Before We Look at SEO for Law Firms
Successful law firms have a growing client base. They encourage potential clients to contact them and ask questions, so they can offer advice and then persuade the person to become a client. One route to success is to make it easy for those potential clients to find your firm, learn about your services, standards, and successes, and then making it easy to make that first contact. SEO for Law Firms allows potential clients to more efficiently find out about you and your firm.
A recent survey of law firms showed that:
- 70% of law firms get new business via their website.
- Only 60% of small law firms have a website.
- 73% of law firms rely on more than printed marketing materials to bring in new business,
- 33% of people looking for a law firm begin their search online.
The Takeaway
Three critical takeaways from these figures are:
- A full third of all potential clients begin looking online. Others go online after they have checked with friends and family, Yellow Pages, or seen an offline advertisement, etc. to learn more and to find a suitable law firm.
- Almost two-thirds of all law firms get business via their website.
- Effective marketing via a website is essential.
This brings us to SEO.
What is SEO?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the term professional marketers use to indicate how easy it is for someone to find a website, blog article, eBook, white paper or video that deals with what they are searching for. Good SEO means it is easy to find. When someone searches on Google, Bing, or another search engine, a multi-page list appears. The vast majority of people never look beyond the first page. Most only look at the first few items on the list.
The Takeaway
The higher on the list your firm appears, the better are the chances of that person clicking on your firm’s name or area of expertise, and being taken to the pertinent page on your website. The more, therefore, your online content is optimized for search engines to find your content, the higher on the search engine results page (SERP) your firm will appear.
Achieving High SEO
Like all goals, to achieve them you need the right strategy and the right plan of action. Then follow the plan, and apply the tactics that will achieve high SEO. A 2019 report on The State of the Legal Market stated, ‘it is critically important for firms to make a clear-eyed assessment of where their key practices fall on the broad continuum’ of what clients need, and ‘key questions that should be addressed for each of the firm’s primary practices or services’ become the basis of their marketing strategy from which they create their marketing plan.
The marketing plan must focus on the areas of law the firm specializes in. The plan, as we said in one of our earlier bold posts, must result in your marketing content being findable, readable, and actionable. Findable is all about SEO for law firms. If your content must be found easily enough for it to be listed high on the Search Engine Results Page.
Once found by a prospective client, your content must be readable enough for them to want to take the next step. They will progress in their client buyer journey when they click the link and then leave their contact details, ask a question for your firm to answer, or dwell on your website as they continue their research.
Those ‘clicks’ boost your firm’s SEO. The longer people dwell on your site to learn more, follow conversations, check out other parts of your site by clicking internal links, the higher your SEO. As you refresh the content on your site and present it in different ways such as blog posts, white papers, Q and A sessions, and video presentations your SEO ranking will increase. The higher your SEO, the higher up your firm will appear in everyone’s search results.
The Takeaway
SEO is critical because your online profile depends on it. The higher your SEO, the more free advertising you get. When potential clients see your firm more times and higher up on the results page than your competitors, the more inquiries you will get. The cost of producing marketing content is the same whether your firm ranks #1, #100 or #1000. So make the most of it and rank high.
If you would like to ask us how we can help you get to that #1 position, please contact us by clicking this link. If you would like to follow us and stay informed on our AdCast, then click here. We look forward to getting to know you better.
(NOTES: The stats in “Before We look at SEO” are from https://financesonline.com/legal-marketing-statistics/)