If you are in the business of proving legal services to the public, you have to make it easy for your potential clients to find you online. While searching for a lawyer online may have been uncommon not too long ago, in recent years, more and more consumers are using Internet search engines like Google and Bing to find a lawyer that provides the services they need.
If your law firm website appears high in the search results for search terms that are relevant to your practice and is designed in a way that generates calls, it can become a veritable money making machine. In part one of this series, we looked at how investing in design, development and professional copywriting can increase your law firm website’s online visibility and convert more visitors into paying clients. Below, we’ll look at how optimizing your website, regular blogging, and analytics can further improve your website’s performance. For a free consultation with an experienced law firm marketing expert, contact Gorilla Webtactics Today by calling 612-400-7060.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization, often referred to as “SEO,” is the process of optimizing a website so that ranks highly in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for particular search terms. If this sounds a bit technical, in plain English, it means building a website in a way that makes it come up on the top of the results when a user “googles” a certain search phrase. So, if you were a personal injury lawyer practicing in Chicago, there’s a solid chance that you would want to optimize for phrases like “Chicago car accident lawyer,” “Chicago slip and fall attorney,” and “Injury lawyer in Chicago.”
Search engine optimization is a highly technical process that requires an understanding of the way search engines operate and how websites are built. Some of the aspects of a website that we address when we optimize a law firm website include:
- Meta titles
- Meta descriptions
- Header tags
- Custom URLs
- Local schema
- Sitemap submission to Google and other search engines
Another ranking factor that significantly influences the SERPs are the backlinks to a site. Backlinks have nothing to do with how a website is built. Instead, a “backlink” occurs when another site links to your site. Google ranks the quality of backlinks, and sites with more relevant backlinks tend to do better in the SERPs than those with fewer backlinks or backlinks that are not topically related to the site in question. Our SEO campaigns involve regularly adding high-quality targeted backlinks that improve our clients’ positions in the SERPs for keywords that generate new clients.
Regularly Update Your Law Firm Website’s Blog
It’s also important to consider the role that regularly updated content plays in improving a site’s position in the SERPs. Sites that are regularly updated with fresh, relevant content that is useful to users tend to rank better than those that stay static. For this reason, it’s highly advisable to update your site’s blog on a regular basis. Some examples of things that may be relevant to a law firm’s blog include recent case results or other firm news, informational articles that may be of interest to your potential clients, FAQs, and recent changes to the law. Importantly, not only can blogging increase your site’s overall position in the SERPS, but individual blog posts can also rank highly for specific search terms. For this reason, when you are blogging, really consider the kinds of questions that your potential clients may be putting into Google and design your blog titles around them. For example, if you are a criminal defense lawyer looking for DUI clients, it may be a good idea to write a blog titled “Do I Need a Lawyer for a First-Time DUI?” Similarly, if you are a bankruptcy attorney, a blog title that may perform well could be “FAQ about Chapter 7 Bankruptcy.”
Use Analytics to Inform Your Marketing Strategy and Maximize ROI
Finally, if you are investing your time and money into online marketing, it’s critical to harness the power of analytics so that you can maximize your marketing ROI. Analytics provide data that lets you know where your visitors are coming from and what they are doing on your site. Here are some of the insights that analytics can provide:
- Which keyword phrases are driving traffic to your site
- What pages users visit most and how much time they spend on them
- Which social channels are performing better than others (Facebook vs. LinkedIn vs. Twitter)
- Which pages result in the most conversions
This type of data can allow you to determine what’s working, what isn’t, and why. Using that information, you can make changes to your law firm website and other marketing efforts to maximize efficiency and get more clients.
Call Us Today to Speak with a Law Firm Website Design expert today
If you are searching for a law firm website design service, you’ve come to the right place. Since 2005, Gorilla Webtactics has been helping law firms throughout the United States connect with their clients and grow their business. To schedule a free consultation with law firm marketing expert, call us today at 612-400-7060 or contact us online.
