As a solo attorney, managing partner of a law firm, or in-house marketing officer, you know that you’ve got to market your services online. It’s no secret that the legal field is highly competitive, with hundreds or even thousands of attorneys and firms competing to reel in the most high-value cases on a daily basis. When people need a lawyer, they often turn to the internet, conducting highly-specific searches looking for an attorney who can help them in their area. Those coveted top spots in the search engine results pages (SERPs) can generate millions of dollars of revenue for the firms that appear there.
For this reason, your law firm website could become a money-making machine. But how do you get there? In the material below, we’ll cover three of the most critical factors in getting your website to rank and generate calls. In the next installment of this blog series, we’ll look at two more.
Law Firm Website Design Matters
Gone are the days where you could throw up an “out-of-the-box” website, add some custom content, and expect the calls to start rolling in. These days, you’ve got to consider design as it relates to user experience (UX). If your website doesn’t make it easy for your potential clients to contact you, they’re likely to hit the “back” button and contact that other firm that is right next to you in the search results.
To keep this from happening, you should always make sure to strategically place call-to-actions. They should always appear both at the top of the page and again somewhere “below the fold” (the part of the webpage that the user has to scroll down to see). In addition, you should highlight them using brighter colors than the rest of the page and animations.
Finally, users want easy solutions. Make it easy for website visitors to contact you by implementing functionality like click-to-call, text options, chat agents, online contact forms, and the like.
Don’t Skimp on Development
You could have the best looking site in the world, but if it’s poorly developed, it’s going to limit how far you can get up in the SERPs. Some of the ranking factors that Google’s algorithm takes into account including page load speed, navigation structure, internal linking, and responsiveness – all of which are affected by the way in which your site is developed. For example, there are things that a good developer can do to make your site load faster, such as using adaptive images, using the right plugins, and caching. In addition, any modern website should be built on a responsive template that automatically optimizes the way the site works for various devices. Failing to work with a professional developer from the outset can place significant limits on how well your site will perform in the future, regardless of upgrades in other areas.
Hire a Professional Copywriter
The content on your website is extremely important when it comes to connecting with potential clients, establishing yourself as an authority in your area of law, and ranking for search terms that are relevant to your practice. As a result, you should be sure to hire a professional copywriter to develop the content for your law firm website design. While you may be an excellent writer yourself, it’s important to remember four things:
- As a practicing attorney, much of your writing is probably directed at other attorneys and judges. As a result, you may be accustomed to using shorthand for certain legal topics with which legal consumers may not be familiar.
- Creating high-quality and consumer-friendly content is extremely time-consuming. Your time is almost undoubtedly better-spent practicing law and attending to your clients’ needs.
- There are specific technical issues with regard to SEO-friendly copywriting with which you may not be familiar, including keyword placement, keyword density, and HTML tagging.
- You should be updating both practice area pages and your website’s blog regularly. Even if you have the time and motivation to deal with your website’s content right now, there will come a time where you no longer can do it. Taking the time to establish a solid relationship with a legal copywriter now while you are already dealing with your marketing will save you from countless headaches in the future.
Call Us Today to Speak with a Law Firm Website Design Expert
A professionally-developed, informative, and easily-navigated law firm website is an essential part of marketing the modern law practice and can generate a stream of new clientele walking through your door on a daily basis. Creating and maintaining one, however, is a full-time job and requires significant technical expertise.
Gorilla Webtactics is a full-service legal marketing agency that works with law firms throughout the United States and provides custom solutions for each client we take. Let us handle your website while you focus on what you do best – practice law.
To learn how we can help take your law firm marketing to the next level, contact us today.
