How SEO Marketing For Attorneys is Making Client Acquisition Easier

Marketing for attorneys is changing to incorporate SEO technology and it is making client acquisition easier than ever. Here is how to grow your firm in 2019.

Attorneys aren’t strangers to the idea of marketing their services. It wasn’t until the late 1970s that attorneys were legally allowed to advertise in print or other media.

Over time, though, it became apparent that a little marketing was needed to keep the doors of law firms open. The same old methods of advertising might not work in 2019, however, seeing as client behavior is changing in profound ways.

Gone are the days that a commercial or billboard was effective in bringing in large amounts of clients. Marketing for attorneys must now be focused online, and the key to online success is a successful SEO campaign.

 

What is SEO?

You’ve probably heard the term thrown around as it’s risen to importance in the last decade. SEO stands for “search engine optimization,” and it’s a key component in how businesses reach their audiences online.

We won’t belabor you with a bunch of facts about SEO, but it will help to have a foundational idea of how it works and why it’s valuable. After we give you a small run-down, we’ll touch on how you can tailor SEO to be effective for lawyer advertising.

 

The Basics of Optimization

Simply put, search engine optimization is the process of making your website look good for the search engine algorithm. This process seems simple, but it becomes more complicated as you dig into the details.

Search engines compete with one another to provide the most relevant search results for user keyword searches. As a result, they have highly-sophisticated algorithms that pull up search results that are specific to the keywords placed in the search bar.

Search algorithms use 200-plus factors to sift through all sites that have been indexed, going from the vastness of the internet down to two or three sites that land at the top.

The job of optimization is to use what we know about search engines to make our sites land at the top of searches. It turns out that there’s a lot of effort needed to gradually make your way to the top few spots.

 

Is SEO Marketing for Attorneys Important?

Think about the last few times that you were in a pinch and needed a service. Unless you have an established relationship with a particular business, odds are you’re going to pull out your phone and search for what you need.

You type whatever it is into Google and select one of the top few pages. This is the general trend among almost all smartphone users, and it’s no different for people in need of legal help.

SEO is the equivalent of a commercial or billboard spot, except it’s highly tuned to your business and allows you a greater degree of specificity. We’ll explain how you can use SEO to generate actually clients next.

 

What’s Your Measure of Success?

You might be looking to spread awareness about your firm, or you might be looking to access people who are in need of legal help immediately.

Search engine optimization can be used to spread brand awareness in addition to generating actual clients. Whatever your metric of success is, it’s likely that you can cultivate some progress through SEO.

Unless you’re a national law firm, you’re going to have the most luck conducting local SEO.

 

Local SEO

As the name implies, local optimization entails making your site appear in the searches of people in your area.

Keyword research and a look at Google Analytic software can get you in touch with what people in your area are searching and how they’re behaving online. There’s a high degree of specificity in looking at different target demographics and how they’re behaving online.

Generally, the process involves identifying a common keyword of the people you’re trying to access, optimizing a page or piece of content for that keyword, and repeating the process as new keywords come up.

That’s an oversimplified version of what SEO professionals do, but the idea is to tailor your page to search engine preferences in addition to the needs of users in your area.

 

Pay-Per-Click Marketing

Another way to access highly specific audiences is through pay-per-click marketing.

Have you ever noticed that the ads you see in your Google and social media activity are more relevant to you than, say, commercials are? This is because the sites you use have cataloged information about you and use it to place advertisements.

This seems like some kind of dystopian idea, but it’s just the way that the internet works now. The sites you use and life collect information and use that information to make your experience more enjoyable and profitable for them. Think what you will about that fact, but the reality is that it makes marketing your business a lot easier.

You can choose specific demographics from your area, create an ad that’s optimized for keywords that they use, and insert those ads naturally into their social media feeds. This is an extremely effective way to market your business online.

Additionally, you don’t have to face the high costs of commercials or other forms of advertising. Instead of paying a fixed rate for ad space that might not generate any customers, pay-per-click only requires that you pay whenever your ad is clicked.

Rates vary depending on the site you’re marketing on, but you can be sure that you get exactly what you pay for. Additionally, you can establish a budget that won’t be exceeded. If your ad is extremely successful, for example, it will be pulled once you reach the capacity of your budget.

Throw all of these pieces of the SEO puzzle together, and you have good odds of being successful.

 

There’s a Lot More to Learn

It’s essential that you’re informed on SEO marketing for attorneys before you spend money on a firm. Make sure to take a look at some more specifics in order to have an informed discussion with the team you’ll be working with.

Check out our site’s web resources to stay up on ways to boost your SEO and social media knowledge.