As a law firm marketing director, keeping the firm’s digital marketing strategy running smoothly through Google’s ever-changing terrain is not an easy feat. Your responsibilities are vast and varied, from managing budgets to organizing seminars, and you often don’t have the time or resources required to keep the law firm’s search engine optimization (SEO) strategy thriving.
This is a shame, however, since a strong SEO campaign has the potential to deliver a major increase in search traffic for the law firm and, in effect, lead to more quality cases.
Search engine optimization requires daily maintenance and review of many moving pieces, and to work well, it often requires an entire dedicated team. While a juggling act might seem like a marketing director’s only way to work, it’s not. You can make a strong impact while ensuring your bases are totally covered by delegating SEO tasks to a trusted partner.
Before setting out to find an SEO partner, consider these two things:
What does an effective SEO campaign look like?
An effective SEO campaign doesn’t just help law firms gain more clients by boosting them to the top of search engine results, but it should ideally help them dominate their highly competitive market. When the following elements are expertly managed, they can come together for a powerful impact on the law firm’s growth:
Content: When it comes to the way Google determines which website deserves first-page rankings, content is the top factor. This means that Google looks not just at a website’s homepage and blogs, but also secondary pages, FAQs and long-form pages to evaluate its trustworthiness. Trustworthiness or authority is built on high-quality content that speaks to the search query, which is why it’s important to have a team of strategists in charge of building that content. An SEO partner should manage topic generation for content, as well as the development of blogs, articles, press releases and long-form pages.
Link-building: As one of the most important factors for ranking well in Google’s search results, an SEO campaign should use strategies to earn natural links. This means that a law firm’s SEO management should acquire links back to their website from reputable sources. Google determines whether a website has merit and trustworthiness through the strength of inbound links.
Reputation management: Reputation management involves reaching out to customers to get them to post reviews on Google My Business, Yelp and other channels, while also managing negative reviews and disputing fraudulent ratings. Online reviews are the equivalent of word-of-mouth recommendations and should be taken seriously by an SEO partner.
Local SEO: Since Google knows where you are when you perform a search, it can provide a user with the top local results. An SEO partner should work toward getting the law firm featured in the first three results that appear on the map.
PPC campaigns and social ads: If pay-per-click (PPC) management and social ads are part of the campaign, the SEO partner should manage bidding strategies, ad language, user behavior and conversion optimization with confidence.
What should a law firm look for in an SEO partner?
A customized marketing plan: A law firm needs a digital marketing team that will build a custom legal marketing process that’s fitted around its unique market, law firm strengths, personality and goals. It needs a one-of-a-kind SEO plan to maximize reach, bring visitors to its site and inspire them to act.
100% transparency: If a law firm is paying for a digital marketing strategy, it deserves to know what the SEO partner is doing with those dollars and why.
Frequent and honest communication: Just like the stock market, performance changes depending on Google’s updates. A law firm needs a partner that will communicate about the natural fluctuations in performance and what it’s doing to address sudden drops, not one that will keep the law firm in the dark or pretend that everything is going perfectly all the time.
Proactive strategies: A huge benefit of working with an SEO company is that the law firm will have a team that is taking the pulse of the industry and staying up to date on changes, features and lead generation strategies. The team should be using this knowledge to come up with new ideas and present those ideas to the law firm so that everyone can have a role to play in the decisions.
Exclusivity: As a marketing director, your SEO partner is now part of your team. You wouldn’t have an employee working for your firm and the competing law firm down the street. Likewise, you should not have an SEO company on your team that is also helping your direct competitors. It should be a committed partner that is as dedicated to the firm’s success and growth as you are.
Serious law firms demand measurable results. Partnering with the right SEO company can make marketing directors look good and show the ROI partners are demanding while freeing up your time to focus on other responsibilities.