I've had this question asked of me several times recently. Usually, a potential client wants to know because they are interested in comparing "apples to apples" with other SEO quotes they've received. There are a number of SEO companies out there that design and sell SEO packages based on optimizing your site for a set number of keywords. Perhaps their bronze package includes 5 keywords, their silver package gives you optimization for 10 keywords, and with the gold package you get 20. With this type of setup, it appears that you are purchasing a more robust, better performing service when your site is being optimized for more keywords.
So how many keywords do we optimize your law firm's website for?
My answer is that this is the wrong question.
Good SEO is not a commodity product, it’s a service. The value of an SEO program should be measured in increased traffic, leads, and business for the firm. As such, it can’t be easily quantified by metrics such as the number of keywords that are promised to be used before you even get started. That type of decision should be made strategically as you engage in the SEO campaign and it will evolve based on a variety of circumstances.
In the legal profession, no client should hire a lawyer based on the number of motions he or she promises to file in court. The decision to file a motion will be made as a case progresses and the lawyer has the need to do so in order to get the desired results for his or her client. Keyword selection is not so different from this. It is an important part of the process and a necessity for successful results with your SEO campaign. But don't make the mistake of thinking that the value of an SEO campaign revolves around how many keywords your site is going to be optimized for before a campaign has even started.
Photo by MervC
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 […]
