SEO Strategies: Top 5 Ways to Improve Law Firm's Marketing Online
What are you doing to ensure your law firm stays ahead of the competition? Like most owners, you've probably turned to online marketing. Smart move, but with almost every law firm taking their marketing online, the digital landscape is getting crowded!
The simple solution is to keep improving your law firm marketing efforts online.
The simple solution is to keep improving your law firm marketing efforts online.
Did you know there over 447,000 laws firms in the United States?
To get you started, we're sharing 5 things you can do to boost your law firm's digital marketing.
1. Prioritize Local SEO
As a lawyer, you're licensed to practice in your state. As such, your law firm needs to target clients in your state of practice. Since you are paying for your office space, you need to use the value of your physical location effectively in local search.
Local SEO will help you achieve this. It will improve your practice's chances of showing up on the first page of Google's local search results. Considering 93 percent of Google searches have a local intent, expect your website to receive more local traffic.
To implement local SEO, begin by claiming your Google My Business page. Fill out your address and phone number, business hours, areas of practice and other relevant details. Create a list of all your keywords, and write a quality description of your law firm including as many keywords as possible. Make sure to include terms such as Lawyer(s), Attorney(s), Law Firm(s) and your city (as well as surrounding cities) and all niche practice areas potential clients may be searching for!
Lastly respond quickly to reviews, positive or negative! Address problems and rectify issues with customers, often times unsatisfied clients that are made happy will delete their negative review. If you receive a negative review that is false and not a client - you can flag the review and also contact Google directly thru places like Facebook or Twitter.
2. Build an Authoritative Legal Blog
How often do you post on your practice's blog? Regular blogging is an effective way to educate your target market about various legal issues and boost your search engine rankings. However, not just any content is going to cut it. Set a realistic number of blog posts you know you can create long term. Don't set the bar too high - if you only believe you can post once a month, that is fine; just stick with it! I set reminders on my phone to post a blog article on a specific website so I remember to accomplish the task.
If you've been doing brief blog posts, it's time to switch gears and deliver longer and authoritative content. And if you're outsourcing content creation, ensure the people writing your content have a legal background or are educated enough to research and draft high quality information.
3. Rack Up Online Reviews
Studies estimate that 85 percent of people read online reviews before making a purchase decision.
One of the MOST important things you can do is obtain positive reviews to your law firm. If your practice doesn't have any online reviews, you're probably losing potential customers to your local competitors. To change this, start encouraging your existing clients to leave a review on your website, social media pages, and other digital review platforms.
Racking up online reviews, though, comes with its challenges. Negative reviews can harm your firm's reputation and send potential clients away. It's essential to address negative comments quickly and professionally.
Don't pay for reviews, however; ask your current and previous happy clients to review your firm on Google. Give them a direct link to your local page to make the task simple.
You will notice in competitive markets that the law firms ranking at the top in local SERP (search engine result pages) have a good number of positive reviews. These reviews help Google know you are a trusted website and attorney in your niche practice areas. Google is pretty good at realizing if you are paying for reviews or if all your positive reviews come from the same computer or are all new Google accounts - so focus on quality (especially because Google will only get better at this). Whenever you have a customer that is happy with your services - ask for a review!
4. Create Digital Video
Even though written content is still king, video is fast becoming the preferred format for most internet users. In 2019, video is forecast to drive a huge percentage of all consumer traffic.
Follow the trend and incorporate short but high-quality videos in your marketing arsenal. For instance, you can capture client testimonials and post them on your website and social pages. You can also create video versions of your blogs and post on YouTube. Several companies offer this service (including Dataflurry - the author of this post).
5. Use Live Chat as a Marketing Tool
In a world where the majority of millennials prefer texting to talking, a live chat tool can give your practice an edge. What's more, you can use the feature to market your services and it is typically pretty cost effective. Dataflurry offers some high quality managed live chat services.
One way to use it for marketing is to set up a customized message that invites website visitors for a chat. This draws the visitor closer to your firm, and once they are in the chat, you have a good opportunity to convert them into a client.
Ramp Up Your Law Firm Marketing Strategy
Like any other business, a law firm needs to attract clients and turn out a profit. For this to happen, you must deploy a solid internet marketing strategy.
But do you have the time and expertise to do it? You're better off sticking to what you do best - representing clients.
Leave your law firm marketing efforts to the pros. Get in touch with Dataflurry for more information about Attorney search engine optimization. Dataflurry's owner has been working in this field for 20 years! He is heavily involved in all client accounts. Dataflurry is a small firm with big results!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joel McLaughlin
Joel McLaughlin is the founder and owner of Dataflurry Law Firm internet marketing. We are a leading vendor with personalized service to independent lawyers and law firms. We have worked with over 50 law firms over the years, and we have the experience and know how to provide noticeable results at good prices. We have a system developed to offer more quality marketing services at a lower price point since we only work with legal clients. This allows us to streamline all operations including optimization, link building and specialized marketing for legal clientele.
Copyright DataFlurry
Disclaimer: While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of this publication, it is not intended to provide legal advice as individual situations will differ and should be discussed with an expert and/or lawyer.For specific technical or legal advice on the information provided and related topics, please contact the author.
