I have had several conversations recently with law firms that are asking if they can purchase SEO services as more of a "one-time shot". Another words, they want to pay a one-time fee for some SEO work and then call it a day. While there are some instances where this may be appropriate, I am afraid that lawyers ask for this type of service due to a lack of understanding of how SEO works and what exactly is involved.
If it was as easy as paying someone a few hundred bucks, as a one-time fee, to achieve high rankings on the search engines, don't you think everyone would just be doing that? Do you think that large, successful companies would have business models revolving around performing SEO work if this is all it took? The truth is that the SEO industry exists by virtue of the fact that it is time intensive work and requires constant maintenance to perform it correctly. However, the return on investment for well executed SEO work can be tremendous.
There is keyword research to perform, on-page optimization that needs to be done, link building on a continuous basis, content production, on page testing, and analytics analysis. After this analysis you should be expanding your efforts, going after more keywords and repeating the cycle. SEO is a dynamic, living thing. It grows and evolves over time. You plant seeds in the beginning and then care for sapling and the tree as it grows. Paying to perform one of these tasks, one-time isn't really performing SEO. In the Getting Found In Google guide posted below, we touch on just a few of the aspects and techniques of proper SEO. After reading the guide, you will see that it takes a commitment of time and resources to perform SEO correctly.
If you were in a situation where you were performing your SEO services in house, another words had people on staff or even yourself handling the work each month, then it might make sense to retain the services of a professional consultant to do a one time analysis and give you guidance. However, too many firms I speak with do not have an SEO in house to handle the work. Instead, the firm is operating under the misconception that paying someone to perform a once-over on your current website will get the job done. Unfortunately, the legal industry is too competitive and there are too many other firms willing to pay professional SEO services top dollar to get a return on their online marketing. You will not be able to compete with these firms "on the cheap". You will need to make an investment of time, money, resources, and patience to properly implement a successful online strategy.
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 […]
