also going to look at your reviews.

So this is where most of your clients are gonna start. They’re not gonna start with your copyright date. They’re gonna look at your reviews. And I will tell you right now, I look at that when I’m looking at talking to potential clients and I get a lot of people who have a lot of really negative reviews and we don’t work with them because I am assuming you’re gonna treat me the same way, whether I’m a client or a potential vendor or whatever it is, all of those things are what we in the business called trust indicators.

indicate whether I should trust you.

Pete Everitt (27:23.02)
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And the harsh reality to everybody that’s got a website is this. The world uses websites every day. So because of that, the overarching impression is that they must be easy. I mean, how hard can it be? So how hard can it be? If you can’t make your contact form work, if you can’t tidy up your site, if you can’t go and update your…

Karin Conroy (27:41.256)
Right. Right.

Pete Everitt (27:47.83)
your copyright date in the bottom of your footer, then what does that say about you as a business? The packer card starts falling down from there. I actually had an argument with our internet service provider today. We’re supposed to be changing package with them. And we ordered this new package about 10 days ago and we hadn’t heard. I had the pre-contract information, nothing else since. So I rang them today and said, hey, what’s going on with this? Because we’re going to default to this ridiculous rate in a few days time.

Karin Conroy (27:52.498)
Everything else. Yes. Yeah.

Exactly.

Pete Everitt (28:16.194)
and well the order failed and that was it i lost it with them it’s like right hang on your my order failed in your system and you didn’t tell me about it and you’re waiting for me to come back to you and tell you that my to find out that my order has failed and then they said but we can’t give you that price it said on the website because the website doesn’t work like that and i was like right sunshine you don’t know who you’re talking to here i know how websites work

Karin Conroy (28:27.943)
my gosh. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (28:41.488)
Yeah.

Pete Everitt (28:42.434)
funnily enough, the router’s arriving tomorrow and I got the price that was on the… So I’ve even got the tracking code from the courier, so I know it’s coming. yeah, but it’s what it says about you as a company. I even use the phrase to them, you’re supposed to be a digital media company and you’re telling me you can’t get your prices right on your website.

Karin Conroy (28:46.122)
It’s so weird!

Karin Conroy (28:53.914)
Nice. Yeah, but it’s…

Yes.

Pete Everitt (29:07.788)
The guy ended up, he referred me to somebody else because he was fed up with dealing with me. think he was probably questioning certain parts of decisions he’s made in life tonight. I didn’t quite mean it to come across like that to him, you know, was just, he did push some buttons.

Karin Conroy (29:16.557)
You’re right!

Karin Conroy (29:22.29)
Yeah, I love when stuff like that happens and I get to step in and be like, no, let me talk to your IT guy. Because he and I have some conversations to have.

Pete Everitt (29:30.332)
Yeah, Yeah, you look, you’re a national internet service provider. If you need a new website, I’ll happily charge you for it. That’s not a problem.

Karin Conroy (29:36.988)
Yeah. Right. Exactly. Yeah. That would be a nice little project. So let’s go back. So I kind of started the list a little bit in terms of things you should check on your website in, terms of your conversion to make sure that when the traffic is coming through from your SEO or whatever work you’re doing and you’re seeing it on your Google analytics and we’ve checked all those things on Google analytics to make sure that set up. Now they’re coming to your site.

What things do we need to check to make sure that it’s not messy, that we are up to date with things, and it’s all working in the best possible way?

Pete Everitt (30:16.28)
So key things to hit before you start sort of getting into micro details here. Contact forms they need to submit. Phone numbers, yeah, phone numbers need to be correct, you know?

Karin Conroy (30:22.824)
Yeah. Number one. So dumb, but it’s so easy to check.

Pete Everitt (30:30.253)
I’m a-

just the number of times. And it’s other things like, if you’ve got a Google business profile and you’ve moved office, make sure that the addresses are the same. Maybe your phone number changed when you moved office and it hasn’t been updated on your Google business profile. So make sure that you, you know, if you’re doing this, you’re doing this, just go and make sure it’s right everywhere. Make sure that calls to action, that there’s a clear instruction for what somebody needs to do. know, fill in this form.

Karin Conroy (30:46.698)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (30:59.006)
Let’s spend a minute on that. Yes. Okay. So let’s, I feel like I’ve said it a million times and everybody knows, but not every client always knows what a call to action is. So let’s start with that. Take a deep breath and then start with that.

Pete Everitt (31:11.776)
Right, so

Call to action. A call to action is an instruction, a clear instruction that you’re giving a visitor to your website as to the next step to take in this process. that, yeah, absolutely. And that needs to be set up.

Karin Conroy (31:25.842)
Yeah, so first you need to know what you want them to do. so let me just say, sometimes, okay, so for law firms, usually we’re talking about an email or a phone number, but sometimes I get these projects and it’s like, listen, we don’t care about traffic. We don’t care about, you know, all of that. We do a different kind of law and this happens quite frequently. This is what we call a validation site.

we are getting a lot of referral traffic and that’s what we want to, we want to keep it that way. We want to have the traffic coming in from this whatever source. But the website has to validate that decision. So in those cases, the route that we want that customer to take, we don’t want it to come across salesy. We don’t want it to come across like, you know, buy now, buy now. It’s, that’s not what we’re doing with a law firm. In those cases, what we want to do is educate.

or inform them about your bio. So those are the more likely calls to action. And that happens quite often where it’s like learn more about me, learn more about our team, learn more about the firm or read more of our thought leadership, which I love. So basically leading them into the blog.

Pete Everitt (32:45.314)
Yeah. So, but that can still be a call to it. That’s still a call to action. It’s still the next step. Whatever the next step is in the, I hate using the word funnel, but let’s use it in this case. Yeah. In this funnel. The whole point is to then narrow people down. So you’ve got the people at the very bottom that are your ideal customers who know what they need to do, who are ready to buy or inquire or move or divorce or whatever it is that you need to do. And they, you know, they’re…

Karin Conroy (32:48.872)
Yeah, absolutely. Yes.

Karin Conroy (32:55.38)
But it is.

Pete Everitt (33:14.226)
they’re there, ready, you know, they land in your inbox. You can do that through a number of ways.

Karin Conroy (33:17.106)
Yeah. One more thing I was going to say about that. Sorry. Let’s also take a look when you decide what that call to action is, take a look at who it is you’re talking to. So if you’re a DUI attorney and you know that, your clients regularly just got arrested for a DUI and they’re coming out of jail and they’re always on their phone, 90 % of your traffic on your site is mobile and they’re always on their phone and what they care about.

is just being able to call you. They don’t wanna read your bio, they don’t wanna read your blog posts, they just wanna call you. You know this, you already know this. So this is what we’re gonna set up. So you know when you’re contacting one of us for a new website, you already know who your clients are, how they want to contact you and what they want from you. This is what your call to action should be.

Pete Everitt (34:08.62)
Yeah. And that, and if you’re then moving traffic around at some point on your website, there has to be the point where they get in touch with you. Right. So if, they come in on a service page and the call to action on that is find out more about our thought leadership or find out more about our team or whatever that call to action sends them to the team page or to the blog. So when they’ve gone to the team page or the blog.

Karin Conroy (34:19.858)
Yes. Yeah.

Pete Everitt (34:35.638)
Now what do they do? So there needs to be, you need to follow this chain through all the way. My background’s in development and we, when you’re coding things, we use, they’re called if else statements. So if this happens, do this, else do that. And you will never end up with a scenario where you’ve got an if without an else, right? Because if you have an if and that condition isn’t met, then you’ve got nothing. So you need to make sure that

There’s always, you can put more of these things in is what I’m trying to say, but you always have to get to a point where the right people need to be able to interface with you at some point. And even at that point, you can use means to validate the lead before they get to you. put in a metric to make it a marketing qualified lead, an MQL.

Karin Conroy (35:16.242)
Yes.

Pete Everitt (35:30.516)
whether that’s conditional logic on a form. I worked with a law firm here in the UK and their brief to me was basically the opposite to most firms, which is we get too many inquiries and we want to filter out the good ones. And we did that by actually making their form process more complicated, actually. But I mean, it wasn’t arduous, it wasn’t a pain in the neck or anything, but it was harder than it had been. But because there was multiple stages to it now,

Karin Conroy (35:41.288)
Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Karin Conroy (35:51.176)
Yep. Yep.

Karin Conroy (35:55.326)
Right. Yep.

Pete Everitt (35:59.694)
if a personal injury was one of their areas of law. So if we could determine that a personal injury case wasn’t over, I think it was about 500,000 pounds, then actually they just couldn’t proceed with the form. We filtered them out and we sent them to a page which had details of other firms or other places that they could go and get help for lower value personal injury cases, for example. So even at that point, you can still filter people out.

Karin Conroy (36:21.533)
Exactly.

Pete Everitt (36:26.966)
you need to know what to do next. It always has to be, and just by saying, well, from here, they send them to there. You send them to the blog or a blog post. So what do they do on the blog post? You know, what do they do when they get to the bottom of it? What’s the next thing? And as long as you get that ironed out, then you’re in good place.

Karin Conroy (36:29.523)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (36:39.272)
Right. Yeah.

Right, yeah, and it’s probably exactly. And my own system is set up similarly because I get tons and tons of garbage inquiries similar to like law firms. And it’s exactly the way you described. My contact form, you have to jump through some hoops. I do not have my calendar publicly available. It only becomes available if you jump through these hoops and you meet certain criteria.

Pete Everitt (37:08.771)
Mm-hmm.

Karin Conroy (37:08.86)
And, and really once you’re getting to a certain level in your law firm, it should be that way unless of course you are like a DUI attorney and you just, it’s about numbers and you’re turning and you you want all those calls. So, but for a lot of firms, it should be set up that way where, you know, you want people to jump through hoops to qualify themselves and make sure that it’s at this certain level. And all of a sudden, once you get it set up right, the leads that come in, you’re like, Whoa, these are

all great and I’m not dealing with all this garbage and wasting my time. And so it does, it can, and it does work. It’s amazing. So let’s talk, sorry, go ahead.

Pete Everitt (37:46.786)
So, so I was just going to say, so if you go into other industries that are more sales driven, they will have two stages in their pipeline, one called MQL, which is marketing qualified lead. So that’s, that’s what we’ve just been talking about, getting a process in your marketing that actually qualifies that the lead is somewhere in the ballpark that you may be able to help them. And then they’ll move on to a sales team or a sales rep. And at that point, a sales person will get on the phone with them and then it will become what’s called an SQL or a sales qualified lead.

Karin Conroy (37:53.833)
Yeah.

Pete Everitt (38:16.718)
And that’s when a squidgy organic human being has actually spoken to the prospective client and they validated that yes, they are going to fit 95 % of your criteria. And at that point they then move on to being a client. And we’re aware law firms often, very few have sales teams to begin with. you know, so there are things you can do certainly at the marketing qualified stage to improve things for you so that when they come through, look,

Karin Conroy (38:26.13)
Yeah. Yeah.

Pete Everitt (38:43.456)
law firms, they’re busy people, they’re lawyers, they’re, you know, they have cases and they, they don’t get paid for the time they spend on their marketing. Even if they have a marketing manager, the better we can filter the quality at that stage, the better it’s going to be for you as the firm coming out the other side.

Karin Conroy (38:46.216)
Yeah. Right.

Karin Conroy (39:00.98)
I’m gonna do one brief mention of this marketing funnel that I’ve been talking about for more than last year, because I seriously believe that this is the best visual to imagine a marketing strategy. And it’s simple. And when you start looking at the marketing funnel, we’ve got a really great blog post on my site about it that you can reference and it goes through all the stages of it. And most people think of marketing.

as just the first top two pieces of the funnel, that kind of awareness and consideration. And then as you move through the funnel, obviously it gets smaller and it’s supposed to. And as you move through the funnel, you need to have systems and processes in place that address every part of that funnel for your firm. And it’s gonna be different for your firm than every other firm. That’s why it’s looks simple, but it’s more complicated. And most firms,

are missing at least one, if not multiple different levels of that funnel, usually it’s down at the bottom. And that’s where the gold is, is those recurring clients. And everybody knows this, they’re not quite sure how to do it, but I just wanted to mention the funnel, because it’s basically what you’re describing. Let’s picture the funnel, let’s picture it getting smaller, it’s supposed to, your number is supposed to get smaller as you get to the bottom, because those are the good ones, and make sure you have something in place for all of that.

Pete Everitt (40:24.792)
So here’s the thing that I don’t like about funnels because it indicates that at the bottom, no, no, everything you’ve said is perfectly right, absolutely. But it indicates that the bottom of the funnel is the end of the process. And I far prefer the idea of an hourglass. So where it’s wide at the top and gets into the middle, there’s your first funnel. That’s the bit that you’ve been talking about. But once you’ve had a customer that…

Karin Conroy (40:30.114)
no.

Karin Conroy (40:39.389)
Yes!

Karin Conroy (40:44.121)
I love that.

Pete Everitt (40:51.662)
or a client and you know, at that point, your job is to delight them, to make the process work for them. At that point, they can then become a referral. Well, they can become loyal. That’s the first stage. So they can not just do this one transaction with you, but multiple transactions. And then they can become an evangelist. So they then actually start to spread the word for you. And that starts to bring the funnel back out again, hence the hourglass shape. That’s why I don’t like funnels.

Karin Conroy (40:56.19)
Yeah. Yep.

Karin Conroy (41:08.222)
Yep. Yes.

Karin Conroy (41:15.218)
Right. Exactly. I love that. I may have to make some adjustments to my funnel thought. So I want to spend like a quick minute talking about AI because number one, it’s in the title of the show. So I’ve kind of made a promise. Let’s just talk about how it impacts search really quick and also like

Pete Everitt (41:21.718)
Hahaha!

Pete Everitt (41:32.024)
Damn it, I thought I got away with it.

Karin Conroy (41:41.098)
How could we use that in this whole thought process in terms of conversions and all of that stuff? As you roll your eyes.

Pete Everitt (41:48.668)
AI is…

Pete Everitt (41:53.098)
AI is the master and the beast all rolled into one.

From a user’s point of view, if you’re not using, if your website isn’t active, even using AI to generate some content to make your website active, to learn how to update that copyright date, nobody wants, like we were saying back then, you know, if the last blog you published was in 2002, then nobody’s, you know, that’s another thing that’s dating it. So anything that,

helps your website become non-static, become dynamic, that is all going to be good. Whether that’s you ask JackGBT for a list of blog ideas that you could sketch out for your particular audience. Whether it’s you’re not 100 % sure what that audience is, so you upload a CSV of the, or an Excel sheet of the last 100 cases you worked on and said, right, can you just crunch some numbers here and figure out

Karin Conroy (42:35.976)
Yeah.

Pete Everitt (43:00.674)
which cases we had the best. Or some of the data of Google Analytics. Yeah. You know, if you can see that you, well, let’s, if we tie it in with Google Analytics. So in Google Analytics, you can see the pages that people came in on. And if you think, right, well, hang on, why, why is this particular service, you know, we’re not getting any DUI inquiries. We’re getting, we’re getting loads of personal injury. We’re getting loads of divorce, but we’re not getting any DUI. Why is that?

Karin Conroy (43:00.978)
or some of the data off of Google Analytics. Like you pull out some Google Analytics stuff, yeah.

Pete Everitt (43:27.918)
Go and ask ChatGPT. Go and drop the link in. Ask ChatGPT, why is this page not ranking in the top 10 where other pages are for these particular keywords? And what are the supporting content titles we can write to help it? And that will help you form the titles for the next 15 blogs that you need to write. You can then ask ChatGPT for the

structures. So for blogs with titles similar to this, what are the structures that are ranking in the top 10 so that I can get my structure right? And the thing that I try and refrain from doing is actually getting ChapGPT to write the words. unless you are literally not doing anything with your website, try and actually be the person that’s written the word that loads to the user. But you can…

Karin Conroy (44:07.484)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (44:18.025)
Yes.

Pete Everitt (44:19.704)
fast track so much of the old process of having to figure out what to write, how to structure it, what the keywords need to be. You can get Trap GPT to help you with all of that straight away.

Karin Conroy (44:29.096)
Right. Here’s what Gert Melick, who I’ve had on a couple of times, and he’s in Spain, I use this thing that he said all the time. Think of ChatGPT as like an intern. So you wouldn’t hand the intern your most important client or like, you know, the actual details of writing the legal brief, but you might have the intern put together an outline.

and give you some good background stuff that makes your work faster and easier and whatever, but don’t let the intern actually write the blog post because it’s going to be gross and kind of garbagey. So I don’t want to spend too much time on the AI. The last thing I wanted to ask is how can it impact your analytics, your search? How is it impacting all of this stuff?

Pete Everitt (44:56.142)
Mm-hmm.

Karin Conroy (45:26.148)
just SEO in general.

Pete Everitt (45:29.048)
So this is what I mean by the master and the beast. So everything I just said is kind of the master side of it. The beast side of it, well, to begin with, AI results are already starting to appear right at the top of search engines. I mean, like above the ads. So if you can structure your content to feed into that, if AI is being used for particular search terms, and you can simply find that by Googling a term, you you want to…

Karin Conroy (45:44.818)
Yeah. Yeah.

Pete Everitt (45:57.462)
you want to rank for DUI attorney in California, then just Google it and see if the AI is working on that yet. But you can structure your content. Normally, it would be in bullet type form. Normally, it would have a clear set of instructions as to, know, so what to do if you’re being charged with a DUI offense. Bulleted list. You’ve got far more chance of that appearing in AI search results than you would paragraphs of text, for example. So

you need to structure your content in a way that the AIs can understand and digest it easily. But you also, flip side to that, is that Google is proactively trying to remove content that it thinks is AI driven from the search results. And that’s largely because AI content, and AI learns by iterating on a subject and getting people to correct it where it’s wrong. It’s like,

Karin Conroy (46:44.883)
Yeah.

Pete Everitt (46:55.438)
It’s learning by repetition and course correction by real people like you and me. And because of that, a lot of the content it creates is quite repetitive. It’s an iteration process. So Google is looking out for that. Hence, it’s really important that a real human does actually write the words that appear on the page. So you’re trying to feed the master, but not be the beast, to finish my analogy.

Karin Conroy (47:21.778)
Yeah. Yes. Okay. So it’s time for the book review. If you didn’t already know, we have a Thought Leaders Library and all of the guests have a book recommendation. So Pete, what’s the book you think should be on all of these lawyers bookshelf?

Pete Everitt (47:40.856)
So, the book I chose is a book called The Million Dollar Weekend by a guy called Noah Kagan. Noah doesn’t work in law at all, as far as I’m aware, but Noah, if you’re listening and that’s not true, then feel free to, yeah, absolutely. Noah set up a company called AppSumo, which in marketing world, lots of people will know about, in other parts of the world, maybe not so many people know about, but basically a website for selling deals on software.

Karin Conroy (47:53.884)
Please get in touch. We’d be happy to chat.

Karin Conroy (48:04.775)
Yes.

Pete Everitt (48:10.752)
and online subscriptions and that kind of thing.

Karin Conroy (48:12.714)
Yeah, like lot of new, like newly launching software and you can get like sweet lifetime deals on stuff and when it’s really, you know, a baby, baby software. And yeah, it’s a big deal to me and Pete. We love it.

Pete Everitt (48:27.746)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, so the million dollar weekend is basically a look at how he started AppSumo and a model that he’s broken down to help people develop either new businesses themselves right from scratch or to develop new parts to your business. Basically by breaking it down to what in marketing we call an MVP, a minimum viable product and spending no more than 48 hours on the whole thing.

And within that 48 hours, if it sinks, then you move on. It even says at the start of the book, look, the reason it’s a million dollar weekend is because everybody has a weekend. So you can invest a weekend in something. And if at the end of the weekend, it’s not a good idea, then all you’ve lost the weekend. And then you can do another one next weekend. But if it succeeded at the end of the weekend, then of course, you know you’re onto a…

Karin Conroy (48:58.009)
my gosh, that’s so cool.

Karin Conroy (49:07.656)
Yeah, right.

Karin Conroy (49:13.81)
Yeah. That’s so cool.

Pete Everitt (49:22.683)
a winner with it and you can structure from there. And he talks you through the process of how to validate if something’s a million dollar idea and all this kind of stuff. So I’m murdering the book. I suggest you go and read it.

Karin Conroy (49:24.116)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (49:29.396)
That’s amazing.

Yeah, but then also you have this crazy story because you got it going in a weekend, you know? And so then like every time you’re on a podcast talking about whatever the thing is, you can say it started with a weekend. Yeah.

Pete Everitt (49:36.748)
Yeah, absolutely.

Pete Everitt (49:42.702)
Yeah, exactly. It started with a weekend. yeah, that’s my recommendation. I read it while I was on holiday and it was fantastic. It was that good, I even made my wife read it. So yeah.

Karin Conroy (49:54.096)
Nice, amazing. All right, so Million Dollar Weekend Noah Kagan, we’ll obviously link to that on the show page and all that good stuff. Okay, so Pete, what is one thing everybody gets wrong? And I was gonna say about this, but I’m trying to think of which this are we talking about? I think we’re just talking about conversions. Let’s say conversions.

Pete Everitt (50:17.73)
Well, the main thing that I find that people get wrong is that, this is going to sound awfully obtuse of me, but that people think that it’s their divine right to get inquiries, right? Or sales. you know, that it’s almost like the bake it and they’ll come or build it and they’ll come type mantra. Well, actually, yeah.

Karin Conroy (50:26.309)
I love it.

Karin Conroy (50:31.572)
Yes. Yes.

Karin Conroy (50:38.632)
Yeah. Yeah. Field of Dreams.

Pete Everitt (50:42.018)
But I’m not wanting to like smash those down or be the bearer of bad news, but it isn’t your divine right to get inquiries or sales. You have to work for them. You have to prove to people that you are the right fit for them. and that was when we were talking about this before, that was, we kind of wrapped it into that bit of the discussion rather than after the book. But, the, that was, that’s the thing that I get time and time again is, you know, why aren’t people buying from me? Well,

Karin Conroy (51:11.432)
Right. I think that’s so true because when this idea of having to have a marketing strategy that exists beyond the launch of a website sometimes blows people’s minds. And that goes right into line with what you’re saying, that they think that they should just launch a website and then, woo, people just show up and they’re just waiting at the door for you to open the door. And that’s just not how it works.

Pete Everitt (51:12.661)
Why should they?

Karin Conroy (51:40.626)
And so the idea of your website being your entire marketing strategy and that once it launches, you don’t have to do anything after that is just wrong. That’s just not how it works.

Pete Everitt (51:54.134)
There’s a part two to this actually, now that we think about it and we talk about it a bit more, which kind of fits into what we saying about that hourglass type shape, which is that the easiest people to sell to are people you’ve already sold to. you know, some people get so focused on the front end of the marketing side of things, getting the leads in, getting them through the door, then worrying about the quality and…

Karin Conroy (52:07.56)
Yes. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (52:12.999)
Yes.

Pete Everitt (52:20.458)
actually they, know, when, when, by the time the works actually delivered, you’re kind of spitting a client out the other end, cause you’re still looking over here. And you, as a business, as a small business anyway, you can’t think like that. Your job is to find clients and to service clients and to delight clients and to make sure that they’re supported as they, yeah, as, as you finish with them, as you say, as you keep them. And if you can’t do all four parts of that, then actually you should be taking a step back.

Karin Conroy (52:27.549)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (52:38.846)
and to keep them.

Yeah. Yeah.

Pete Everitt (52:48.674)
Because like we said, it’s not somebody’s divine right to work with you or to inquire with you. But when you’ve got those clients and you’ve worked so hard to achieve them, by God keep them, right?

Karin Conroy (52:49.417)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (53:01.82)
Yes. And I can hear the argument in some lawyers’ case, in their minds as they’re listening to this, well, my clients are DUIs. you know, for the majority of them do it once and whatever, then let’s rethink that. So they know people. They are going to now, instead of them like being a repeat client, maybe they’re a referral client. Maybe you’re, that’s not your plan. Maybe your referrals are coming in from like a financial guy.

Let’s just look at what you can nurture that could pull in more leads. And maybe it’s not as simple as you think, but it’s there. No matter what your practice area is, I promise you it’s there. There’s something there that you could be nurturing and doing that is in our definition towards that bottom of the funnel that you’re probably not doing. And that’s where the gold is. Like you’re just missing out. Yeah. Awesome. That’s all right. Well, maybe we’ll edit one out.

Pete Everitt (53:51.608)
Yeah, absolutely. So, there you go. I’ve given you two now, but that’s my thing. Don’t do that! They were both good!

Karin Conroy (54:01.49)
Just kidding. Pete Everett is a digital strategist and that is your entire title. Despite the fact that I know that you do 5 million other things, I feel like it is a good umbrella. But you know, that is the title that we’ve got and follow, he’s got a great podcast that talks about all this good stuff. And it’s also on YouTube. You should definitely check that out. But thank you so much for being here. This was such a…

Pete Everitt (54:12.672)
You

Karin Conroy (54:27.39)
jam-packed version of episode of this. I feel like there’s so much good stuff in there.

Pete Everitt (54:33.23)
No, it’s a pleasure, Karen, honestly. I mean, we don’t have professional backgrounds to our podcasts like you do. So just be aware that you’ll still be seeing my little record thing in the background and some guitars behind me. I won’t have this peacock thing going on, but yeah, absolutely. You’re more than welcome to come and listen to it. It’s all about WordPress and SEO stuff.

Karin Conroy (54:46.878)
you

Karin Conroy (54:53.778)
Amazing. Thanks again.

Pete Everitt (54:55.777)
No worries.