How Can AI Send Your Law Firm Local Clients

Karin (00:00.448)
Someone in your city just asked ChatGPT which lawyer they should call. It gave them three names. And do you know if your name was one of them? The firms it named aren’t always the best ones, but they’re the ones that AI could figure out. So today my guest is Tyler Henn. He founded Hen House, a local SEO and web design studio in Marietta, Georgia. And he built it on a method he calls entity alignment.

Where we’re making sure Google has zero doubt about what and who a business is, what it does, where, all of that stuff. So I hear a lot about, and we’ve had a lot of shows about AI and AI with SEO and you know all of that stuff. But today we’re gonna really focus in on local and how to integrate that with your AI strategy and why and how it works and you know, all of that good stuff. And you know, you’re hearing that AI is changing search and but

Up almost nobody is telling you what what to change at your own firm to show up locally. So we are gonna walk through how AI sends you local clients and how to tell if your real problem is getting found, getting chosen, or following up. And before we jump in, if your firm shows up online and you’re not sure if the right local clients are finding you or what happens once they do.

That’s the kind of problem we work on at Conroy Creative Council. We act as a marketing co-counsel for law firms and we look at the whole path from the search, first search to the signed client. So, Tyler, welcome to Councilcast. Tyler, welcome to Councilcast. Thank you for being here. It would be nice if I could pronounce my own show name.

Tyler Henn (01:46.572)
Podcasts are hard. Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Karin (01:50.634)
Thank you. I I don’t know. Today I feel like it’s just kind of one of those mornings where, you know, I’m just kind of slowly getting going. but let’s jump in and first talk about local SEO specifically in relation to AI. And the title of the show I forgot to mention is How Can AI Send Your Firm Local Clients? So let’s start with how is the local search different from all the other stuff everybody’s talking about with SEO, GEO.

AEO, all of the AAI related search stuff.

Tyler Henn (02:25.346)
Yeah. So for for me, for for local SEO, the number one thing I say that you need to have is a Google business profile. I tell people that that’s that’s step zero. Like if you don’t have that, you’re on step negative one. and so the first thing I start with is looking, making sure that you have one. and then like one of the first early mistakes that I see is that and this is kind of Google’s fault because they they don’t really walk their their users through the whole process when when you make one. So like typically what you would do is you

Karin (02:31.668)
Yes.

Karin (02:42.687)
Yeah.

Karin (02:54.004)
Yeah.

Tyler Henn (02:55.564)
You say, hey, I want to make a Google business profile. You hit, you click create, you put your business name, you put your address. It may or may not ask you to verify and pray that it doesn’t, because what a pain. and then it asks you like what’s your service area, and that’s pretty much it. Well, if you actually go back in and hit edit profile, you see that it asks you all about your categories, about your services, what languages you speak. Are you open on on Martin Luther King Jr. day? Like it asks you a bunch of extra stuff.

Karin (03:05.674)
Yeah.

Tyler Henn (03:25.038)
And most people don’t even know to ever go back and look at that. They just think, I have a Google business profile, we’re good. Yeah. Where do I’m waiting waiting for the calls? and

Karin (03:29.683)
I filled out the form. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I feel like Google’s whole systems, usually with a lot of these things, they’re sort of backwards. They’re very, they don’t care about being user intuitive. Like they you have to kind of back yourself into whatever it is their strategy is.

Tyler Henn (03:50.413)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And and one thing that they do too that’s super frustrating for for me as an agency owner who knows this, but nobody would ever know, unless they, you know, were running tools on on their, you know, where they’re actually showing up. So when you first create a Google business profile, it’ll ask you, hey, this address that you just typed in, do you serve clients there? And most people will say no. Like, for example, a roofing company is not is not having people come to their office.

Karin (04:10.868)
Yeah.

Karin (04:16.213)
yes.

Tyler Henn (04:20.684)
So they say no, I don’t. And then Google says, okay, you should be a service area business. What Google doesn’t tell you is that if you don’t show your address, you will not rank. Like you’re automatically at the bottom of the list. And so there’s like certain things that you just know where and I I’ll I’ve pulled in a lot of clients where they aren’t showing their address because they’re like, Well, I don’t serve clients there. I’m like, Well, we’re gonna tell them you do, because if you want to rank, you gotta you have to be showing your address. So it’s kind of one of those things.

Karin (04:29.353)
Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Karin (04:41.535)
Yeah.

Karin (04:46.215)
Right. Yeah. Okay. So and these are things that you’ve just learned because you’ve been doing this for years and years and you kind of learned the hard way. And if you’re a single law firm and you’re only sending setting up one business profile, Google business profile, and you’ve only ever done that once, there’s a good chance you’re gonna make a lot of mistakes. So let’s first talk about how like some of those mistakes and you know, all the things that you know about how to set up that profile right. And then I wanna talk about how it even works, like how

Does why does that Google business profile relate to your AI search results and and how does how do they kind of speak to each other? But first, what are some of the things? Okay, so number one, you have to show the business address. And I will say for most law firms, that’s that’s probably happening. they’re probably gonna check that box the right way. There are a good number of firms that we work with that are virtual and they have different

People in different offices and things like that. And so they may have chosen that option where they said, no, this is our home office or something. We don’t serve people out of this location. What would you recommend for people who don’t have a, or it is their home office, you know, they don’t have like a actual office l address that they want people to see and they or it’s their home that they want to keep private. What’s the right way to do that with your Google Pri profile?

Tyler Henn (06:13.9)
Yeah, I I wish there was like a really cool hack or something. Like you you just kind of have to be showing it. and I I have, you know, clients ask me all the time, well, like I’m not comfortable sharing my home address. And I say, you know, okay, you’re not gonna rank. and I wish there was a way around it, but there’s really not. So there’s either showing your home address, and I promise, people when they put in directions and see it’s in a neighborhood, they’re not gonna come. And if they do, call the cops. and so

Karin (06:16.539)
Yeah. Yeah.

Karin (06:25.299)
Yeah, yeah.

Karin (06:36.765)
Yeah. Well, some of my clients use like a mailbox address or, you know, like a virtual thing like that. So we’ve had some issues though, where because that’s a shared address and so they don’t own that address. So do you have thoughts about the success rate of that type of thing where it’s like, you know, it’s like your your PO box type thing.

Tyler Henn (06:42.595)
Mm-hmm.

Tyler Henn (07:01.994)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I I try to stick to to Google’s guidelines because they are getting super strict and and you know, just not approving even actual staff locations now because the video’s not being filmed right. like and just another thing from experience too, like technically if you film a verification video and there’s a human face in it, they will just instantly deny it with AI. For whatever reason, if the hu if a human face is in it, they they will not approve it. And so like I’ve had

Karin (07:13.497)
Karin (07:28.012)
jeez.

Tyler Henn (07:29.272)
I’ve had clients film videos before where I instantly got an email, like 30 seconds after they submitted it, denied. I’m like, okay, was it facing it? They’re like, Yeah, I showed myself in the mirror. I’m like, no, don’t do that. but what what Google wants and what it says in their guidelines is it has to be a staffed location. that is actually in an office. So if you have a PO box Google profile, you’re lucky and

Karin (07:36.393)
There was someone there. Yeah. Don’t do it. Yeah.

Karin (07:47.615)
Okay.

Tyler Henn (07:55.928)
Don’t try to make too many changes to it probably because if you go into reverification in 2026, you’re gonna have a a rough time getting verified again. So I’d be super careful with that.

Karin (08:05.981)
Okay. So in my experience, it’s usually better to have like a office space, like an actual office space that even if it’s like a co-working space or something, you know, having them give you like a suite number or something like that where you have your own unique office address that you can now list on your Google Business profile and

you can list as a staffed location. So that’s number one. What else do you, what other tips do you have about the Google Business Profile?

Tyler Henn (08:41.154)
Yeah, I mean, just making sure you answer all the questions. Like a a mistake that I see a lot of people make is that, you know, you get to the bottom and it asks, like, do you speak Spanish? Do you speak Turkish? Do you speak Ukrainian? And people are like, I don’t speak any of those. I’ll just leave it blank. Well, Google actually appreciates for you to answer no, I don’t, as opposed to leaving them blank. Cause it it shows Google that you took the time to read every question and answer and they appreciate the effort that you put in. one of w yeah, it’s not not the b yeah, absolutely.

Karin (08:52.935)
Yeah. Okay.

Okay.

Gotcha.

Karin (09:04.595)
Yeah, it’s more data. Yeah.

Yeah.

Tyler Henn (09:09.536)
It’s it’s not the biggest ranking factor, but it is it does matter, you know, all other things being equal. You want to make sure that you answer everything. Same thing with like veteran owned, woman owned, indigenous owned. There’s a and and we can maybe get into that later. Those are actually pretty cool for for showing up in AI.

Karin (09:17.149)
Okay. nice.

Karin (09:26.665)
Well, yeah, let’s talk about that because then I want to transition into the AI side. So I know I have indicated my business as a woman owned business. what about some of these things that are kind of set you aside and differentiate your business like that?

Tyler Henn (09:34.914)
Mm-hmm.

Tyler Henn (09:43.574)
Yeah, so as far as my company? Or

Karin (09:46.057)
Well, just in general, like putting veteran owned or woman owned or you know, any of those indicators like that.

Tyler Henn (09:50.122)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, I have I have a really specific example for a client of mine where we he’s a roofing company and we have he’s probably ranking around fifth or sixth place on average, which is pretty good. We’re I’m in Metro Atlanta and we have 3,300 roofing companies. So happy about that. but if you look up Latino owned roofing company in the same area, he’s number one because we we answered that he’s Latino owned and we we made sure to talk about that throughout his website as well.

Karin (10:07.444)
Yeah.

Karin (10:13.662)
Nice.

Karin (10:19.709)
And then that he speaks Spanish as well.

Tyler Henn (10:19.767)
So when

He speaks Spanish as well, that he moved here from from Ecuador and all that good stuff. And so if somebody if someone is looking for a a Latino owned company in particular, he’s gonna show up. And there’s probably a lot of Latino owned companies in the area that aren’t talking about that on their website and Google Business Profile, and they won’t show up. And so, like one one thing that I always push to my clients is if you want to if there’s something in particular that you want to show up for, it needs to exist online about you. Because, you know.

Karin (10:41.993)
Nice.

Karin (10:50.207)
Nice.

Tyler Henn (10:51.777)
Google and and L LMs can’t just infer whatever you you know, you want them to think about you.

Karin (10:54.973)
Right. Well, and it sounds like especially not just exists online, but also very particularly in your Google business profile, if it’s one of those kind of categories that could fit there. Yeah.

Tyler Henn (11:06.751)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, the the Google business profile description box is a great place to talk about that as well. like proud proudly Latino owned or proudly woman owned. that’s another place that Google’s gonna look when it’s trying to match you up with the search intent of that potential client.

Karin (11:14.185)
Okay.

Yeah.

Karin (11:23.167)
And I suppose you could put things in there that aren’t in their, you know, in their form. Like if there’s some category that you f fall under that doesn’t, you know, isn’t one of the boxes that they have to check, right?

Tyler Henn (11:34.923)
Yeah, categories are a little tougher. I d I think you do have to always pick the categories that they have. there’s there’s some tricks that you can do to kind of use the w a page on the website to do what I call re-theming. but it still has to be adjacent. but services, yeah, you can put in anything that you want.

Karin (11:40.051)
Yeah.

Karin (11:47.742)
Okay.

Karin (11:53.59)
Sure. Okay. So let’s talk next about how AI, why this all matters in terms of a specifically AI search and what and then how that’s changed because of AI search. So, you know, local search was something that I did a show on, I did a handful of shows on, I want to say in the first year of this show. And we’re in the fourth year. So early on in this show, we were not talking about AI at all.

And then it just became like dripped into almost every show. But I think when we first started talking about local, it was not in relation to AI. It was much more about showing up on the map pack and all of that stuff. But how has that changed, would you say, over the last four to six years with you know, how AI has brought in that whole overlay and how have things also stayed the same?

Tyler Henn (12:50.283)
Yeah. Well, I mean, good SEO is is going to get you showing up in AI. so that’s you know, I think the base principles of SEO have not really changed, I would almost argue ever. but I do think that search has gotten a lot more specific in the last year or two. and I can give you an example of that. So, and I actually I gave this example at a at a coffee this morning. So bear with me. I’m gonna try to walk back through it.

Karin (12:59.047)
I agreed completely. Yeah.

Karin (13:13.136)
perfect. It’s the example of the day.

Tyler Henn (13:16.469)
It’s the example of the day. Well, I love using the same examples so that I can keep honing in and and and and have like really, really good examples. It’s gonna be amazing. So so let’s say like 15 years ago, you had only blue links on on Google search results, and someone may look up personal injury attorney near me. And they’re pretty much gonna click on one of the top three because you know, people don’t like to scroll. And you know, they say, What’s the best place to hide a dead body? Page two of Google search results. And so

Karin (13:20.359)
Yeah. So this one is gonna be better than the earlier one today.

Karin (13:45.385)
Right. Yeah, exactly. Right.

Tyler Henn (13:46.351)
Because no one goes there. And so but now, you know, we have we have these tools, you know, that are available to us where we can get super specific with what we need. and so someone might say, Hey, I drive a Prius and I just got hit by an F three fifty and I it broke my leg and it really hurt and my car rolled over. What the heck do I do? And ChatGPT might Google something like personal injury lawyer that works with broken legs from getting hit by a big truck.

I mean, this is a this is a funny example. Like it it’s not really gonna search that, but but what I’m speaking to is how how specific LLMs can get as opposed to Google. And so if you don’t talk about exactly what you do with broken leg car crash cases on your website, you’re not gonna get recommended for that search. And so I I’m trying to get all my clients right now to get more specific about what they do, the kind of cases that they want, and I

Karin (14:14.314)
Yeah.

Karin (14:24.061)
Right, right.

Tyler Henn (14:41.688)
great way to do that is to sit down and kind of develop personas of like, okay, what are the what are the kinds of people that we hope find us? And then what is what content needs to exist for them to be able to find us. And so like if you primarily, right.

Karin (14:50.196)
Yeah.

Karin (14:53.875)
Yeah. And that’s not different. Yeah. And that part’s not different from what we’ve been doing forever. Like, you know, I we used to sit down and like with paper, which I don’t use ever anymore. And we would like draw out and they and these personas, they they used to be kind of corny. Like they we would put names on them and you know, it would get like a little too elaborate. but

Tyler Henn (15:00.716)
Mm-hmm.

Karin (15:18.823)
You you know your kind of general category of the types of clients you work with. And maybe there’s three categories, maybe there’s five, depending on how your firm is set up, maybe there’s one. and but then the more you can define that in your own mind, and then especially figure out where they are on the internet, where they go for their research and the things they care about, and then build your content around that.

It’s that’s still the same recipe. We’re just doing it at a higher, more effective rate.

Tyler Henn (15:54.211)
Yeah, absolutely. And and you the other thing that people don’t realize too is like you can you need to have unique content on your website too. Because if you and and you know all these marketing people now just go to ChatGPT and say, like, make a great website that’s gonna rank well. And it’s like, well, it doesn’t really work like that. but it sure would be nice, yeah. But no, we still have to put in effort as an SEO guy, unfortunately. So

Karin (16:03.955)
Yes, yeah.

Karin (16:12.167)
Right, right. Wouldn’t it be nice? Actually, no.

Yes. Yeah.

Tyler Henn (16:23.97)
But you have to have new unique content. So like an another example that I give, where I’m gonna run through all my examples of the day. so let’s say, you know, 3,000 roofing companies in Metro Atlanta. and if I’m talking too much about things, things besides legal, you know, let me know. okay. Okay. there’s 3,000 in in in Metro Atlanta. And, you know, every time you ask someone what’s unique about your company, they say like, well, we go above and beyond.

Karin (16:29.685)
Perfect. All in one show.

Karin (16:39.315)
You’re fine. No, it’s it’s good. Examples are good.

Tyler Henn (16:51.246)
Well it’s like, well, okay, everyone goes above and beyond. Like you okay, so you you do your job. So, but or they say, like a more realistic example, they say, Well, we do free inspections. Well, everyone does free inspections. And or they say, we work with your insurance company. Everybody does that. That’s where the money’s at. Of course they’re gonna do that. But like

Karin (16:54.089)
Yes. Right.

Karin (17:02.674)
Yeah, right.

Yeah. Right. The equivalent for legal is exceptional legal services or some other e-word, exceptional. We are experts, we have the expertise, some kind of e legal services in X city that does Y type of law. And then the equivalent to everything you just said is the free consultation. Like they all do, you know, call here for a free consultation. And listen, cover your

Tyler Henn (17:19.352)
Mm-hmm.

Tyler Henn (17:31.917)
Yeah.

Karin (17:36.118)
logo go to your website cover your logo and does your website say that right now and if so it’s dated and it’s not just dated from a human perspective it’s dated from an AI perspective and part way through this show right now we’re talking a lot about AI and how that works and the Google and all of that but partway through I want to transition over to the human side of it and like take to all of these thoughts into

Tyler Henn (17:46.573)
Mm-hmm.

Karin (18:03.369)
like the human interaction. And we’re gonna do that, you know, in a few minutes after we get through this part of it. But you know, as Tyler’s walking through these generic examples, there are generic examples for lawyers too, and your site probably says that.

Tyler Henn (18:19.564)
Yeah, I mean, if if someone tells me that they’re what sets them apart is that they’re an expert, I’m like, well, I hope you’re an expert. That’s why, you know, I’m not gonna hire someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing. yeah, exactly. So but so anyway, so I have a roofing client who what they do is they have this huge system that’s in they they bring like six ginormous bags to every bit to every you know you know, roof replacement.

Karin (18:25.913)
Right. I didn’t want to hire the dummy.

Tyler Henn (18:45.036)
And it’s this system called the catch-all that they put up and it goes 12 feet up in the air and it goes around the perimeter of the house, it goes over the bushes, it protects the plants, it protects the windows, the garage doors, and all this stuff. It’s like you you don’t see those everywhere. And so we make sure we highlight that on the website because you know, someone who goes above and beyond to protect your home and and where a project manager is there all day as opposed to showing up one time for lunch and then at night to collect the check is like, you know, those are the things that nobody does. And so you wanna

Karin (18:54.535)
Nice.

Karin (18:59.281)
Nice. Yeah. It’s different. Yes.

Karin (19:10.333)
Right, right. Yes.

Tyler Henn (19:13.814)
sit down and and think about what do you actually do that other companies don’t do that, you know, are gonna make you worth hiring over anyone else. Like you have to show Google and people like why, why would I pick you out of any of of the other three thousand? and then make sure that content exists about that.

Karin (19:27.507)
Right. So how would you do that? Okay, that was sorry, I I spoke over that last sentence, but that was my next part. You were saying make sure everybody knows and then put the content that supports that. So how would you do that on your kind of your local business profile or within the Google content posts and things like that or a combination? How would like if we’re gonna stay with that example of that roofing company that does that elaborate system for protecting all the trees and the whole

Tyler Henn (19:45.102)
Mm-hmm.

Karin (19:56.192)
What do they call it? Catch all? yeah. So how would they promote that that super el elaborate, well thought out strategic difference within their their local profile and content and what what would that look like?

Tyler Henn (19:58.287)
Called the catch all system, mm-hmm.

Tyler Henn (20:14.05)
Yeah, so so I’ll break down my framework that that works for me and for my clients. So I typically try to get people to four or five total Google business profile categories on their profile as long as they’re relevant. So, like for a roofing contractor that might look like roofing contractor, gutter contractor, siding contractor, window contractor, something like that, if they do all those things. And then I try to add

Karin (20:17.695)
Okay.

Karin (20:25.565)
Okay, yep.

Karin (20:35.827)
Okay, so for a law firm that would be your practice areas. That would be truck accidents, personal injury, boating accident, you know, all of your the various practice areas that are listed on your website.

Tyler Henn (20:44.078)
Mm-hmm.

Exactly. And so we do we kind of do a workshop and onboarding of like, okay, let’s let’s see what’s available and let’s work look through these. Do you do this stuff or not? And if you don’t do it, definitely don’t add it. and then and then I tried to I know it’s crazy.

Karin (20:54.323)
Yeah. Yeah, right. I mean I laugh, but people do that. And they’re like, look it. There’s some traffic behind these keywords. Should we throw that in? And it’s like, Well, do you do that? It’s like, No, but you know, maybe if I get on the phone, I could it’s like, no, no, no. We’re not gonna do it.

Tyler Henn (21:09.985)
Yeah. Yeah.

Tyler Henn (21:15.778)
Yeah. No, let’s get let’s get warm leads, people who are actually interested. I actually had a client who his old SEO guy was making pages on his website just talking about other businesses in the area just to get traffic onto the website. And I’m like, that that’s gonna tank your SEO because and a lot of people don’t know this. If you search for something and you click onto the page and instantly leave because it’s not what you wanted, that tells Google that that page should not be number one because

Karin (21:28.499)
Yeah, yeah, yes.

Tyler Henn (21:44.674)
You know, at at scale, of course. If one person does it, it’s all good. But if a hundred people do it in a day, then Google’s like, Okay, we need to show something better that people actually want to read. so exactly.

Karin (21:52.5)
Right. That they went to the page and it was a waste. Like it was not what they were looking for. So they left quickly because they were like, no. and so it’s, you know, it’s a no and it’s also like a dumb a down vote or a thou thumbs down. And so Google takes that in the same way as a thumbs up in the other direction if they sit on that page.

Tyler Henn (21:59.877)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Karin (22:13.949)
and scroll through it for two solid minutes and then click over whatever. That’s a nice thumbs up. But what you’re describing that a lot of people don’t talk about is these sort of thumbs down activities that are that negatively impact your results. Yeah. Okay.

Tyler Henn (22:27.221)
Mm-hmm. Exactly. So yeah, so we get the four to four to five categories. And then I try to get 30 total services, not 30 per category, but 30 total of like the 30 things that you would most like to show up for. And then obviously those get I call it a silo. They get categorized under the under the right category. Then when we build the website, we make sure that there’s a page targeting every single one of those categories and service pages. So like if you do roof repair.

Karin (22:35.071)
Okay.

Karin (22:40.692)
Okay.

Tyler Henn (22:55.843)
Then you make and and you’re in Atlanta or look, look, we’ll do personal injury. If you’re a personally personal injury lawyer in Dallas, Texas, then you make sure you have a page where the the H1 and the meta title is personal injury attorney in Dallas, Texas. and then this is where we start kind of weaving in some of these, you know, more specific things. So like I make we set all the categories, we set all the services, but then I also will have like an hour or two long conversation with that client saying like,

What is unique about you? And I I ask, you know, questions that I’ve created that are tailored to that to that particular business of like, okay, I know that you’re a veteran, you know, talk about how that’s, you know, made you a really good personal injury lawyer. And, you know, what is it like to be a personal injury lawyer in Dallas? Maybe, you started in Baltimore, now you live in Dallas. What can you speak about that’s different and and all this kind of stuff? And then I weave that information, the unique information into every page on the website. And so that’s how that’s where

Karin (23:46.013)
Right. Yeah.

Karin (23:52.724)
Okay.

Tyler Henn (23:54.66)
you might find on the roof repair, roof replacement and roof insurance storm repair pages that it mentions, you know, we’ve got you covered. We’ve got this amazing system that’s gonna protect your garage doors and all that good stuff.

Karin (24:05.445)
Nice. Okay. So a good amount of this will be fed over to the Google Business profile with content and whatever, but the goal is to pull them over to that website where it has all this more in-depth pages for each kind of each one of those services that you talked about. And then obviously the whole blog where they can kind of go from there and click around and, you know, figure out more information and follow that path. Okay, so we talked a lot about the Google Business Profile.

Anything else in the sort of tech stack where that we should mention in terms of what people should be thinking about, especially now with AI, before why did my screen just go away? before we go get into the human side of kind of how it’s all working and how to think about local in terms of that kind of hum human interaction side of things.

Tyler Henn (25:01.517)
In the tech stack. I mean

I I don’t really monitor like where people are showing up in AI too much. It just kind of happens when you do get SEO. and so like my my main principle that I tell everyone or ask everyone is like, you know, to to break marketing down one step further. Cause you know, you you ask people what they’re doing for marketing sometimes. And they’re I don’t well, I’m not running ads. It’s like, well, that’s one way to market. But so I’ll ask people, what are you doing to let people know that your business exists? Because that could be.

Karin (25:13.715)
Yeah, yeah.

Karin (25:27.187)
Yeah. Right.

Karin (25:33.885)
Yes, yeah, yeah.

Tyler Henn (25:35.329)
I could just walk up to you on the street and say, Hi ma’am, I have a SEO company. It’s called Hen House. And then walk away. That’s marketing. I could give you a business card. I I could knock doors.

Karin (25:38.91)
Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I had someone ask me early on in my career what the difference between advertising and marketing is. And you know, to be fair, I think not everybody understands this, but advertising is one tiny, tiny part of marketing. And marketing is the whole thing that like you’re describing. How you’re talking about it, how you’re showing up locally, not the things you’re necessarily doing online, like all the other stuff.

Tyler Henn (26:06.841)
Mm-hmm.

Karin (26:07.889)
So you talked about Google business profiles, the practice area pages, kind of pulling it all of that stuff and having the conversation between the local account, basically, the Google local account and your website and and all of that. what about how else do you anything else in terms of like AI and how that’s different with either your website or your Google business pro profile from before we were talking about AI?

Tyler Henn (26:32.047)
Mm-hmm.

Tyler Henn (26:39.273)
I mean, I do think that like Google and and LLMs just take a more holistic approach to like your online existence now too. So third party validation is really vague. So like Reddit, Reddit’s kind of rocky right now. I had a guy on my podcast who’s who is it’s his whole business model and he seems to be still super optimistic about it still. But you know, we saw a couple probably two months ago now that it’s getting cited a lot less. But that doesn’t mean that.

Karin (26:54.395)
Yes.

Karin (27:03.633)
Yes, a huge dive.

Tyler Henn (27:06.165)
But that doesn’t mean that people aren’t still going there to to gather information. So whether ChatGPT is using that as a resource anymore doesn’t mean that someone’s not going to go look and Reddit has their own AI thing now that’s really good at recommending threads. so I would I would still be on there if I could. like if you can afford it, because it’s obviously it’s, you know, a a big commitment. If if anyone’s company can afford it, just hire someone to go and and interact on Reddit all day.

Karin (27:08.253)
Right. Yeah.

Karin (27:16.617)
Yep. Yeah.

Karin (27:31.059)
Yeah, have an account and yeah.

Tyler Henn (27:32.555)
Not necessarily promote yourself and be like, I’m a lawyer by the way, but just go answer questions like that you

Karin (27:37.856)
There’s thousands of lawyer-related forums and you know, all the practice areas. and yeah, I think Reddit and for lawyers, a combination of Reddit and LinkedIn, that alone is pretty much a very solid what I would sort of call a social strategy. You know, if you’re gonna do social and you have a limited amount of time, I would do those two. LinkedIn and Reddit.

Tyler Henn (28:04.634)
Mm-hmm.

Karin (28:06.335)
Figure that out, find a way there, and and you’ll actually see measurable results that are, you know, talking about getting getting you into that topic that you’re talking about. Whereas Instagram and all of the other things, it’s such a slug. Like it’s just so much effort for very little payoff in what I’m seeing. okay, so let’s switch over to the human side of things. Cause I know you have a background in.

what those of us are in this world call UX, but lawyers don’t know what that means. So let’s talk about first of all, what is UX? and w how does that relate to all of this conversation?

Tyler Henn (28:39.717)
Yeah.

Tyler Henn (28:47.332)
Yeah, so so UX, just the definition or it stands for user experience. and so what it is more so than making a website or an app look super pretty and nice, it’s making sure that it’s very easy to use. And so

Karin (28:53.203)
Yes.

Karin (29:01.459)
It’s doing what it’s supposed to do. It’s doing what that user wants it to do. Not what you and your ego want it to do, what that user actually wants it to do.

Tyler Henn (29:07.778)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. And so, like one of my favorite examples to use for all my iPhone people, you may remember back in like iOS seven or iOS eight or something, before that, you had to pull down the control panel and press the flashlight button to turn the flashlight on. And then Apple realized, based off of just user data, that enough people were wanting to use the flashlight often enough that it should be easier to access. And so now it’s right on that lock screen.

Karin (29:24.949)
yeah.

Karin (29:33.117)
Yep. Yep.

Tyler Henn (29:35.485)
And it saves you, you know, one gesture where before you had to tap your screen to turn it on, slide down, and then hold and and then press the button. Well, now you just pick your phone up, it turns on automatically, and you just hold that button, you’re good to go. And even one step further than that, now they’ve added the the mechanical action button to the side of the phone where you can turn your flashlight on there as well. And so that’s that’s a really whatever you want it to be.

Karin (29:53.748)
Yeah.

Yep. Or you can make it whatever you want it to be. Yeah, you can switch the functionality to some other thing that you use all the time. Okay, so here’s why I want I I love talking about UX because I feel like or maybe I should just keep calling it user experience just so people know what we’re talking about. Because I feel like this along with this this whole whole talk topic of local, they’re things that are sort of getting buried a little bit in the conversation.

AI and all of this other stuff just takes over the room. And nobody’s sitting there and saying, okay, but listen, it’s fine if you’re showing up and it’s fine if you’re getting all this traffic. But is your website doing what your user wants it to do? And is that actually bringing you the business that you want? Or are you just getting a whole bunch of vanity traffic that doesn’t even matter and maybe is actually detrimental because it’s just wasting your time? so and the other reason I wanted to bring this up is it.

Because when I landed on your website, the home page front and center on your site says marketing agency in Marietta, Georgia. And I almost always use an example like this when I’m talking to law firms about, from a user perspective, what not to do. So I wanted to ask you what the what what’s why you chose that? And why why does it feel like

Tyler Henn (31:19.824)
Mm-hmm.

Karin (31:22.643)
you’re speaking to the bots and the AI there as opposed to the user. And and maybe this is in I well, I’m sure it’s intentional, but how are you speaking to that user, that human there? And and how is that working?

Tyler Henn (31:38.843)
So it’s it’s very much Google forward. So I wanna I definitely want Google to understand exactly what each page on my website is for and how everything works together. And so a lot of there’s this thing that people do on home pages that kind of drives me crazy where they try to do some like really inspirational quote as their H1, like, the future is here and and we’re gonna revolutionize your thing. And it’s like that’s really cute, but Google has no idea what you do now. And so

Karin (31:42.088)
Yeah.

Karin (31:58.907)
Yes.

Karin (32:06.793)
And now it’s a waste.

Tyler Henn (32:08.632)
And it and it’s a waste. And so I I try to make it as blatantly obvious as possible what every single page. And so if you scrolled through my site, you would have seen branding design services in Marietta, Georgia. You would have seen website design in Marietta, Georgia. And and on the on the human side, it also lets people know that I’m right down the street if they look me up locally. And so I I try to to cut out all the the cutesy fluff stuff on on websites and let I want

Karin (32:27.059)
Yes, yeah.

Tyler Henn (32:36.9)
I want the user to as soon as they land there say, Okay, I’m in the right place. I landed on brand design in Marietta, Georgia. I live in Marietta, Georgia, and I need brand design. This guy says he does it. So let’s read the rest of the page.

Karin (32:40.03)
Yes.

Karin (32:47.911)
I feel like there’s there’s this constant balance between speaking to Google and speaking to the human. And what I hear you saying, and correct me if this is wrong, but with that H1, because you you the H1 is the largest text on the main part of your page, on any given page of your website. And you use it once. And so from from what I’m hearing you say, is this is high

high demand, high important text and I’m mainly giving it to Google in this case. And then I’m expecting people to have an importance in the local side. Whereas for someone like me, I do not focus on local. My clients are literally all over the world. And so this would not be the same approach I would take because it’s a t I’m looking for someone totally different. But for you, your approach is very focused on that local. So you’re leading with that in that one

Tyler Henn (33:36.794)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Karin (33:45.446)
H1 moment that you get. so where do you I’m sure that when you first get clients, you see them making a lot of mistakes in terms of whatever their goals are and their focus. And they’re gonna be across the spectrum like you and I are. So where do you see people making mistakes on their website in relation to how it plays out locally or, you know, with their AI search?

Tyler Henn (33:48.624)
Mm-hmm.

Tyler Henn (34:09.902)
Yeah, I mean, one of the biggest mistakes I see, like I said, would be like a cute thing on the homepage instead of saying like exactly what you are and what you do. and then right below that, you well, okay, here, here’s a a funny example too is like a lot of the times you’ll land on someone’s homepage, let’s say like a a painting company that’s been around for 20 years and is family owned, and they start telling the story of how their grandma started this company and she was so nice and awesome and and but what people don’t

Karin (34:15.529)
Yeah.

Karin (34:33.565)
Yes. Yep.

Tyler Henn (34:38.424)
realize or think about is that when someone lands on your website, they don’t care about your grandma. Like maybe, maybe they will down the line after they hire you, but people are very selfish by nature. And when I land on a website, I want to know what can you do for me? Like that’s great about your grandma, but when how cheap or or what price are you going to paint my house for and do you do a good job? And so the number one most important thing on on a homepage for me, besides the H1 and and targeting a partic particular keyword.

Karin (34:52.573)
Yes, yeah.

Karin (34:59.188)
Yes.

Tyler Henn (35:07.94)
would be right below that hero page and or it in the hero section and in the hero section as well, making sure that person understands that they are in the right place. So like an example of that for a personal injury attorney could be, you just got in a crash and and you’re lost and confused and you don’t know what to do. We’ve got you covered. Like something like that, you know. And so

Karin (35:17.897)
Yeah, yeah.

Karin (35:28.361)
Yep. Yes. And I see this all the time where there’s there is some named partner in the firm who does pull in a lot of business because they’re well known in the community. So that would be similar to what you’re talking about, the grandma who started the f the business that you’re describing, or this named partner. And it’s not that that’s not important because that is part of the story, and maybe they do have a lot of referrals and their name is well known.

But that’s just not what you lead with. And so you may have them like right in that second section. But the first thing is that problem that they’re there for, like you’re describing. The first thing is the car accident or whatever it is that they are seeking your services for is what you lead with. And then if you do have this one named person that is super important to your book of business and you, you know, obviously know this just based on.

Tyler Henn (36:01.105)
Mm-hmm.

Karin (36:28.425)
history and the number of calls they get and all of that stuff, then that is there. And we’re not saying not to talk about them, but just not maybe, maybe that’s second. Maybe that’s down like right underneath that the problem section. okay. We have so much other stuff that we could talk about. but we have to get to the book review and some of this other stuff too. so I if you haven’t

Checked out the show, which I’m sure you have, because you know, everybody here is, you know, a longtime listener and subscriber. but there is a Thought Leaders Library section on the website with all the books that all of the guests have recommended. So, Tyler, what is the book? Because I know this also ties into everything that we’re talking about too. What’s the book that you’re gonna recommend for the library today?

Tyler Henn (37:13.828)
Yeah, so the book that I would recommend would be Don’t Make Me Think by Stephen Krug. And what is it what it’s about, they they forced all of us UX students to read this in college and and I’m glad that they did because it’s I mean I could almost save you the read because the the whole principle of it is, you know, if somebody lands on your digital product, and in this case we’ll we’ll say website, if at if at any point, even for a moment, they wonder, hey, I wonder what will what will happen if I click this button.

Karin (37:43.614)
Yes.

Tyler Henn (37:43.682)
Or hey, I wonder what will what this company does. You’ve already lost them. And so the whole concept is you don’t ever want to make your users have to think about, you know, how something works, what something does, or what something means. Yeah, exactly.

Karin (37:46.985)
Yep. Yep.

Karin (37:56.18)
What’s happening next. Yeah. Yep. You tell them like in the button instead of just click here, like the never have a button say click here. The button should say get your download here or click here to go to the contact page or you know, s some shorter version of that. and I mentioned to you before we started recording that there’s a book that I always reference that’s similar. It’s a Seth Godin book called The Purple Cow. And this is

Tyler Henn (38:06.041)
Mm-hmm.

Karin (38:25.759)
This goes way, way back before AI, before like even WordPress, I want to say. This is like when websites were HTML. And his basic premise there is I the book is called The Purple Cow, but for some reason he says that the your user should be like a monkey. And picture them like a monkey that and you give them one banana on every single page. And so you have this hierarchy of the way that the information information is structured.

The banana should be the biggest button and it should have the highest contrast and you know, can it can go into all the design theory around that? But and it should be very clear. Like when I click on this banana, it I know what’s gonna happen. I’m gonna either go to a contact page or whatever, and you can have secondary calls to action, which is what we’re talking about. The main banana is your call to action.

but they are not gonna have the same amount of weight or importance design-wise on, you know, so the reason I wanted to jump into this book review is because we’re still talking about user experience, the UX, and how important that is in terms of making all this stuff happen. And so how do we tie in that sort of UX user experience and the book with local search? How does this all kind of come together?

Tyler Henn (39:47.461)
Yeah, yeah. So I I have like two examples that come to mind immediately. and so like the first one is I use a tool called Post Hog. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it. but it it’s unbelievable. I can’t even we don’t have enough time for me to tell you everything that it does. But the main things that I use it for are you can actually watch session replays of people interacting on your site, like literally a screen recording of them on your site. And so, and it’ll tell you if they’re like rage clicking or like

Karin (39:51.263)
Perfect.

Karin (39:56.297)
No.

Karin (40:09.551)
awesome. Nice.

Tyler Henn (40:15.524)
Trying to click on something that’s not actually a button and you’re like, okay, I should make that look less like a button. Or they might be clicking on a button. Yeah, they’re they’re mad, or or they might be clicking on a button that’s actually not doing something. So like I’ve we’ve run into stuff before where we’re like a customer will come to me and say, Hey, my meta ads are getting a ton of clicks and people are going to my site, but I’m not just not getting any forms. And then come to find out that their submit button doesn’t work. So people are just leaving after trying to

Karin (40:20.243)
Yeah, they’re mad. Yeah.

Karin (40:41.864)
Yeah.

Tyler Henn (40:44.154)
Trying to submit stuff. And so it’s really good for stuff like that. And then also just watching, like you can break down steps of a funnel. So like you can have it track, like, okay, they landed on the site, they started the form, they went to the next step, they didn’t hit submit. Okay, why did they not hit submit? Let’s go watch the recording and see. the button’s broken. but you can you can break down all kinds of stuff there. and then like just from a Google standpoint, with good UX.

Karin (40:58.131)
And something happened there. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay.

Tyler Henn (41:11.454)
we always want to make sure that we’re satisfying search intent. and it goes back to like some of the examples that I gave earlier, where it’s like if you need a new roof and you click on to a roofing company’s site and they’re talking about mini golf, like you’re gonna leave because you’re like, What yeah, or or or their grandma, you’re like, Okay, that’s nice, but I’m gonna go to someone who wants to sell me a roof. and so you know.

Karin (41:23.581)
Yeah. Or the grandma. Yeah.

Karin (41:33.204)
And I think it’s more like that, that kind of case where like you’re talking about it, but you’re talking about it in a more obtuse way where you think you’re talking about it in the right way because you’re talking about your grandma. But what you’re describing is really lining up that content to what they’re actually searching for. So if they are searching for gutter cleaning in Marietta, Georgia, and then you land on it and it talks about, okay, in 1952, my grandma started this.

and then way down somewhere in the page it mentions gutter cleaning, they’re gone. They’re already gone by this point. so clean it up basically is is the solution. Like line up that question with the, you know, the the answer that you’re providing. Yeah.

Tyler Henn (42:08.974)
Mm-hmm.

Tyler Henn (42:22.446)
Yeah, absolutely. yeah, we just always want to make sure we’re satisfying search intent. and so that’s that’s definitely a part of of the user’s experience, which is is what we design. so yeah, it’s very cool.

Karin (42:32.925)
Nice. Okay. All right. I feel like there was a lot of stuff that we didn’t even get to that we could have, you know, made this like a three hour show, but neither of us want to do that today. Yeah, exactly. But let’s talk about what okay, so people have listened to this, they’ve l heard us talk about the AI and that local search, and then a lot about user experience and the UX and all of that good stuff. What is the first thing that after listening to this episode, someone should do sit down and

Tyler Henn (42:42.36)
I know. Maybe a maybe a part two in the future.

Karin (43:02.737)
and do because like we’ve covered a lot of different things and maybe maybe you could you know, it doesn’t have to be one thing. Maybe there’s a couple of things they should be doing with with all the things we talked about.

Tyler Henn (43:09.776)
Mm-hmm.

Tyler Henn (43:13.156)
Yeah. go look at your Google business profile and make sure that you have answered all the questions. there’s also like what what kind of parking do you offer? Like garage parking, wheelchair accessible parking, all that stuff. It’s like it’s ideal for you to have wheelchair accessible parking, but if you don’t have it, just answer no. Like Google will appreciate it. It’s okay. if you don’t speak Africa cons, answer no. and then there’s a lot of languages on there, and there’s like what? Yeah, I don’t think anyone speaks that, but

Karin (43:24.337)
nice. Yeah.

Karin (43:39.188)
Yeah.

Yeah. There’s probably a couple left.

Tyler Henn (43:42.909)
and then yeah, yeah, yeah. but and then the other thing would be make sure that all of your services, well, first of all, make sure you actually have a lot of services because a lot of my clients when they started with me had one category and one service. Well, guess what? Google thinks you do one thing. So, like you’re not so if you only say that you do roof repair, Google may not recommend you for roof replacement. and so try to get to that. Yeah.

Karin (43:57.94)
Yeah, yeah. Yep.

Karin (44:07.357)
Yeah. Or the gutter cleaning or yeah. Yeah.

Tyler Henn (44:11.288)
And especially gutter cleaning, like yeah. So make sure you have, I mean, at least two categories and try to get to 30 services and put descriptive descriptions for each service and talk about the area that you perform that service in, preferably the the city that your Google business profile’s verified in. that alone can move the needle depending on on the niche and and where you’re located.

Karin (44:36.051)
Amazing. I feel like this is really I said this in the beginning, but I, you know, just want to repeat. I feel like it’s a really underplayed side of things. And I don’t understand why. Like it makes so much sense that you would tie this in and then obviously that some of these elements are changing, but I d I don’t know. Throughout our conversation, I feel like a lot of this has really stayed the same. There’s just a few little tweaks that we’re making for AI, but you know.

Tyler Henn (44:59.279)
Mm-hmm.

Karin (45:03.097)
Overall, the vast majority is similar. So that almost makes it easier and more comfortable to know that, like, okay, what we were doing last year, five years ago, you know, we’re gonna take a similar but better approach. so but I think it’s just getting lost in the weeds with all of the other stuff that people are focusing on. And it’s it’s n not in a good way. Like it’s at a detriment to a lot of firms. So I it’s such an important conversation.

And then that combined with user experience and making sure that you’re pulling people through to your website that is also like doing what it’s supposed to be doing. That’s such a good recipe for success and something to focus on that’s actually gonna, like you said, move the needle. So thank you so much for being here. Tyler Henn is the founder of Hen House Digital Growth Studio in Marietta, Georgia, as it says right front and center on his homepage. Thank you so much for being here.

Tyler Henn (45:58.99)
Yeah, thank you so much. That was a lot of fun.