SEO for Law Firms Explained
SEO stands for "Search Engine Optimization." What does that have to do with a law firm?
SEO is one of the strongest intake opportunities on planet Earth for law firms. That said, not every lawyer really understands it, what really makes up "SEO" or what is involved in successful law firm SEO strategies.
Google is the undisputed king of search. Do you know how big of a company Google is?
The Automobile industry is a $729bn industry (source: Fidelity). Google is over 5% larger than the entire automotive industry with a market capitalization over $770bn (source:Marketwatch). As of the time of this writing, Google is 4.8 times larger than the four top US automotive manufacturers combined (Tesla, GM, Fiat Chrysler and Ford).
Let that sink in. Shouldn't your law firm take the power of Google search seriously?
Google's Vision
Look at SEO from Google's perspective. Alphabet, Inc is one of the largest companies on the planet. Why? People across the planet universally trust that, when they search for something, Google provides results that are:
- quality
- authoritative
- relevant to the search
Google wants the best. SEO is therefore about being the best website in Google's eyes. More like the eyes of artificial intelligence. Human eyes are a downstream consideration. We have worked on aesthetically great websites that were losing traffic and serious revenue -- looks can be deceiving to the human eye. Sneaky tricks don't work. If they happen to game Google's algorithm in the short term, in the long term they get penalized.
"There's nothing that puts attorneys to sleep faster than me talking technical details of SEO. What's important is this bigger picture. Google wants to reward the best; that's what effective SEO accomplishes."
J. Austin McCubbin, Owner, SEO Expert
What is the best SEO for law firms?
What makes your law firm look like the best option in Google's eyes? Here are but a few considerations to their complex set of algorithms:
- An excellent website
- Technical details of the website are pristine
- Great user experience
- Mobile-friendly
- Fast page load speed
- Content is quality, authoritative and relevant
- Website is worthy of:
- Sharing socially
- Earning links from other websites
There's way more to technically excellent SEO, but we try to explain things to attorneys at a high level. The super-technical details are not safe to discuss while driving or operating heavy machinery... they're that boring!
SEO is Relative
When a user searches a keyword (word or phrase), Google returns results on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Ten natural search results are returned, as well as paid ads, map results and rich snippets where applicable.
SEO is all about topping this list of ten "natural" search results. Why do we emphasize this over advertising on Google searches? More people click the natural or map results, and -- if you're successful -- SEO achieves a higher return on investment (ROI)
By the nature, the top spot is relative to your competition. Are you in a small town with only 10 law firms? Ranking in that market is child's play. If you're in a metro area with over 1 million residents, you can imagine that it is far more difficult to top this list of ten.
The larger and more competitive your market, the higher the standard of "the best" becomes.
Why SEO is So Important for Law Firms
When someone searches a keyword like "injury lawyer" in their hometown, guess what they're interested in finding? You guessed it: they're interested in hiring your injury law firm.
SEO is incredibly valuable as a source to increase your intake leads, improve the quality of cases you close and expand your law firm's open cases. Unlike paid advertising, which puts your firm in front of people who don't need your services, SEO connects you directly with qualified leads who are ready to find a lawyer.
Who Searches for a Lawyer?
If you're a corporate law firm with a book of clients that you consistently service, you're not really a practicing in an area that would benefit from hiring an experienced law firm SEO agency. It just won't pay, and you don't need it.
Why? Think of how you land new clients. Your reputation provides word-of-mouth referrals. You may have golf buddies who are business hotshots that can connect you with new clients. Perhaps someone from your church in a nice neighborhood knew to ask you for help with his or her business issue. This particular attorney or firm would be a better fit for a brand presence website, which acts as a digital business card and a link that people can send around to people as they refer you business.
What about demographics that don't golf with lawyer buddies, don't live in a nice neighborhood or have social interactions regularly with lawyers?
SEO is a critical service connecting attorneys with clients who don't know who else to turn to than Google. If someone has been injured, for example, they're going to turn to sources they trust for help: family in friends. If nobody knows an injury lawyer, the next source they trust is Google. They search, connect with an attorney, and they call, email or live chat to schedule a free consultation.
What Practice Areas Need SEO
Here are a number of common practice areas where attorneys invest in SEO:
- Personal Injury
- Divorce/Family Law
- Bankruptcy
- Criminal
We break firms down into two categories: high volume or low volume. They have two business models and two different paths to go "in the black" and start earning a return on their SEO investment (ROI).
High volume practice areas (i.e. divorce, bankruptcy, criminal) have a shorter service delivery cycle. A chapter 7 bankruptcy filing service is a service that is delivered and billable in a short time frame compared to a multi-million dollar injury lawsuit against an automobile manufacturer. Hence a bankruptcy firm is going to start bringing cash in the door relatively quickly from SEO. You can measure success by the increased volume of cases your firm has seen. If you're properly tracking website leads, you'll be able to attribute how much cash this has brought in the door and clearly understand your path to ROI.
Personal Injury Law Firm SEO
Personal Injury is a much different business model, and it is impacted differently by SEO. An SEO campaign can begin positioning a firm on page one within months, but the nature of the business means that cases are lower frequency, high impact leads. You can't control when someone gets hurt, but you can't land the big fish case unless you have a "line in the water," so to speak.
Injury lawyers absolutely must be positioned competitively on Google to grow their book of open cases. Only a handful of PI attorneys will succeed in any given market. The top position will receive more traffic volume than 2-5 combined, they will close the most deals and get the biggest cases. Page 2 competitors ... that's an oxymoron. Page 2 doesn't compete at all when it comes to PI.
Due to the long cycle an injury firm goes through prior to ever having that first settlement hit the bank means that an attorney or firm must be financially prepared to make it to the long-haul. Whereas we've delivered ROI for higher volume firm practice areas within a year, an injury lawyer SEO campaign often takes over two years to deposit the first check.
Can you, as an injury law firm, handle paying an additional paralegal salary to an SEO agency for three to four years before you ever realize actual return on investment?. If the answer is no, then you need to reconsider whether or not an SEO investment is worth it to you.
The good news for PI firms is the ability to project ROI. You know what cases you have open. You know what percentage fee you charge. You've been through enough mediations to have an idea of what price range your cases will settle. Tracking this data and ensuring that your intake form is able to attribute a new case to your SEO campaign means you can project on-paper ROI versus actual ROI. Most firms can project on-paper ROI within two years.
Example Case Study: Growing Injury Law Firm
Intrepid.Marketing does not show off law firm clients. Period. We work exclusively with one client per market area, and we don't advertise that we're about to dominate a local market. Why? Shouldn't we be showing our clients off as a part of our sales pitch? Most people do, but we have our own flavor of SEO, and we're not in the business of having our intellectual work-product ripped off by competitors. We put a lot of time into theory, testing and optimizing for best results. All we have to do is dominate. Our company grew as a referral-only business for over six years, and our work has spoken for itself.
That said, we have worked with so many different law firms across the country, and we know so many stories of how attorneys and firms have gone from poor-performing websites (or none at all) to becoming the top performer in their market on Google searches.
Let's create a hypothetical law firm, "Doe & Doe Attorneys," where the scenario is fictitious yet based on real people we have worked with.
John Doe was a successful injury lawyer at a prestigious firm. He was able to go out on his own in the nineties, and now his son Steve has joined the family business as a recent law school graduate. John has maintained an impressive log of open cases that he alone, along with his paralegal team can handle. But now that Steve is in the picture, business as usual wont' increase intake in a way that makes room for this new talent.
Josh is a millennial, so he knows the power of Google. When he searched "injury lawyer charleston", their firm website wasn't even on the first five pages in Charleston, SC. He asked his dad why he hadn't invested in SEO, and his dad gave him a blank stare. "I hired FindLawyerRightNow.Org, Inc. [fictitious company name] to make my website, do my SEO and create a profile for my firm on their directory website."
Turns out this very large corporation sold them a very shiny piece of trash. When Steve called the account manager at FindLawyerRightNow, he asked why they were paying for "SEO" in their contract and weren't ranking at all. The account manager dropped a bunch of buzzwords, and Steve got the feeling that this guy had no clue what he was talking about. So Josh fired them.
Or so he thought. The account manager pointed out that his dad had signed a contract to "lease" a website from the company. His dad doesn't even own his own website. Not to worry, the account manager is happy to part with FindLawyerRightNow's intellectual property for the low low price of thousands of John Doe's hard-earned dollars.
With this awful taste in his mouth, Steve decided to tune out all of the companies that constantly call their office soliciting website and SEO business. He had received this cheesy fake cardboard briefcase via FedEx last week, and when he opened it there was an actual screen inside that began playing an ad for a marketing company. He threw it in the trash and decided to start asking around for help.
Steve knew a friend from law school whose dad's bankruptcy law firm was killing it from Google searches, so he gave his friend a call. "You have to talk to Austin," was his reply. After an email introduction, Steve and Austin connected for a quick phone call to hear more about the firm and its growth objectives. Austin agreed to do some market-specific research to be able to present at a follow-up meeting with both Steve and John.
Steve liked the presentation. It was nice to talk to someone who wasn't a salesman - this guy is the one who has done this by his own hand for attorneys for years.
However, he still had one main question: "how much am I going to make, and how fast am I going to make it?"
Austin's reply: "Anyone who tells you that answer with any specificity is lying to you. They want to take your money, not make you money."
Steve instantly knew this guy wasn't like all those other salesmen. They signed with Austin's company.
After the first month, Steve was already seeing the results of an improved website that was hand-crafted to perform on searches. His Google Analytics report used to show traffic coming from direct or referral sources, and organic search traffic was very weak. Within a couple of months, organic search was the main driver of visitors to his website, but he still didn't have any leads.
Four months in, Steve received an email in his inbox. This was an auto accident case lead! To date, the only emails he had received from his website were salesmen soliciting business. He was so excited. Steve sent Austin a text, and Austin even had to do a double take -- this was the fastest he had driven a six-figure case for a client. A celebration was in order!
Three years later, Doe & Doe Attorneys had become an SEO success story. John's referral network still landed them great cases, but now Google-driven clients were increasing their case load so much that they were about ready to hire yet another paralegal. They had landed a big case on top of a healthy range of small and medium injury cases. That first case settled and instantly put their SEO campaign "in the black" -- they had already realized actual ROI.. They were consistently projecting continued on-paper ROI.
Steve had taken a risk investing in SEO, and it paid off big time.
J. Austin McCubbin, Owner, SEO Expert
Talk to a Law Firm SEO Expert
Do you think your firm is ready for SEO? Make no mistake, the competition will be tough, but to break through the competition and start growing your practice with SEO?
Our SEO experts are available to talk to any lawyer at your firm about your marketing needs. Use our online contact form to request a consultation, and we will have Austin follow up with you as soon as possible.