Legal Search Marketing

Archive for the ‘Legal SEO Marketing’ Category

One of the goals of every lawyer web site is to get ranked high at the search engines for keywords related to the firms location and practice. Especially at Google!   This is what Ive been doing for lawyers for the past 12 years!

I remember working at the downtown Chicago law firm of Foran and Schultz and I was in charge of the firms web site, as well as the firms computer network.  Web design was a new thing and it was pretty cool putting up the firms first site, but I was more excited by the fact that the site could also be found at search engines like Alta Vista, Hotbot and good old Yahoo! Google wasnt even in the picture back then, but they were coming!

I remember telling the lawyers at the firm that it was an important thing to be found at search engines, they werent so sure and told me not to put in any more overtime on what I called Search engine site optimization! They were wrong because as we all know now, having your site listed at Google in the top spots can make a real difference in getting new clients.

There is more to do in todays age then just organic SEO, now theres pay per click marketing, videos, facebook, twitter, linked in, blogs and the list goes on.  Yet its always going to be key to make sure your site is coming up at the top of the search engines for your most important terms.

WE GET GREAT RESULTS

Getting top search engine rankings involve many things.  There is no one single thing to do, you have to do a lot of things over time. Its all about having a good domain name combined with great solid content and a solid social media and link campaign.   Most lawyers would never have the time to do all of this, so it makes sense to have an expert do it all.

If your law firm is looking for assistance with their overall Internet marketing strategy, call us at 630-393-0460.

Having a website for your law firm is obvious now but sometimes you have to upgrade your site in order to keep up with the ever changing Internet.  Many times lawyers will create sites but never really update them, so after a few years, the content is somewhat outdated.  Its always a good idea to add new practice areas if you can and any articles anyone in the firm has done, more content can lead to better organic SEO results.  Then sometimes you want to add Video or a translation feature that allows your site to be read in different languages and then sometimes you just want a better looking site. 

This is a Seattle Personal Injury law firm that we have helped upgrade to a newer more
professional looking site and we also have added many new features
including multiple videos describing what the law firm does and
testimonials from satisfied clients.  Then we also added a Spanish
translation feature that allows the site to be read on Spanish. We also updated the content, added new personal injury FAQ's and then further optimized the site for SEO purposes.

If your law firm needs a website upgrade, contact the Legal web design and SEO marketing professionals at Lawyers Court today for further information.

We have helped another law firm upgrade their web presence from a basic site to a more advanced web site design.  Updating your law firm site can be a good idea for a number of reasons.  First its always a good idea to update the look and feel of your site and keep it fresh.  Then a lot of times law firms won't ever add new content to the site, so upgrading the site is a perfect time to add new fresh content. This can be in the form of update and additional practice areas, legal articles, testimonials, newsletters and blog posts.

RENTON WASHINGTON PERSONAL INJURY LAWYERS

We have created a new web site for the firm of Boyd Buckingham, a Renton, Washington Law Firm that focuses on Personal Injury and Family Law.   We have created the site using the WordPress content management system, which can make it easier to make updates to the website.  We have updated the content, added new legal images and fully optimized the site for the search engines.

Lawyers Court provides lawyer web design and legal seo work. We assist attorneys and law firms of all sizes in creating new websites, doing search engine optimization work, creating legal blogs and all other legal Internet marketing work.

FROM LAWYER CASTING:

Alyn-Weiss & Associates has just released a study showing that 59% of law firms have used SEO over the past 24 months(up from 20% in the prior 2 year period). And 20% of firms said they got new business from SEO in 2007-2008 (up from 8% in the prior 1 year period). The average size of firm in the study was 46 lawyers.

I'd venture that the 80% of the firms who feel they didn't get new business from their SEO efforts weren't properly tracking traffic and conversions, didn't do the SEO right, or did a poor job of closing leads. Basically, it's somewhat difficult not to get new business (or least get new leads) over time when SEO is done right. 

I would agree here that the firms that say they didnt get new clients with SEO, either didnt really do SEO or more then likely didnt track where the new clients came from.   Every lawyer that we have helped with SEO or PPC has gotten new clients as a result.  Josh is correct in that if the SEO is done right, its almost impossible not to get new clents! 

Source

I blogged a couple weeks back about the first updated site we launchedfor Tax Attorney Ken Sheppard and I said I would be blogging soon about the Top Google Search rankings the site was going to soon have.  I didnt think it would be this soon!

Sometimes you have to start over with a site to get the best possible results at the search engines.  In this case we moved the site to a new webhost, created a search engine friendly design with an additional 15 pages of optimized content and fully optimized the site for the search engines. 

Just two weeks ago the site could not be found for any keywords, now the site is #1 for Ohio Tax Lawyer, #1 for Ohio Tax Attorney and its basically in the top 10 for all keywords related to Ohio Tax. Its even in the top 10 for national tax keywords such as irs tax attorneys and tax lawyers. These are harder keywords to get ranked for because your competing against everyone, not just attorneys in Ohio.

This site is still not 100% done and we are adding more content to the site daily.  No coincidence that the traffic over the last week has more then tripled.  I talked with the client today and he told me he got a high number of calls this week and signed up a few new clients as a result.  So already not even before the site is done, it pays off bigtime with new clients!   Plus he has a better looking site that is easier to navigate, has more content and is ranked in the top 10 for all his keywords, how is every lawyer not doing this? It works!!

A few backs I blogged about the importance of making sure that your Google Adwords campaign is properly optimized. 

Many times lawyers will create an Adwords campaign and not really pay attention to it or use the Pay Per Clicks search engines optimization suggestions, which can result in you paying a lot more money then you should.  We will easily save this client at least $3,000 a month, if not more as a result of reviewing and adjusting his campaigns.

TOP 10 ORGANIC RESULTS ARE VALUABLE
More important though is having top 10 organic results at Google for the same keywords your bidding on via Pay Per Click.  The best thing about the organic listings are they are free!   So if your paying $20 per click on average and you get 100 visitors for the month via the organic listings, that would value your organic listing at $2,000 each month and thats just for one keyphrase.

SAVE MONEY AT PPC & GET TOP 10 ORGANIC RANKINGS
The same Massachusetts Drunk Driving Lawyer that we helped save money on the Pay per click ads, we have now also gotten him top 10 rankings at Google organics for many of the same terms he is bidding on.  Some of the terms are 
- Massachusetts OUI (#6)
- OUI Lawyers Mass (#4)
- Massachusetts DUI (#6)
- Massachusetts DWI (#8)
- Massachusetts Drunk Driving Lawyers (#8)

I already see an increase in traffic from the organic listings. So as a result of our Internet Marketing work, the client has not only saved over $3000 a month but now has many top 10 organic listings and is now getting more traffic and visitors then ever before, which will result in more clients.

If we can be of assistance to your legal practice, with either pay per click marketing or organic optimization, please contact us.

Most lawyers that contact me for doing organic search engine optimization or pay per click marketing are smaller law firms and solo attorneys.

CAN YOUR FIRMS ATTORNEYS BE FOUND WHEN THEY ARE GOOGLED?

I usually notice that bigger law firms websites aren’t optimized and sometimes you can’t even find key partners when "googling" them, let alone finding the firms site for keywords related to their practice areas.

I would think that bigger law firms with big marketing budgets would do more with search engine optimization and pay per click marketing.  This is good news though for the smaller firms of the world, they can compete and beat the bigger guys in online advertising.

MOST LAWFIRM MARKETING DIRECTORS DONT GET SEO

I do have a number of bigger law firms that do recognize the value of search engine optimization and thats usually because of a sharp law marketing director.  Yet I find most law firm marketing directors don’t seem to understand how important it is to have some optimization done on the firms site, at the very least make sure your firm and its partners can be found at Google.

I do see more and more lawyers recognizing that online marketing is the wave of the future and replacing the yellow pages and traditional ways to advertise.

The latest large law firm client that we are working for is a Canadian law firm with multiple locations including Toronto, New York & London.

If you law firm needs assistance with search engine optimization or pay per click marketing, contact us today.

Getting links to your legal website from other sites is one of the more important things in getting high rankings at the search engines, especially Google.   To check the # of links that you presently have pointing to your site, goto Google and type in link:http://www.yoursite.com/ changing the domain to your law firms domain name.

Google doesnt report the full # of links though using this tool, yet they have rececently started reporting much more detailed link analysis in the Google sitemaps program. Yahoo though will report a more accurate # using the link search link:http://www.yoursite.com/.

The more links you have the better, but getting links from highly ranked and linked sites that are legal related will produce the best results. Getting links from any .EDU website can be especially valuable. 

If your law firm needs assitance with link building, contact us today.

Getting top 10 search engine rankings is the goal of most search engine optimization projects.  It makes sense that if your in the top 10 for a keyword related to your firms practice, that you will get some traffic from people looking for the type of law you practice. How about if you were able to get ALL TOP 10 rankings for certain keywords!!!

Ive got one client who has a number of different sites including many mini sites that are focused on specific practice areas such as corporate law, tax law, litigation, estate planning and others and most all of them are listed pretty well in the organic search listings.

At MSN for the keyphrase Chicago Tax Law the firm has the first 7 spots and then also the 10th place for a dominating 8 out of 10 top 10 rankings!   Its harder to achieve that at Google BUT they do have 3 out of the top 10. 5 out 10 at Yahoo.

Having multiple sites can be a very good idea and a way to focus on different sets of keywords. Yet its important though to not just repeat the same content on multiple sites, you must have unique content in order to have success. The more unique content, the better, content is and always will be King!