Most attorney SEO tip lists include things like keyword research, link building and content marketing. And while these are undoubtedly important pieces to the SEO puzzle, they don't communicate the bigger picture of how organic search marketing fits into the marketing of a law practice.
Here are 10 SEO tips for attorneys to keep in the back of their heads at all times:
Over the years, law firm prospects have sent us reports from just about all of our competitors. Unfortunately, even today, some law firm marketing agencies still mislead their clients via "reporting." One particularly egregious example comes in the form of ranking reports. Which prompted this LinkedIn post. To my surprise, I received a lot of […]
John Wanamaker supposedly said "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." In an an effort to figure out "what half is working," attribution was born. Coupled with a transition from traditional, offline ads to digital media, attribution became the holy grail for analyzing advertising spends. But […]
I recently asked ChatGPT, "What are some of the top personal injury law firms in Chicago?? Actually, first I ask "who are some of the top personal injury lawyers in Chicago?" ChatGPT couldn't handle that one, so I modified the prompt. ChatGPT listed five very well-known firms downtown. Can you guess the other four? That's […]
If you're like me, you have some degree of AI, ChatGBT, Bard, exhaustion. Now don't get me wrong, this is stuff is remarkable and is changing, well, a lot. But before you hook up the ChatGPT API to your WordPress API and crank out 10,000 pages, here are a few things to think about. Let's […]
If you know me, you know my opinions about links and SEO advice from Google. If you don't, here's the TL;DR: Meh, links! Meaning, all things being equal, links still remain a competitive difference maker for ranking. Take Google's SEO advice with several grains of salt. Google has no economic incentive to help your site […]
The best marketing advice I can give you is to be authentic. Of course, you don't find that very helpful in terms of meeting your growth goals. So, you might decide to game the system. As I'm writing this, one of the more popular ways to gain the system is to pay for engagement. This […]
The following post was written by ChatGPT. ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, is a state-of-the-art language model that can generate human-like text based on a given prompt or context. This technology has the potential to revolutionize the way that businesses, including law firms, market themselves to potential clients. One way that a law firm could use […]
How long does SEO take? When can I expect to see results? What results should I expect to see? These are all reasonable questions that we field from lawyers every day. And, like many legal answers, the answer is: It depends. Yes, I know that's not the answer you wanted. But it's the most honest […]
And how much time should they spend doing it? I recently had the privilege of chatting with Tyson, Jim, and Conrad for an upcoming episode of The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. If you're not familiar with The Maximum Lawyer community, you should definitely check it out. Jim asked a really great question about who should do […]
Thank you for your post.
It does bring up a challenging issue: convincing attorneys that they need to spend time participating online and also creating quality copy to engage potential customers and get better rankings. The days of the old-boys' club (for getting new clients, anyway) is nearly over. Blindness to this fact--and the need for their active participation in marketing and engaging in the online world--seems to challenge both the mature and the newer attorneys (who are focused on getting as many billable hours as possible and/or getting their solo practice off the ground). Even firms with marketing depts and/or deep pockets don't seem to realize that their attorneys need to come to the party and participate (including having strategies for capturing and reusing/redeploying the content they do create, and distributing it for--gasp--free).
I'd love to see more suggestions on how to show attorneys that participating online and in copy creation is not good of them, but good for them, and the new reality of today's marketplace, and that they are running the risk of being left behind.
Thanks again.
Thanks for your comment. With regard to convincing attorneys that they should spend time participating online, it's really no different than convincing them to spend time networking in more traditional ways. Those that understand the effectiveness of developing professional relationships will benefit. Those that don't won't.
As to proving the value of online participation, that is bit more challenging. How do you prove the value of attending a social/networking function? Count handshakes and business cards?
Traditional metrics tend not to apply. "Social metrics" tend to be irrelevant. I think it comes down to connecting the dots. If you want to measure anything, I recommend measuring things like:
- Subscribers
- Comments
- @mentions on Twitter
These engagement metrics are telling in terms whether or not the ways in which we are participating are effective with our audiences.
Are lawyers going to get inbound calls saying that they "found them on facebook?" Maybe some, but not many. On the other hand, publishing and sharing content on various platforms that demonstrates knowledge and attracts more readers, subscribers and sharers, builds industry recognition.
And of course, being social counts. After all, lawyers and their clients are people. Which means, by nature, they are social.