Why Law Firms Need to Invest in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Successful Marketing

Quick, if you were injured in a car accident and needed a lawyer, what’s the first thing you’d do?  If you’re like the majority of Americans, you’d search online for an attorney.  According to recent studies, 87% of all consumer searches for products start online.  That’s a compelling statistic, especially considering car accident victims searching online are hot prospects, ready to hire a lawyer today. It would be law firm marketing malpractice to ignore the prodigious flow of online accident lawyer searches.

80% of Consumers Skip Paid Search Ads

Consumers are skeptical of advertising.  80% of Americans searching online skip paid ads and proceed directly to organic results.  That’s why it’s imperative personal injury law firms develop a long term, strategic approach to Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  A quick SEO audit by an experienced law firm marketing agency can give you a sense for your law firm’s current rankings, and what can be done to improve them.

Brantley Davis runs a law firm marketing ad agency, Brantley Davis Ad Agency, in Washington D.C.  His agency markets law firms from New York to Seattle and is on the front lines of Search Engine Marketing.

“It’s common sense.  If 80% of car accident victims skip paid lawyer ads and go directly to organic results, your law firm can’t afford to ignore Search Engine Optimization,” Davis continued, “Many law firms have saturated television but have been slow to embrace Search Engine Marketing. That’s left them vulnerable to smaller competitors who have leapt ahead using digital marketing.”

What Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing the visibility of a website on a search engine result page (SERP), which is the list of website links shown in response to a user’s search query. SEO is not a “silver bullet” that can instantly boost a website’s ranking. Rather, it’s a long-term strategy that requires consistent effort over time to see results. There are a number of factors that determine where a website ranks in search engine results. These factors include the number of sites linking to your website, the text on your website’s pages, your website’s architecture, your website’s authority, and more.

Benefits of Investing in SEO for Law Firms

  • Reach more potential clients – By investing in a solid SEO strategy, law firms can reach more potential clients online, leading to more business. By increasing your website’s visibility on SERPs, you can reach a larger audience, including people who are searching for legal help but aren’t necessarily ready to hire yet. SEO can help you to connect with these potential clients and guide them through the decision-making process.
  • Improve brand awareness – Brand awareness is an essential element of law firms’ success. Brand awareness can help law firms to secure new clients, increase retention rates, and increase referrals. Investing in SEO can help brand awareness by increasing your law firm’s online presence and making your website more visible to potential clients.
  • Improve lead generation – SEO can help law firms generate leads by driving more traffic to websites and boosting conversion rates. By increasing website traffic, law firms can collect more leads, contact information, and email addresses, which can be used to guide clients through the decision-making process.

The Cost of SEO

The cost of executing a solid SEO program can range anywhere from $5,500 to $20,000 per month but compare proposals closely to avoid overpaying.

“There’s only so much you can do for SEO each month,” cautioned Brantley Davis. “For example, generating too many backlinks in a month will actually hurt your law firm’s Google rankings.  Play the long game and don’t overpay.”

SEO proposals should include a site architecture audit, 300-500 backlinks per month with solid Domain Authority, 8,000-16,000 words per month in blog content, and special attention to local Google maps and reviews.

SEO Tactics for Law Firms

  • Focus on long-tail keywords – Long-tail keywords are highly specific phrases that are more likely to convert than broad, short-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are also easier for law firms to rank for, making them a valuable SEO tactic. By focusing on long-tail keywords, law firms can create more targeted content that is likely to convert.
  • Create useful and high-quality content – To rank higher on SERPs, law firms need to engage their potential clients. The best way to do this is by creating high-quality content on their website and connecting with potential clients through that content.

How to Create an Effective SEO Strategy

There are a few key components to creating an effective SEO strategy for law firms:

  1. Defining goals – Before starting your SEO strategy, it’s important to define your goals. What are you trying to achieve with SEO? What do you want to get out of it? Defining goals for your SEO strategy can help you to stay focused and make sure that you’re putting your time and effort into the right things.
  2. Competitive analysis – Once you’ve defined your goals, it’s time to conduct a competitive analysis. A competitive analysis can help you understand your competition, the keywords they’re ranking for, and the types of content they’re publishing.
  3. Creating an editorial calendar – An editorial calendar can help you to stay on track with your SEO strategy. An editorial calendar outlines all of the content that you’ll be publishing, when you’ll be publishing it, and how it relates to your overall SEO strategy.

Keyword Research for Law Firms

Keyword research is the process of researching and discovering which search terms people are using to find solutions to their problems. By conducting keyword research, law firms can discover which keywords they should be targeting, and how they can rank higher for them. There are a few different ways to research keywords and discover which ones are best to target.

  • Using a keyword tool – There are a number of keyword tools that can help law firms to conduct keyword research. By using a keyword tool, you can enter a few different keywords, and the tool will pull data and offer suggestions for additional keywords to target.
  • Conducting a manual keyword analysis – Although keyword research tools can be helpful, it’s also important to conduct a manual keyword analysis to make sure that you’re targeting the right keywords. To conduct a manual keyword analysis, you can review websites that are ranking for your desired keywords to discover what their content is about.

Link Building for Law Firms

When it comes to SEO, link building is the process of gaining external links to your website from other websites. External links are important because they can help to increase your website’s authority and improve your SEO. External links also help to improve brand awareness and generate more leads. For law firms, there are a few different ways to build links to their website, including:

  • Building links through content
  • Creating valuable, helpful, and high-quality content can not only help you to rank higher on SERPs, but it can also help you to earn links from other websites. By creating content about topics that other websites are also linking to, you can reach out to those websites and ask them to link to your content.
  • Building links through guest posts – Guest posts are articles that are published on another website. By writing guest posts for relevant websites, you can earn links back to your website. This is a great way to build links through content and can help to increase your brand awareness.

How to Measure SEO Success

There are a few different metrics that can help you to measure your success with SEO.

  1. Traffic – The number of people visiting your website is a good metric to track and can help you to measure your success with SEO. The more people visiting your website, the more likely they are to convert.
  2. Conversion rate – The number of people visiting your website who choose to complete a specific action, like filling out a form or making a purchase, is another good metric to track. The higher your conversion rate, the more successful your SEO efforts are.

SEO Tools for Law Firms

  • SEMrush – SEMrush is a free online tool that can help you to track your SEO efforts. With SEMrush, you can track your website’s traffic, keywords, and more.
  •  Google Analytics – Google Analytics is a free tool that can help you to better understand your website’s traffic. With Google Analytics, you can track your website’s traffic, discover which pages are the most successful, and more.
  •  HubSpot – HubSpot is a marketing software that can help you to track your SEO efforts. HubSpot can help you to track your website’s traffic, discover which pages are the most successful, and more.
  • SEMrush – SEMrush is a free online tool that can help you to track your SEO efforts. With SEMrush, you can track your website’s traffic, keywords, and more.