SEO for Lawyers by a Lawyer Turned SEO Pro Bob Barocas 1
SEO for lawyers: many online marketing companies are doing it. Unfortunately, most have absolutely no idea how to do law firm SEO properly.
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After all, most companies doing SEO for lawyers lack the fundamental knowledge about the legal profession needed to write high-quality content that will rank well in Google.
8 Proven Ways to Improve Your Search Rank........................................4
They apply the same SEO strategies over and over whether they’re working for a pest control company or your law firm.
Link Building for Lawyers..........................................................................10
Not only that, they aren’t familiar with the basic problems and challenges you’re facing because they themselves aren’t lawyers. This invariably translates into unmet expectations. Luckily for you, there’s an alternative. A Professional SEO Company Run by a Lawyer More Clicks More Clients was started by a lawyer turned SEO pro with the intention of helping lawyers grow their practices and improve their ROI. We have the best of both worlds: a licensed lawyer with hands-on legal experience who mastered and is certified in online marketing. Think about it: How many SEO pros in the entire United States are attorneys that now focus on helping other law firms with SEO?
On-Page SEO for Lawyers........................................................................5 Local Business Citations............................................................................22 Content Creation for Lawyers................................................................ 26 Creating High-Quality Content Enhances Law Firm SEO.............. 28 Law Firm Press Releases.......................................................................... 30 Testimonial Outreach................................................................................34 Social Media for Lawyers..........................................................................37 Website Redesign...................................................................................... 44 Conclusion...................................................................................................47
We are uniquely qualified to provide your firm with phenomenal SEO that gets results while speaking your language and deeply appreciating your specific marketing goals. We wrote this guide in order to share our insider knowledge and help your law firm reach its potential.
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8 Proven Ways to Improve Your Search Rank
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he following are eight of the most important ways your law firm can take control of its web presence and radically improve its search ranking. For an indepth look at any one of them, please click on the appropriate link below.
1 – On-Page SEO: A detailed, behind the scenes look at how to get your site to rank above your competition by optimizing the tags and content on your website. 2 – Link Building: How to acquire high-quality and high-authority links that skyrocket your site to the top of Google and other search engines. 3 – Local Business Citations: The tried-and-true approach to boosting your Local SEO, getting found online, and leveraging Yelp and Yellow Pages (among others) to generate more business. 4 – Content Creation: The ins and outs of how blogging and article writing dramatically improve SEO for lawyers and significantly increase your ROI.
8 – Website Redesign: The down-and-dirty guide to transforming your less than attractive website into a beautiful WordPress site that’s mobile responsive and uniquely designed to get you more clients.
On-Page SEO for Lawyers
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igh-quality law firm SEO requires a good hard look at your website and investing serious time and effort into improving it on both the front-end and the back-end.
Title Tags We’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but Google does judge a site by its title. Optimize your title tags by putting your keywords as close to the beginning of your titles as possible.
SEO
5 – Press Releases: The best practices we’ve picked up along the way to get your law firm maximum exposure in the press.
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6 – Testimonial Outreach: A look at how crucial testimonials on Avvo, Facebook, and Google+ can be for your online reputation and how to build trust by garnering them.
In SEO terms, this is called an H1 tag. Google gives tremendous weight to this when ranking sites. Make sure to put your keywords in them and keep them between 35 and 65 characters long.
7 – Social Media Marketing: A clear-cut, no-nonsense explanation of how Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn can expand your brand, reach your target audience, and drive more traffic to your site.
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Keywords
Images
Extensively research and identify your best keywords with Google’s Keyword Planner. Then, use them strategically and logically throughout the body of the content on your website. Don’t forget to blend them naturally in the text so your reader doesn’t get confused or lose interest in the post.
Pictures are vital to keeping your reader’s attention and boosting your web presence in search engines. Try to choose images that evoke emotion and resonate strongly with your readers. Remember, on the back-end, you’ll have to code their alt tags to be search engine optimized (since Google can’t actually “read” images).
Subheadings Google loves subheadings, so craft eye-catching ones. This will help your firm rank higher while simultaneously attracting more readers and potential clients to your site.
Meta Description This is a fancy name given to the short description underneath the title of a page in a Google search result. The key is to design a meta description that strategically includes your keywords, entices potential clients to click on your page, and is within the 165 character length requirement. It’s not an easy task, but if you do it enough, you’ll get the hang of it very quickly.
Internal Linking Boosts Google loves when pages on your site link to one another. For example, if you have a Business Law page, you can discuss the types of contracts your firm drafts and link to another page dealing with, for example, LLC Operating Agreements. Internal linking like this (or cross-linking) gives Google’s bots an opportunity to bounce around your site and index it best. This is huge for SEO. It also keeps your readers on your website and looking for more information about your firm.
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NAP If you want to rank higher in Google My Business or Bing Places, having your law firm’s name, address, and phone number (NAP) in the footer of every page on your website is an absolute must. Not only that, but your phone number should also be hyperlinked, so mobile users can call your firm with a single click of a button.
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Videos
Sitemap Generation
Having videos on your website is no longer a nice luxury, it’s a necessity. In today’s world, garnering a reputation for being the preeminent lawyer in your field requires high-quality videos on your website. Aside from building trust and authority, videos engage with your visitors on a personal level and improve your SEO tremendously––especially if you put the video on YouTube and embed it on your site.
If you can’t find your pages and posts, neither can Google! Create an XML Sitemap that helps search engines find and index every page and post on your entire website. It’s also worth generating an HTML Sitemap that’s readable by humans, so your site navigation will be even more organized. After creating these, sign up for and use Google Search Console (AKA Google Webmaster Tools) to ensure that the most up-to-date version of your site, pages, and posts are appearing in all the major search engines.
Page Speed Google confirmed long ago that sites that load slowly will hurt your search rankings. Also, studies show that users won’t stay on your site when it takes a long time to load. Now is not the time to be cutting corners. Ditch your cheap hosting package on a server with 15,000 other sites and make sure that you invest in fast, high-quality hosting on a stellar server. You can significantly improve your page speed by enabling any and sometimes all of the following: 1) page caching; 2) browser caching; 3) CSS & JS minification; 4) image optimization, scaling, and resizing; 5) minimizing your number of total requests; and 6) using a Content Delivery Network (CDN).
As you can see, on-page SEO for lawyers can be pretty intense and gets very involved. If this seems way too technical and time consuming, we can take care of all of it for you. We’ve been doing this successfully for years, and it’s just the beginning of how we get your law firm on Page 1.
Mobile Responsiveness Almost everyone is on an iPhone or smartphone these days. Many even ask “Siri” or “OK Google” questions about finding an attorney to hire. If your site isn’t optimized for mobile searches, you’re losing business. If your law firm’s website isn’t mobile-friendly, you need to make it happen. If your site already is, find the best place to position your phone number to maximize calls from potential clients searching for lawyers in your practice area.
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Link Building for Lawyers
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hen search engines notice highly ranked websites linking to your site, they reward you with a big ranking boost.
Most importantly, Avvo allows you to build links with keyword rich anchor text right in your bio, which is huge for law firm SEO. Many other high-powered legal sites allow you to build links back to your firm’s website. Three others that can be extremely helpful for your legal practice are:
In fact, links are considered the second most important ranking factor (second only to keywords), so you better believe link building is a huge part of the SEO strategy you should implement to get your law firm on Page 1. Earning links from highly ranked websites requires tremendous creativity, thinking outside the box, and good networking skills. To give you a small taste of what we mean, here are 10 of the most successful link building strategies in our ever-growing law firm SEO toolbox:
Legal profile links are a no-brainer and a quick win – they boost your reputation as a lawyer, make you more available to potential clients, and improve your SEO in the process.
2 – Scholarship Links 1 – Legal Profile Links When doing SEO for lawyers, you need to harness the power of legal profiles. You and the lawyers in your firm might even have some of these, but with a few modifications, they can be used to build extremely high-quality links back to your firm’s website.
It’s well known in the SEO world that links coming from .edu websites are the holy grail of link building. When it comes to doing SEO for lawyers, one of the best ways to obtain .edu backlinks is by offering a scholarship to your local law school.
For instance, you’re probably on Avvo already. If you’re not, sign up now. Avvo lets you create an attorney profile including your practice area, awards, licenses, education, a bio, and more.
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Think of the perfect candidate, come up with requirements, and email the Dean of Admissions explaining what you’d like to do. Most law schools will jump at the opportunity. They’ll almost always post a short paragraph explaining your scholarship and requirements on their website along with your contact information––including a link back to your website. If they don’t include the link, you can politely email them asking them to include it. Doing this fosters good will, is great PR, and will earn you one of the highest quality links you can get. If your firm can afford to offer 2 or 3 smaller one-time stipends, you can offer them to 2 or 3 different law schools and build that many more links. Forget about advertising on billboards or magazines this month, and put that money toward a scholarship for a law student instead. You’ll make that money back and so much more in no time, and you’ll feel good for what you’ve done.
3 – Guest Blogging (AKA Guest Blawging) Guest blogging (or guest blawging) involves writing an article on another person’s website, and it usually comes in two different varieties. The first involves networking with other lawyers in non-competing states in the same niche as you and offering to write a post for their blog. For example, if you’re a traffic ticket lawyer in Baltimore, you could reach out to a traffic ticket lawyer in New Jersey and do some guest blawging for him or her. Typically, you’ll create an author bio in the beginning or end of the article and include a backlink to your website in it. The second involves writing an article on Lawyerist, Lawyernomics, Attorneyatwork, or other sites dedicated to creating highly engaging, law-related content.
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When you’re writing for these sites, make your article extremely professional and chock-full of insights. Depending on the guidelines of the particular site, you’ll either be allowed to use a link with keyword rich anchor text in the actual body of the content or you’ll be allowed to include a link in your author bio. Ultimately, whether you choose to focus your guest blawging efforts on one or both of these methods, the links you can obtain as a result are incredibly helpful to your legal SEO.
After identifying 25-50, reach out to them via email or over the phone and ask to have your website, an ebook, or some other resource of yours included in their list. The key is to identify lawyers with professional looking and aesthetically pleasing sites that are updated frequently and contain a healthy amount of resources on their Resources page. If successful, securing these links in addition to the others we’ve mentioned so far will help skyrocket your law firm’s SEO to the top of Google.
4 – Resource Links 5 – Social Profile Links Social profile links are similar to the legal profile links we mentioned above. However, in order to set up a social profile, you need to be on social media first. Once you have a social media account with, for example, Twitter, you can create social profiles on high-authority sites like Klout, Twellow, and Favstar. These days, most lawyers and professionals have a Resources page on their website. It usually includes links to authoritative websites, ebooks, videos, and sometimes infographics. Being considered a resource to others not only improves your reputation among potential clients, it’s a fundamental way to build links and effectively do SEO for lawyers. Although tedious, your law practice should invest some time and effort into identifying which lawyers in non-competing jurisdictions have Resources pages.
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Setting up your social profiles and properly inserting the links in each one requires a bit of technical know-how and some social media prowess, but with the right SEO company it’ll be a breeze. Full disclosure: having social profile links isn’t going to be enough to give a huge boost to your law firm’s SEO. Instead, they should be used to 1) help anchor you to Page 1 if your competition is trying to take you down or 2) push you over the hump from Page 2 to Page 1.
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6 – Image Links
7 – Comment Links
Image links are exactly what they sound like: links from images on other websites.
It should go without saying that you need to intelligently respond to all of the comments on your own law firm’s website and blog.
The best candidates for image links are infographics about the legal profession, photos of the attorneys in your practice, and your law firm’s logo. However, a stock photo relating to the legal profession will also suffice.
However, thoughtfully commenting on other law-related websites and blogs is a pivotal part of SEO for lawyers.
It’s worth noting that you don’t have to wait for someone else to take your beautiful photo, post it on their website, and link back to you.
That said, before you go ahead and start tapping on your keyboard, here are some guidelines you need to be aware of.
Another method that works surprisingly well is creating an account with a company like Dropshots and uploading your own law firm photos, infographics, and logos.
Your comment should:
After you upload a photo, add a comment containing the URL of your law firm’s website. When you post the comment, the URL becomes a live link back to your site. You can do this for every photo you upload. Don’t overdo it though; 3-5 photos and links should suffice to give your law firm SEO a much needed shot in the arm.
• Add something to the current conversation • Be topically relevant to the post • Be several sentences (or even paragraphs) long • NOT mention your legal services • Avoid sounding spammy at all costs Aside from the fact that any direct marketing in your comments could be construed as a violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct, it’s simply in poor taste and ineffective. However, leaving a thought-provoking insight or piece of advice that adds value to the post you’re commenting on is a great way to establish yourself as an authority, get your name out there, and drive traffic back to your site.
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How can blog commenting drive traffic back to your site? It’s simple.
8 – Legal Forum Links
When you post a comment, you’ll almost always have an opportunity to type in your website. When you do, the site will automatically add a link back to your site using your name as the anchor text (i.e. the blue and underlined text that people click on).
Legal forums are places your potential clients go to ask legal questions and find out if they need a lawyer.
If your comment was well-crafted and piqued the curiosity of those reading it, they’ll click on the link and visit your site. Believe it or not, this can be very effective!
Answering questions on these forums can drive considerable traffic to your website, enhance your online reputation, and get your phone ringing.
Some blogs are “CommentLuv” enabled. This means the website owner installed a plugin that lets you post comments that include a link to a recent blog post of yours. This special link will appear at the bottom of your comment and can be an additional source of traffic back to your law practice’s site. If the blog owner has paid for the premium version of the plugin, this link can be coded as a follow link. Without getting too technical, this means that the link back to your law firm’s blog post can be a much needed boost to your legal SEO.
To get started, you first need to identify the legal forums your potential clients hang out in. To do this, type the following into Google: “powered by vbulletin” + “xyz” (where “xyz” is your practice area, niche, or field of expertise). After identifying a handful of good prospects, you’ll need to create a profile on each forum. Don’t cut corners here: upload your headshot and completely fill out your profile––the more professional and authoritative the better. Feel free to include links to your social media accounts too. Once you found the right forums and created your profiles, start answering a handful of questions every day. Most importantly, leave a link to a relevant page on your website, so the potential client can go to your site and get more information on the subject. For example, try ending your answers with: “If you’re interested in other ways to get out of a speeding ticket in NJ, I’ve written a fairly comprehensive post on the subject here: http://www.yourlawfirm.com/title-of-the-post.”
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If you don’t have a resource to offer, create a forum signature. In the signature, explain who you are in two sentences or less and include a link to a landing page or your law firm’s About Us page.
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When it comes to SEO for lawyers, answering potential clients in forums is a must.
10 – Broken Link Building
9 – Mention Reclamation Mention reclamation sounds technical, but it’s actually extremely simple and undeniably beneficial to SEO for lawyers when it’s properly executed. Mention reclamation is a two step process. The first step involves identifying websites that mention: 1) you, 2) your law practice, 3) other lawyers at your firm, or 4) quotes from you or members of your firm without linking back to your law firm’s website. The second step involves sending a polite email gently encouraging them to link back to you.
Have you ever clicked a link to a website and been redirected to a 404 page? If so, that means you clicked on a broken link and the page you should’ve been taken to no longer exists. Broken links are terrible for a website: they’re bad for SEO and visitors hate them too. Broken link building is a mutually beneficial solution to the problem. Broken link building for lawyers requires three crucial steps.
The key here is to avoid sounding like you’re drafting a demand letter or cease and desist order. That’s a sure-fire way of getting the mention removed completely, burning bridges, and not getting the valuable link you want!
First, you need to identify broken links on other law-related websites. (Using a tool like Open Site Explorer will expedite the process.)
There are several ways to find mentions online. One is as simple as Googling your name or firm with quotation marks around it and scanning the search results. A second method involves setting up Google alerts.
Second, after identifying a bunch of broken links, you need to have or create an alternative resource or page to get linked to. A topical, niche specific ebook or highquality article will usually do the trick.
If you’re willing to put some money into it, you can use Fresh Web Explorer from Moz to track mentions.
Third, reach out to the site owner letting him or her know that his or her site has a broken link and your law firm has the perfect resource to take its place.
However, if you’re pressed for time like most attorneys, you might want to leave all of this to your online marketing and SEO company. 20
While this certainly doesn’t work every time, when it does, it helps improve your search ranking tremendously. 21
Local Business Citations
• Getting plenty of positive reviews from happy clients through these listings
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hen Googling something, have you ever seen a box containing a map and three businesses just below the paid ads? This is Google’s Three Pack. Getting in the Three Pack can be tremendously lucrative for law firms. Why? Think about it: Google’s Three Pack takes up serious Page 1 real estate, it’s right at the top above all organic results, and it’s exactly where many of your potential clients click when looking to hire an attorney. Getting your site front and center in Google’s Three Pack requires high-quality local SEO for lawyers. Simply put, local SEO is the name given to geographically targeted SEO designed to get your site to appear in Google’s Three Pack and boost your overall ranking for geographic-based keywords (e.g. SEO for lawyers in NJ, law firm SEO in MD, etc.). Local SEO for lawyers can get a bit complicated, but it mostly involves the following: • Claiming and verifying your business in local business listings (e.g. Google My Business, Bing Places, Yelp, etc.)
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Building links to your website
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Building links to your business listings
There are currently 200+ local business citations available online that you can acquire to boost your law firm’s local SEO. While it’s not necessary to claim and verify your business in all of them, garnering as many as possible is extremely crucial. More Clicks More Clients recommends that you strive to claim and verify 50 or more. However, it’s not enough to get your business listed on these sites. You need to fill out all of the information and be as thorough as possible. Upload your law firm’s logo, include links to your social media accounts, and treat the description section like an amplified elevator pitch promoting your law practice. These simple things can have a big impact on SEO for lawyers. If the site allows you to include pictures of your staff or the outside of your law office, put these up as well. Remember, everything you say or put online makes a statement about you and your firm, so invest in having professional photos taken. Doing so enhances your online reputation and makes you more credible in the eyes of your potential clients.
• Filling out as much information as possible about your business in these listings
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Most importantly, add the URL of your website and phone number. Next, choose 3-5 of the most popular local business listings and get positive reviews on them. The key to local SEO for lawyers is getting reviewed through the business listing sites, not simply posting testimonials on your website. Let’s say your law practice wanted to target Yelp, Yahoo!, and Google My Business. It would be a big mistake to reach out to happy clients and ask them to email you a review or testimonial. Instead, you should try to get these clients to review you on one of your local business listings. Be careful, though: Yelp (among a few others) prohibits the direct solicitation of reviews.
You can invite happy clients to share their experience with your firm on these sites while avoiding directly asking for a positive review. If you want to err on the side of caution, send an email containing the favorable result and simply include a “Find Us on Yelp” button below your signature line that links to your business listing. The last step to improving local SEO for lawyers is link building. The amount of high-quality links pointing to your site is so influential to Google that it not only impacts your overall search ranking, but also your placement in the Three Pack. If you’re serious about improving your law firm’s SEO, make sure to implement the strategies we discussed previously. A clever way to occupy more Page 1 real estate is by building links directly to your business directory listings. Even if you build just 2 or 3 high-quality links to a few of your listings, you could easily begin to see them on Page 1 of Google when searching for your law firm. Ultimately, if you do this with enough of them, you can blanket the first page of Google with your law firm’s website, Facebook page, and all of these business listings. This gives you full control over what potential clients are seeing on Page 1 when they research your law firm.
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Content Creation for Lawyers
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p until now, we’ve discussed how attorney SEO involves on-page SEO, link building, and local business citations.
However, before getting too carried away, it’s vital to take a step back and remember that law firm online marketing is not just about technical ways to improve your visibility in search engines. Put a bit differently, white hat SEO for lawyers cannot simply be machine focused – it has to be human focused. If you want your law firm’s online marketing efforts to be successful, you’re going to need to create high-quality content. Having a one page website isn’t going to cut it, no matter how sleek it looks. Potential clients want to know that your firm can solve their legal challenges. In order to help persuade them, you need to create content that educates, builds trust, and distinguishes your firm from all the rest.
The Correct Approach to Law Firm Content Marketing These days, when potential clients look for lawyers online, they do their research. They read your blog posts, check to see if your site is riddled with spelling errors, and want to find out if you’re genuinely qualified.
The best way to prove this to your potential clients is by publishing articles and blog posts directly discussing their legal problems and providing insightful solutions to them. Let’s make this more concrete. Imagine what would happen if a law firm specializing in contract law wrote a blog post entitled “Top 3 Clauses You Need to Include in Every Legal Agreement.” Doing this would accomplish at least four things: 1. First and foremost, the attractive title would entice potential clients to come to the law firm’s website. 2. Second, the post would educate potential clients about something they’re extremely interested in, which makes their visit to your site very worthwhile. 3. Third, it subconsciously shows (instead of telling) potential clients that this firm knows what it’s talking about and can be trusted as an authority when it comes to contract law. 4. Fourth, it reveals that this firm is more of an authority than a competitor who lacks a blog or only posted low-level content on it several years ago. When content creation is approached from this perspective, every post and article published to your website becomes an opportunity to build your brand, attract more clients, and subtly convince them that you’re the attorney they need to hire. Aside from knowing what content to create, it’s extremely crucial to create and publish that content often.
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Frequently publishing high-quality content demonstrates two things: 1. You’re active in your niche. 2. Your law firm’s site is not stale. Nothing sends red flags out to potential clients faster than a website that hasn’t been updated in a while.
Creating High-Quality Content Enhances Law Firm SEO Also, the more content you publish, the more content Google can index and rank you for. All of the content on your website represents online real estate you own. If you only have three pages on your site, you can really only optimize three pages.
However, if you have 30 posts or pages, you can optimize and rank 30 pieces of content. This radically enhances your chances of ranking well in Google not only for multiple keywords, but also multiple pieces of content. In this sense, the more pages and posts you have, the more online territory you can occupy. The more you expand your online presence by writing high-quality content, the more Page 1 positions you can take up. Be careful though: you won’t get away with creating 100 blog posts that simply regurgitate boring legal precedents or cut and paste news updates found elsewhere on the web. (Doing that is a recipe for getting slapped with a Google penalty.) Every page or post you publish must attempt to answer a question your potential clients are asking and provide tons of value to them. Like we said in the beginning of this section, it’s not enough for law firm SEO to target machines, it must focus on your potential clients. If you make your content enticing and simultaneously helpful, potential clients will turn to you as the definitive authority for all of their legal questions. Likewise, when it comes time to choose a law firm to help them, they’ll know exactly who to call.
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Law Firm Press Releases
or even YouTube videos. All of this helps improve your online reputation and, when properly leveraged, can significantly improve your rank in Google.
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The more frequently and consistently your audience hears your law firm’s name and the positive things it’s doing, the more likely they’ll be to remember you when looking to hire an attorney.
ust a few decades ago, press releases were in the exclusive domain of the print media.
However, nowadays, most people get their news from the Internet. As a result, the print media has taken a tremendous hit and some even claim that it’s dying rapidly.
Reaching your target market in the modern era requires blasting your message out over the Internet.
The best kinds of law firm press releases announce: • New victories (i.e. recent cases your law firm won) • Substantial jury verdicts and non-confidential settlements
Instead of sending a press release to a few local newspapers and hoping several hundred people will read it, a press release can now reach hundreds of thousands of people by broadcasting it online.
• Precedent-setting cases your firm was involved in
Not only that, but online press releases are also distributed in their entirety without being cherry-picked. The full message you submit will be the complete message your audience reads.
• CLE presentations your attorneys will be teaching at
As you already know, law firm press releases are used to attract media attention and press coverage to help you get the word out about your firm, develop your brand, and build your reputation. What you might not have known is that they help SEO for lawyers. Many allow you to include links to your website, social media profiles,
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• New attorneys you recently hired
• Speaking engagements and seminars your team will be leading • Scholarships you’re sponsoring, non-profit fundraising, and similar efforts Before going any further, it’s worth cautioning you a bit: even if your press release properly targets your audience and makes one of the above-mentioned announcements, it still might flop completely. The following best practices will help you get the biggest bang for your buck while making a splash in the press.
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1 – Have an attention-grabbing headline
4 – Be descriptive and make it exciting
People love to click on attractive headlines and completely ignore dull ones. Make sure your law firm’s press release has an attention-grabbing headline.
When writing your press releases, forget that you’re a lawyer and think like an online marketer. No reader wants to read a press release with a formal or stodgy tone. Keep it informative but light and engaging.
If you’re having trouble making your headline pop or determining if it’s irresistibly clickable, head over here to use Co-Schedule’s Headline Analyzer. The Headline Analyzer is incredibly powerful. Not only does it help you identify whether your title is catchy enough, it also grades it on a scale from 1-100. It’ll even tell you what percentage of your words are common, uncommon, emotion-generating, and power words.
2 – Top-load the most newsworthy information When crafting your press release, put the most newsworthy information in the first two paragraphs. After all, most people will only get that far before skipping to the very end or leaving the page.
3 – Include something that sets you apart from other law firms In a world where everyone is sending out press releases, you need to stand out. Find out what makes your firm unique and mention it.
5 – Include links back to your law firm’s website and social media profiles Getting links back to your law firm’s website and social media profiles is the key to how press releases can substantially improve SEO for lawyers. Include keyword rich anchor text linking back to your website as well as links to your law firm’s Facebook page and Twitter account. While most press release submission sites allow you to do this, not all will. If the one you’re using doesn’t, at least place a link to the URL of your website at the end of your press release. If necessary, you can include a signature line at the end of the press release containing your name, law firm, URL of your firm’s website, URL of your Facebook page, and URL of your Twitter account.
6 – Relate your story to new or emerging legal trends If possible, relate the content of your press release to a new or emerging trend in the legal field. The key is to ride the coattails of a story that already has buzz. Doing this can help you generate additional readers and wider media exposure.
7 – Include your firm’s contact information Tons of law firms make mistakes with this. Be sure to include your law firm’s contact information in your press release. Either put it in the actual content of the press release or include it when submitting it. Make sure to give the phone number and email address of an extremely responsible and reliable employee who can answer every call or correspondence in a very timely manner. To avoid telephone tag and intermediaries, it’s ideal for this person to be a lawyer instead of a secretary, paralegal, or assistant. Remember, failing to follow up hurts your ROI, makes a bad impression, and is tantamount to shutting the door on potential clients who want to hire you. 32
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Testimonial Outreach
Getting Avvo and Facebook reviews involves the same techniques we mentioned earlier when talking about local SEO for lawyers:
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he importance of testimonials can’t be understated.
Aside from the fact that they’re a critical component of SEO for lawyers, they’re precisely what potential clients look for when choosing to hire you over your competition. We already mentioned the role reviews and testimonials play in local SEO for attorneys. However, not every person looking for an attorney will be doing so on Yelp or Yellow Pages. When it comes to researching law firms, many of your potential clients are also looking on Avvo and even Facebook.
Having tons of glowing reviews on Facebook and Avvo builds trust and makes your firm a more attractive choice to potential clients.
1. First, win a case for a client or reach a favorable resolution. 2. Second, let your client know via phone or email. 3. Third, invite your client to share his or her experience with your firm on Avvo or Facebook. However, for these particular reviews, we’re adding a fourth step because they’re that vital to establishing trust and getting you more clients: 4. Fourth, embed your Facebook reviews and Avvo reviews on your law firm’s website. This doesn’t mean copy and pasting! If you do that, you’ll lose the personal touch of the testimonial and it will lack credibility. After all, anyone could post on their website that Joe Schmo said their law firm is the best ever. However, when a unique Facebook profile and picture are associated with the review, this shows that you didn’t fabricate or edit it in any way. If you don’t love the idea of integrating your Facebook and Avvo reviews with your website, at least link to them on your Testimonials page or put something just under your site navigation that looks like this.
From a purely legal perspective, it’s a good idea to have a disclaimer page on your website or at least a sentence in your footer saying, “Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.” (Certain jurisdictions actually require this by law, so be sure to consult your particular state’s ethics rules.) 34
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Don’t forget to link each logo to the corresponding reviews page.
Social Media for Lawyers
When potential clients see something like this, they immediately know that you have:
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• Positive feedback from former clients on independent websites • Experience getting people just like them favorable results • Credibility as an advocate and a track-record of success Remember, attorney SEO isn’t just about getting to the top of Google, it’s about turning clicks into clients. That requires investing the time and energy into testimonial outreach or hiring a company like More Clicks More Clients to do it for you. Whichever route you take, make testimonial outreach a routine activity at your law firm for every victory you achieve.
ost lawyers understand the importance of social media. Unfortunately, they simply lack the time to be active on it.
This puts most firms in a terrible catch-22: they either: 1) have dead social media accounts that haven’t been used in months (or sometimes years), which tarnishes their reputation in the eyes of potential clients or 2) they don’t even have a social media presence, which makes them look antiquated and really not with it. A potential client looking to hire a lawyer like you will spend tons of time digging into every crevice of online space you occupy just to find out if your firm is right for him or not. Your potential clients are on social media and they want to see that you are too. Having dead social media accounts (or no social media presence whatsoever) is a huge red flag that will send the majority of people researching your firm running for the hills. However, being active on social media lets you engage directly with potential clients in the space they feel most comfortable. Here are just five ways attorneys are using social media to get more clients:
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1. Making niche-specific Q&A videos for YouTube
The goal is to give potential clients a taste of who you are, what your firm stands for, and why they should hire you.
2. Posting pictures of themselves with a client after winning a case on Pinterest or Instagram
Likewise, your background image should be as attractive as possible. The same goes for your profile picture.
3. Sharing topically relevant posts that position them as an authority on Facebook
While you’re at it, upload some high-quality images of your law office and attorneys. If you have video testimonials from clients, upload those too––they’re great social proof attesting to your reputation.
4. Responding to questions, comments, and reactions from potential clients on Twitter 5. Growing their professional network to gain more referrals on LinkedIn Without a doubt, social media is an indispensable component of growing your law practice.
Remember, a phenomenal Facebook page can also improve SEO for lawyers, so be sure to have some hand-selected keywords carefully and seamlessly placed in your About section. Once you finished making or revamping your law firm’s Facebook page, ask yourself the following questions: • Would I be enticed to spend more than 5 seconds on this Facebook page? • Does this Facebook page look professional and attractive?
Facebook for Lawyers Facebook is one of the most widely used social media platforms in the world. With over 1.59 billion active monthly users, you’re literally leaving money on the table if you don’t create and maintain a robust Facebook presence. As with all social media profiles you create, you need to take the time to fully fill out and complete your law firm’s Facebook page. For example, your About section should be as detailed as possible and try to capture your firm’s personality and philosophy. It should never be a mere regurgitation of your website’s About Us page.
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When your answer is “yes” to both questions, you can begin to use your law firm’s Facebook page to help enhance your brand and get more clients. The best way to start enhancing your brand online is by being perceived as an authority in your field by prospective clients. This is typically achieved by having your finger on the pulse of hot-button legal issues and posting links to newsworthy articles involving your main areas of practice. Once your law firm becomes an established authority, it’ll become the go-to source for these issues and your name will be what potential clients remember when they need a lawyer.
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Twitter for Lawyers Although fewer people use Twitter than Facebook, it still has a whopping 305 million monthly active users. Twitter is the go-to platform for sharing quick updates, breaking news, and blog posts. Lawyers use it to do all three of these and more. One of the most important ways to use Twitter to get more clients is by growing your following. The more people you have following your law firm, the more potential clients you can reach.
Not only will this increase traffic to your site, it will also increase your sales funnel and the likelihood of getting more clients. Frequently posting all of the following exponentially increases the chances of your Twitter followers hiring you or recommending your services to others: • Updates about groundbreaking legal cases • Blog posts of non-competing niche attorneys • Your own blog posts
Remember, the key to monetizing your Twitter account is amassing a following of people who can either become your clients or bring you more clients.
• Breaking legal news
This usually includes:
Ultimately, amassing the right following and posting the right content can land you more clients and steadily improve your ROI.
• Fellow lawyers who can help you build a referral network • Current clients who may use your services again or refer you to friends • People interested in your practice areas who may need a lawyer down the road • People interested in your practice areas who may know someone in need of a lawyer By amassing a solid following of people who are interested in your main practice areas and posting links to niche-specific blog posts on your website, you’ll begin to attract your Twitter followers to your law firm’s website.
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LinkedIn for Lawyers LinkedIn is a tremendously powerful tool for professionals to network with one another. In the past, LinkedIn was looked at solely as a tool to help people secure jobs and network to get a job. Now, however, people are also using it to build referral networks, become industry leaders, and grow their businesses. More specifically, lawyers are connecting with fellow lawyers to create client referral networks that tremendously improve their ROI. How are they doing this? It’s not rocket science; it just takes a bit of effort and social intelligence. When it comes to building a referral network, the most successful lawyers build off of current successes. This translates into connecting online with those you already connected with offline.
While it’s a good idea to amass 500+ connections, it’s not smart to connect with just anyone. Target lawyers who you honestly believe you can build a real relationship with. After these attorneys accept your connection requests, send each one a thank you message. Try to find out the areas of practice they specialize in to help make this message as personalized as possible. Be sure to also tell them that you would gladly refer them business and would love to help them in any way you can. Slowly, over the next several weeks, try to build a relationship with each attorney you connect with. The more you make yourself available to help your connections, the more likely they will be to refer you clients. If you feel comfortable, take the conversation offline. Set up a time to have a phone call and discuss the possibility of working together and referring clients to one another. Be sure that everything conforms to your particular state’s ethics rules. If you keep at it, this technique can help you grow your law firm and improve your ROI tremendously. Also, LinkedIn is becoming fertile ground for posting “law review”-like articles that can transform you into an industry leader.
For example, if you already have 2-3 people that refer you clients, connect with them on LinkedIn. When you do, you’ll be able to see who their connections are and you can request to connect with those new people.
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By doing this, several attorneys have positioned themselves as authorities in their unique areas of practice. How can you do this?
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Publish at least one long article per month that’s similar to the type you used to write for law review. However, make it much less pedantic and forget about Bluebooking your citations. The post should be a bit formal, very detailed, and hopefully intriguing. These LinkedIn posts can serve as publications that help improve your standing in the legal community, enhance your legal reputation, and keep you in the minds of your peers. Whether you choose to put your law firm on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn is ultimately up to you. However, we strongly suggest starting with at least one of them and gradually branching out to all three.
If you’re honestly not sure, here’s a checklist of everything your law firm’s website must have to successfully compete in today’s tough market: • Mobile responsive design • Logo prominently displayed in top left of every page • Professional “hero” banner on home page • Attractive “Call Now for Your Free Consultation” button in “hero” banner • Firm’s phone number prominently displayed on every page (i.e. typically top right of screen) • Headline on home page with your firm’s slogan or strongest selling point
Website Redesign
• Social proof prominently displayed (i.e. Super Lawyer status, client testimonials, 10/10 Avvo rating, etc.)
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et’s face the cold, hard facts: many law firm websites are downright unattractive.
• High-quality site navigation on every page
They look as old as a dinosaur, aren’t updated, have plain graphics, and aren’t mobile responsive. You can do as much SEO as you want, but if your law firm’s website looks as old as Methuselah, almost no one is going to hire you after seeing it. You and your fellow attorneys need to answer the following question: Is it time for us to redesign our website?
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• Professional portraits for “hero” banner and About Us page • Vibrant colors in navigation menu, background images, and logo • Striking, high-quality images used in every article and blog post
web design is no way to launch your firm into the digital age, and attempting a redesign on your own is a difficult task to undertake. Ultimately, when it comes to something as significant as your web design, make sure you’re showcasing your firm in the best possible light by keeping your site looking modern and incorporating our checklist items.
• Eye catching videos used site-wide • Regularly updated legal blog (AKA legal blawg) • Landing pages offering e-books and/or guides in exchange for email addresses • Firm name, address, and phone number in footer on every page • Social media icons prominently displayed linking to your social media accounts This might seem like a lot, but if you think about your website from your potential client’s perspective, you’ll easily begin to see why each one is necessary. According to HubSpot, in just 3 seconds a potential client will determine whether or not your site is worth his or her time. That means you have about 3 seconds to show visitors that you’re reliable, trustworthy, experienced, and interesting. That’s enough to instill more fear into a lawyer than your First Year Torts professor calling on you for the rule in Spivey v. Battaglia when you didn’t brief the case! When thought of from this perspective, a set it and forget it approach to law firm
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Conclusion
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e hope you found SEO for Lawyers by a Lawyer Turned SEO pro extremely valuable. It’s now up to you to implement these proven strategies to grow your law firm. If you’re serious about getting more clients, but don’t have time to do all of this on your own, contact More Clicks More Clients today for your free consultation. Here’s to your success!
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