A law firm SEO service is the ultimate in targeted advertising and search engine optimization for law firms. While you might pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for pay-per-click (PPC ads) with Google Ads, SEO means organic traffic for your website and law firm.
You also own the ranking you acquire through local SEO instead of temporarily renting (and paying through the nose) for the same ranking with Google Ads. Using a law firm SEO agency is the new industry norm, and no one wants to be left behind.
Of course, anyone can hire an SEO firm to put together a broad strategy and drive a bunch of random traffic to your site. Having hundreds of visitors sounds great, but if they’re not relevant, quality clicks, the firm has wasted its money.
Local SEO services for law firms solve this problem by optimizing your SEO strategy for your firm, your website, your content, and your clients in your local market, wherever that may be.
Why Would a Law Firm Use SEO?
Finding anything these days means going straight to a search engine, especially for people that don’t already have a recommendation for a lawyer. To get clients onto your website and convert those views into calls and emails, they need to be quality clicks.
It doesn’t matter what type of company you are, you need an SEO strategy.
This is what SEO strategy can do for a law firm. Consistent growth quarter after quarter.
Local Over Everything
Especially for the legal industry, local SEO is critical. Clients prefer lawyers they can sit down with. Local searches are becoming more popular, and law firms should make sure their SEO service can hone in on location-specific traffic for a hyper-local niche market.
What a Law Firm SEO Service Does
After an initial consultation, they will do keyword research to get the most effective keywords for searches, content, and your website — the more specific, the better.
Competition
Your goal is to beat out the competition and get to the top of the search results. Specific and long keywords mean that there is less competition for search engine ranking.
When you choose specific keywords instead of general ones like “lawyer for hire,” you are accessing the specific clients looking for you. A law firm SEO service gets you to the top of search results paying, beating out your competitors.
Keywords
A law firm SEO service will focus on the keywords that are specific to your firm. The goal is to keep things local, so including neighborhood names and city names will help.
Most people search for the thing they want and where they want it in the same search. Your clients will find the right law firm in the area they want when you optimize for their extremely specific searches.
Website Optimization
A law firm SEO service should always be able to perform comprehensive website optimization for your firm. Getting clicks is not enough because you need to make your website easily navigable and user-friendly.
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There should be a direct link between the information they are looking for and the information they find. Finally, your SEO service should make sure your website views are leading to calls and emails. A good SEO agency will always take care of this and might even specialize in doing this for law firms.
Content Optimization
Having a blog is a lot of work, but it makes a big difference. Law firms with an active blog can expect to see around 3,000 visitors from organic search traffic. Without it, that average drops to 182.
A law firm SEO service will get your content to do the speaking for you. It should provide information, but it should also drive traffic to your website. Being a trusted source for legal advice is what you do best, so take advantage of that deep knowledge base and get some of it (not all!) online.
The Magic of SEO
It sounds almost mystical and can be genuinely complicated but hiring a specialist SEO service fixes all of that for you. But does SEO live up to the hype?
Awareness
By building awareness through local search engine optimization services, you maintain awareness instead of renting it for the period that you’re paying for your campaign. This is a more sustainable way of doing business and a more sustainable way of bringing in website traffic.
Branding, Credibility, and Trust
Your law firm relies on an important level of credibility and trust for your legal services. Your clients need to trust you and your capabilities, but also in your brand and what you stand for. Everything adds up to your law firm’s brand and what it represents.
If a client finds you through an advertisement, they know that you are targeting them and hunting for business. People trust natural, organic search results because they know nobody is pushing it on them.
Internet ads are annoying for most people, and they give off the impression that they’re not as pure in intention as organic website traffic.
Return on Investment (ROI)
The ROI for search engine optimization is much higher than PPC ads. You’ll need to invest some money upfront for a reputable local SEO service, but you won’t have to pay recurring fees for the ads every time someone clicks on them. Your cost-per-click (CPC) will be significantly lower over time.
Sustainable Advantage
While a Google Ads campaign will finish when you stop paying it, search engine optimization does not stop. It is a sustainable way of bringing in website traffic, and it doesn’t finish when you run out of money.
Curious how we got our site from only $1K in keyword value to $19K+ in 1 year? SEO of course. Our custom SEO strategies can help any company in any industry and if you ever need a reference list of law firms we've helped improve, contact us to get it.
Scope
By having options for a wide range of search terms, long-tail keywords, and the ability to optimize for a broader market if needed, SEO gives you a bigger scope than with a Google Ads campaign.
Competition
Ad campaign effectiveness is dependent on how much money you have to spend. The big firms will be able to outspend the small ones, and their advantage will compound over time.
On the other hand, search engine optimization is a fair fight. There’s no outbuying the competition. Small firms and medium-sized firms can compete in the hyper-local market, and it doesn’t require outspending the competition.
Local Is Important
Being present in your market means putting your law firm’s services in front of the right people, not just as many people as possible. Most people want to drive down the street and meet with their lawyer face-to-face to build that trust and credibility we talked about earlier.
Local SEO Services Are Hyper-Local
Your presence on Main Street or the office tower down the street from your client is an important factor for your law firm’s success. They feel more secure when they work with you face-to-face.
By utilizing local SEO services, you remain hyper-local and continue to attract the clients that want to work with you.
Optimizing for local SEO means your business is visible to the people who are more likely to want to work with you because of your proximity.
Higher Local Rankings
Since search results are dependent on specific and often long search terms, visibility often depends on the location of the business. You will get higher rankings when potential clients search for local law firms.
Don't for get about mapped results as well. Want to show up in Google's Map 3-pack for your specific practice areas in your city? That's SEO.
More Local Calls
It’s great to get people to your website, but now you need to convert those visits into a phone call and then a meeting. The conversion from a website click to a phone call is a big deal. Your conversion rate is the number one statistic to pay attention to.
Since those local search terms and the hyper-local strategy of targeting your niche market are so effective with law firm SEO services, your conversion rate to phone calls will be much higher, leading to more clients and revenue.
Location First
People prefer local service when searching for a law firm. They want a local firm that can meet with them face to face. Listen to their concerns and guide them in person.
Sure, you can hire a law firm from across the country, but trust and credibility often come from having a personal relationship in which you can speak freely. Clients look for that from their law firm and will always choose to use a local service.
When people search for your service, they will often include a location in their search terms. They will start with the type of law firm they are looking for, and then they type their city or their neighborhood if they are looking for a hyper-local firm.
If they like what they see from two firms, but one is closer, they will choose the closer of the two law firms.
Local Law Firm SEO Services Are More Cost-Effective
Your cost-per-click will be lower the longer you implement your local SEO strategy. You also don’t need to pay for each click individually. However, you do have to invest some money upfront to develop your search engine optimization by hiring a law firm SEO service.
Did you know that digital marketing can be up to 23X more effective than traditional marketing? It's true. And when it comes to digital marketing, SEO is king, as the cost to get the same amount of return will be a fraction of your required Google Ads spend year over year. Click the image to read about more things that your marketing department isn't telling you.
Any law firm that dedicates itself to this strategy will only have to pay a set monthly fee far less than a Google Ads budget, and then they can move on to their work. You will need to check-in and monitor your SEO, but the law firm SEO service you hired will take care of all of it for you.
What Else Can SEO Do For My Law Firm?
It’s clear SEO has a long list of advantages, but we’ve only just scratched the surface. Your law firm is a business, and that bottom line needs to be protected. A law firm SEO service will use SEO to supercharge your firm and protect your bottom line at the same time.
Eliminate Recurring Costs
Instead of paying for recurring advertising campaigns, the infinite nature of search engine optimization means you can have consistent and reliable website traffic without shelling out a fortune.
Human Behavior
Internet ads are like pests, and most people skip ads when they do a Google Search. They go straight to the top three organic search results instead.
Consumers can tell the difference, and they prefer not to be sold something after they have been targeted. The difference is especially obvious if you have a campaign that doesn’t look like a search result, which happens often.
Ad Badge
Google now has a badge next to the results that are advertisements, and so consumers are less likely to click on them. Instead, they will skip to the first results of their organic search results.
For the record, we're extremely good at increasing conversions and lowering monthly ad spend if you need a Google Ads campaign. See how we did it for Osterbauer Law in Minneapolis.
Organic Traffic
Focusing on SEO optimization with a local SEO services agency will help your law firm put together a plan to be at the top of the list without paying a hefty price to be there.
Overall Cost
You will have plenty of opportunities to get quality leads every single month using SEO without shelling out a consistent and constant budget for PPC advertising campaigns. A law firm can easily dedicate $10,000 a month to Google Ads, but a law firm SEO service can generate leads for half that cost or lower.
Budget Optimization
Putting your business development budget into action is a difficult thing to do and making decisions about where to spend the money is a two-part consideration.
First, you need to choose the most effective tool and decide which opportunity cost is lower after you have found your favorite. If you choose to pay for PPC ads, the high cost will prohibit your law firm from implementing other strategies. By using a law firm SEO service, you don’t have to worry about the opportunity cost because you know that the upfront investment to get a high conversion rate will be much lower.
There is no difficult compromise when using an SEO service that prioritizes cost-efficiency.
The Takeaway
You are a great law firm with a regular client list and a consistent flow of new business. You’ve grown your reputation carefully, and that is a marketing statement on its own.
You could keep going as is, but why not kick it up a notch? A law firm SEO service has the specialized knowledge to drive organic traffic to your website and keep your business development going on autopilot.
What To Look For
It’s always good to find someone you can trust, so if you like the brand and personality of the SEO service, it will be a good fit. Your work will consist of some consultation and advising, so if you are comfortable with your advisor, this process will work a lot better.
Where To Find It
There are always the organic searches you can do for yourself but always prioritize reputation. Searching for all of the SEO services that can help a law firm like yours will give you choice overload.
Start by getting recommendations if you can, or better yet, model your choice on one of the top-tier firms like Agency Jet. Why settle for second-rate?
What They’ll Deliver
You can expect a consultation and review of your current website and any SEO strategies currently employed for your law firm. The keyword research that will give you the right search terms will be done quickly and then will continue to be refined over time as results start coming in.
A law firm SEO agency will boost organic search traffic for your law firm, but it has an equally important purpose — giving you the quality engagement with your clients that sets you apart from the crowd.
Website optimization is critical, especially in an often static legal industry. The gold standard of the past was buying up physical ads, which changed to buying digital ads, which works pretty well, but you have to ask if “pretty well” is good enough.
Your law firm SEO service will give you the most powerful search tools to optimize your marketing, making it more cost-efficient and sustainable. Why stick with the old gold standard of PPC Google Ads when SEO is the new and improved gold standard?