With the help of search engine optimization (SEO), your law firm can ascend to the top rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs).
At the top rankings, you’ll get more visibility, more traffic, and more conversions, ultimately allowing you to trounce your fiercest competitors.
But to see the rest of these dominoes fall, you need to be able to practice SEO effectively.
And while you might be one of the best lawyers in your area, you probably don’t have the expertise to launch a pitch perfect SEO strategy.
Even if you did, you wouldn’t have the time to do it.
That’s where a law firm SEO expert comes into play.
Why do you need a law firm SEO expert? And how do you choose the right SEO partner for your law firm?
Table of Contents
A Primer on SEO for Law Firms
We’ve already introduced the goal of SEO for law firms: increasing your website’s rankings and visibility in search engines.
How do you do it?
We’d be lying if we said it was easy, but the gist of the topic is simple enough to understand.
Google favors websites with high levels of trustworthiness and high levels of relevance for user searches. Our job as law firm SEO experts is to make your web presence extremely relevant and extremely trustworthy in the eyes of Google and other search engines.
To do this, we focus on areas like the following:
- Keyword research and targeting. Before we can make your law firm website relevant to searchers, we need to know what they’re searching for. Through keyword research and targeting, we discover the most valuable keywords for your legal niche and create a plan for how to integrate them into your website.
- Onsite content development. From there, we want to produce high-quality onsite content. This is an opportunity to optimize for both relevance and trustworthiness, and the posts we create will be invaluable for our offsite strategy as well.
- Technical onsite SEO. Google won’t give you a chance to rank unless your website works properly, so we adjust it with tweaks like mobile optimization and page loading speed refinement.
- Link building (and offsite content). It’s almost impossible to build trustworthiness and credibility without inbound links. A big part of our strategy is building the natural, high-quality links necessary to boost your website authority without putting you in danger of a penalty.
- Data analytics and recursive updating. And of course, we need to look at the objective data to make sure we’re doing our jobs properly. Regular reporting allows us to identify and correct missteps, set a course for new opportunities, and prove our value.
Of course, every client is different, so we do adjust our SEO approach based on the needs and goals of the law firm hiring us.
How a Law Firm SEO Expert Can Get You More Clients
Why do you need a law firm SEO expert?
In short, we get you more clients for less money.
With an effective SEO strategy in place, you’re almost guaranteed to get more traffic. You’ll get more organic traffic, since you’ll rank higher in search engines. You’ll get more referral traffic, since we’ll be building offsite links in major publications. And as your reputation grows, you’ll get more traffic from other areas as well.
Keep in mind that all this new traffic is going to be highly relevant; these are people specifically searching for terms related to your legal niche. While not all of them will be perfectly qualified, these are going to be highly valuable streams of traffic.
Even better, your website is going to be so technically optimized and full of high-quality content that it’s going to be much easier to convert visitors. Conversion optimization isn’t synonymous with SEO, but SEO does carry significant conversion optimization benefits.
So why not do it on your own?
Well, you can certainly try. SEO isn’t especially hard to learn, at least not at the fundamental level. But if you choose to practice it, the limitations of DIY SEO will quickly become apparent to you.
If you choose to do all the work yourself, you’ll quickly run out of time. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re much more likely to earn a Google penalty, which can set you back months. And without years of experience behind you, you’ll find it much harder to interpret your reports and verify whether you’re doing things correctly. Even if you are satisfied with your results, you may never know how much of your potential you’re wasting, as a law firm SEO expert could likely help you grow faster and more reliably.
Of course, another option is to hire SEO experts internally, but this is usually more expensive than working with a law firm SEO agency.
How to Choose the Right Law Firm SEO Expert
Working with a law firm SEO agency is the obvious choice for any law firm interested in improving the visibility of their web presence and attracting more clients.
The real dilemma is choosing the right law firm SEO expert partner, since there are so many SEO agencies to choose from.
These are some of the most important factors to consider:
- Budget. SEO services aren’t exactly cheap, but that’s because they usually involve significant, skill-intensive effort. Most law firm SEO agencies are less expensive than hiring staff members full-time, but you should still consider your overall marketing budget and shop for an option that fits it.
- Specialty. Not all SEO agencies specialize in serving law firms. And many SEO agencies that specialize in serving law firms won’t specialize in your area of focus. You may want to work with SEO experts in the realm of personal injury law, mass tort law, family law, estate planning and tax law, or even the emerging field of space law.
- Qualifications. Your law firm SEO expert should have years of experience under their belt and competent staff members with a diverse range of specialties.
- Past results. Law firm SEO experts should also be able to demonstrate past results, with at least several law firm clients who have been satisfied with their work.
- Existing SEO efforts/knowledge. Once you start talking to an SEO expert candidate, ask them questions to gauge their existing SEO knowledge and the process they follow to see results. Do they seem to know what they’re talking about? Are they transparent and forthcoming with answers?
- Communication. In fact, pay attention to your communication overall. Are these people easy to get a hold of? Are they pleasant and professional? Trust us, you don’t want a law firm SEO expert who acts like a jerk.
How do you find a law firm SEO expert that meets all your needs?
- Look around. You can start here. We’re not the only law firm SEO experts in town, but if you’re reading this, take a look around to see what we’re capable of.
- Referrals. The vast majority of clients seek referrals when looking for a lawyer, with 62 percent of people getting referrals from friends and family, and another 31 percent getting referrals from other lawyers. Consider asking lawyers you know if they have any recommendations for a law firm SEO expert.
- Searches. Conduct a search to find more law firm SEO experts. The people ranking at the top of these searches clearly know what they’re doing.
- Networking. You can also find SEO experts through networking, which is something you’re probably doing regularly anyway.
When you open the door to a law firm SEO expert and begin the conversation, consider asking the following questions to learn more about them:
- What is your SEO philosophy? There are many viable ways to practice SEO, but not all of them are equally effective and not all of them are ethical. Search for white hat SEO experts who prioritize long-term, sustainable, scalable strategies.
- What is your approach/process? Get details about how these people operate. If they’re doing anything sketchy, you’ll likely notice it right away; they’ll either admit to engaging in questionable habits or refuse to answer your questions.
- What metrics do you track? How does this SEO agency define success? Which metrics do they track and how do they expect those metrics to grow once they begin your campaign?
- How do you report? Many SEO experts for law firms report on results at least monthly, and sometimes weekly. See if you can get an example of the types of reports they usually produce.
- What services do you offer and what do you charge? Some law firm SEO agencies offer comprehensive service packages, while others provide services a la carte. Both are viable, but you’ll need to understand these service packages before you move forward.
- What if…? Asking “what if” questions can also help you figure out what type of SEO agency this is. What if I’m not happy with the results? What if I want to upgrade or downgrade my package? What if the campaign isn’t working after a few months?
Red Flags: When to Run From a Law Firm SEO Expert
Finalizing your choice of a law firm SEO expert can be stressful.
After all, this is a lot of time and money to spend. And the wrong move could actually set you back, rather than moving you forward.
In your search, be on the lookout for the following red flags:
- Big, concrete promises. No competent law firm SEO agency is going to promise the world to you. Yes, SEO is incredibly valuable and you can often see tremendous growth after a few months of effort. But if this SEO expert promises big, specific results or promises them nearly instantly, it’s probably too good to be true.
- Bad reviews. Gauge the reputation of this SEO service provider. Are there any bad reviews or controversies following them? Keep in mind that no sane SEO expert is going to draw attention to these, so you may have to do some digging outside their website to discover them.
- Lack of transparency. If an SEO agency doesn’t explicitly reveal how it creates content or builds links, it could be a sign that it uses black hat or questionable practices. There are many cheap tricks that can give you temporary or superficial forms of growth, but they’ll always hurt you in the long run. A lack of transparency is always a bad sign.
- Sketchy practices. Of course, sometimes supposed SEO experts have no self-awareness or shame; they’ll outright brag about practices like keyword stuffing or engaging in link schemes.
- Limited technical knowledge. When you ask this law firm SEO agency about SEO-related matters, do they have confident, easily understandable answers? If your representative can’t answer your questions, or if they seem puzzled by the topics you bring up, it’s a red flag.
- Prioritization of vanity metrics. Some metrics seem extremely valuable for law firm SEO, but they don’t necessarily tell you the whole story, nor are they particularly relevant to your bottom line. For example, higher keyword rankings are usually great, but if they don’t generate organic traffic or help you get more clients, they aren’t something to brag about. A trustworthy law firm SEO partner should be prioritizing your success, rather than superficial metrics.
- Restrictive or complicated offerings. Not all SEO service offering packages are going to be a good fit for your law firm. If this agency’s contracts are especially restrictive or if the service offerings are very complicated, it could limit your flexibility in the future and reduce your potential.
- Employee turnover. General employee turnover, across all businesses, sits at just above 17 percent. If you notice that this law firm SEO agency has exceptionally high turnover, or if they’ve recently lost lots of staff members, it could be a sign of internal turmoil – or unethical practices.
Law Firm SEO Expert: What Our Clients Are Saying
At SEO.co, we consider ourselves law firm SEO experts.
We’ve helped dozens of lawyers and law firms like yours beat out their top competitors and climb to the top of local search rankings.
These are just some examples of the results we’ve seen – and the praise we’ve received from our most successful partners.
Your Next Law Firm SEO Expert: SEO.co
We’re SEO.co – SEO experts with specialized experience in serving personal injury attorneys like you.
If you:
- want to start an SEO campaign but you don’t know where to begin,
- struggle to get the SEO results you want, or
- simply need some extra help ticking all the boxes on your SEO checklist,
SEO.co can help you.
We have worked with SEO for personal injury lawyers to corporate law firm SEO and everything in between.
If you’re ready to get started with your free consultation, contact us today!
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