Search Engine Optimization For Law Firms

This blog post is a result of a recent conversation with a friend who owns 13 mattress stores in a major U.S. city. My friend has only recently started to use the Internet to drive foot traffic to his local brick and mortar stores. During our conversation, he mentioned being afraid of wasting money with his current Google Adwords campaign. I asked him if I could take a look at his Google Adwords account and discovered that he was indeed flushing a significant pile of money down the toilet. The advice I shared with him would be useful for any lawyer trying to gain local clients.

-Cost saving tips for keyword phrase marketing-

1. Do not spend money on overly-general keyword phrase like “mattress“. The word lawyer may get a bazillion searches, but chances are not many of those searches will lead to a paying client in your jurisdiction.

2 . Every keyword phrase you spend money on should be geo-targeted like “Phoenix mattress store“. Of course, this advice might be different if your practice is heavy on co-counsel referrals.

3. Do not spend money on keywords that are not found on your website. i.e. If you don’t sell a latex mattress why advertise for one? Similarly, if you do not practice employment law, it makes no sense to spend time, money, and energy trying to generate that type of traffic.

4. Go after long-tail keyword phrases like “mesothelioma attorney in arizona”. Targeting more specific keyword phrases makes it easier to attain natural rankings, will generally bring a more qualified searcher (in other words they know exactly what it is they want = paying customers), and give you an opportunity to cater to that searcher as an expert. For example, if someone knows they are looking for a “mesothelioma attorney in Arizona” chances are good, if you have a specific website page which discusses your practice’s role in assisting clients in need of a mesothelioma attorney in Arizona, you will get a phone call!

5. Arrange for some kind of tracking tool. All of the major PPC networks have built in conversion tracking tools, however this does not help attorneys as you are not selling a product which can be purchased on your site.

-My “best practices” recommendation-

I would advise having your webmaster set up several different entry pages all with different 1-800 numbers and email addresses that correspond to set keyword phrases. This allows you to track the number of calls and emails generated by each keyword phrase. Thus, ensuring you can track each keywords success rate.

Tags: Local Search, Pay Per Click Advice //