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Search Engine Land » SEO » SEO and meta descriptions: Everything you need to know in 2025
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Meta descriptions are crucial in shaping how search engines and users perceive your content. 
While meta descriptions don’t directly impact search rankings, they can significantly influence user engagement, click-through rates (CTR) and, ultimately, a site’s SEO performance. 
Meta descriptions are often the first interaction potential visitors have with a website, making it essential to create informative and enticing descriptions. 
Just as you would carefully choose words when introducing yourself at a networking event, the same attention should be given to crafting your meta descriptions.
As search engines continue to prioritize user experience, particularly with the rapid advancements in AI and semantic search, 2025 marks an ideal time to give meta descriptions the attention they deserve. 
A well-crafted meta description can be the deciding factor that drives clicks to your site instead of your competition. 
This article covers everything you need to know about meta descriptions in 2025, including:
Let’s start with on-page SEO basics.
Metadata refers to the snippets of information that provide context to a webpage’s content. It helps search engines understand what a page is about, assisting in indexing and improving search result relevance.
Your meta description is one of these elements. It isn’t visible on the content page itself, but it could be visible in the search results as a search snippet.
Although meta descriptions are not a direct ranking factor, they significantly encourage users to click on a result. 
A good meta description should be concise (around 150-160 characters), informative and compelling, making it clear what the user can expect from the page. 
It should spark curiosity and provide a reason to click, indirectly benefiting SEO by improving CTR.
Search engines like Google monitor how users interact with search results. If your meta description is enticing enough to generate clicks, it signals to the search engine that your page is relevant and engaging, potentially improving its ranking indirectly.
With advancements in semantic search algorithms, meta descriptions must convey context, not just keywords. 
Implementing structured data (like schema markup) further helps search engines understand the content’s meaning, linking it to broader concepts or entities. This can help improve rankings for long-tail or voice search queries.
Metadata plays a pivotal role in SEO, user engagement and your website’s overall visibility. 
While it may seem like a small detail in the grander scheme of SEO, well-optimized metadata can make a significant difference in:
Let’s take a deep dive into the best practices for writing effective meta descriptions.
The ideal length for a meta description is around 150-160 characters. Any longer and Google may truncate it.
Although Google sometimes rewrites descriptions based on the search query, keeping yours within this limit ensures more control over how your page is presented.
A good meta description should clearly address the intent behind the user’s search query. 
Consider what the user is looking for and how your page can solve or answer that problem. This helps increase relevance and the likelihood of a click.
While keywords in the meta description don’t directly affect rankings, they will be bolded in SERPs when they match the user’s search query. 
This bolding can make your listing stand out, so it’s a good idea to include relevant keywords without overstuffing.
A meta description can include a soft call to action. Phrases like “Learn more,” “Find out how” or “Get started today” can gently encourage users to click your link.
Leaving a bit of mystery can pique curiosity and encourage users to click. 
For example, hint at the information they’ll find on your page instead of explaining everything in your meta description. This tactic is particularly effective for informational searches.
For large sites like ecommerce platforms, manually writing unique meta descriptions for every product can be challenging. 
In such cases, dynamic meta descriptions that pull key information such as product names, categories and prices can be useful. However, ensure these are still readable and make sense to users.
Although not strictly metadata, structured data (schema markup) can enhance your metadata by providing additional context to search engines.
Implementing schema can result in rich snippets, such as product reviews or recipe cards, which can improve your listing’s visibility in SERPs.
Optimizing metadata is not a one-time task. Over time, as user behavior and search algorithms evolve, so should your metadata. 
Regularly review your pages’ performance, tweak the metadata as needed, and A/B test different versions to see what works best for your audience.
Several common mistakes can undermine your efforts in writing compelling meta descriptions. Here are the key things to avoid when optimizing for search engines and users.
While cramming as many keywords as possible into your meta description may be tempting, this is a major mistake. 
It can harm your performance rather than improve it. Moreover, keyword-stuffed content tends to read poorly, leading to lower user engagement and click-through rates. ​
Your meta description should clearly reflect the content of the page. 
Misleading or vague information might increase clicks initially, but it can lead to low engagement rates when users realize the content doesn’t match their expectations. 
This mismatch hurts your SEO in the long run, as search engines track how quickly users leave your page.
Using the same meta description across multiple pages dilutes the effectiveness of your metadata. 
Every page on your site should have unique metadata that accurately reflects the content of that specific page.
Duplicate metadata can confuse search engines and negatively impact your SEO, as it reduces the perceived uniqueness and relevance of your pages​.
Google typically shortens meta descriptions longer than 160 characters, which can result in important information being “cut off,” reducing the clarity and appeal of your listing.
Keeping descriptions within recommended character limits ensures that users can see the entire message in search results​.
As more users rely on mobile devices and voice search, it’s essential to optimize for these formats. 
Avoid overly complex or technical language and aim for a conversational tone that matches the more natural, query-based language of voice search​.
Your meta descriptions should be designed with the searcher’s intent in mind. Failing to match user intent can result in fewer clicks or mismatched traffic. 
For example, if your page addresses informational queries, the meta description should reflect that by providing clarity and inviting the user to learn more. 
Ignoring user intent means your page is less likely to resonate with the target audience​.
Search engines now place a strong emphasis on context and intent rather than just keywords. 
Avoid focusing exclusively on keywords without considering the overall relevance to the page’s content and the user’s search query. You should provide value and context, not just keyword signals​.
Your meta descriptions should evolve as your content changes and as SEO best practices are updated. 
Failing to update them, especially on older content, can result in outdated information, which affects user experience and, therefore, search engine ranking. 
Regularly auditing and refreshing your descriptions as you update content across a website helps keep them relevant and effective.​
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If you follow all these tips and avoid the pitfalls, you should always see your carefully crafted meta description in the SERPs, right? 
Unfortunately not. While this may seem concerning when it happens, it’s not necessarily something to worry about. 
Depending on which study you look at, you’ll soon see that Google rewrites somewhere between 60% and 70% of all meta descriptions.
Considering Google’s goal to deliver the most relevant and useful information to searchers, it makes perfect sense that they would do this. Here are some key reasons why:
Dig deeper: Google shares 4 examples of how to improve a meta description
While seeing Google alter your metadata can be disconcerting, it’s usually done to improve the overall user experience and to better match the search intent. 
Google’s primary focus is delivering the most helpful results to users. 
If Google adjusts your description, it’s usually a signal that they’re trying to align your page with the specific needs of searchers. 
In many cases, these rewrites improve click-through rates (CTR) by making the result more relevant to the query​.
Google now increasingly delivers personalized and dynamic search results. 
Factors such as location, device, or search history can affect the description shown. 
Depending on the context, Google may adjust it for certain queries but still use your original version for others.
Even if Google sometimes rewrites your meta description, following best practices for SEO is still essential. 
A well-optimized meta description that clearly describes your content and incorporates relevant keywords will often remain intact, especially when they closely align with user intent.
As SEO and search technologies continue to evolve, 2025 brings several noteworthy changes to how meta descriptions are used and perceived by search engines, particularly Google. 
Here are the key changes to be aware of in 2025.
With advancements in AI, search engines are becoming more sophisticated in understanding context, meaning and user intent. 
Google is increasingly rewriting meta descriptions dynamically to better match users’ search queries and provide more relevant results. 
This shift began in recent years, but by 2025, AI-generated meta descriptions and title tags will become more prevalent.
This trend will expand, with search engines taking more liberty in rewriting meta descriptions on the fly based on the user’s specific query, location and intent.
The era of lexical search is over. Google is a semantic search engine.
This means Google places less emphasis on exact keywords in meta descriptions and more on understanding the meaning behind search queries.
For 2025, you must reflect this shift by focusing on intent-based, conversational phrases rather than rigid keyword optimization.
To adapt:
Structured data will continue to be critical in helping search engines understand your page’s content and display rich results.
Google increasingly rewards websites that implement structured data, allowing them to appear with rich snippets, such as how-tos and reviews.
In 2025, the SERPs will be more influenced by user engagement metrics such as click-through rates, time spent on the page and engagement rates. 
Google is becoming smarter at gauging whether your meta descriptions are drawing in users and keeping them engaged. 
If they aren’t, Google may continue rewriting them to boost performance.
For local businesses, using structured data and optimizing meta descriptions with location-based keywords and clear contact information will become even more important. 
By 2025, local results may rely more on AI to show meta descriptions tailored to the searcher’s specific area and intent.
Effective meta description strategies in 2025 will need to align closely with AI, user intent and semantic search. 
While core best practices remain essential, emphasis will shift to:
Success will come from creating user-focused, context-rich descriptions that go beyond keywords to fully address search intent and improve the overall search experience.
Dig deeper: The complete guide to optimizing content for SEO (with checklist)
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This week, we covered that Google told creators that a new search ranking update is coming fairly soon, but you shouldn’t expect to recover with this update. Google is now downgrading the rankings of content that is starkly different from the main content of the site. Google said again that it is doubtful you’d see big ranking declines over core web vital issues. Google AI Overviews is rolling out to 100+ countries and over a billion users. OpenAI started to roll out search in ChatGPT. Google Search ranking volatility was heated again last week, including some spooky ranking changes. Google updated its URL structure documentation and favicon documentation and added new Google Trends documentation. Google is testing a frequently saved label and also testing snippets with mentioned products carousels. Google has trust scores in its knowledge panels. Google Ads rep made unauthorized changes to an ad account; it is a big deal. Google Ads recommendation for raising your budget is improved. Google Ads has new conversion reports with sales and leads tabs. Google Ads has a new business links asset type. Google Ads will sunset call ads next year. Google is testing scrollable ad categories. Bing is testing hiding its ad label again. Bing is testing a new local knowledge panel design. Google Maps released a bunch of Gemini AI-powered features. Google Business Profiles is testing reviews within the photos carousel. Google and Microsoft both reported high earnings reports, with ad revenue still on the incline. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.
Sponsor: BruceClay one of the founding fathers of the SEO space, doing search marketing optimization since 1996. Bruce Clay is big into SEO training, check out seotraining.com to learn more and check them out at bruceclay.com. Also, check out their new product, Prewriter.ai – this tool empowers writers to write better and more efficiently, so check it out.
Make sure to subscribe to our video feed or subscribe directly on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or your favorite podcast player to be notified of these updates and download the video in the background. Here is the YouTube version of the feed. For the original iTunes version, click here
Search Topics of Discussion:

• 0:00 – Introduction
• 1:00 – Google: Search Ranking Update Coming Soon But HCU Victims May Not Recover
• 2:41 – Google Search Downgrading Rankings Of Content Starkly Different From Main Content
• 3:35 – Google: Doubtful You’d See Big Ranking Drop Over Core Web Vitals Issues
• 3:47 – Google AI Overviews Rolling Out To 100+ Countries & Billion+ Users
• 4:07 – OpenAI Releases ChatGPT Search
• 4:49 – Halloween 2024 Google Search Ranking Update
• 5:11 – Google Search Ranking Volatility Again On October 26th & 27th & 23rd & 24th
• 5:18 – Google Updates URL Structure, Favicon & Adds Google Trends Docs
• 5:29 – Google Tests Frequently Saved Label On Search Result Snippets
• 5:42 – Google Search Snippet With Mentioned Products Carousel
• 5:57 – Google Search Entity Trust Scores From APIVoid & ScamAdviser
• 6:19 – Confirmed: Google Ad Rep Made Unauthorized Changes To Ad Account
• 6:53 – Google Ads Raise Your Budgets Recommendation Gains Information
• 7:17 – Google Ads New Sales & Leads Conversion Reports
• 7:24 – New Google Ads Business Links Asset Type
• 7:33 – Google To Sunset Call Ads; Migrating To Responsive Search Ads
• 8:03 – Google Tests Scrollable Search Ads Categories
• 8:15 – Bing Tests Hiding Ads Labels After Domain
• 8:38 – Bing Tests New Local Knowledge Panel Design
• 8:46 – Google AI Answers In Google Maps: Things To Do, Review Summaries & About This Place
• 9:22 – Google Business Profiles Testing Reviews Within Photo Carousels
• 9:38 – Google Menu Highlights Search Carousel
• 9:51 – Google Ad Revenue Up 10% – With Biggest Ad Revenue Quarter Ever
• 10:10 – Microsoft Bing Advertising Revenue Up 18%
• 10:20 – Conclusion

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Google has removed the ability to listen to podcasts directly from search results, which may indicate a shift to promote podcasts on YouTube.
Google has quietly removed embedded podcasts from search results, which means users will no longer be able to listen to podcast episodes directly from the SERPs.
This change was first spotted by Podnews, who received confirmation from a Google spokesperson that the removal was intentional.
This change will affect the ability to listen to individual podcast episodes without leaving Google, a feature that was launched in 2019.
Google will still include links to podcast episodes in search results, but users cannot listen to them directly from the search page.
Instead, users will be directed to the website where the podcast is hosted.
The decision to remove embedded podcasts from search results was made to provide a better user experience, according to a Google spokesperson.
“We’re constantly experimenting with ways to improve the experience for our users,” the spokesperson says in a statement to Podnews.
It’s unclear how this improves the user experience other than creating a leaner SERP.
Although Google didn’t give any prior notice, removing embedded podcasts from search results isn’t unexpected since the Google Podcasts app hasn’t been updated for 18 months.
The move will likely be met with some disappointment from searchers who routinely use the feature.
On the other hand, this change could result in more individuals subscribing to podcasts as they will no longer be able to listen to them through a quick search.
Google’s decision to remove embedded podcasts from search results might be part of a larger strategy to phase out the Google Podcasts product.
The fact that the app hasn’t been updated for over a year indicates that it may be headed for the Google graveyard.
However, this doesn’t imply that Google is abandoning the podcast industry altogether.
In 2021, a report from Bloomberg revealed that YouTube sought to hire someone to oversee its podcasting business.
This suggests that Google is committed to enhancing the podcast experience on YouTube, and the company may not want to compete against itself in that area.
Per a 2022 study conducted by Edison Research, YouTube is the leading platform for podcast listening, followed closely by Spotify.
That said, it makes sense why YouTube is the priority for Google for podcasts.
It’s worth noting that YouTube achieved this level of popularity without having a specific podcast category.
Before August, YouTube didn’t have a specific podcast category. Users had to search for them manually.
If Google discontinues its Podcasts app, the company will likely shift its focus to YouTube. This could mean that a YouTube Podcasts app is on the horizon.
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Matt G. Southern, Senior News Writer, has been with Search Engine Journal since 2013. With a bachelor’s degree in communications, …
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"To effectively leverage GEO, law firms should create high-quality content that directly addresses your audience’s questions and is optimized for AI processing," writes 9Sail founder Joseph Giovannoli.
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The online search environment is changing rapidly, fueled by the rise of artificial intelligence-driven search engines like ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Perplexity. This means that traditional search engine optimization (SEO) techniques alone are no longer sufficient to ensure that your law firm appears in all relevant search results. To stay competitive, law firms must embrace the next evolution in search marketing: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).
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Gyi Tsakalakis founded AttorneySync because lawyers deserve better from their marketing people. As a non-practicing lawyer, Gyi…
After leading marketing efforts for Avvo, Conrad Saam left and founded Mockingbird Marketing, an online marketing agency…
Conrad and Gyi take an early look at Clio’s foray into website design and the connection between lawyers and ramen noodles. Plus, some quick takeaways from the brand new 2022 Clio Legal Trends Report.
Continuing its effort to be your law firm’s one-stop shop, Clio is now entering the website design and hosting arena. Is Clio’s new offering, which specializes in sites for lawyers and seamlessly integrates with the Clio universe, going to be the answer to getting your firm out there on the web? Will all its bells and whistles get you noticed, get you to the top of SEO rankings, and bring in clients? The guys share their appreciations and hesitations on Clio’s new service, and how it compares to website builders in general.
And then, it’s time to get Econ nerdy. We all see what’s going on with the markets these days, and all feel the rising costs. Maybe you haven’t quite yet started swapping out your nice flank steak for a can of Spam and your linguine alle vongole for a bowl of ramen, but you’re feeling that grocery bill just a bit more. The guys get into how lawyers should be thinking about their pricing as buying power goes down and the demand for legal services, counterintuitively, goes up.
Plus, important insights from the new, 2022, Clio Legal Trends report. What are the most important things to a potential client? Survey says: you’ll have to listen to find out!
The News:
Special thanks to our sponsors CallRail and Clio.
Intro:  Before we get started, we want to thank our sponsors.  Clio, Laya, Posh Virtual Receptionist and NODA.
Conrad Saam:  Hey Gyi, how was Nashville man?
Gyi Tsakalakis:  Amazing.
Conrad Saam:  All right.  Can you tell our good listeners what you’re doing in the City of Bachelorette Parties?
Gyi Tsakalakis:  I was at the Magnificent Clio Cloud Conference 2022.  One of my not-to-be-missed conferences at the Gaylord Opryland Resort.  You ever been there?
Conrad Saam:  I have not.
Gyi Tsakalakis:  It’s hard to describe.  Bob Ambrose does a nice job of trying to articulate it at LawNext.  So, check out his review, but it is quite a spectacle.  Indoor water parks, they got a river, a boat.
Conrad Saam:  You’ve got a river?
Gyi Tsakalakis:  Inside a river.  It’s kind of like if Disney World was all inside.
Conrad Saam:  And country.
Gyi Tsakalakis:  And Country and Vegas Hotel kind of, I don’t know.  There’s a lot going on in there.  It’s a heck of a thing.
Conrad Saam:  What was your favorite part of ClioCon?
Gyi Tsakalakis:  You know, I always say this, but man, they have an amazing community at Clio and you can just tell.  It’s like the energy when you go to ClioCon, it’s something you really have to see all the way from the Clions, these are the people that work at Clio, their entrance, the support they provide attendees, the people who are there in terms of expertise and it’s just very like forward-thinking innovative people in legal.  Whether it’s lawyers, whether it’s consultants whether its technology, people, it’s is just — it’s quite a thing.  I highly recommend ClioCon to everybody.
Conrad Saam:  Next year, we expect to see all of you at ClioCon.
Gyi Tsakalakis:  I already bought my ticket — they give you a big discount if you buy it before.  Well, we’re recording this after October 15, so you must have missed it.
Conrad Saam:  Yup, too late.
Gyi Tsakalakis:  Prices are only going up, they’re not going down, right?  You snooze you lose everyone, snooze you lose.  Inflation is here.  In addition to the Gaylord Opryland Resort, what are we talking about today?
Conrad Saam:  Well as usual, we’re going to start with the news.  Lots of interesting news coming out, including a big announcement that came from the Gaylord Opryland Resort ClioCon.  So stay tuned for that.   And we’re going to go back.  One of the things that we’ve talked a lot about regularly and this is hot off the press now, is takeaways from the 2022 Clio Legal trends report, and now time for some music.
[Music]
Conrad Saam:  Welcome to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing, it is time for the news.  Well continuing on our theme of Clio.  Clio now has bunch of updates.  We had websites, which we’re going to come back around to, later on this segment.  Texting and better integration.  So, we’re all of the announcements out of Clio what you expected, Gyi?
Gyi Tsakalakis:  I’ll be honest, I didn’t see websites coming, I’m not surprised texting, some of the better integration stuff, I mean look, the vision here is to make the operating system the platform, the only software you need stay inside Clio for Lawyers.  So, they made some great strides in realizing that vision from my perspective.  And you know, they want to support lawyers, helping their clients all the way through the Clio Service Consumer journey.  I think that they’ve made some strides on that for sure.
Conrad Saam:  Great.
Gyi Tsakalakis:  Yeah.
Conrad Saam:  Next in the news, Gonzalez versus Google.  Give us the top-level don’t read.
Gyi Tsakalakis:  You know, I’m certainly not a Section 230 expert and you know, we’ve had Professor Goldman on.  I know you recently chatted with a Section 230 expert, short version is this, both sides of the political spectrum seemed to be questioning whether or not the internet should be this liability free zone for users and platforms.  Will put a link to the box article but, looks like the Supreme Court’s going to take a look.  Oh, maybe, I don’t know, we’ll see what the Supreme Court does with this one, be interesting.  But you know, in the context of we’ve talked about this many, many times, you know, it’s fake reviews.  It’s misinformation, you know, there’s all this stuff going on out there and it’s like, is that just for better and worse, buyer beware, or should there be some accountability and liability for either the platforms or perhaps the people.  You know, certainly my view is this, it’s pretty easy from a fake review standpoint, and I think the FTC is probably going to start.  I think they’re already cracking down on this a bit more, but if you buy fake reviews, if you’re publishing fake reviews, it’s very easy to fall under violations of your rules professional conduct, and I think also running afoul of the FTC’s rules.
(00:05:13)
Conrad Saam:  So, all right, Section 230 change is coming, we’ll break the internet as we know it.
Gyi Tsakalakis:  Maybe —
Conrad Saam:  I’m a big Section 230 fan.  Okay, Google Business Profile.  Now this is not news.  The only news is that nothing has changed.  If you are a regular listener to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing, you will have heard us last session and possibly even the session before that, talking about the problems with Google Business Profiles.  Gyi, what are the problems with Google Business Profiles and why are, at least I am continuing to recommend to people, play MC Hammer and don’t touch this?
Gyi Tsakalakis:  The root problem is that Google doesn’t make any money off of Google Business Profiles.
Conrad Saam:  You cynic.  Okay, for those of you who had the over-under of four minutes before Gyi got cynical about Google, you are now winning.
Gyi Tsakalakis:  The short version is that people are getting suspended for all sorts of things that they shouldn’t be getting suspended for.  And so, you know, if Google Business Profile, Local Pack Visibility makes up a big percentage of your lead generation or your reputation validation when people searches on your name, which it does for most of you that have it.  I guess the way I would respond to Conrad’s like “don’t touch this” is, don’t touch this unless you absolutely, absolutely have to.  So, put it that way.
Conrad Saam:  Or don’t touch this unless there’s nothing to lose, right?  If you’re not winning right now —
Gyi Tsakalakis:  Yeah, if you’re not getting phone calls, if you don’t have any reviews on your profile, great time to experiment.
Conrad Saam:  And if you don’t know, if you’re not getting any phone calls from Google Business Profile, you might want to update your internet tracking.  Anyway, that’s a different —
Gyi Tsakalakis:  Don’t know Google Business Profile, you better go learn right now because where have you been?  You obviously never listened to us.
Conrad Saam:  Pay Gyi hundreds of dollars to learn about what that is.  Okay, a bunch of good conferences coming up, Gyi.  We’ve got, (00:06:59) the Great Legal Marketing is set to kick off.  You just had Clio.  This seems to be the very, very heavy conference season.  Any others that you wish you could go to?
Gyi Tsakalakis:  Not just wish, but I may be attending the AAJ Winter Convention, that is not until February though.  Of course, got a plug Tech Show in March.
Conrad Saam:  Tech Show, March.
Gyi Tsakalakis:  Yeah.  But you know, I mean again, if you’ve been feeling like you’re kind of on an island managing your firm, get to one of these great shows because, you know, as much as I ranted against conferences before and in fact, Bob actually, Ambrose at LawNext, he  actually made a critique that it was the first time he felt like ClioCon was a little more pitchy than usual.  But, you know, I think some of that’s — maybe I’m hedging a little bit from my last rant about this.  Think some of it is the nature of the beast, you know, these conferences are for vendors, they’re vendor funded.  But there’s so much to learn.  I mean, I can’t tell you just being around people that are like thinking differently about law practice, it’s so valuable.
Conrad Saam:  Get out of your box.
Gyi Tsakalakis:  Get out of your box.
Conrad Saam:  And finally, in full disclosure, I’m an investor in this company so I am happy to bring this to you, but just know where I’m coming from.  Justice For Me those of you who have heard me talk about Justice For Me in the past.  This is a company that will offer financing directly to a consumer and their need for legal services.  So instead of you running the risk of that consumer not paying you, they will actually take that risk for you and guarantee that payment to you. They just raised 10 million dollars in debt funding.
Gyi Tsakalakis:  Good for them.
Conrad Saam:  I’m super psyched about this.  I really, you know, I got into the legal market back in 2006.  I talked to Mark Britton at the time and he talked to me about how technology was going to make the legal service world much more accessible to lots of people.  It feels like that is moving very, very slowly but services like this make that available.  And so, I was really excited for them to make that debt funding race.  We’ve already talked about money, let’s have some ads and then we’re going to get back into this.  Talking about what Clio launched at their conference, the Legal Trends Report.  We’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time and here it is.
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Gyi Tsakalakis:  And now it’s time for the Legal Trends Report minute brought to you by Clio hot off the presses.  It’s the 2022 Legal Trends Report minute.  Here’s a fact about lawyers who switched jobs in the last 12 months.  37% of them move firms in pursuit of better work-life balance.  Given the irregular schedules, and long hours that lawyers often dedicate to their clients, it’s no surprise that many are willing to leave in pursuit of a more manageable work life.  The unfortunate result is that staff turnover can be incredibly disruptive for both you and your clients.  You know, this is an interesting one.  Again, so grateful for the Legal Trends Report in general, new edition.  I think we’ll even go deeper and have some more segments about it.  There’s so much good stuff in there, so go get it.  But, yeah, lawyers are like a lot of other industries, folks moving jobs and reprioritizing what’s important to them.  Late nights and long hours are not as important to folks as they maybe they once were.
Conrad Saam:  You know, I don’t know if you saw this post and I’m blanking on the name of the firm.  This was a corporate marketing department that switched firms, not just a person, but the entire department switched firms in —
Gyi Tsakalakis:  I saw that headline, I’m blanking out too.
Conrad Saam:  I’m blanking on the names but, and, and it really was around work-life balance, right?  And so it was just a — that was surprising for me to see a team of people deciding to get up and switch.  That must have been a really interesting negotiation and a bit of a shock, right?
Gyi Tsakalakis:  Totally.
Conrad Saam:   So work-life balance is important.  We talk about this probably not enough.
Gyi Tsakalakis:  For more information on what law firms can do to keep good people, download Clio’s Legal Trends Report for free at clio.com/trends.  All right.  Well as Conrad mentioned, one of the announcements from ClioCon was that Clio is entering the website builder game and as I fish seriously joked on Twitter, the SEO game.  So Conrad, you were still learning about Clio’s product and we don’t want to just go deep, we will put a link to Clio’s product page.  But you know, we’ve talked about website builders.  What are some things that lawyers that might be considering Clio’s website builder to be thinking about in asking about in the context of website builders?
Conrad Saam:  Well, you know, I have been — I will go on the record as saying I was completely wrong in thinking that Clio would never do this.  Mainly because from an executive respective, I know some people have a lot of influence there who are really, really reticent about launching websites for Avo.  And then when they did that, it was frankly, a flaming disaster.  The Avo websites were terrible and it was a bad experience for customers and it was a bad experience for Avo internally.  So I was really surprised to see this and the the answer to your question is built into the history there.  A business that is funded by venture capital is looking to scale, right?  So you need to understand that as the background and so the only way — and the problem with doing websites as Gyi and I know, absolutely painfully well, is that there is a subjective side to the design of a site.  There is a subjectivity to it that is by definition not scalable.  And so I think when you are thinking about Clio specifically, you need to have that as a background understanding of you’re probably going to get what is a well-done, but very, very templated approach to a site.  Now, Gyi, the sites that we’ve looked at so far.  And I want to talk about generic, about some of the other non-WordPress sites and we talked about WordPress Builders as well.  But the sites that we’ve seen from Clio so far, they I think fair to say are somewhat simplistic.  The ones we’ve seen live are single page, right?  So you can navigate two sections within a page.  They do have real time booking functionality that I think is really fascinating, that is going to probably dovetailed directly into Clio Grow.  But speaking of Clio Grow, this is built as out of the box as being a subdomain of Clio Grow right, which I would see as a more problematic.  If I recall correctly, you can actually move that to your own domain, is that correct?
(00:15:06)
Gyi Tsakalakis:  And so, you know, like many of the proprietary website builders, you know, they’re giving you the product, they’re giving the platform.  You always talk about, they’re giving you the car, not the gas.  And so, you know, the idea here is its low cost, do it yourself but if you don’t know about creating a custom domain, if you don’t know about things like robots.txt file, if you don’t know about things like HTX access files and 301 redirects, we have no idea how Clio is going to support the product, right?  It’s very, very new, that’s why we give them the benefit of the doubt.  But as we notice, there are Clio Grow websites that are currently indexed in Google that are on the cliogrow.com subdomain, which is not optimal from an SEO perspective.  And you know, as we’ve talked about many, times it’s like whether it’s GoDaddy or Wix or Linux or whatever I mean even WordPress out of the box they don’t always do work the way that you think that they should work.  I look at this as like in the conversation of the proprietary versus WordPress thing, you know plus side, keep it simple, do-it-yourself, low-cost.  I think one of the coolest things that they’re doing is they’re actually using some of your Clio data to populate some of the stuff on the site.  Which I think is a really, really cool idea, right?  So like, you know, if you have an — I’m just making something about, I’m not going to do this.  But if you have an average response time to matters in Clio, maybe they published your response time, which is obviously very important to potential clients on your website.  That’s a very cool thing in my opinion.  But that being said it’s like it’s this classic lineup — is the same thing where it’s like oh out-of-the-box your SEO friendly or SEO optimized like, you know, your (00:16:57) start searching lawyers near me and your website is going to pop up.  It’s like well, not necessarily.
Conrad Saam:  So my take is I feel like they may have taken the shroud off the sculpture before it was completed.  And I think there’s a lot of opportunity.  I’d like to see more of this.  If I was advising you on this kind of low-cost do-it-yourself approach, my advice would be I think it’s going to get better and this is probably not the example where you want to be an early adopter, right?  I think we’re going to see some better examples.  I think we’re going to see things built out a little bit better, but this might not be one where — this is where the cutting edge may become the bleeding edge, right?  And it’s probably going to get better.  I just want to see that before you decide to jump into this.  The other thing Gyi, just as we’re talking about this, I think in the back of this from you and me, we have this, maybe it’s a level of arrogance although it’s probably built on experience here that WordPress is the answer, right?  If it’s not WordPress, it’s garbage.  That is also not necessarily true, and I think that you run the risk of having just as many problems with WordPress if it’s not done well either, right?  So it’s not like —
Gyi Tsakalakis:  That’s right.
Conrad Saam:  Oh, I’ve got WordPress and now I have an SEO optimized site which I often hear from people.
Gyi Tsakalakis:  Well, that’s what I tell people too is like, because I’m always like, let’s just use WordPress even though I agree with you, WordPress can create the same issues and in fact WordPress, probably, you know, WordPress is like the “Salesforce” of website builders, right?  So it does ton of things very configurable.  I mean, it’s not open source so that’s maybe not a good combination with — maybe like more like Zoho.  That’s probably too inside baseball for people.  But the point is, is that I don’t really care what platform you’re on.  You know what I care about does it load fast?  Does it look great on mobile?  Is it reducing the friction between someone who’s searching for information about you or your firm and getting to signing up for a consultation or a contact to you?  Like, that’s what I care about.  And I think of the Seth Godin pretty websites, like it doesn’t really — I don’t care how pretty it is.  I don’t care about the subjectivity part.  Is it converting or not and are we able to configure it in a way that optimizes it for the experience of those potential clients?  Because otherwise, who cares, I don’t care.
Conrad Saam:  Hold on, let me — I need to get a push back on that because —
Gyi Tsakalakis:  Go ahead.  Push away.
Conrad Saam:  And I think you’re going to agree with me.  I think you do care if a law firm is beholden to a proprietary platform that they can’t get away from without either great expense, technical effort or starting over, right?  That is problematic, that’s massively problematic.  So, I do think that is one of those cases where you find yourself on a platform that no one else can work on.  You’re stuck, right.  Your vendor now owns your relationship and owns the site.  And if you want to do things on that site that they’re not interested in like — go pounce in, buddy.
Gyi Tsakalakis:  Oh that’s why I always say just use WordPress but I was trying not to.  In fact I was trying to give the others but — I mean look, you got to balance, right?  This is like everything else.
(00:20:02)
There’s no silver bullet for everything, Squarespace and Wix has done a really good job of moving forward from an SEO perspective and giving some more configuration options.  It’s a balance between time, the cost that you’re going to put in and your experience working with some of these platforms.  But yes, like you don’t want to be beholden but if it’s you know, I’m just making something up.  But if your platform is a dollar a month and it does all the things that you needed to do, and it’s converting like I don’t care.  But your point, if you ever want to switch, that’s where the issue comes in.  And guess what, by the way, for the most part, most of the proprietary, CMS solutions that you see especially in legal, they’re not the most affordable option anyway.  They’re not very configurable.
Conrad Saam:  That’s true.
Gyi Tsakalakis:  They don’t have all of the advantages of like the Wix and Squarespace has.  They don’t have.
Conrad Saam:  That is a great caution, right?  The funny thing is, the more expensive the platforms are, you’re often giving up that flexibility, right?  I think that is a very salient point.  And with that, we’re going to come back in a moment.  But we’re going to take a little break right now and we’re going to speak later on about Spam, Ramen and Lawyers.
And I don’t mean spam as in stuff you get in your inbox you don’t want.  I mean the stuff that you get out of a can in an economic downturn.
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Gyi Tsakalakis:  So to the five people who are listening to this podcast, you didn’t leave us any reviews from the last episode.  And so this is my reminder, to give us some feedback.  Tell us what you want to hear about.  Leave us a review.  If you just landed here, subscribe, we’re on Apple podcast and Spotify and tell a friend, you know, hey check out Lunch Hour Legal Marketing, share the episode.  We’d love to hear from you and for those that do listen frequently, we do appreciate it.  Let us know what you think.  Thanks so much.
Conrad Saam:  And please, if you are a website product manager, at Clio, do not, leave us a review.
Gyi Tsakalakis:  No, leave us a review.
Conrad Saam:  We would love — actually, you know what?  We would love to have you come on the show and talk about the product.  How’s that for an invite?  Now, I talked about Spam and ramen and lawyers and the reason we talk about this, one of the things that came out of the Clio Legal Trends Report, it kind of the top level on this was that lawyers are not keeping.  Lawyers’ pricing and business models are not keeping up with changes in inflation.  Meaning basically, you are discounting your services over time and we talked about this last week.  We presciently saw this coming, Gyi, and then, boom!  It shows up in the Clio Legal Trends Report.  Bob Ambrose did an interesting cover on this one.  Make sure that that goes in the show notes.  But the reason I talk about Spam and ramen, there’s a macroeconomic theory of the counter-cyclical demand product.  What the heck does that mean? For those of you —
Gyi Tsakalakis:  That’s MBA talk right there.
Conrad Saam:  No that’s econ.  That even nerdier than MBA talk.  That is —
Gyi Tsakalakis:  They don’t teach that in law school.
Conrad Saam:  Microeconomics and it basically talks about there are some products out there that the worst the economy is, the greater the demand for that product and Spam is an obvious one because as your micro econ teacher will tell you, people will start replacing their strip steak with canned Spam, right?  So they’re still getting meat but it’s not high-end.  And it’s an interesting perspective.  You know, when we dealt with the economic downturn brought about by COVID, there was a downturn for legal because people weren’t driving and getting in wrecks, people weren’t driving drunk, the courts were close, like nothing was happening.  And so there was kind of this reduction.  But Gyi, can you talk about how in an economic downturn, we actually may see an increase in the demand for Legal Services.  And therefore no reason to keep your pricing as it were.
(00:25:03)
Gyi Tsakalakis:  Yeah.  And so again go check out the Legal Trends Report but one of the big headlines was kind of this interesting situation where demand for lawyers is up and if you’re wondering about (00:25:14), I don’t understand.  It’s like, well think about it, economic hardship times create more stress, more anxiety can put stress on families, put stress on personal finance.  So, you think bankruptcy, family law —
Conrad Saam:  Crime?
Gyi Tsakalakis:  Crimes.  Sadly crime, that’s where I was going.
Conrad Saam:  Oh, sorry.
Gyi Tsakalakis:  Said all those, right?  Those are all — but you know this is what a lot of consumer facing lawyers.  Help people navigate is some of these tougher issues and so, Legal Trends Report demand for legal services up and we don’t know the — unfortunately they don’t segment it by practice or at least that I didn’t see.  So, we don’t know specifically which segments are particularly up but the pricing is not keeping pace.  So, lawyers are — they’re not raising their hourly rates there to a large extent still even though legal service and consumers want this.  They’re not changing their pricing models.  And the short answer is that the way I look at it is this, look things get more expensive if you don’t address the pricing issue.  At best, it’s cutting a little bit into your margin but eventually, there’s an inflection point where like you’re not keeping up with being able to like pay your bills, right?
Conrad Saam:  Or do a great job for your clients, right?
Gyi Tsakalakis:  Right.  And again, this is nothing to and we talked about this in the context of like the wellness stuff but like, if your pricing is causing you to have financial strain and hardship and stress and anxiety, to Conrad’s point, this is the thing I think a lot of lawyers don’t connect is that you’re not doing the best you possibly can for your clients.  And I would talk to lawyers all the time, they’re like, lawyers are outside of this, like we just do great for clients no matter what.  And I’m like, you know what — and then you wonder why the lawyers index high for substance abuse issues and all of the family issues that we talked about, you got to take care of yourself and part of taking care of yourself and taking care of your business, because it is a business not just a hobby for many of you, is to understand your pricing in a time of historic inflation growth.
Conrad Saam:  All right, so change of pricing to queue for its great time to up your rates, even for existing clients who have been sticking with you, they’re happy with you.  Great time to up your rates Q4, okay.  The other things that came out of the Legal Trends Report from Clio that I was really excited because I guaranteed, I made a promise during the last podcast that in the top three things that people care about when they are hiring a lawyer was going to be responsiveness.  The responsiveness of the lawyer being in the top three, Gyi, was I right?
Gyi Tsakalakis:  You were, number three responsiveness.  And again, you know, we covered responsiveness, the expectations around speed and responsiveness are only getting higher.
Conrad Saam:  So, go back and listen to our conversation on Sales Velocity if you’re wondering what we mean by responsiveness, but that’s the last podcast episode, go back and listen to that.  What was number one, and two, Gyi?
Gyi Tsakalakis:  Number one was reviews, which I think that — yeah I’m not really surprised by that one, right?  I mean, I stare at way too many local packs every day and I will tell you, even when it’s like local pack of lawyers that I know, even though I know that the “best lawyer” of the three, the reviews jump out.  I mean, we are trained by Amazon to shop on reviews.  Now, again, the cynical downside Section 230 problem is that there’s a ton of fake reviews in there and people shouldn’t rely just on reviews, but let me tell you, they do.  Every study Google does every study Amazon does it always comes back, people are using reviews as a big part of the equation in making these decisions.
Conrad Saam:  Yeah.
Gyi Tsakalakis:  Even professional services I mean it’s just it is, it is what it is.
Conrad Saam:  Hate it, you might tell me that you’re a better lawyer than all the people with all the great reviews and no one knows it because of the reviews.  Alright what was number two, Gyi?
Gyi Tsakalakis:  Two is proximity.  We’ve actually — yeah we talked about this one before especially in the context of like ads and conversion rates but you know, I’ll set it up, personal injury lawyers always say, you know, who’s your target audience, who’s your target market?  Oh well, you know, for the right injury case —
Conrad Saam:  I will go across Texas, baby.
Gyi Tsakalakis:  Yeah, I’ll go anywhere.  But again, for the legal services consumer, locality matters, and this was interesting even in the context of they don’t care if you’re not at your office.  They don’t care if you’re working from home, they don’t care if they’re having virtual meetings with you but they want to know you’re nearby.  And so, things like your area code and your phone number, where you actually keep your address, your familiarity with local stuff going on, it matters a lot to legal services consumers.
00:30:12
Conrad Saam:  That for me, was a very pleasant surprise because, you know, I wrote the book On the Map, it went out to the ABA right before COVID happened, where we literally are not dealing with the office, right? Where you’re literally not thinking about the office.  And the whole premise of my book was that proximity matter.  So it was interesting to see that this still has persisted.  There’s a great quote out of the Legal Trends Report that says, despite client’s preferring virtual meetings, so they do not want to come into your office, they do care that you are local.  That was a really big insight for me.  And yet you know, some of the things that we’ve talked about regularly, Gyi, are things around, you know, being involved in the community, right?  Actually, having a presence, that localized recognition.  It is a Really important thing and the extent to which — and this has been — I think the ugly flip side of this is, you know, it’s really easy to create that new office, you know, an hour and a half away from me, that’s never staffed and throw up a GBP profile and all of a sudden you now have a competitor there.  What can you do as the real local business to insulate yourself from losing clients to those offices that really are just the skeletons?  I think that is the flipside of this.
Gyi Tsakalakis:  Yeah.  And again, not for every practice area not for every type of client but I will tell you location, local community, it’s an affinity people.  Like to know, I mean we talked about this with like you know, the Chicago guys.  Like they want to know.  Oh yeah.  You know Chicago or you know Detroiter and really those are big markets but like in my local suburban community. people want to know that stuff.  Like are you from the area?  Do you know the area?  Are you familiar with it?  And and it’s not even a logic thing, it’s much you know, talking about the Aristotelian modes of persuasion, it’s much more pathos than it is logos —
Conrad Saam:  I love it.  Yeah, Gyi’s philosophy degree, making an entrance at Lunch Hour Legal Marketing.
Gyi Tsakalakis:  It’s an emotional connection that — and again lawyers don’t think about this, right?  It’s like well, I have the most experience, I’m the only lawyer who does this.  I’m the hardest fighter but again, it can just be like, it’s someone from my community.  You know, we go to the same whatever it is, whether it’s, you know, the elementary school, my kids go to the same school, that stuff matters a ton for legal services, consumers.  And so what do you do, well, you’ve got to do content marketing include location as part of your affinity in your content marketing, talk about what you’re doing in the community, talk about the places you like to eat, talk about the events that are going on because that’s going to resonate with those local consumers.
Conrad Saam:  Yeah, they absolutely. Number four was interesting to me, we’re going to talk to number four because I feel like there’s a lot of resistance to this and we talked about, you know, upping your hourly rates.  But number four was billing type.  What the business model you are employing?  Are you charging hourly clients really seem to want and expect options beyond that hourly rate?  And yet there has been a digging in of the heels among legal committee to do that.  So, I think the demand that you’re seeing from clients what they’re valuing is a different model by and large of what many of you are serving up.
Gyi Tsakalakis:  Yeah, I think that might be an opportunity for a future episode on different business models.  We’ve touched down in the past but it’s obviously a big thing.  And then number five, scheduling availability.  We talk about this all the time, even in the context of search.  But like if you’re showing that, you’re not open afterhours, I mean, people are working during the day and so if they can only get ahold of — if you’re going to schedule on your own terms, you’re going to lose out.  I mean, it’s just is what it is.  Or if you send them an account link, and your next available appointment is three weeks from now, get ready for them to move on.
Conrad Saam:  Yup, that’s how you should be talking about consultations instead of leads.  We can come back to that theory over and over again.  All right.  Well, Gyi, it’s been two weeks Since we’ve talked, Lunch Hour Legal Marketing.  It’ll be another two weeks before we talk again.  Hopefully, some time you and I can actually have a beer at one of these many conferences that are coming up because it’s been far too long.  Until then, we will hope for Michigan to continue on their amazing football journey.  We will see you all in two weeks.
[Music]
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