Home     RSSRSS

SEO for Lawyers — Building a Healthy Client Base

March 14, 2013 by George Murphy | No Comments | Filed in Lawyer SEO, On Page SEO

As most in the profession will attest, lawyers are generally left-brain thinkers.  In other words, those who practice law rely on analytics and data to make deicisions.  As such, many attorneys may prefer eating styrofoam to marketing and promoting their law practice.  Understanding SEO for lawyers or other online marketing strategies is difficult enough, but implementing these strategies may be just too much, especially when you have clients who need your legal help.

But you know that keeping your practice afloat requires revenue and revenue comes from clients.  Providing excellent legal advice unfortunately is not enough to operate a successful business.  You must also let the world know how good you are.

This is where the right-directed brain comes in.  According to an article in cmswire.com, “it looks for meaning and wants to put things into broader context. It’s why content marketing that speaks to an audience like they’re humans — not numbers — and understands their pain proves so effective.”

Buying ads on benches, billboards and in newspapers is not enough.  Today’s digital market requires online marketing.  And online marketing is no longer about simply placing a bunch of searchable terms in your website and hoping the major search engines find you and list your practice on their first page.  Rather, it has evolved into a focus on content and fulfilling the needs of your audience.

Consumers are looking for solutions, not keywords. Customers seeking legal assistance want to know the value and benefit of the services you provide and not just a menu with prices. In fact, often customers may not be able to specify exactly what kind of help they need, but instead need someone to guide them through the legal process.

For help conveying the solution-oriented message you need to build a strong client base, contact us.  Not only does Search Ninjas have online marketing expertise, but we work exclusively for attorneys and understand that there should be a different strategy when working with lawyers in a variety of practice areas.

Introduction to Facebook Graph Search

January 29, 2013 by George Murphy | No Comments | Filed in Facebook Graph Search for Attorneys

Graph Search – The New and Improved Google?

Facebook recently announced the launch of a beta version of their new search tool “Graph Search.” You knew it had to be coming. With over 10% of the world’s population as members, FB is sitting on a mountain of content and the challenge will be how they sort and present that data as a response to a plain language search.

And right now they will admit that they aren’t certain just how that’s going to shape up.

However, the potential for this project could be huge for businesses particularly those that thrive on referred leads…like your law practice. The difference between content indexed in Google and that which Facebook calls its own is the FB data is exclusively “social content” meaning content that has been endorsed or “liked” by members.

Word of Mouth Gets Ready to Take a Giant Leap

Can you beat personal referrals as a source of leads? Not hardly. That lead has been pre-sold to some extent by the referring source and is far easier to convert into a client than a lead coming from other sources. The whole idea behind Graph Search is to find something that your “friends” “like.”

For example in the beta version you can look for an Italian restaurant in Portland and it will return lists of Italian eateries in Portland that friends have patronized and were so impressed they pressed “like” on the restaurant’s FB page or the “like” icon on the restaurant’s website. It’s rather like a Yelp listing except all the reviews are by people you know. Now if the searcher only has 8 friends this tool isn’t going to be all that helpful. However the average FB member has 300 friends and many have 1,000 or more.

Imagine a person who is just involved in a serious auto accident reaching for his or her smart phone and searching FB for a personal injury attorney in Cleveland. The results provided are not anonymous links like Google they are links that have been socially validated. That could be the game changer in the search industry.

Graph Search Has a Ways to Go

Graph (which is marketing shorthand for demographic) in its beta form is pretty limited. Currently it can search for images, places and people but that’s just the beginning. Roughly 1,000 Facebook members and others have been invited to test it and it will take some time to learn just how the experience works and how the beta testers use it.

Even then there will be challenges to integrate links, videos and other elements into the searchable database. Lastly will be the ability to make Graph Search mobile and that’s where the action really will be.

Even in its infancy some on Wall Street are taking it seriously. The day after the Graph Search announcement Yelp’s stock took a 7% loss. Yelp is an obvious target but so are all the dating sites and local centric operations like 4Square. And of course there’s the mother of all search engines Google.

There is however one potentially huge problem for Graph Search and that revolves around the privacy of Facebook members. The typical user does not understand the bifurcated privacy settings that FB has established. They may think that they are limiting their activity on FB but what happens when their content shows up on a Graph Search conducted by one of the other 999,999,999 members? FB management is going to have to be proactive espousing privacy concerns while at the same time extolling the benefits of sharing an opinion. That might be like walking a tight rope over the Hoover Dam. Pray for no wind.

How Do You Take Advantage of Graph Today

The short answer is you don’t. It’s not ready for prime time. But your firm can be proactive and jack up the engagement not only on your FB page but on all social media platforms. The objective is to provide content that will encourage and is worthy of the “like” button.

The more likes you have from the more members increases the odds of your targeted keyword pieces being picked up in Graph. Simply put, the bigger the population you have of members who like some part of your content the better positioned you’ll be when Graph reaches maturity. And this engagement exercise isn’t going to hurt you in the near run either.

Graph is coming. Graph will be the advertising salvation for Facebook so you know it will be a reality at some point. Preparing for it by stepping up your social media campaign will certainly not hurt you but may very well put you in a very competitive position when the product becomes a staple for every FB member.

How People Find Lawyers- Survery Results

December 19, 2012 by George Murphy | No Comments | Filed in Content, Conversion methods, Google Places/Google+, Lawyer SEO, Online Reputation Management

We came across an interesting survey conducted by Mike Blumenthals on behalf of a client of his (an Orlando personal injury law firm) which asks participants questions regarding what they would do when it comes to looking for a specialty lawyer.

The Google consumer survey asks three different questions:

  1. When you need to find a specialty lawyer how would you start your search?
  2. If you search for a specialty lawyer on the internet what is most important to you?
  3. If you searched for a specialty lawyer on Google, what would do you first?

The results are very interesting, especially as they pertain to arguments like:

  • “Is social media the new SEO?”
  • “Is SEO dead?”
  • “Are the Yellow Pages ancient?”, and
  • “How important is online reputation management (ORM)”

We’ll eventually touch on each argument in a separate post, but first lets dive into the results and we’ll offer some insight and opinion and, of course, feel free to comment on this post with anything you’d like to add or discuss.

When you need to find a specialty lawyer how would you start your search?

So if someone is looking for a specialty lawyer such as a personal injury attorney, bankruptcy attorney, family law attorney, etc., what are they most likely to do first? The options that participants were given are:

  • Ask a friend
  • Ask my current lawyer
  • Look in the printed Yellow Pages
  • Look elsewhere on the Internet, and
  • Ask on my favorite social network

Results

Of the 1500 responses that the survey received (at the time of publishing this blog post), referrals/asking a friend is the leading response, which is no surprise. No matter what business you’re in, referrals from past clients, friends, and associates is almost always going to be your best source of new business because we trust the opinion of those who are close to us and who might have gone through a similar experience.

After referrals from friends, which received 34.6% of the votes, search engine results are the second most trusted resource for those looking to hire a specialty attorney. In third place is “ask my current lawyer”, followed by Yellow Pages, looking elsewhere on the Internet (Yelp, Avvo, Youtube, or any other site that the particular person uses on a regular basis), and asking on a social network site such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn comes in last with only 2.1% of the votes.

If you wanted to group “Ask a friend” and “Ask my current lawyer” together as something like “referrals from others”, then searching on a search engine would be the second-most popular answer by far for those looking to hire an attorney.

The survey also allows you to break the results down by Gender, Age, Geography, Urban Density, and Income. The data for each of these categories can be extremely important when you take into account certain practice areas.

Results by Gender

In certain practice areas, it’s important to know how to market to men or women. One example is, in family law, some divorce attorneys brand themselves as “Divorce attorneys for men” or include “Father’s rights” as one of their practice areas, and vice-versa. Are females more likely to hire an attorney (male or female) who brands themselves as “Divorce lawyers for women” when searching for a divorce lawyer? Most likely. The same goes for child custody and other family law matters. They may be disqualifying half of their target audience, but they’re also going after a niche which is more likely to convert potential clients at a higher rate because they’ve established themselves as the experts in that particular field.

It should be noted that the majority of the results of this survey are from women. Of the 1500 responses, 64% (or 945) are from women, and 540 men answered the survey.

When it comes to where men and women look when hiring a specialty lawyer, the results are as follows:

Referrals

Asking a friend or lawyer is both male and female participants’ preferred resource when searching for a specialty lawyer, but women rely on their friends’ and/or lawyers’ recommendations more than men.

Search Engine Results

Women are more likely to rely on referrals, and according to the survey, men are more likely to search on Google, Bing, or Yahoo! for a specialty lawyer than women.

Yellow Pages and Additional Internet Resources

Not much useful information from the Yellow Pages or additional Internet sites. Men are slightly more likely to look at Youtube, Yelp, or sites other than a search engine than women, but other than that “nothing to see here people move along”.

Social Media

According to the survey, women are more likely to refer to the opinion of those on their social networking sites (Facebook friends, Twitter followers, LinkedIn connections) than men.

Results by Age

Just like with gender, age also plays a factor when it comes to marketing certain practice areas to certain demographics. Age can come into play in practice areas such as (just a few examples that we came up with, feel free to add more or chime in):

SSDI (social security disability)- The average age for a person receiving SSDI is 53, so they would probably fall under the older few age groups.

Personal Injury Lawyers for Children (Child Injury, Birth Injury, Cerebral Palsy, Lead Paint etc.)- The average age for a first-time mother is around 25 years old, so a parent looking for a personal injury lawyer specializing in child injuries is more likely to fall under the age demographics categories of (in no particular order) 25-34, 35-44, or 45-54. That’s not to say that a child’s grandparent, older brother or sister, or someone else outside of these demographics won’t search for a specialty lawyer on their behalf. These are just generalization for marketing purposes.

Elder Law Attorneys- Those looking for attorneys in the elder law practice area are more likely to be the elderly person’s son, daughter, or in-laws. Those looking for an elder law attorney probably fall under the age demographics of (in no particular order) 25-34, 35-44, or 45-54.

Family Law (Divorce, Child Custody, Child Support, etc.)- These numbers can vary by state and practice area, but average age for each probably plays an important role in each.

DUI/DWI- Are you a criminal lawyers who represents DUI/DWI clients? You can probably market to someone in the 18-24 age group with certain marketing messages (“Don’t ruin your future”, “This is a VERY Serious Offense and You NEED a Lawyer”, etc.) than those in other age groups. Younger drivers, between the ages 21 to 34, are responsible for more alcohol-related fatal crashes than any other age groups.

When it comes to where each age group typically looks when hiring a lawyer, the results are as follows:

Referrals

According to the results, the younger a person is, the less likely they are to rely on a referral from a current lawyer (which really isn’t too surprising, how many lawyers does an average 21 year old interact with on a regular basis?). So those catering to elderly clients, make sure you get a solid referral program in place and start reaching out to other lawyers in your area. Networking always helps (State, city, or county Bar events, Mastermind Groups, etc.).

Search Engine Results

No surprise here either. According to the survey, the younger a person is, the more likely they are to search on Google, Bing, or Yahoo! for a lawyer. Of those who said they would rely on search engine results to find a specialty lawyer, 63% of them were between the ages of 18 and 44. However, the 45-54 age range is also well-represented, while people between the age of 55-65+ are more likely to rely on…

Traditional Yellow Page Ads

Results by Location/State

The law firm that Mike conducted this survey for (a client of his) is located in Florida. If we look at participants who were only located in their home state:

More people in Florida, according to the survey, are likely to rely on search engine results than their friends’ recommendations. There were only 56 verified responses, so I wouldn’t feel too confident in this as a generalization.

Results by Region and Suburbs

Instead of going into each state individually, here is are some interesting results broken down by region and suburbs when comparing Yellow Pages to SEO

SEO vs Yellow Pages By Region

SEO vs Yellow Pages By Urban Density

Results by Income

There are just too many variables and questions marks to make generalized statements or conclusions when it comes to the results broken down by income, so instead of doing so I’ll just share the results:

If You Search for a Specialty Lawyer on the Internet, What is Most Important to You?

If people searched for a specialty lawyer on the Internet, the had the options to choose the following as what’s important to them:

Information about the lawyer elsewhere on the Internet (Online Reputation Management, Most Important Factor)

It’s common knowledge, when it comes to a lawyer and/or law firm maintaining a presence online, that the name of the law firm and/or attorney(s) are always the top keywords used to search for a law firm’s website. This may be because a friend referred them and they’re looking for the firm or attorney’s website for more information (the attorney’s bio, contact information, etc.), or because someone saw or heard one of the lawyer’s advertisements, but regardless of why someone is searching for you, your law firm, or another attorney in your office, it’s very unlikely that your website is the only place they’ll end up. You need to know what’s out there on Google, Bing, or Yahoo! results when people are searching for you.

The Quality of Reviews on Google (Second Most Important)

If someone found you on a major search engine, it was most likely on Google. Which means that it would be pretty important to have some good reviews out there, right? (This sounds simple, but you’d be surprised how many lawyers take their Google reviews, or lack thereof, for granted).

How Close The Attorney is To Me on a Map (Third Place)

How close your office is located to the person searching on a major search engine for a lawyer is also going to play a factor in whether you’ll actually appear in the search results (depending on what they’re searching for), but the general conclusion here is that people will be willing to drive a little further if they’re confident in you as an attorney, but you have to rank well for these searches first!

Less Important Factors, But Different Takes on Each

Endorsements from Friends on Facebook- If someone shares, +1′s, likes, or Tweets something about your website or promotes it in other ways through social media, there’s a chance that it can have a positive affect on SEO and improve the chance that your website ranks when someone is searching for a specialty lawyer on Google. So, while Facebook Likes may not be an important factor for conversion, it does still play a role in SEO.

The Impression Created by their Website- I’m not sure that someone would actually say “I don’t really care if they have a crappy looking website” or “So what if their website was down when I tried to visit it?”. Don’t take this answer for granted, the image that your website portrays is a LOT more important than you and/or others think.

The Quality of Reviews on Yelp- This can actually be a sub-category of the first answer, Information about them elsewhere on the Internet. If someone searches for you or your law firm on Google, they’re likely to come across your Yelp profile if there is one and if it has reviews. If they see negative reviews, it’ll be a turn-off. If they see positive reviews, it’ll be the exact opposite. The same holds true with your Avvo profile and reviews, CitySearch, MerchantCircle,  and other trusted directory/citation sites where past clients typically post reviews. Granted, it depends on the review and reviewer and how sincere they both seem to be, but the general conclusion- reviews matter, and a presence on Yelp and other citation sites can influence conversion AND SEO.

If You Searched for a Specialty Lawyer on Google, What Would You Do First?

This is another subconscious type of question where participants try to answer what they would do first when searching for a specialty lawyer, and I think that variables such as:

1) Are they searching for the law firm or attorney’s name, or for a search term like “Orlando personal injury lawyer”?

2) Do Google+ Local/blended results appear for the search, and are they trying to decide between multiple law firms/attorneys?

3) Do people actually have a set gameplan in their head in terms of what they would do first, or would it depend on what’s presented to them?

keep me from drawing specific conclusions when looking at the results. We’ll just assume that people are searching for something like “Orlando personal injury lawyer”, and here are the choices that participants were given:

Visit The Lawyers Website (Most Important)

It’s a given that most people would want to see a lawyer or law firm’s website when searching for a specialty lawyer, but certain factors such as:

  • Search engine rank (it’s a known fact that the higher on a search engine for a search term like “Orlando personal injury” that you are, the more visibility your website will have)
  • Meta description (the preview in the search engine results)
  • Shared or endorsed by a friend/social media connection?

And other factors will influence the user as to which website they should visit.

SEO Sidenote: Additional website factors (authority, load time/errors, on-page SEO and structure, content, etc.) will determine if the website actually ranks in the search results.

Read The Reviews on Google (Second Most Important)

Again, we’re assuming  that these are blended/Google+ Local results that we’re talking about, and if that’s the case, it’s hard to imagine that a user would see something like “4 Google Reviews” next to a listing and not click to read them.

SEO Sidenote: Reviews also play a part in whether or not a law firm’s website is listed in the search results. It’s not a MAJOR factor, but it does help if your law firm’s Google+ Local profile has some good reviews.

Read Reviews Elsewhere on the Internet (Third Place)

This is a given. Whether I’m going to hire a lawyer, buy a home, or rely on someone else for any other type of major event, I’m going to Google them and see what else is out there.

View The Map And See Where They’re Located

You’re not going to hire a lawyer 3 hours from where you’re located, I don’t care how great their website or reviews are. But the main thing I’d like to add to this is that it DOES matter where your office is located, so if you’re trying to rank well for search terms in Houston, then guess what- you should be looking into a Houston address.

Call and See What They’re Like

So people just call in to have a nice friendly chat with their potential lawyer? Not sure this is always the case for volume-based practice areas like bankruptcy or family law, but it’s possible for criminal defense or personal injury. I think that people usually look at lawyers’ Youtube or other videos more often then they just pick up the phone and call, and I also think that Live Chat and Free Downloadable Reports are additional actions that could be added to the list.

Look at Their Photos/Description on Google+

Appearance matters. Be aware of what pictures are out there and what impression people have of you. Spending some extra money on good, professional photographs is a good idea, but putting up a picture of yourself from 10 years ago with a full head of hair is probably a bad idea if you’re now bald(er) because it starts things off on the wrong foot.

 

Conclusion

The only closing comments that we’d like to make is to thank Mike for sharing such a great survey, and to remind you that not everyone does the same thing. While this data may be useful for generalization purposes, not everyone searches for the same thing on a search engine, not everyone in a certain age group or geographic area is the same, and not everyone realizes how important certain factors are until they’re presented to them in real-time. Long story short- don’t put all of your eggs in one basket, and don’t assume that all of your potential clients are the same.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Google Announces Sturctured Data Tool for Events

December 12, 2012 by George Murphy | No Comments | Filed in Lawyer SEO, Website design

Google has announced today that there is a new tool available in Webmaster Tools called “data highlighter” that allows webmasters, developers, and SEO’ers to easily implement rich snippets onto their web pages for any events that the particular website is announcing.

Today, we’re offering webmasters a simpler alternative: Data Highlighter. At initial launch, it’s available in English only and for structured data about events, such as concerts, sporting events, exhibitions, shows, and festivals. We’ll make Data Highlighter available for more languages and data types in the months ahead.

Prior to the tool, the only way to implement the rich snippet data onto the web pages was by editing the pages’ html content and implementing the rich snippets directly via markup code.

The new WYSIWYG tool allows users, instead of making html changes to their web pages, to simply highlight and designate specific tags to events that are listed, such as the name of the event, the date, the location, etc.

Possible uses of this tool for attorneys and law firms could include:

  • Trial Dates (for class action and other types of practice areas where publicly sharing trial dates is useful)
  • Press Releases
  • Firm Announcements (new hires, new cases, promotions, etc.)
  • Promotional Giveaways
  • Podcasts
  • Webinars
  • Scheduled website and blog launches
  • Speaking engagements
  • Community Service and Charity Events

What other types of events do law firms typically list on their websites or blogs? Feel free to comment below.

To use the tool, simply log-in to Google Webmaster Tools , select “optimization”, and click on “data highlighter”.

There is also a video below on how to use the tool.

Long-Tail Keywords for Law Firms- What Is The Client Thinking?

December 11, 2012 by George Murphy | No Comments | Filed in Content, Lawyer SEO

#1: Think Less Like a Lawyer and More Like A (Potential) Client

You’ve probably asked yourself, depending on your law firm’s practice area, questions like:

If I were in a car accident, what would I search on Google for?

If I was thinking about filing for divorce, what would you I into a Google search?

If I needed to hire a bankruptcy lawyer, what would I do?

But the fact that you already have years of experience in that particular practice area, and the fact that you probably think that most people who are ready to hire an attorney are searching for the types of vanity phrases that we mentioned before (Maryland personal injury lawyer, New York bankruptcy attorney, etc.), your answers to those questions may be biased and your judgement may be clouded.

You’ve met with enough clients by now to know that not everyone’s story is the same. So try to take into consideration what made people contact you for a consultation or retain you to represent them throughout the years, and put that data to good use.

I was rear-ended in a car crash and suffered whiplash

Virginia auto accident statistics

Can I file for divorce in New York if my spouse lives in another state?

Can I file for bankruptcy in Maryland if I have unfiled tax returns?

Think about what your clients or potential clients were thinking about when they contacted you, because the chances are that they’re not the only ones who have thought this way.

It’s easy to just move on to the next client or sweep inquiries under the rug, especially if they didn’t result in the client hiring you, but you’d be surprised how much data you can get out of some of your past contacts even if it seemed like a waste of time. Put your customer service hat on and:

  • Go through your intake notes for past clients and consultations and read their stories.
  • Read past e-mail inquiries and what clients/potential clients described when it came to their situations.
  • Listen to any voicemails that you still have access to. People are surprisingly specific when it comes to leaving lawyers voicemail messages.
  • If you have live chat enabled on your website, read the live chat transcripts and see what some clients and potential clients were going through or wondering about at the time.
  • If you monitor your phone calls, listen to past client calls and get a better feel for what they were going through before they contacted you.

Then, create some FAQ’s or blog posts which touch on those topics. These pages may not result in an extra 1,000 visits per month, but the visits that they do generate will likely have a lower bounce rate if it addresses the visitor’s specific question, offers some value, and gives them the impression that you know what you’re talking about and understand what they’re going through.

Long-tail Keyword Tip #2- Analyze your Existing Data (coming soon)

5 Ways to Come Up With Long-Tail Keywords for your Law Firm

December 11, 2012 by George Murphy | No Comments | Filed in Content, Lawyer SEO, On Page SEO

When it comes to determining what keywords your law firm’s website should be targeting when coming up with ideas for content, it’s important that you don’t spend all of your time and effort trying to rank for a handful of keywords.

Yes, ranking well on Google, Bing, and Yahoo! for search terms like “Maryland personal injury lawyer” or “Baltimore divorce attorney” may result in your website generating better leads and traffic, but that doesn’t mean that everyone who is interested in retaining your law firm to handle his or her case is always going to search for the same thing.

The biggest mistake when it comes to marketing any type of business on the web from an SEO standpoint is putting all of your eggs in one basket, and if your law firm website only has a couple of pages of content because its main goal is to rank well on search engines for “vanity” keywords which requires a lot more time and effort to rank for, then you’re probably missing out on a lot of opportunity.

Ever since Google Panda and Google Penguin launched, the quality of content that’s on a website is even more important than before. So if Google and other search engines’ spiders are crawling your website, and notice that the same 5-10 pages are the only web pages on your law firm site, then they’re probably going to have to have a hard time justifying ranking that particular website over a competing firm’s site which has fresher and higher-quality content.

This week we’ll be sharing 5 ways to come up with content ideas for your website in order to improve long-tail search terms that are driving traffic to your law firm’s website.

#1- Think Less Like a Lawyer and More Like a Client

#2- Analyze your Existing Data (coming soon)

#3- Ways to “Spy” on Competitors (coming soon)

#4- Tools that Can Help to Identify Potential Long-Tail Keywords (coming soon)

#5- Search Queries that SEO “Ninjas” Use (coming soon)

 

 

Infographic- Local SEO 101 for Law Firms

November 13, 2012 by George Murphy | No Comments | Filed in Google Places/Google+
Courtesy of: http://www.thesearchninjas.com

Lawyer SEO: Better Than Traditional Advertising Methods

September 22, 2012 by George Murphy | No Comments | Filed in Lawyer SEO, On Page SEO

For a lawyer SEO services can make sure that potential clients are informed as to how lawyers can be helpful in their particular legal situations. It’s not enough that a lawyer possesses the expertise and experience in helping clients go through a very murky legal battle. A lawyer’s website can contain all the pertinent information on how he or she can be helpful, but without proper SEO, clients will not even know how good you are.

The traditional ways that most lawyers have used in order to advertise their services are now largely ineffective—what’s worse, some of them are ineffective and costly as well. The Internet is already the preferred way of finding the right lawyer for any legal situation and for an attorney SEO services can make sure that they will be found by their potential clients easily.

Comparing Between SEO and Word of Mouth

Word of mouth is still the most instinctive way that a client uses in order to get the name of a good lawyer. This is simply natural; we gravitate towards our friends and family when we are in legal trouble, and the name of a lawyer is a way for them to help. This used to be sufficient before the Internet was introduced; but nowadays, clients tend to verify everything they hear online first. If you are a lawyer, and a former client recommends you to somebody else, you can’t be certain that your services will be consulted as a result. Quite a lot of people may not think you are the right choice if your website does not appear prominently in Google, and the recommendation may be rendered moot.

For any attorney SEO should be considered a necessity, and even lawyers who prefer traditional advertising methods must learn to adapt to the new way of reaching out to their audience. Legal SEO can be considered a new version of word-of mouth in a way, because many potential clients regard Google and Yahoo as a friend that makes the best recommendations of all.

Comparing SEO to Print Ads

Any law firm SEO experts have assisted will see more results with their websites than before, and this method is much more effective in garnering new clients than print ads. Unlike Google results, print ads in newspapers and magazines are glazed over by their readers. In contrast, this rarely happens for Google searches, because the user is intent in finding the right website in the first place. A potential client who needs a lawyer won’t think: I need to check last week’s newspaper for any lawyer advertisement. The client will instead think: I need to check Google for a lawyer right now.

Newspapers are no longer trusted as reliable sources of professional services. In fact, there is a growing trend that even the news stories they feature are not even being read at all these days. Either people tend to watch the news on TV, or they simply check Yahoo and Google news and they will have the latest news they would like to read about. Newspapers are losing their readership, and so are their ads.

As a lawyer, it may be a good investment to pay for legal SEO services. The cost is much lower than what you would pay for print advertising, and yet the results are much more significant. For any law firm SEO represents the most cost-effective way in advertising their lawyers’ availability and expertise.

How Legal SEO Connects Clients to the Right Lawyers

September 21, 2012 by George Murphy | No Comments | Filed in Lawyer SEO

For an attorney SEO services can play a crucial role in enabling them to connect with the clients who sorely need their services. If you have a website that offers your legal services to would-be clients, then as a lawyer SEO services may be necessary in order for clients to be made aware that your firm even exists.

SEO Helps You Land Clients in Your City or State

Lawyers are licensed to practice their profession in very specific areas. These areas are determined by the required bar exams, which means that if a lawyer has passed the exam that the state of New York requires, then that lawyer can practice in that state only. Clients within the same jurisdiction therefore need lawyers who have the required licenses so that the legal assistance can be offered and received.

Search engines have ways of determining the location of each user, and this can be very helpful in providing the appropriate query results. Google and Yahoo can easily provide your website to a searcher if you operate within the jurisdiction of this person’s case, as long as your website has been properly optimized by SEO professionals. What this means is that with the help of legal SEO, your site would come up if someone needs a lawyer in your area.

Your website can also explain the various legal complications, as there may be some confusion regarding location references. For example, if a client has been arrested for a crime, the location may refer to the crime scene, or where the client lives; and your website can help clarify matters.

SEO Connects You to Clients Who Require Your Field of Expertise

As a lawyer, you probably specialize in a particular legal field. Perhaps you focus on divorce cases, or you tend to spend the majority of your time defending the civil rights of people who have been arrested for drug possession. A law firm tends to have many kinds of lawyers in its roster so that it can serve the needs of more people involved in all types of legal matters. The website of a law firm SEO experts have optimized for, would then effectively offer these particular services to people who need them.

Time Constraints

There is also a time factor involved. In short, clients often need a lawyer now, when they have been arrested or have just received notification that they are being sued. If you have failed to optimize your website properly, then a client would need to wade through many other websites of law firms which may not possess the necessary skill set or experience that your law firm does.

However, the website of a law firm SEO professionals have worked on will rank up high in search engines, and this significantly reduces the delay that your client will experience in receiving the appropriate legal assistance. The client can get the help they need now, and perhaps a gross injustice may be averted.

With the help of a lawyer SEO provider, your site can be made more visible to those requiring your services, and clients can be served much better as a result.

Why Law Firm SEO Services Should Be Outsourced

September 20, 2012 by George Murphy | No Comments | Filed in Lawyer SEO

Why Law Firm SEO Services Should Be Outsourced

For a law firm SEO services can be very invaluable, and it may be a good idea to invest in acquiring the best legal SEO services available. The most effective way to obtain legal SEO is to outsource the job, so that lawyers can minimize expenses and acquire the best possible results.

Here are some of the benefits of outsourcing lawyer SEO requirements:

Lawyers Can Focus More on Their Job

Lawyers are involved in cases that require a lot of their time. There’s too much work involved, and it is sometimes a wonder how lawyers find the time and energy to do everything that needs to be done. Many of these particular jobs have set schedules as well. A lawyer needs to explain the realities of a case to their clients, and then he or she needs to file the appropriate paperwork to the right agencies and departments, using the proper legal terminology. All these things should also be done in a timely manner.

A case also often involves a lot of research. This does not only involve studying up on legal matters that take hours and hours to do, but may also involve actual investigative work that may require professional investigators. A lawyer would have to oversee these investigators, to ensure that everyone observes and follows the legal procedures and that the investigators know what legally relevant evidence they should be looking for.

So really, it makes no sense for a lawyer to add SEO to his list of responsibilities. There is already too much work to be done, and some jobs are better delegated to other professionals. This is why for an attorney SEO services should be done by others.

The Right People for the Job

An attorney’s biography can sometimes read as a testament to dedication and purpose. A good attorney would have spent years in college, then a few years more in law school, and these things require a lot of effort on the part of would-be lawyers. After law school, there is more studying to be done in order to pass the bar exam, and then after that, an attorney will then choose a particular specialization for his work.

All these years and efforts are aimed at making a lawyer good at being a lawyer—whether as a defense lawyer protecting the rights of illegal aliens, or as an advocate for a wife in a difficult child support case.

As you can see, none of the training actually delves on how to make their websites more popular on search engines, through SEO or other Internet marketing methods. In contrast, an SEO professional has actually spent a lot of time and effort in learning these things. Lawyers should therefore concentrate on purely legal matters and refrain from DIY SEO. Legal SEO services are available from SEO experts who studied the subject extensively, which is why lawyers should leave the SEO work to them.

By choosing the right legal SEO company, you can significantly increase your rank in search engines and this translates to more clients for you.

« Older Entries