No one teaches you about online marketing or law firm SEO when you go to law school.
By the time you sit for the bar exam, the only thing you’re thinking about is scoring well on the MBE and essay section!
However, after you’ve earned your stripes and have your own law practice, you’re hit with a cold hard fact: without a solid online presence, your business will never reach its potential.
Why You Need Law Firm SEO
If you’re like most attorneys, the majority of your clients come from word-of-mouth referrals. Unfortunately, those alone barely scratch the surface of your potential client base.
To combat this, some lawyers invest in billboards or other traditional modes of advertising that cost a tremendous amount of money and rarely yield a high return on investment.
In contrast, online marketing costs 62% less per lead than traditional outbound marketing and it produces tangible results.
Just look at the following statistics:
- 57% of businesses have acquired a customer through their company blog.
- 57% of companies have acquired a customer through LinkedIn.
- 48% of companies have acquired a customer through Facebook.
- 42% of businesses have acquired a customer through Twitter.
If nothing else, these numbers should convince you that actively blogging on your law firm’s website and properly leveraging social media channels can get you more clients –– and these figures are expected to increase in the new year!
However, successfully running an online marketing campaign can be extremely time consuming and very involved.
After all, your social media posts must target the right people, have your marketing goals in mind, and truly engage your audience on all social platforms.
Likewise, your blog posts can’t resemble case summaries or quickly scrawled updates about recent courtroom victories. They need to be thought-out and well-written articles that add value to your site and brand by delivering information your visitors actually want to read.
Not only that, but your social media messages and blog posts need to be centered around your core keywords in order to ensure that Google, Bing, and Yahoo! are showing your content when potential clients search for those phrases.
To do this, you need to put considerable time into law firm SEO.
Search Engine Optimization involves much more than simply updating title tags, meta descriptions, and images on your website. Genuine law firm SEO also entails (but is definitely not limited to):
- Analyzing and optimizing your page speed
- Building links from authoritative, law-related websites.
- Claiming and verifying local citations and directory listings.
- Creating additional content on your own website and blog.
- Developing relationships with other lawyers in your niche.
- Identifying keywords your potential clients are searching for.
- Keeping up with constant changes in Google’s algorithm.
- Posting your content on social media platforms.
- Tracking progress in Google Analytics and Search Console.
- Writing high-quality guest posts on well-trafficked sites.
Whether you’re an employment lawyer, litigator, or personal injury attorney, your potential clients are turning to the Internet more and more to find you. Remember, most Americans don’t own a phone book, let alone use one.
Want more clients in 2023? Make investing in law firm SEO your New Year’s resolution.