Online Law Firm Marketing Strategies

 

In 2019, most lawyers and law firms can’t just rely on referrals and their reputation to bring clients through the door. Even if business is going well, failing to establish a robust online presence can result in losing out on valuable clients to your competitors.

Professionally-developed  law firm marketing online can establish your firm as a leader in its areas of practice and expand your client base. In addition, it can improve your rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs), allowing the clients who are searching for your services to find you more easily.

At Gorilla Webtactics, we are passionate about law firm marketing and create custom solutions to help law firms grow. Here are 6 ways that can help improve your firm’s online presence and help you connect with clients looking for firms like yours, fast!

1. Follow SEO Best Practices

Search engine optimization, or “SEO,” is the process of building and managing a website in a way that will make it rank higher in the SERPs for particular search terms. There are several factors that affect rankings, and good SEO takes time and technical knowledge of website coding and the way that search engines operate. For this reason, it’s advisable for busy practicing attorneys to hire a law firm SEO expert to help them make the most of their site.

Some of the ways that can be done to optimize a law firm website include:

Obtain backlinks by regularly posting and sharing useful and informative content
● Engage in keyword research in order to determine what phrases your potential clients are searching for and place those keywords in your website’s content, meta descriptions, and image alt-tags
● Place relevant outbound links to authoritative websites in your content
● Use an SEO plugin like Yoast SEO which tells you if you’re doing a good job like in the image below:

Lawyer SEO Best Practices

2. Specialized Practice Area Pages

If your law practice is like most, you focus on one or two areas of law which can be further broken down into sub-areas of practice. For example, if you are a personal injury firm, you likely handle motor vehicle accidents generally, which may include car accidents, truck accidents, motorcycle accidents, bicycle accidents, and pedestrian accidents. Furthermore, there’s a good chance that you also take other civil cases involving injury, including those arising from incidents like slip and fall and consumer product accidents. Each of these “sub-areas” should have its own page. This will make it clear to site visitors that you can help them and also cast a wider net for potential search terms. For example, take a look at how Carlson & Jones created a unique page to get found for being Minnesota’s best car accident lawyers.

Law Firm Marketing Website Design

3. Get Personal with Video

It’s important to establish a personal connection with your potential clients, and while pictures and personal information can start to build trust, video can get you all the way there. Video is engaging, and adding it to your social media accounts and website can establish that all-important connection immediately. Some ideas for engaging videos include answering questions clients frequently asked, discussing previous case results (if your jurisdiction allows it), or telling clients what drew you to the practice of law in the first place. Here’s an example of a video one of our clients created to inform clients on what to expect at their initial consultation:

Just think about how soothing this would be for a client. After implementing these videos in to this bankruptcy law firms automated appointment reminders we saw a significant drop in no shows.

4. Create Informative Content

One of the best ways to increase your rankings in the SERPs and connect with potential clients is by creating valuable, informative content that is of interest to your potential clients. One of the best ways to think of new ideas for content is to consider the questions your clients are asking. Some examples of questions your content could answer include:

● Do I need a lawyer for an uncontested divorce?
● How much is my personal injury case worth?
● Is bankruptcy right for me?

You can use a variety of content formats in your digital marketing efforts, such as blog posts, videos, FAQ pages, and new practice area pages. Below is an example of one topic we talked about for a Divorce Attorney in St Louis:

Law Firm Marketing Content Writing

FUN FACT:  If you have really good answer for a question that is commonly searched in Google your answer might even show up in a featured snippet which gets you really high up in the search engine results.

5. Ask Satisfied Clients for Reviews

Asking clients for reviews is an excellent way to build trust with people online. In fact, according to data, 84 percent of people trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation. Contact previous clients and request that they provide a review on Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, or other platforms where your firm has a presence. If you’d like to really make it easy for someone to give you a google review copy the link in the back end of your Google My Business listing and send it to them. Here’s a photo of the back end of our listing that you can reference to help you find your link:

How To Get Google Reviews For Lawyers

Notice the “Click to copy link” highlighted in yellow. Simply copy that and email to all of your happy clients.

6. Consider Setting Up a Google Ads Campaign

SEO is a great way to get your law firm’s website to rank well for particular search terms, but it takes time to see results. In addition, the SERPs can change overnight, sometimes for no discernible reason. Google Ads is a pay-per-click advertising platform that allows you to shoot to the top of the page for search terms of your choice. We’re sure you’ve seen these ads before, but if not here’s a photo to reference:

Google Adwords Marketing Advertising For Lawyers

The best part about these ads is that you only pay for the ad showing when someone clicks it! The Google Ads platform is fairly sophisticated, however, so you should either invest a significant amount of time in learning how to use it or have your PPC campaign managed by a law firm marketing professional.

Call Today For a Complementary Consultation From an Online Law Firm Marketing Expert at Gorilla Webtactics

Gorilla Webtactics is a full-service law firm marketing agency that helps lawyers and law firms grow their practices and get new clients. Some of the services we offer include law firm website design, lawyer SEO, legal content marketing, PPC management, and social media marketing for attorneys. To schedule a consultation with a law firm marketing expert, call us today at (612) 470- 9877 or contact us online.