Nice post by Josh Dreller on Searchengineland.com on Keyword List Building.
Many of these strategies can be applied to keyword list building for your law firm.
Cast A Large Net
Whether you're talking paid search or organic targets, start by casting a large net. Don't count yourself out of the fight before you've stepped foot in the ring. Overtime, your analytics data will show you which keywords are worth keeping and which are throwing out. When it comes to your "keyword hunches" you'll probably be surprised as to which keywords work for your firm. Be scientific, not Nostradamus.
Research Your Market
The ways people search vary wildly. The way you might use the Internet or a search engine will be different from the way of your potential clients. Assume nothing. Ask current and prospective clients how they found you. Be detailed. If they found you on the Internet ask them specifics (i.e. which search engine, website, or key phrase).
Legal Jargon and Slang
How does your target audience refer to your services? In addition to obvious language differences, even within the English language, there are several minor variations in the terminology a potential client might use to refer to a particular legal professional. Unless your target audience is other attorneys, be sure to avoid industry terms, terms of art, or words you learned in law school. If your audience doesn't use these terms, it is unlikely they will search them on the Internet.
Common Misspellings
With regard to paid search, be sure to include common misspellings. Using Google, Yahoo, and Bing isn't a spelling contest. Often times, people using search engines are in a hurry or just down right lazy when it comes to performing searches. Don't assume that misspellings are only generated by the uneducated. Again, your analytics data will show you whether these misspelled key phrases are translating into new business.
Local
If you have a local consumer-based practice, don't forget to use geographically modified key phrases. Often times, these key phrases are less competitive than their more general counterparts. Be sure to take advantage of local listings like Google Places and include your local key phrases in those listings too.
photo by: allyrose18
 |
Ineffective Law Firm Website?Is your law firm website performing the way you'd like? Get a FREE Website Checkup. Let us take a look at your firm’s site and show you the problem areas and what you can do to remedy them. |
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 […]
