What is SEO for Law Firms?

What is SEO for Law Firms?

SEO is the acronym for “Search Engine Optimization,” and is the process of improving the visibility (i.e. the “find-ability”) of a website or even a single web page of a website in search engine results for FREE. Finding a web page or website using a typical search engine such as Google, Bing or Yahoo is also known as “Organic Results.” The higher ranked sites returned for a given search on the search results page is directly proportional to the number of visitors (website traffic) that a particular website will receive.

Those of us who work at developing an Internet Marketing Strategy for a particular website must consider how search engines work, what people search for, the actual search strings that are typed into search engines and which search engines are preferred by most searchers (i.e potential clients). Optimizing a website involves engineering its content and HTML TAGS and other coding to both increase the site’s relevance to specific keywords and strings of keywords.

SEO also involves the careful-crafting of page-by-page META DATA (Titles, Descriptions and Keywords) which is not visible to the website visitor but has a dramatic impact on THAT page being easily found. This tedious but critical component of a well-crafted website ensures that each and every page of the website will act as a stand-alone-website and be found on its own merits regardless of the main sites’ focus and other pages which make up that website. The best SEO optimization also involves creating and promoting an ever-increasing number of good “backlinks,” or inbound/incoming links from other serious and credible websites.

Because effective SEO almost always requires changes to the HTML source code of a website site and the creation or re-editing of the website’s “copy” or “content,” SEO tactics are always a critical building block during the website design process. Websites that were not properly optimized initially can be re-worked to make them “search engine friendly” and increase their potency on the Internet. We can fix your site if it was not properly designed or the SEO was never even attempted…

Search Engine Optimization for Law Firm Websites

Creating a powerful presence online with a custom-designed website is a great start, but if clients cannot find you, why bother? Over the past decade we’ve seen some stunningly-gorgeous and breathtakingly-expensive law firm websites (eg: 48 months @ $1,000 per month); yet we’ve also heard that 30-months into the cash-draining contract no one at the law firm could ever identify EVEN ONE new client that came by way of the huge financial investment! Yikes… Something went wrong.

Search Engine Optimization is the practice of optimizing a website, –for us– typically a law firm’s website, to achieve the highest search engine ranking possible for our law firm’s targeted potential new clients. Proper and well-engineered SEO is a cost-effective method for getting Internet Visibility for your law practice quickly. Good SEO makes certain that your website will maintain high search engine rankings over the long-haul and is a core foundation block of a good Law Firm Internet Marketing Strategy – – – a strategy that will provide you a strong and reliable web presence from the day your site goes “live.” Moreover, good SEO will give your law practice the necessary local and regional web presence – something every credible law firm must have – while simultaneously reinforcing current client loyalty and current client referrals.

Law practice SEO – is a critical step to get your website FOUND and viewed by new potential clients on the Internet at virtually ZERO cost. A well SEO-optimized legal website is more powerful than hiring a full-time sales manager – but even better – because it will work 24/7/365 without fuss, back-talk, requests for a pay raise, nor or a worker’s comp claim!

Law Practice SEO Services

Over the years, we have developed proven techniques that get our clients’ websites found on PAGE ONE results on Google, Yahoo and Bing search results for dozens of pre-determined keywords and strings of keywords searches. Frankly, we’ve discovered that the best SEO techniques, while mostly an endeavor of science and technique, also has a measurable percentage of “artistic component.” Moreover, companies such as Google and Microsoft are routinely changing and tweaking their search engine algorithms every so often to meet their always-changing standards. This means that the search engines are giving all of us a moving target. To stay ON TOP; to stay HIGHEST in the search engine results, every website’s SEO must be tested, measured and sometime adjusted to adapt competitively to these changes.

The web is an amazing place! In addition to the routine changes in the search engine’s code, the web is a growing, expanding, and fluid marketplace where new legal websites are being deployed daily. Thus, your legal colleagues and competitors are also adding NEW moving targets into the mix. They may be as clever as you – so we need no revisit SEO every so often in case their efforts are closing in or bettering our initial SEO efforts. In small markets – you should have someone who is skilled and competent at Legal SEO carefully review your website at least once a year. In big, high-density markets such as Boston, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, it would be prudent to schedule quarterly SEO reviews unless your law niche is very, very unique and your website is always dominating everyone with similar skill sets.

SEO Maintenance – Because we have two ever-changing components: algorithm changes and new legal websites coming online daily in some markets, that makes it necessary for those law firms who want to get the most out of the web – the last and greatest marketing frontier of all time – to do some routine SEO maintenance if they really want to prosper over and beyond their legal opposition. Moreover, by re-visiting your SEO every so often, you have a fantastic opportunity to bypass your legal competitors who you once thought untouchable. How is this possible? We often discover that law firms with $40,000 – $60,000 websites think that are OKAY because 2 years ago their over-priced website was launched and did really well –but– they have become lethargic and complacent and have never touched their fancy website since… They are going to learn a lesson from their more clever, more educated rivals regardless of financial pocketbooks.

Competent SEO Means Working Each and Every Page of your Website

When we work to get your Law Firm found by your targeted audience we have to research and engineer each page of your website so that each page will have a good shot at high rankings on its own – as if that ONE page was the main website. When our websites are SEO-optimized this way, our sites are found for dozens of searches and is very rewarding and will grow a law practice’s bottom line.

Upshot? When a potential client searches a keyword related to your law practice, your website will be listed along with other relevant websites on the Google, Yahoo and and Bing searches. When your website is found organically (i.e. for FREE) you get exposure to clients without the expense of paying search engines for their “sponsored ads” listings commonly known as PPC (Pay Per Click).

Our Search Engine Optimization Services include:

  • Professional, Site-Engineered Search Engine Optimization
  • Focused Whole Site Optimization
  • Page-by-Page Optimization
  • Optimization Targeting your stiffest Local Competitors
  • Geo-Targeting Internet Marketing
  • Search Engine Website Directory Submission
  • PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Set-Up and Campaign Management
  • Monthly or Quarterly PPC Reporting
  • Social Media Marketing
  • FaceBook Custom-Designed Legal Pages
  • Legal Blogs Created

To have us look at your current SEO or start new contact Keith today.

Does Law Firm Internet Marketing Work?

It does! The Yellow Pages have gone the way of the buggy whip and have been “history” for almost a decade now. Direct mail is incredibly costly or impossible given the broadness of where your clients are to be found and the randomness of most legal cases. Radio and TV are super-expensive and only tend to be viable for a few, extremely-narrow, niche legal issues such as Credit Card Bankruptcy, some Class Action cases, and maybe DUI Defense in some high-density markets. The Internet IS THE MARKETING AREA for most all law firms. The sooner a law practice understands that and gets a presnece and maintains it they will benefit. Frankly, the cost of prospering by Internet Marketing is a fraction of the same efforts in the Yellow Pages Days!

Internet Marketing is essentially you having one or more well-designed websites on the web that tell your story and connect you to the clients who are searching to find you. Those lawyers and law firms who are always easily found by their targeted potential clients will prosper. Simple. Proven. It works. Those who are not easily found are virtually invisible.

To find out more about your legal internet marketing campaign contact Keith today!

Why is Law Firm Search Engine Optimization Important?

Just How Important is Good SEO?

Let’s look at a recent client with a General Law practice in San Francisco. Looking at the data, we find that the Keyword String: “San Francisco Attorney” is searched for 40,500 time EACH month!

There are 4,300,000 residents in the Bay Area. At $0.60 per letter, Direct Mail would cost $2,580,000 to be in every mailbox each month ready to be found by those impossible-to-predict new potential clients. Ouch!

But consider the almost FREE cost of having an SEO-Optimized website sitting there waiting for those 3 SIMPLE WORDS… Then showing up instantly and reliably when those three keywords are searched for! There you are! – Powerful Legal Law Firm Marketing! The search engines are making every possible attempt to connect the searcher with the those very specific firms claiming that they offer the searcher the solution they are looking for. Imagine how many new clients you could add to your law practice by being FOUND by even a fraction of those 40,500 potential clients. You can show up organically (for free) AND you can also show up in the Sponsored Ads as well.

Perfect Storm: Organically Found Website and a PPC Ad Campaign

Why consider both? If for no other reason – not to be overlooked by a significant percentage of Internet users. Some Internet users ONLY pay attention to the paid ads. I know that is frustrating after working so diligently to get a well-engineered website to Page ONE organically, but that “ads-only” demographic is out there, and you will miss all those potential clients who have that mindset. We’ve interviewed these “ads-only” folks in focus groups and they make the analogy of the Yellow Pages where they will only call a business that “is serious enough” to have at least a 1/2 page Yellow Page Ad. They would never, ever, look at the one-line entries that the Yellow Pages insert in their books at NO COST. Besides, they insist: “Those businesses listed in the FREE ADS often never even answer their phones, so why bother with them?” We have many many law firm clients whose websites are routinely Page One AND have a Paid Ad on that same Page One results page.

Tightly Focused Marketing

A well SEO-optimized website can target specific critical keywords (eg. DUI, DWI, DMV Hearings) and specific geographical regions (eg. San Francisco, Bay Area, Oakland, etc.) allowing you to optimize your site for very-targeted, very-specific potential new clients. Compared to any other marketing channels such as the now-inconsequential Yellow Pages, pricey direct mail, exorbitantly-costly radio and TV commercials, nothing earns you a better return on your investment as an Internet Website. Virtually everyone on the planet goes to the Internet for everything from Movie Times to Restaurant Hours to Legal Services. If you are not there to be found – in essence – you don’t exist.

Marketing That Works 24/7 Without Complaint and no W-2’s

Once we properly SEO your existing website or design, build and deploy your new legal website, that SEO-Optimized website will reliably be there at 2 am when a potential new client is loosing sleep over a pending legal crisis. You will be found in the middle of the night – while you are peacefully sleeping 50 miles away in your bed. Your website will tell your story, offer videos if you choose, provide confidence-building pictures, legal information, your address, phone numbers, email addresses, contact forms, even intake questionnaires without fail at anytime: day or night.

The Ever Expanding Pool of Clients

The Yellow Pages are Dead! – In fact, the free, home-by-home distribution of un-requested Yellow Page Books is outlawed in many cities (waste of paper – environmental concerns, nobody wants them and immediately toss in the trash…) or the books are only used to prop a door open. Magazines and newspapers are operating at losses and folding every month. The Internet is THE MARKETING SANDBOX for everyone including law firms. Investing in your existing but lackluster website or having us design and deploy a new website for you with well-engineered SEO will guarantee that your prospective clients will find you. You will be a legitimate player in your legal field in the very communities YOU CHOOSE to serve.

How Do I Start?

  • Call us about your current poor-performing website. Have us do an “SEO Tune-up…“
  • Consider having us design and build you a cost-effective new website including all the SEO necessary.
  • Have us set you up a PPC “Sponsored Ad” Campaign while your re-worked or new website is accessed.

PPC (Pay Per Click) Campaign – While your re-worked or new legal website is “aging” for a while as the search engines re-assess it or index it for the first time, have us build you a Bing/Yahoo AdCenter PPC Campaign and/or a Google AdWord PPC Campaign. You can have PAGE ONE Yahoo, Bing and Google visibility via “sponsored ads” within 48-hours of calling us – driving new clients to your website and getting your phone to ring virtually immediately. We can work with any budget for PPC – from $50 a week to $50 per day or more. It all depends on how much new business you can absorb.

To Learn More about Pay Per Click for Law Firms Click HERE

To have a conversation with an SEO GEEK – not a salesperson – please call Keith today: computer lab – (888) 900-9078 or cell – (714) 381-9025

Call anytime:

–Keith Bennett


888.900.9078 – computer lab
562.265.1218 – office
714.381.9025 – cell