Category: Advice

Choosing the right digital marketing agency can be a make-or-break decision for your law firm. A good agency can significantly boost the effectiveness of your online marketing and increase your revenue.

On the other hand, a poorly chosen agency can lead to disappointing results or even cause negative outcomes. In this article, we will provide you with some tips on how to choose the right digital marketing agency for your law firm.

Why Hire a Legal Marketing Agency?

Hiring a legal marketing agency can save you money, provide access to years of experience, offer greater bandwidth and efficiency, access to experts, new perspectives, and better resources. Investing in marketing technology can get expensive. An agency, assuming they’re reputable, will have access to the most up-to-date and cutting-edge resources that’ll improve your strategy over time.

Make Sure the Marketing Agency Understands Your Needs and Your Business

It’s essential to seek out an agency that understands exactly what you need, as well as your practice areas and your target audience. While specializing in the legal industry is not a requirement, it is highly likely your firm will achieve better results partnering with an agency that understands the specifics of working with lawyers and law firms and the nuances of legal marketing.

Here Are Things To Look For in a Legal Marketing Agency

1. Understanding Your Needs

Before you start looking for a digital marketing agency, it’s important to understand your law firm’s marketing needs. Consider the goals you want to achieve, the target audience you want to reach, and the specific services you require. Do you need help with search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, social media marketing, or all of the above? Understanding your needs will help you find an agency that can provide the services you require.

2. Identifying Potential Digital Marketing Agencies

Once you’ve identified your needs, you can start looking for potential digital marketing agencies. You can use online search engines, social media platforms, or professional directories to find agencies that specialize in law firm marketing. Additionally, you can ask for recommendations from other lawyers or colleagues who have worked with digital marketing agencies before.

3. Evaluating Agencies’ Experience and Expertise

When you’ve compiled a list of potential agencies, the next step is to evaluate their experience and expertise. Look for agencies that have experience working with law firms or in the legal industry. Ask about the agency’s team members’ credentials and expertise in digital marketing. Ensure that the agency has a clear understanding of the legal industry and the specific challenges law firms face when marketing their services.

4. Reviewing Agencies’ Portfolios and Case Studies

Reviewing an agency’s portfolio and case studies can give you an idea of the quality of work they produce. Look for examples of digital marketing campaigns the agency has executed for law firms. Review case studies that demonstrate the agency’s ability to achieve the goals and objectives you have set for your law firm.

5. Assessing Agencies’ Communication and Collaboration Skills

Working with a digital marketing agency requires a significant amount of collaboration and communication. Ensure that the agency you choose has strong communication skills and can provide regular updates on the progress of your campaigns. Consider the agency’s communication methods, such as email, phone, or in-person meetings, and choose an agency that aligns with your communication preferences.

6. Inquiring About Agencies’ Reporting and Analytics Capabilities

Measuring the effectiveness of your law firm’s digital marketing campaigns is critical to determining their success. Inquire about the agency’s reporting and analytics capabilities. Ensure that the agency can provide regular reports and metrics that demonstrate the effectiveness of their campaigns. Additionally, ensure that the agency can track and analyze the data from your law firm’s website and other digital marketing channels.

7. Examining Agencies’ Rates and Contracts

Digital marketing agencies can charge different rates and have different contract terms. Examine the rates and contract terms of potential agencies to ensure that they align with your law firm’s budget and needs.

Ask About Their Services and Skills

Ask any agency you’re considering what services they offer and which, if any, they specialize in. An honest agency will be upfront about where its strengths and weaknesses lie. Anyone claiming to be an expert in all aspects of digital marketing is almost certainly over-representing themselves.

Room for Growth

Ask about the agency’s ability to cover a few different strategies and how accustomed they are to adding services as their clients grow or their needs change.

Ask About Strategy vs. Execution

Some marketing agencies will specialize in strategy and planning, expecting you to take care of the execution. Others might be ready to handle the execution, but expect you to devise and inform them of your own strategy. Still, others will fall somewhere in the middle. The right choice for you will depend on exactly what your goals are and how involved you want to be in the various processes.

Make Sure Your Goals Are Aligned

Before heading into the hiring process, map out your marketing goals. Then, bring up goal setting when you meet with agencies. Do their goals for your firm align with your own? Do they feel equipped to reach your goals?

Ask How Results are Communicated

Find out right from the start how those results will be communicated to you. A good digital marketing agency will not only provide the data but also help you glean actionable insights and strategies from that data.

Ask For and Check Past Results. Don’t Take Their Word Alone

Ask for and check references. Any reputable marketer will be able to provide references from past clients with verifiable results.

Make Sure the Price is Right

Consider how much your firm can afford to spend and how you will be charged. You should think about both of these factors and ensure you know how billing will work with each agency you’re considering.

Conclusion

Choosing the right legal marketing agency is paramount for success. Not all agencies are alike, and sadly, there are many companies that lack knowledge of best practices. With these tips in mind, you can start your search for a digital marketing agency that will be both effective and comfortable to work with. Remember to seek out an agency that understands your needs and business, ask about their services and skills, ensure there is room for growth, and check past results.

The goal of online marketing is to increase the flow of traffic to your law firm’s website to ultimately reach more potential clients. When it comes to increasing that flow of traffic, you have two primary options at your disposal: search engine optimization or pay per click advertising.

Both strategies have their strengths and weaknesses. It’s important to understand the basic tenets of both strategies, their advantages, and key factors to consider as you make the decision of which option to go with. Ultimately, your law firm’s advertising budget, location, and competition will play a major role in determining which mechanisms you employ for your online marketing strategy. 

When it comes to choosing an option for your law firm’s marketing plan, factor in the resources you have available and how the options differ. 

What is SEO? 

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the use of targeted keywords to ensure you’re found by the audience performing internet searches for those keywords.

There are best practices in place to help you do this. This is a more organic form of internet marketing – you rely on strategically developed content laced with keywords as well as your landing pages to guide internet users in your area to your law firm’s site. 

SEO typically accounts for local and organic results which are shown below (*excluding the top paid ad shown in local)

What is PPC? 

Pay per click (or PPC) advertising is the practice of purchasing internet traffic using specifically cultivated programs with search engines such as Google and Yahoo. You set up an ad to be displayed in the “sponsored results” portion of their search engine results. Depending on how common the keyword you choose is, you’ll pay the search engine every time a user clicks your ad. 

This guarantees your ad will be moved to the “front of the line” with the search engines you’ve partnered with. While it will be labeled as a “sponsored result,” you can at least ensure that your link is viewed by the specific group you’re targeting. 

While these do appear at the top, less people click on paid ads than typical local or organic.

Advantages of SEO

SEO is a less expensive way to gain the attention of internet users seeking the counsel of a law firm. You save money by attracting organic interest from users in your area.

You can attract this free traffic by implementing a content development strategy – blog posts on topics of interest to your potential clients. This has the added benefit of establishing you as a subject matter expert in your practice’s particular field. 

Advantages of PPC

Whereas using primarily SEO you save money, using primarily PPC saves you time. PPC is a quicker fix than SEO. If you have a larger advertising budget, PPC offers a faster payoff than waiting for organically placed search terms to gain attention. PPC puts you right in the potential client’s crosshairs – you gain access to an audience that you’re certain is looking for the type of legal services you provide right away. 

With SEO, you’re unable to pay for preferred placement in the search listings. You’re at the mercy of Google or Yahoo’s algorithms to rank you favorably. 

Analysis 

The major difference between these two mechanisms is the difference between organic and paid traffic. There are four major factors you should consider before opting for SEO or PPC: 

What is your advertising budget? 

PPC costs more but can offer faster results. If your firm has a higher advertising budget, opt for a PPC-focused campaign. When it comes to SEO, your major investment will be time. You may not spend as much money in the short term, but you may end up dedicating significant staff resources towards getting the most out of your SEO efforts. With PPC, the costs for your firm are front-loaded. 

How much (and what type of) competition do you face in your area? 

It’s critical to consider what kind of competition you face from other law firms in your area. Do they offer the same services as you? What type of clients are they pursuing? 

For example, let’s say you operate a personal injury law firm in a medium-sized city. You wouldn’t have to worry quite as much about a firm that specializes in patent law in the same area. But any competing personal injury attorneys may be targeting the same keywords as you. This will matter whether you have to develop keywords for your PPC or SEO campaigns.

How common are your target keywords?

Using Google tools such as its Traffic Estimator and its Keyword Planner, to help you gauge the popularity of the terms you plan to target, particularly in your area. It will also help you judge what keywords your competition is targeting. Consider the terms your competition is targeting and in what ways you can differentiate yourself from them. The more specificity you can insert into your targeted keywords, the better. This helps you establish your firm as a set of specialized experts and separates you from your competition. 

Do you follow updates to the Google algorithm? 

Both your organic and paid traffic will rely on targeted keywords. To optimize your use of Google this way, you have to stay on top of updates to the Google algorithm. Otherwise, your firm may be penalized by not showing up in search results as often as you’d like. This can hurt both your paid and organic traffic stats. 

Summary

In order for your online marketing to function effectively, your advertising campaigns require significant investments. For PPC you’ll need to invest capital and for SEO the major investment is your time. 

You don’t have to choose one or the other but can use both to complement each other. PPC puts you at the forefront of your potential client base’s internet purview as long as you’re willing to make a significant financial investment. SEO takes patience but can establish you as a trusted authority in your field through the development of content while saving you money in the short term. 

For the best return on your investments of both your time and money, it is necessary to adopt a campaign containing elements of both SEO and PPC.  Pairing the two together for your law firm’s marketing campaign will cast a wide online net reeling in both paid and organic traffic that will lead to more clients. 

The short answer is yet. Lawyers really do need websites.

As a lawyer, your office looks for a very specific type of client. If you practice family law, you might look for upper-class individuals who need legal support as they move through their divorce.

Conversely, if you practice criminal law, you might specialize in a specific type of law: petty theft or traffic law, for example.

Whatever your area of focus, however, you may find yourself asking, “As a lawyer, do I really need a website?” In the middle of the technology age, websites have become more important for every possible area of business than ever.

Your website is a critical marketing tool that can go a long way toward helping you establish yourself in your field. Still on the fence about building your website? Let’s look how a website like the one below can help you.

How A Website Can Help

1. Control what Google shows potential clients

What comes up when a potential client turns online for research and Google’s your name? A website like Avvo probably shows up. And when they click there, they see other competing attorneys. You may have just lost a client.

2. A website will help you to be in control of your own reputation

Today’s clients consider online reviews just as important as word-of-mouth recommendations from people they know in person. In fact, many people who aren’t able to get those important in-person recommendations from someone who has used a lawyer in the past will turn to the internet to do their research and learn more about local law firms and other organizations.

Your website is the perfect place to display those important online reviews. If you don’t have your own website and social media pages–and monitor social media conversations about your practice area and your firm on a regular basis–you may miss out on critical opportunities to control and manage your reputation and control the conversation about your business. Your website can also help establish your reputation in other key ways. It Puts You In Control Of Your Reputation.

3. Build client rapport. Showcase those awards

You can showcase your awards and local honors. Were you recognized in a local ceremony or in a magazine? Did you receive an award for something you accomplished? Do you have additional certifications or experience that goes above and beyond the requirements for your field?

Your website is the perfect place to showcase all of those important honors and let potential clients see exactly what you have the potential to accomplish for them. 

You can display client results. Your results in past cases won’t necessarily guarantee your results in your next case, but they can tell your clients what you’ve accomplished in the past and, therefore, what you’re likely to be able to accomplish for them. You won’t display any identifying information about your clients, but you will be able to give a look at past client results that can help future clients decide whether you are the lawyer for them. 

Your Website is a Great Tool for Establishing Client Trust

Some clients won’t trust you at all if you don’t have a website. Today’s clients assume that if you lack a website, you are likely a fly-by-night organization that lacks the experience and the validity they need to help them through their legal struggles. Not only that, however, your website is an excellent tool for building trust with your clients.

Start providing advice before clients ever walk through the door. Your blog is an excellent tool for offering clients insight into their situation or providing basic legal advice before they make their first phone call. Often, your website can answer frequently asked questions or help clients through the early stages of their legal questions. Not only is this a great way to build their trust through quality advice, it’s an excellent resource you can provide to your existing clients, which may in turn help you better manage your office hours. 

Show clients your authority and your trustworthiness. The quality of your website matters! You wouldn’t let your office get shabby, run-down, and dirty because of the message it would provide to your clients. The same is true of your website. For many clients, your website is the first connection they will have with your business. Much like a storefront or the receptionist’s office at your law firm, your website must be well-maintained to provide clients with a sense of security when they connect with your firm. 

Your Website Brings Fresh Leads

In addition to its other benefits, your website is an excellent marketing tool that can help bring in fresh leads for your firm. When you build your website, you offer clients a new way to connect with you and provide them with access to vital contact information, including your address, your email address, and your phone number. The more your website grows, the better the marketing tool it will become. 

Potential leads will find your website when they look for information about your legal specialty.Blogging will grow your search ranking organically, while paid ads can help boost your search ranking faster and more efficiently. Without a website, even paid ads can’t help potential leads find as much information about your business.

Your website tells leads who you are. It gives leads a look at your firm and the type of law you handle. What type of law is your specialty? What type of clients do you prefer? Through your website, you can provide leads with that vital information. Listings in a phone book simply don’t provide the same level of information, especially if your firm name is simply the last names of your associates. 

Your website makes you available at any time of day. You don’t have someone manning the phones 24/7, and you can’t possibly know about everyone in your city who has a need for the type of law you practice. Through your website, however, you’re always available to potential clients, which means that you will be less likely to miss out on potential leads. 

Are you ready to start building your website, improving your credibility, and enhancing your authority? You don’t have to do it alone! Just like you specialize in a specific type of law, we specialize in building websites and handling marketing efforts for law firms and other legal clients. If you’re ready to increase the return on your marketing investment or create a website that will help establish your authority, contact us today to learn how we can help. 

As you’ve explored marketing your law firm, you’ve likely heard a great deal about blogging: its impact on SEO or its opportunity to reach out to clients. As a lawyer, however, you may feel that blogging isn’t practical for you.

There are a host of excuses: you aren’t sure what to blog about; you aren’t sure people will want to read what you have to say; you’re concerned that blogging will turn out to be a waste of time.

Should lawyers blog? Absolutely! Blogging offers a number of unique benefits, and not just to your search ranking. 

• 

Benefit #1: Blogging Allows You to Share Your Personal Expertise

As a lawyer, you’ve had the opportunity to see some unique situations and do things that no one else has done. You have a deep well of personal expertise that the average citizen simply doesn’t have, and blogging is the perfect opportunity to share it.

Obviously, you can’t break client confidentiality or share the private details of a case that could make it identifiable to someone else; but you can use your extensive experience to provide valuable advice that others, especially people without their own legal background, simply don’t have. Blogging will allow you to share your stories or to offer those takeaways that you’re always surprised that people don’t know. 

As you’re thinking up blog topics, consider your clients. What are the questions that they ask on a regular basis? What brings them to you?

The longer you’ve worked in your field, the more experience you have to draw from; but even if you’ve only recently begun working as an attorney, you likely still have a pool of knowledge and experience that will allow you to share valuable information with others. Find your voice and take the opportunity! Your blog is your chance to give potential clients and other searchers the advice you wish they had gotten before they walked into your office. 

Benefit #2: Blogging Helps You Build a Lead Generation Tool

Blogging is an amazing tool for bringing in interested leads. When a potential lead searches for the type of content you’ve created, they already have an interest in the type of law you practice.

Your blog posts should focus on the types of law you most want to practice and the clients you most want to cover. When potential clients search for information about that topic, they’ll start building their knowledge of your law firm, which will increase the odds that they’ll contact you for their legal needs. Each blog is the opportunity to connect with clients in a different aspect of your practice. 

Benefit #3: Blogging Helps Build Client Trust

When potential clients come to your website, they want to learn more about the legal situation in which they’ve found themselves. Eventually, they may need a lawyer to help them through the situation, whether they’re filing for divorce and need to know more about how to protect themselves or they’ve gotten into criminal trouble and need a lawyer to represent them through the process.

As they browse through your website, your blog will help them build trust in you so that when they are ready to call for a lawyer, your name is at the top of the list. Your blog can:

Show clients that you know what you’re talking about. Your blog is the perfect opportunity to show off your expertise. Do you know a few things about the legal industry that can offer genuine help to your clients?

Your blog is the perfect chance to share it with them. You’ll help build your authority in the industry and let clients know that you do know how to offer them quality legal advice–which in turn makes them more likely to take you to court to represent them. 

Improve clients’ awareness that you genuinely care. Your blog isn’t just a dry marketing tool. It’s a chance to genuinely connect with your clients: to provide some of their needs without ever needing them to call into your office.

Your blog can create the impression that you care for your clients long before they actually connect with your office, which in turn will increase the odds that they’ll come to you with their legal needs. 

Benefit #4: Blogging Grows Your Brand

Blogging is a perfect tool for growing your brand, whether you need to grow your personal brand or improve the brand of the firm as a whole. Through your blog, you get a chance to tell potential clients who you are. You can:

• Show what makes you unique. What is it about your brand that makes you different from other lawyers in the area? Your blog is the perfect place to express it. 
• Offer sound, quality advice. 
• Set the tone for your clients so that they know what to expect when they come into your office. 

As you grow your blog, you’ll create your tone and establish your brand. Then, when they call you or come into your office, your clients will experience that as merely an extension of what they already know about you. 

Benefit #5: Blogging will Increase Your Organic Search Ranking

In addition to its other benefits, blogging offers a solid benefit to your search ranking. When you blog, you’re producing new content for your site. You have the opportunity to focus on new keywords or to highlight your local keywords more effectively than ever.

As you continue to blog, especially as you produce highly valuable content that gets plenty of hits from interested parties, you’ll find that your search engine ranking steadily increases. As your search engine ranking increases, you will be more visible to potential clients in your area. Blogging also allows you to highlight a wider range of keywords than you’re able to target on your website alone. 

Are you ready to start experiencing all the benefits of blogging for your law firm? Whether you’re ready to dive in, but you aren’t quite sure how blogging works or how to use it to reach your goals, or you’d like some help producing those key blogs, we can help! Contact us today to learn more about how we can help with your law firm marketing efforts. 

Your marketing efforts are critical to your ability to bring in clients and give them a better idea of what your firm can offer. Unfortunately, many law firms fall into marketing traps. Instead of bringing in clients, your marketing efforts might cause you to spend more money than you anticipated or leave you struggling to get the results you hoped for. Are you making any of these key marketing errors?

Error #1: Skipping Local Marketing

Local marketing is one of the most important forms of marketing for your law firm. You don’t need traffic that’s just coming by your website for the latest legal advice or that will never hire you to represent them–and you work in a specific state, likely within a specific city or area. Make sure that you focus on local marketing! Highlight local keywords and consider using searcher location as a component for your ads. You’ll be surprised by how much of a difference it makes in the type of traffic you get–which in turn can significantly increase the return on your marketing investment. 

Error #2: Not Knowing Your Target Audience

Who is your law firm really marketing to?

Are you looking for young people who were just caught in their first crime? Young couples that are getting divorced? Or is your focus on family law, with a specific focus on clients who can afford to go the distance when it comes to fighting for their desires?

Take the time to sit down and develop a clear buyer persona. Then, make sure you take the time to target your advertisements to that persona. Where can they be found most often? For example, most people now have Facebook accounts, but younger people are more likely to use Instagram and Snapchat, which means that you may need to focus your efforts there. 

Error #3: Letting Qualified Leads Slip By

When someone calls your office, who do they get? Are they connected to a complicated phone tree that has them frustrated long before they get to speak to a live person, or do they connect directly with a receptionist? If they do connect with a receptionist, does your receptionist help guide them through the final steps of the sales cycle, or do they simply take a number and promise to call them back later? You need a well-trained receptionist and a phone system that will help guide potential clients as well as accurately representing your law firm’s ability to help these important clients. Not only that, both the receptionist and your phone system should be in keeping with the persona you have created for your firm and what your clients expect based on your advertisements. These simple strategies can go a long way toward helping your law firm keep and convert qualified leads, rather than sending them to your competition. 

Error #4: Ignoring the Competition

There are plenty of other lawyers in your area, many of whom work in the same field you do. Quick: do you know how they’re handling their marketing? You don’t want a marketing campaign that is an exact duplicate of what your competitors are doing, but you don’t want to miss out on opportunities they’ve already taken advantage of, either. When it comes to the competition, you need to know what they’re doing–so make sure that you check out:

• Their social media campaigns. Which platforms are they using? How do they connect with potential clients?
• Their keywords. What keywords are your competitors targeting? Are you using the right keywords, or are you missing out? 
• Their advertisements. Do they look just like every other advertisement for a lawyer in your field–including yours? If so, you may need to make alterations to your own plan to create something different. 

Error #5: Working with the Wrong Agency (Or No Agency at All)

Are you still trying to handle your marketing in-house? Have you worked with agencies in the past that just didn’t fulfill your needs and meet your expectations? When you choose a marketing agency, make sure you ask the right questions. Before making a choice, ask:

• Have you worked with law firms before? The legal field offers unique considerations for marketing, and you want a marketing agency with experience in that area.
• What metrics do you track?
• How do you determine the success of a new campaign?
• If a campaign doesn’t perform as intended, what will you do to try to fix it?
• How do you prefer to communicate with your clients?
• What do your other clients have to say about your business? Can I talk to any of them for a personal recommendation?
• What do you consider your greatest success as an advertiser?

When you take the time to get to know the marketing agency, you’ll get a better picture of whether they are a good fit for you–and a better idea of how they will handle marketing your business. 

Error #6: You Still View Marketing as an Expense

Marketing can quickly take up a large percentage of your budget, especially if you’re struggling to see the return on your investment. Marketing, however, is so much more than just a vaguely defined expense or an unfortunate necessity. When it comes to your law firm, marketing is a critical investment. Your marketing efforts allow you to bring in more clients, connect with your existing clients, and increase client trust in you. Your blogs and social media posts are an incredible tool for raising awareness about your firm and increasing client trust. When you view marketing as an investment–and take the time to track the return on that investment–you will often discover that you are in a better position to shape your marketing efforts to better advance your business, rather than wasting money on marketing efforts that will fall flat.  

Are you ready to break out of the mistake cycle and make better choices for your law firm? Is it time to set your past mistakes to the side and learn how to accomplish more with your marketing than you ever dreamed possible? Contact us today to learn more about how we can handle your marketing efforts and help guide you to success. 

When you pursue a digital marketing campaign for a law firm website, you could choose to go in many directions. Many firms end up outsourcing the development of digital content but find it challenging to partner with an appropriate agency. The goal is to craft the right voice for their brand. Finding your voice is not as simple as it sounds, especially for firms targeting multiple regions or types of legal matters.

Past Trends in Digital Legal Content

In the past, law firms focused on developing content in which pieces were tied to timely news articles. For example, personal injury law firms could post about local accidents and how they might help injured victims. Law firms also called for evergreen content on general law topics and content specific to their firm’s current operations. In the present, the voice you want for your law firm’s website may include these types of content, but it must be written in a voice that will be appropriate for delivery over multiple channels. Increasingly, effective content must be styled in a breezy, listicle format that’s easy to digest for mobile readers. Today’s readers won’t delve too deeply into digital content before making brand decisions. They have too many daily decisions to make.

How Voice Represents the Brand

Before you seek to create a brand, it’s best to understand what it means for your law firm. Here’s how Casey Meraz explained it last year in Brand Quarterly:

“Just like the human voice, a brand voice carries a spectrum of emotions, and it behaves differently depending on the context or scenario. The distinctiveness of your voice should come through in its consistency; no matter what the circumstances, it should always embody the agreed upon brand values.”

Considering Your Market

Before you can build the right voice, you must analyze all target markets. People who get arrested for DUI will have different immediate concerns than people who slipped and fell at Target. A person accused of a DUI will want to get released from jail and return to work as soon as possible. An accident victim will be more concerned with recuperating from trauma and how recover money for his or her hospital bills and lost wages. Both types of clients may have some questions that must be addressed immediately and others that can be explained once the case progresses. Your brand voice can address different types of questions in effective ways and subtly encourage potential clients to contact your firm and to rely on your employees to sign them up for legal services.

Understanding the Impact of Voice

When we refer to voice, we mean how the writer speaks to the readers and targets their needs and wants in the text format. For example, a legal content writer must grasp how much background knowledge their targeted readers will possess and how many details they will need to make sense of the selected topic. If a writer includes too little information or too much jargon, the readers can get turned off by the content. You also must be sensitive to the emotions you include in each message.

When your content must address parents who recently lost a child to a drunk driver, your voice must demonstrate great sensitivity to their loss. They also have other strong feelings like anger and resentment, wishing that someone would pay for the harm done to their child. They may not understand that the legal system will take years to work, and there is no guarantee of recovering anything in a wrongful death suit.

Types of Voice

A brand voice is sometimes hard to define, but it can either turn on or turn off the reader. It’s hard to generalize the types of voice that will suit a law firm’s digital audience. In one sense, legal content must consider a reader’s age, sex, location, family unit, educational level, and knowledge of the law. For example, past offenders may possess a deeper understanding of the legal process a DUI case moves through than first-time offenders. Offenders who can afford a private attorney would have different expectations, such as finding the firm’s minimum retainer and fee structure, than people who cannot afford an attorney. The latter group would need to consult the public defender’s website for their information.

Building a Content Strategy

When you decide to revamp your law practice website and develop it into a better source of leads, be sure to allow enough time for strategy development. By this, we mean mapping out the site design and setting expectations for user-friendly applications. The planning process also calls for analyzing the kinds of content you will need. Some kinds of informative content can be written on the front end for the site launch and updated over time = evergreen content. Your content strategy will also include scheduling of regular content feeds for the website, blog, and social media pages. These messages are typically shorter in nature and are more time-sensitive than evergreen content.

Get Started Today

You can partner with a content provider, either an agency or a single writer, to develop new posts for your website. However, please ensure that your intended provider can develop content on your schedule and deliver it to the website manager for timely distribution. If you start to build an online audience and then the content does not meet their regular needs, they will look to other law firms for information. Typically, your provider will guide you to establish voice guidelines. This includes using only the types of references permitted in legal content. According to the rules of the Federal Trade Commission and to your state’s ethical guidelines for law practices, certain types of content cannot be included on your digital and social media pages. Your partner should deliver content that accomplishes your business strategy without violating your voice guidelines and without placing your law firm at risk for lawsuits or ethical violations from regulatory agencies. Some content providers are known to be more reliable at meeting publishing deadlines and consistently providing messages that increase a law firm’s authority on the Internet.

 

“Whatever the facts and circumstances of your new law office, you need clients walking through your door, calling your office, emailing your inbox or otherwise soliciting your services and assistance. In order to do so, former, current and prospective clients alike need to be able to find you…And the first place they are likely going to look is Google, Bing or Yahoo.” 

– Jared K. Nelson, Oklahoma Bar Association

Your law firm’s success hinges in great part upon your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. With thousands of people in the United States advertising SEO services, it can be challenging to find an SEO specialist with expertise in your field of law. Fortunately, there are some measures you can take to ensure that you choose a provider who will deliver outstanding SEO results. With Below is your eight-step guide to finding a law firm SEO expert.

1) Seek an expert who specializes in law firm SEO

As you dive into a deep pool of SEO providers, the first step to take is to whittle the number of prospective SEO specialists. The best way to accomplish this is to restrict your search to SEO providers with a proven history of success working with law firms. This will ensure that you hire a provider who is truly an expert in law firm SEO.

2) Ask your friends and colleagues who they use for SEO services

“Ask your friends who they use and if they’re happy with the company. If they’re pleased with it, odds are good you will be, too. Referrals from trusted sources are the best way to find a good company.”

– Sharon Nelson and John Simek, Law Practice Magazine

Referrals can be instrumental in helping you further narrow the field of eligible SEO experts. Friends, family members, and colleagues can often lend valuable guidance regarding their personal experiences with SEO firms. Remember to target friends and family members who are lawyers or who work in the legal field to ensure that you receive a list of providers who can hit the ground running.

3) Avoid providers who are unresponsive to your inquiries

As you contact prospective SEO specialists, you will likely find that they vary greatly in terms of their degree of responsiveness to your inquiries. Some will respond promptly and enthusiastically while others may fail to return your phone calls or e-mails. In general, it is a good idea to steer clear of prospects who are uncommunicative or who fail to provide you with a quote.

4) Find out which specific SEO tasks will be provided

“SEO encompasses a lot of different tasks. You need to have a clear understanding of what the firm will be responsible for and what tasks are left for you. Which technical, off-page and on-page tasks are they prepared to handle? And since SEO, content marketing and PPC (Pay-Per-Click) are so interconnected, you might want to find a firm that’s set up to help you out with all three.”

– Andrew Raso, Co-Founder and Director of the Online Marketing Gurus

The SEO process is complex and involves many tasks and techniques. As you evaluate prospective specialists, make sure you ask what services they offer and whether there are any limitations or restrictions on the services they provide.

5) Request a written quotation

Affordability is a top consideration for many law firms, especially those that are in their formative years. After your initial discussion with each prospective SEO expert, be sure to request a written quote that outlines the services provided along with the cost of each. Make sure the quote contains the following details:

• The date the quote was prepared and an expiration date
• Acceptable modes of payment and an explanation of payment terms
• The signature of the individual who provided the pricing
• Details regarding any guarantees that are offered

6) Choose an SEO specialist who is a good fit with your law firm

“The personality, integrity and communication style of the SEO needs to match the organization or progress will be hard.”

– Rand Fishkin, Entrepreneur and Founder of SparkToro

Finding an SEO specialist who is a good fit with the work culture at your law firm is vital to producing top results. The expert you hire will be interfacing with your marketing, IT staff, and lawyers to develop content, highlighting the need to hire an SEO specialist who is similar to your law firm employees in terms of values and work ethic.

7) Request a list of current and past clients in the legal field

References can prove to be invaluable assets as you evaluate SEO specialists. While current and past clients may not be able to offer specific details related to Google analytics or specific techniques employed by an SEO specialist, they can offer useful insight regarding the following:

• The SEO expert’s impact on their search engine rankings
• Any notable increases in their conversion rates
• Feedback about their overall experience with the SEO provider

8) Consider your ongoing SEO needs

“Remember, SEO is an ongoing process, so ask the firm or consultant how much it will cost to maintain the site once the major changes have been made.”

– Issie Lapowsky, Wired

SEO does not occur in a vacuum. While the majority of the effort will likely occur on the front end, you should look for an SEO expert who recognizes that SEO is an ongoing process. In addition to asking prospective providers to outline a current SEO strategy for your law firm, you should also ask them to outline their proposed long-term strategies for success along with estimated costs.

The Bottom Line

Hiring a true law firm SEO expert is the surest way to drive traffic to your law firm’s website. As you evaluate potential SEO providers, you can follow the steps above to help ensure that you choose the best provider for your law firm. By seeking a responsive law firm SEO expert who is a good fit with your law firm’s culture, you will be on your way to higher search engine rankings and increased conversions.