Integral to this is what we call your law firm’s SERP results. These are your law firm’s search engine results. In particular where your law firm is ranking for given keywords that you’re chasing in the marketplace.
For example, if you’re a personal injury law firm located in Sydney, Australia you want to be ranking positions 1, 2 or 3 for the search term, “Personal Injury Lawyers Sydney.” Why do you want to rank for this search term? Because according to Google approximately 600 are searching with these keywords every month. It’s the most competitive search term in Australia, as you would expect.
Just to brag, our client BPC Lawyers ranks #1 for this extraordinarily competitive search result. Now keep in mind that if you were paying Google to run ads for this competitive search term you would be paying them between $80 – $120 per click. Do the maths, that is significant money you would burn with an average click-through rate of 8%. You would want to have a budget of at least $20,000 each month to play competitively.
So, needless to say, ranking for keywords organically or naturally without paying Google is a smart thing. We call this work SEO and we’re sure you’re familiar with it.
When it comes to SEO, how we secure great results for law firms is through a multi-dimensional approach.
Need Law Firm SEO help. Let’s reach out here
1. Optimize your website.
Most law firm websites simply aren’t optimised for great SEO results. Just this week we were contacted by a law firm needing our help who for the last 12 months have been paying an agency an exorbitant price for SEO (approximately $4.000 per month) and yet despite paying the fee each month, at the time of the call, the firm was ranked position 28 for a relatively competitive search term. Now all this agency was doing was SEO and Adwords and nothing else. Sure, SEO is complex, time-consuming and costly, but if you’re not getting results after 3 months, that’s file open results….then move on.
Optimising your law firm’s website is ensuring a bunch of things are working for you and not against you. In this regard, titles on your law firm’s website, sufficient content, content that keeps people on the website and a fast-loading website are some of the successful ingredients.
Great looking websites don’t necessarily mean great rankings.
Need help with redesigning your law firm’s website? Reach out here
2. Ensure Your Website is Mobile Responsive
Mobile-first indexing is now how Google approaches websites. Your law firm’s website just has to be mobile responsive and fast. We are big proponents of not just making the desktop version of your website responsive, but rather completely designing a mobile experience that meets Google’s objective, but also meets the objective of a potential client. In this regard, make sure your law firm’s website is fast-loading, but just as importantly, make it very easy for your time-poor potential client to achieve their objectives. In this regard, testing your website (both desktop and mobile) is essential.
3. Create Omni-Channel Content
We’ve been doing this work for a long time and one thing is certain that the far percentage of clients coming to a law firm’s website aren’t necessarily ready to sign a client retainer today. What they’re doing is searching for information that relates to their issue. In this regard, never before has it been more important to provide this information across a range of multi-media. For example, for our clients, we will not only do their content writing for them (if necessary) but we accompany it through the use of podcasts, videos, blogs, downloadable guides and webinars. Remember, not everyone wants to consume content in the same way, so making your content broad in its appeal not only will satisfy the interest of your potential client but will keep them on your website for a longer period. This, in turn, assists your firm’s ranking position, as time on site is a factor that Google takes into consideration.
Similarly, podcasts are becoming extraordinarily popular, both on websites and syndication platforms like iTunes and Spotify. We do approximately 40 podcasts every month for our clients, recording them for those syndication platforms, but then creating different versions for both their website and social media.
Thinking about podcasting within your law firm. It’s painless, we interview your lawyers on topics and times that suit them. We then do everything else, including the editing and the design of the multiple formats, followed by the syndication to the various podcast platforms. Reach out to learn more here
4. Get Great Reviews
Receiving positive Google reviews is without doubt of growing importance in assisting your law firm to not only become better ranked but it, of course, is a considerable influencing factor for a potential client as to whether or not they call your number or engage with your chatbot.
We know that getting reviews can be problematic. Try advising the majority of clients to leave a Google review after they leave your firm happy, and most will look at you blankly. For this reason, at Practice Proof, we have created our own software to help you help your clients leave positive reviews.
One of our clients OMB Solicitors received 22 positive reviews within one week of using our own review platform.
Want to get more reviews. Talk to us about our platform today. Reach out here
5. Seek Quality Links
Link-building as we call it has had a bad wrap since the Google Panda algorithm change a number of years ago. Essentially that change derived from Google going on the hunt for websites that acquired links to their website from shonky or unrelated websites. For example, your law firm may have had links from a car dealership in Pakistan who for dubious reasons had built up authority in the eyes of Google. Consequently, if this car dealership website had links to your law firm’s website, it at the time rewarded you because you were in good company and your rankings improved…sometimes out of sight and overnight. Those days are over, but the importance of links from reputable and related sources is still vital for your law firm if you’re wanting to be better positioned in search results.
Conclusion.
Marketing your firm is 2019 is complex and requires a lot of work. One thing is for certain, ranking naturally for search results your firm wants to be found for is a significantly cheaper approach in most cases than paying Google for ads. That’s not to say you shouldn’t do both, in fact, we encourage it. Is there a relationship between them, in other words, if you pay Google for ads will you be rewarded further by better organic (natural) search results? The general consensus is “yes,” but to what extent is unknown. But as usual, the rule of thumb is if you’re expending $10,000 each month and making $100,000 you’re in a happy place!
Need help with anything “marketing” in your law firm, rest assured we’ve got you covered. Fill out some details below or reach us here.
