Why Local SEO for Law Firms Is More Critical Than Ever

John McDougall explains why local SEO is more critical than ever for law firms as AI-driven search leans on map results and Google Business Profiles. They discuss how reviews, Q&A posts, photos, videos and detailed services all signal experience and trust to Google’s algorithms, and how to align your profile with your website practice areas. You’ll also hear practical tips for generating AI-assisted posts and building a consistent cadence that keeps your firm ahead of less active competitors.

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John Maher: Welcome to AI SEO for Law firms, the podcast that cuts through the tech noise to give you the exact roadmap for dominating search everywhere optimization, and landing high value cases. From McDougall Interactive, I’m John Maher, and with me today is our founder, John McDougall. Today we’re talking about why local SEO for law firms is more critical than ever. Welcome, John.

John McDougall: Good morning, John.

Why Local SEO Matters Even More in the AI Era

Maher: So John, in the age of AI, is local SEO still important for law firms?

McDougall: Yeah, more important than ever, really, because it’s very bottom of the funnel. When people are searching now, often the basic AI answers are kind of cluttering up the results, but when they’re looking locally, you see the map listings. Robby Stein, the VP of Google Search, I just saw this morning a cool interview with him, and he was saying they’re using Google Business Profile as data points. So, the AI is looking at your Google Business profile for lots of information about you, so you’ve got to fill it out and have that together, or you’re really hurting your chances of coming up in AI.

How Google Business Profiles Became Core AI Trust Signals

Maher: So how has the Google Business Profile’s role changed from what used to be maybe a simple listing of your business with its address and phone number, maybe a few pictures, to a primary answer source for Google’s AI?

McDougall: Again, it’s kind of like your source of trust, especially in “your money or your life” categories, like law and finance. If you don’t look trustworthy, like a good Contact page on your website, a picture of your building, a real address, a full Google Business Profile, just blog content isn’t enough to signal trust, so that’s one of the big things, is it is that source of trust.

How Review Text and Sentiment Influence Legal Rankings

Maher: And why is the actual text inside a client review of your firm now more important to Google’s AI than maybe even the five-star rating itself?

McDougall: AI is able to look at huge amounts of data points, right? Even Amazon reviews. But they’re looking at your Google Business Profile reviews for the keywords and the sentiment of what’s in there. Again, I think Robby Stein of Google was just talking about that as well, and if you want to see that YouTube video, I think Silicon Valley Girl was the woman that interviewed him. It was really, really good, but he was saying AI is scanning into not just your profile, but what people are saying in the Google reviews, so if there are keywords in there…for us, for example, when we ask people for reviews, we’d say, “You might mention ‘they helped us with AI SEO, and our Google rankings went up'” as opposed to, I think we have one Google Review that someone just said, “Great service.”

Maher: Right. That’s not going to tell AI much about what you do.

McDougall: Right. I love the ones, “Yeah. We were really struggling with Google ranking, and McDougall Interactive came in and helped us with our AI SEO, and we went through the roof. Now we’re ranking in Google Gemini and ChatGPT”, etc. That kind of keyword rich conversation is good, and you really want to reply to those reviews too, and you can put keywords in there. You don’t want to spam it. You don’t want to be like 1990s SEO about it, but at the same time, you don’t want to not do that, so it’s a matter of, from a practical standpoint, paying attention to those things and executing them reasonably and consistently.

But again, don’t say, “Oh. Give us a star rating. We just need lots of five stars,” or you say, “Great, great law firm.” No. Get more specific, down to even the practice area in the reviews.

Using Q&A-Style Google Posts to Feed AI Overviews

Maher: Okay, what is this new Q&A-based strategy for Google Posts, and how does that actively feed answers into Google’s AI overviews?

McDougall: So, that’s very similar. If you ask a question, and you can actually do this yourself on your own Google Business Profile. It seems a little spammy, but I just did it the other day for us. I asked a question like, “What are some good keyword tools for AI SEO for law firms?” Then, you can answer that, “Oh. Answer the Public, SEMRush, Ahrefs, etc.,” and that, like the review, has keywords and conversation. AI, again, being very good at looking at huge volumes of data, is looking at the conversations that are happening on your Google Business Profile, like you answering customer’s questions, or even your own question, and they’re using that to judge your experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness, and just what your topical focus is.

Proving EEAT with Photos and Videos on Your Profile

Maher: I think a lot of firms might just have thrown up a few pictures, years ago, and then left it alone. How can a law firm now use photos and videos, even on its profile, to prove its EEAT to Google — its expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trust?

McDougall: Well, number one, just use them, because it’s pretty common for companies, law firms, even agencies to just kind of be asleep at the wheel. We’ve done it at times, especially early on. It’s like you fill out the Google Business Profile, and then it’s kind of like a checkbox, like get some consistent name, address, phone number listings, and fill it out. Then, it’s easy to want to just move on and focus on blogging and all that, but you really need to take Google Business Profile much more seriously in this day and age, in my opinion, because if it is this source of trust for AI, then having images, videos, posting regularly on it puts all those keywords and shows your experience, and again, what your topical focus is to the AI. You’re sending a very clear signal to Google with activity in those various formats.

Optimizing Products and Services for Legal Practice Areas

Maher: And how should a law firm use the products and services sections in the Google Business Profile to dominate searches for its specific niche practice areas?

McDougall: Yeah, so you can list your services, and you should. Again, it’s one of those things. Some people just fill out a basic description of their law firm and maybe put a category of law firm. Very generic. You want to be more specific than that. Put your actual different practice areas, various services that you offer. Then, you can put products as well. Products doesn’t have to be like a T-shirt. You can have a free consultation or something like that as a product and link to a landing page on your website from the “edit product, add product” part of Google Business Profile, so it’s a matter of just making use of the different features when you log in to edit your Google Business Profile, add a service, add a product. Go do those things, and it will send more signals to the algorithm.

First Steps to Make Your Google Business Profile AI-Ready

Maher: And then, finally, what is one action that a law firm could take today to make their Google Business Profile ready for the age of AI, or at least get started and going in the right direction?

McDougall: So, number one is fill it out completely, like a full, robust, Google Business Profile. Look at what your competitors are doing. You can even make a little spreadsheet, and we have a template for this. If you email us, we’ll give you a template to compare your site to other law firms, and what are they putting in their Google Business Profile and their description? How many service pages do they have, etc.? So you want to go and fill it out completely.

Then, also align it with your website. So Google is looking at the Google Business Profile as a signal, but then it’s looking at your website, especially helpful if you’re also linking from, even if it’s once a week or once a month if you had to, but once a week posting on Google Business Profile and linking over to your website, where there should be the same services, practice areas, that you’re mentioning on Google Business Profile should be on your website, of course, and then connected to an attorney for each of those practice areas.

So, if you are making a post on Google Business Profile and linking to a blog post, who wrote that? There should be an author bio, a specific attorney, and that can link to the practice area page that that attorney is part of, maybe to “case studies”, so it’s about interconnecting your website content and your Google Business Profile services and content to send that clear signal of what your topical focus and what your law firm does.

Lastly, one quick tip is, I think it’s reasonable to use AI, not to just generate blog content, like AI slop, but I think, for Google Business Profile, I don’t see any reason not to have it generate, say, in the minimal, the least you can do, of course, but a good start, is have AI generate a dozen Google Business Profile posts, and then you can go in and schedule them to go live once a month.

At least if you’re going live with an AI-driven little blurb, a post maybe linking to one of your blog posts or a practice area page, and if a Google post happens on Google Business Profile even once a month, that’s better than the next guy that’s not doing that, because a lot of people are just, again, they fill out the profile and then they just forget about it, and they think, “Well, we’ve got to get more reviews,” but that’s not all there is to it.

Even a once-a-month cadence would be a positive signal to the algorithm, as opposed to whenever you get to it. So that is a really easy takeaway like, “Hey, ChatGPT or Google Gemini, give me a dozen, relevant, short Google Business Profile posts”, and then get them scheduled, and you’re off and running. I mean, that’s obviously the bare minimum, but that’s so easy that I would just go do that right away.

Maher: All right. Well, that’s great information, John. Thanks again for speaking with me today.

McDougall: Yeah.

Maher: And thanks for joining us on AI SEO for Law Firms. If you’re ready to stop losing high value cases because of outdated SEO, subscribe and follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. And for a deeper look at your firm’s current AI strategy, visit mcdougallinteractive.com for a free audit.