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Resoursefulness is a Key to Winning: A Quick Introspective

I grew up playing Chess, a quality pastime that involved me studying

classic games, varying openers, and getting trounced by my great uncle

no matter how many Dewer’s in he was. When I got to 5th grade and

the school’s Chess tournament was around the corner, it was apparent

that the biggest contenders were in the gifted program. I, on the other

hand, was not.

My first mentor was my 5th grade music school teacher, who looking

past my apparent proclivity for the recorder, found it important that I

escalate my commitment to practicing Chess by taking my lunches with

him to give me the edge when the tournament brackets opened up.

Maybe I was the most tolerable adolsecent he could expound his

strategies upon. Maybe he had a hidden despisement for the gifted

kids, yearning that one day an outsider could outperform their

highfalutin intellect. Either way, those lunches were aggressive and left

my mind whirling with advanced “think several steps ahead” logic that

I was not exposed to nearly enough before.

After winning our school’s Chess tournament in 5th and 6th grade to the

total chagrin of the niche brainy community, I think it was pretty early

on that I reflected on how this had happened. Of course, my IQ

couldn’t have been part of it because I wasn’t a part of the very

obviously labeled group that retained that designation. It was

accepting an opportunity to use a resource that presented itself, and

unlocking concepts that carry on to plenty of areas of business and

marketing: preparedness and always being several steps ahead of your

competition.

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It was wearisome accepting an award in front of the whole school that

said “1995 Chessmaster” (something like that), it may as well have said

“Biggest Nerd in the School”. Forget the gifted kids. That one hung

over my head and the impending doom of prolonged bullying seemed

inevitable. I switched over to electric guitar to find a young person’s

equivalent of “social balance”, but all these inherent qualities of

understanding Chess stuck with me because as I write this, I look back

at it with surprising lucidness. I look back and also realize I should have

stuck with a promising trajectory for Chess, along with being in the

Math Club. Alright, maybe that would have being overdoing it.

Chess is a great analogy for what I’ll include in the following chapters.

It is one of the few games that’s completely devoid of luck – you’re only

lucky if your competition has a misstep or doesn’t see your assemblage

of pieces going into a formation to cover some serious ground.

Commitment to the art and studying of experts is how you grow and

find yourself on another level of skill. After a while, a seasoned Chess

player will simply never lose to anyone that hasn’t been playing

consistently for some time. The same goes with being consistent and

dedicated to your marketing channels. You’ll widen a gap between

yourself and your competition so far that it will take an unreasonable

amount of time and money for them to catch up.

Most importantly is always looking ahead and finding meaning and

logic behind every single move your competition makes, innocuous or

random. It’s an elegant dance with plenty of meaning, all with one end

goal: pronouncing “Checkmate” with gusto, the confirmation that your

hard work has paid off by taking the time to use your resources and put

in the effort. Then you reap the rewards of winning.

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Why I decided to create this guide

I’ve had a passion for putting ideas and findings together for quite

some time. I started off working for an SEO agency when my

Bachelor’s in Finance didn’t fly during a recession and had an

immediate gravitation to work that had immediately and transparent

results I could attribute to in several weeks (and sometimes several

days). I moved immediately from an agency SEO consultant to an in-

house Digital Marketing Director for a criminal defense law firm, to

consulting for law firms, back to being a Director of Marketing for a

personal injury in a hyper-competitive south Florida market, having

respectable success and growth along the way. The last step of the

journey has me as a co-founder of Market My Market, having helped

hundreds of lawyers at this point.

I didn’t just keep working with lawyers just because I enjoy working

with them (really, I do). I love the legal marketing industry because:

• It acts independently from many other marketing industries, as

confirmed by the number of agencies, experts, vendors,

conferences, and guides (like this one) that reference their niche as

either only law firms, or only a few.

• The competitiveness of the industry is both challenging and

fascinating, as there are a huge number of law firms in operation

around the country which all, on average, also command a

relatively high budget for marketing.

• Consumer behavior varies greatly from legal service to legal

service, so content, calls-to-action, and messaging keeps traditional

marketing approaches interesting and fresh.

• Laws and trending legal services change frequently too, so savvy

marketers have to be on top of constant SEO changes as well as the

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frequent changes to law as well, converging often times at ongoing

opportunities.

I’ll be candid though – I love the passion for winning that comes from

motivated lawyers that want to win. Lawyers don’t set out to lose their

trials or get poor resolutions for their clients. They fight to get the best

outcome – sometimes working themselves to death quite literally in the

pursuit of justice for those they represent. I’ve grown to deeply

appreciate this caliber of dedication (and align with many of the same

values), and I know this mentality carries over to other aspects of their

firm, from business development and marketing. No law firm should

be in a position where their abilities are superior to other firms in their

geography, only for their online presence or website to tell potential

clients looking for their services otherwise.

I think that between all this, my interest in working with lawyers, along

with finding new opportunities and speaking/writing about them, has

been consistent. It’s also why I’ve written hundreds of blogs/pages and

recorded dozens of podcasts talking about all things digital marketing

in the legal industry. I also think that’s why we’re all overdue for a

really great guide that takes everything relevant over the years, breaks

it down, and looks to the future.

The majority of this guide will be my personal writing on the subject

matter and focusing on getting leads without relying on paid lead

generation tactics and paid third-party visibility. In some instances, it

will be some of excerpts from previous blogs and articles I’ve done,

rewritten yet updated with my review with a couple people on my

team assisting with filling in the gaps on some important topics. Some

will be sections of podcasts that I’ve done for some paraphrased content

to guide big ideas and topics along, with my personal attention to

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expanding into useful information that will warrant plenty of

takeaways.

I don’t want to give the impression that you should not pursue paid

opportunities. Everything comes down to ROI (Return on Investment)

and LCV (Lifetime Client Value). We work with clients to create a

marketing mix that works best for their firm, and it’s very commonly

organic and paid. We are discussing why you shouldn’t have your firm

relying completely on paid options, since the source of the leads

requires you to pay into it indefinitely. Every firm is capable of

pursuing marketing strategies that earn leads naturally, which are also

often times of much higher quality than paid. Organic marketing is

more relevant than ever, and this guide will confirm this as a fact when

you may be hearing marketers saying otherwise with no factual basis.

Why be candid about the content being produced here in the guide?

Well, for one ghost writing is rampant in my industry and I’m not

trying to fill out a guide with 5,000 of my own words and 25,000 from

the words of someone that hasn’t spent over 20,000 hours working

specifically on digital marketing strategy and campaigns for law firms.

I want to share a guide with you that I believe will provide a ton of little

wins that will add up to something great. The inundation of so-called

legal experts that constantly profess having multiple “hacks” or “one

change” that “will forever get you clients for life” makes my skin crawl

– I’ve spent the time going through them either way and can confirm

the level of idealism in their execution is truly utopian. You know from

your firm you got to where you are from very hard work and there

aren’t true shortcuts, but more so the roadmap to achieving your goals

much, much easier since you don’t have to reinvent the wheel or figure

it out on your own.

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I truly respect the time of lawyers, especially the ones that want to take

time for further insight on growing their firms. These are a lot of ideas

and concepts that have been applied with success and are thorough and

lucid. They are not conjecture nor regurgitated over and over again

from an agglomeration of random sources. I absolutely love what I do,

so hopefully that comes out in the vast majority of what you’re

preparing to read.

I know why I do what I do, do you know why you do what you do?

When we delve into materials about marketing our law firm, we have to

ask ourselves first “what are we trying to accomplish”? I’d figure the

majority of the answers would be “I want to grow my practice by

receiving additional leads that will turn into more clients. Obviously?

This is a ridiculous question”. But what if we didn’t want more leads –

we wanted higher quality leads. What if we just wanted heightened

brand awareness and notoriety in our communities? What if we didn’t

put marketing in place to draw our attention to prospects that weren’t

familiar with our firm, but more so to secure the perception of our

brand online to referrals that were doing research on us ahead of time?

The landscape for legal marketing has never been more complex. After

the legal advertising industry passed over $1 billion dollars, the trend

never really slowed down. This money is spent across websites,

billboards, radio, television, paid and organic campaigns done in-house

and with agencies, directories, lead programs, social platforms, and so

much more. Being in Yellow Pages as a main means of marketing is

already well over a decade old, people have moved from desktops to

mobile to eventually voice search to find legal help, and Google keeps

slowly but surely monetizing almost every aspects of a search result.

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Search results, as we also know, are only a few coveted spots that truly

matter, which would be the 4 paid positions up top, almost always a 3-

pack of local locations below (which also used to be the 7-pack and was

cut more than half – don’t forget the paid position within maps as well)

and a general clickthrough of the 1st position being by far the most

organically, much less by 2nd, even less by 3rd, and into obscurity as

quickly as the 4th position.

Sometimes it’s tough to grasp that the growth and future of a law firm

can be determined by their visibility within a very finite amount of

positions on a search engine called Google. But that’s the world of

consumerism we’ve been in, and it’s certainly following that trend.

My passion has always been doing SEO and doing SEO in competitive

markets. I’m have co-hosted SEO is Dead and Other Lies with a good

friend and colleague Paul Warren for over 2 years, garnering thousands

of downloads from those immersed in the SEO community, not holding

back on absolutely everything I’ve learned about digital marketing over

the course of a decade (wow, it really has been that long now). I also co-

host the podcast “Legal Mastermind Podcast” with the other partner of

Market My Market Chase Williams – every week on the podcast, we

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talk to experts mostly in the legal field about almost every aspect of law

firm management and development, sometimes for B2C, sometimes for

B2B. The topics vary greatly; we’ve covered a tremendous amount (in a

short current run of 50 podcasts so far): developing young lawyers for

success, addressing mental health, video production, being a larger law

firm acquiring a smaller one, using your digital assets to tell a

meaningful story, the importance of using plain language, and what in-

house business coaching for a large law firm looks like, to name a

handful. No matter the topic, every single podcast establishes the facts

among the legal community:

• It’s hard to run a law firm, let alone grow a law firm because of the

absence of business acumen being established through law school

education (though the amount of resources that exist online now is

astounding and respectable).

• It’s hard to find the right partner to assist with almost any aspect

of law firm management and development that a lawyer desires to

work on.

• Lawyers are resistant to change in almost any aspect of law firm

development.

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When we work with lawyers, even if we offer an entire comprehensive

digital strategy and plan spanning everyone’s buzzwords of SEO, SEM,

Social and Web Development, we’re still only fulfilling one aspect of the

future success of a law firm. The purpose of this guide I believe is then

two-fold – to give lawyers and legal professionals insight into what we

strongly believe will be trends and opportunities in the upcoming year

along with solidifying what we know are best practices for today, and

looking at the robustness of other aspects of law firm development and

tie them into the capabilities of a well-maintained and executed

marketing vision.

There are aspects of this guide that should be prioritized over others

and may even be easier to implement than others. I will certainly be

addressing those as they arise. I think that’s why I wanted to start off

homing in closely to law firm branding and storytelling, since I find this

aspect of marketing to be the simplest (although nonsynonymous with

easy). When someone is passionate about the work that they provide to

their clients, it’s easy for it to come out in messaging they deliver. It just

has to be captured the appropriate way for consumers to understand.

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1) Telling Your Story

To start, I think it’s important for law firms to visualize the concept of

telling a story as one of the simplest, but possibly the most impactful,

ways of differentiating themselves from their competition. When a

potential client starts opening up multiple law firms in their browser

(and believe me, they will), they’ve going to get hit by the same barrage

of awards, testimonials, settlements, reviews, etc. In a competitive

market, storytelling and strong messaging are going to help law firms

stand out and be the magnet that brings in the quality leads they’re

looking for.

Storyboarding, though one of the most simple

and straightforward aspects of marketing I’ve

encountered in the past year, is among the

most powerful. The initial question we ask

ourselves in storyboarding is “what are we

doing to make the potential client the hero in

the story”. Sounds kind of off balance for

someone looking for legal services, but when

we rework this narrative, we get the following:

when someone is visiting a legal website, they

don’t care so much about what makes the law

firm so great as much as they care about if the

law firm will be the right guide for navigating through a legal issue. If

you want to have a very comprehensive grasp on storyboarding and

telling a story, most of this will be found in “Building a Story Brand” by

Donald Miller. I will make this relatable and applicable to the legal

industry though.

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Presenting yourself as a guide to visitors of the website can happen in

stages, and possibly 3 phases. You can begin to unpack your story as

people wish to learn more about you and your firm as they browse the

website. These phases can be viewed as a 3-second story, a 10-second

story, and a 30-second story, all of which will be showcased on your

website’s homepage and repurposed to appropriately coincide with

other marketing materials, email correspondence, and collateral. We do

want to keep our stories and messaging as succinct as possible because

of the pure nature of consumer attention spans. What does each phase

really look like?

The 3-Second Story – Your Tagline – Example: “The Courage to Uphold the Law”

The 10-Second Story – Your Sub-Tagline – Example: “Litigating Thousands of

Complex Legal Matters Since 1909”

The 30-Second Story – Your Elevator Pitch – Example: “Attorney & Lawyer Team

has been an authority on case law for over 100 years. A full-service firm bringing

together some of the most knowledgeable and aggressive lawyers known to

mankind, A & L has the audacity to rework state and federal legislation and take

cases that other law firms are too meek to even ponder. “

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This is a brief one I encourage you to spend more time reflecting on

than researching as most of it is self-explanatory, but if you can’t

explain what you do and why you do it, your potential clients certainly

won’t be able to either.

➢ Your digital assets present the “Journey” to the potential client

where you are the “Guide”.

➢ Segment your story into different attention spans for ads, your

website/call-to-action, and potential client experience

➢ Start thinking about your value-added services, value

propositions, and unique differentiators.

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2) Access the Hundreds of Legal-Specific Services and

Technologies Available

Your Intake Process

The first person to answer the phone at your firm, respond to the first

chat, follow up with the contact form or email, is the first interaction

and therefore first point of a client experience your potential client will

have. It is more important than ever that the following happens

whenever someone expects to contact a firm:

• No chance that a call rings more than several times. It either

forwards to a call center or directly to a lawyer’s cell phone.

• Correspondence that indicates with certainty when someone will

return a call (4 hours, 6 hours, 24 hours). In a study we did in

2019, those that were 40 years old and older said 24 hours was

appropriate for a call back. That number drops drastically down

to 4 hours for people ages 30 and younger.

• Communicating via chat and after hours

I had a conversation recently about the reservations about chat, and I

can say that I completely understand where everyone is coming from

when they say they don’t like the impersonal, mechanical feel of scripts

and robots chatting with potential clients. Even when I’m browsing

around looking for help on Amazon or American Express and I get the

bots directing me to help articles and community input before a real

chat, there’s the most minute twinge of frustration I feel that there’s a

barrier before a real person.

But I suppose it’s worth mentioning what the journey for contact looks

like without a chat managed by a bot at all. With the absence of chat, all

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that’s left typically as a substitute is a simple contact form. And what

happens with a contact form? We fill out our information, hit submit,

get a confirmation that someone will be in touch with us (maybe?)

within 24 hours, and we wait for a call or an email to pop up.

Sometimes it almost feels like we sent our information into the void,

and there’s almost a chance associated with form submissions that the

person we’re contacting may not even receive it at all.

How often are we asking, “What is your preferred method of

communication?” instead of just asking for all of their contact

information and letting our team pick the one most convenient for us?

The process of getting information via chat, whether it is a bot or a

human, works. Even if the person chatting in knows it’s a bot, there’s

something much more personal about a serious of questions such as

“May I have your name” and “May I have the best method of reaching

you?” that reassures the person that their personal info is indeed going

where it needs to be. Even the script closing with something along the

lines of “Thanks for providing all of that information! I will be sure to

get this information to the right person to follow up with you” is much

more assuring that the prompt below a typical contact form that says,

“Submission accepted”. And when that happens, people are less like to

fill out the same forms on your competition’s website.

Chat has never been the main form of communication on the law firm

websites we’ve worked on – amounting to roughly 15% or less of

contacts – but it certainly is a widely accepted form of contact by

consumers. It also stands in very well for a form of contact after hours

and on weekends, which we would encourage greatly.

Nurture Campaigns

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When are nurture campaigns appropriate? Considering the area of law,

you’re in, as well as the specific legal issue and level of urgency, there

will be a window of decision making for your potential client. Of

course, when we have potential clients with a serious injury after an

accident or a threat of losing their license after a DUI indefinitely,

urgency takes precedence. If someone is looking into creating a trust

for their estate, there may be the “window-shopping” effect, where

nurturing someone to proceed with your firm may take much longer.

When creating a nurture campaign, typically you have two routes, and

either can be contingent on urgency.

Sales – In this route, you’re basically creating a campaign that is using

emotion and urgency to sell the potential client on why they need your

legal services, and why they need it now. Of course, being overly

aggressive can completely deter your potential client, so finding a

balance between a strong call-to-action and the potential for missing

out.

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Informational – In this approach, the law firm would be providing

consistent, meaningful content to the potential client in order to help

inform them and position the law firm as an authority. This is a longer

play but may be the positive respite someone is looking for to feel more

empowered when it is time for them to choose a law firm.

Forms of nurture are mostly email, but remarketing could be

considered another form to “stay in front” of a potential buyer. Any

campaign that systematically provides value to your current and

potential clients could be considered a nurture campaign, but

preferably automated. Email platforms are common, but personalized

electronic and physical mail could certainly be a part of the process.

In some situations, a sort of hybrid approach may work best along the

timeline of a nurture campaign. For example, starting with

informational for several emails and grouping together all of the

emails that opened every single email (and possibly clicked some of

your links) could receive a more sales-driven email since it’s fair to say

they’ve expressed more interest in your law firm than the others you

have emailed.

Law Practice Management Software

Even though I worked in-house for about 4 years, I’ll admit I don’t

know all of the best processes and choices for selecting Practice

Management Software that would work for you. All I know is that in

2020 it’s almost a necessity, as some professionals in the space say that

the absence of a degree of implementation could almost hinge on

malpractice. I’ll admit, out of all of the initiatives you can take in 2020,

the idea of a full comprehensive implementation of software, or the

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overhaul of current outdated software, seems the most daunting. But

when the process is completed, it could also be one of the most

important decisions you make for the future success of your law firm.

Since legal software is so

often revolutionary for a

law firm, there are

commonly communities

that form organically from

the biggest adopters and

ravers. Clio, which is

commonly regarded as one

of the best legal practice

management and client

intake software in the industry by many of my peers, has gone beyond

their platform to create the “Clio Cloud Conference”, where thousands

of lawyers travel to not only talk about the ways they’re leveraging the

software, but how they’re taking their tech-minded thinking and

applied it to all aspects of their firm.

There are plenty of “up and coming” technologies that vastly improve

efficiencies and internal operations, including FileVine and Law Ruler.

They will also become more practice specific, so doing your research

and requesting some demos will assist with you making the right

decision. Keep in mind, this a big undertaking, since it is likely that

every single person on your team has to be 100% on board.

➢ Your Intake is the first touch point anyone ever has with your

firm. Record calls, create scripts, re-emphasize the importance.

➢ Stay in front of any potential clients that don’t sign up on the spot.

People call on behalf of other people, are potentially very

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qualified, and don’t decide right away. Don’t keep track of leads

on sticky notes.

➢ Now is the time to use Case Management Software AND a CRM

(Customer Relationship Management). No more excuses.

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3) Getting Involved in Social Media

So, does Facebook actually work or not?

I’d say that 2019 was the year I finally saw some traction on Facebook as

a place for lead generation. Brand awareness I suppose was always

suitable on Facebook and other social media for a while, but how can a

law firm quantify that. There is plenty of documentation that shows

paid ads works and paid ads don’t work on social media, so this guide

won’t be a place for harboring that debate right now. But we’ll look at

some other aspects of social media here along with mediums of content

that seem to be best suited.

Videos and Repurposing

Videos are consumed heavily on social media platforms, and while you

may have done some videos for your website and for video SEO via

YouTube in the past, having a plan in place for featuring them on social

media is encouraged. You can give old videos new life via social

platforms as well.

Yet, the biggest hesitation for lawyers when it

comes to producing video content: Time.

Time is limited and Time = Money “How long

is this going to take? Am I going to have to

dedicate hours, days, weeks?” Keep in mind that videos and other

easy-to-engage-in content is the easiest to share and digest via social

media, both organically and paid. Here are some reasons to create

video along with their best practices for law firms:

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• Maximize your time with video content. Create one powerful

video that you can use on YouTube. YouTube is the 2nd

largest search engine in the world, and it is owned by Google.

Not only does it show up in YouTube search results, but

Google’s as well. Plus, Google loves video, so they push any

video options to the top of the list of results.

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• Share this one video on ALL platforms/ marketing efforts

(e.g. email newsletter)

• Use a system:

• Develop a list of videos that you think would be

beneficial to viewers

• Script the 1st video that you want to create:

• Intro or hook: You have to get the viewers’

attention within the first 3-5 seconds!

• Guidelines or bullet points to stay on track

• Outro

• Script out the various Call to Actions within the video

• Film the video for YouTube and create alternate endings

or outros for each platform

• Examples:

• FB CTA: Share this with your friends, Like my

page, etc.

• IG CTA: DM me if you have more questions

• Film in blocks of 20-30 seconds and utilize ‘jump cuts’ to

keep viewers engaged.

• Utilize an editor to edit the video for each social

platform

• Leveraging Instagram TV

• IG prefers content that viewers engage with

• 3-5 minutes, single take, expanding on the hook of the video

• Remember to film vertically

• Make sure to use an aesthetically appealing cover photo for

the IG TV video as this will show up in your feed

• How to create organic growth and engagement with your videos:

• View analytics in YouTube’s platform

• Click Through Rate per video (ideally 4-10% CTR)

• Attention-grabbing title and thumbnail

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• Use an image of whoever is speaking in the

video

• Minimal Text / Supplement the title

• Audience Retention: How long is the user watching

the video

• Know your target audience

Creating a community on social platforms

Just like telling a good story on your website, your mission and your

philosophy will need to extend to your presence to other places online.

Nothing is more accessible than your social media presence. You want a

community either bound by geography or by interest and cause – the

following are some considerations for making this happen organically

on your social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter,

LinkedIn, and more.

It Starts with a Passion

When you have a passion for something, there is no one who can hold

you back. You want to connect with your social media community by

sharing ideas and passions. Listen to the questions that your

community is asking and respond. We all want to be heard, and that is

the connection that your community is looking for. Even though a

brand and a logo are important, what connects people are shared ideas

and beliefs, so get to the heart of your community by sharing your

passion.

Make Customer Service your Brand Model

Do not just focus on aggressive CTAs and conversion only; you want to

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create loyal clients. You will get clients who love your brand and

recommend it if you are able to deliver amazing customer service via

responsiveness and sharing testimonials, videos, and reviews. The

better your business’s customer service, the more loyal your clients will

be.

Focus on Problem Solving

You want to make your business stand out from the crowd. You can do

this by solving problems for your clients. Make sure that your brand or

company is solution focused. You want to create real value for your

clients, so listening is key now more than ever.

Make Sure Your Business is Easy to Find

Your services may be exemplary in your geography, but if no one can

find your business, then you’re set up for failure before you even start.

In order to get found, follow these simple tactics: put your website URL

and contact information on business cards, join social media groups that

share your passion, make sure to respond to any social media mention,

and give personal email responses. People often times will look for

reliable contact info via social platforms.

Be Authentic and Vulnerable with your Story

If you have an authentic story to tell about yourself or your brand, tell

it. People love to hear and read stories, and stories allow your audience

to emotionally connect to your brand.

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A story allows you to describe what is unique about your brand, and

by telling your story, you are able to showcase the practical benefits of

your product or service.

Positivity is primed for shares and visibility.

Keep Up with Communication

Communication is key when it comes to your clients. There is nothing

more annoying than dialing a number and being placed on hold. You

want to show your clients that you care. When a customer can reach

you easily, the process starts off ideally. Keep in mind that social

platforms all have methods of communication such as messaging as

well, and when enabled, you want to be sure you’ll be responsive.

Admit your Mistakes and Keep it Moving

When you admit your mistakes, it helps you to grow, and it also makes

your authenticity shine through. People who don’t admit their faults do

not come off as trustworthy, so be open and honest with your tribe and

they will respect you for it. People voice their opinions and concerns

voluminously on social media as we know, so be aware of how people

are talking about your brand.

Commit to the Work

If you want to build a passionate social media community, you have got

to be ready to put the work in. Having a business is like having a

relationship. You have to be ready to do the work in order for it to

flourish. Only if you work hard at maintaining the relationship with

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your clients and practice consistency will your business thrive and

grow.

➢ Video and Social are channels many lawyers don’t engage on.

They both require consistency to be effective.

➢ Paid success on Facebook and other social platforms is heavily

contingent on creating the right audience. Spend time researching

look-alike audiences and custom audiences before engaging.

➢ Organic social has to be just that – natural, genuine, and

informative. Good content can be derived from content you’re

already producing for your website via repurposing.

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4) Organic Positioning Beyond Your Website

The state of SEO now

SEO has come a long way in the past 10 years, but really the biggest

things to happens to legitimize it happened almost 10 years ago. In a

few fell swoops, Google eliminated some of the biggest detriments to

quality results, which included:

• Keyword stuffing (mentioning main keyword on the page very

unnaturally and continuously)

• Keyword cloaking (if the keyword came off too unnatural on the

page, the webmaster would simply hide them behind images, or

match the font color with the background colors)

• Link farms (authoritative websites that would simply just list tons

of links to other websites without context, and using their top

keyword in anchor text)

Trends in 2020, especially when COVID-19 took flight, baselessly

claimed that SEO and organic search was on the way out, and only the

pandemic saw an uptick in Google and Search. Confirmed to be wrong

countlessly, searches for legal services happens continuously as it

always has.

In a survey conducted in May of 2020, in the midst of the pandemic that

will forever change how people search and retain professional services

like legal services, the following was uncovered in a survey of 250

respondents:

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How Would You Go About Finding a Lawyer for a Legal Matter?

(Percentage of Respondents)

There is absolutely no mention of social media, Facebook, or anything

as the platform to find a lawyer. Though one would argue that

Facebook comes into play when pushing out content when someone

appropriately needs legal services, 34 out of 250 have gotten legal ads

on social media when it was somewhat appropriate. 49 out of 250 have

at some point when it was not.

Lastly, when asked what digital source is the most reliable for finding

legitimate lawyers, 56.4% said Google. 3.6% mentioned the appropriate

bar association. When asked what an unreliable place is to find legal

services, 15.2% said Facebook, with 7.2% saying all forms of social in

addition to that. 7.2% said Bing after never mentioning Bing at all

before (sorry Bing), with 4.8% saying specifically Craigslist would be

last place in the world to find a reliable lawyer.

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It is still clear that Google has positioned itself far and away as the

leader in both reliable and trustworthy results when finding legal

services.

There hasn’t been too much other major movement since these very

obvious tactics were snuffed early on. Since then, Google updates

haven’t done too much to impress most digital marketers, some reasons

of that to me at least include:

• Complete transparency that link building and authority mean

much more than content in many SERP instances, with directories

being a big example.

• Links from websites just a step up from link farms passing value to

websites.

• Websites with thousands and thousands of pages with 99% similar

content indexing and performing well.

Google is monetizing more search results, lawyers I talk to in LA won’t

speak to me for a minute about SEO (truly the most nefarious of digital

marketing acronyms), and it seems like directories and mega firms are

just dominating every viable position.

Yet there’s still hope. What are some strategies that we can employ that

small law firms use to get market share, and larger law firms don’t want

them to know? All of the following trending marketing techniques are

helping law firm owners compete legitimately without million-dollar

marketing budgets.

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➢ SEO and Organic results will produce the most qualified leads

online next to your word-of-mouth/referrals.

➢ SEO has become increasingly more difficult because of the

variance in search results, including articles, directories, and many

other kinds of results. It’s competitive, but it’s rewarding.

➢ In the past 3 years of surveying how people search for legal

services, “Google” has never fallen under 50% of all responses.

“Emmanuel Lasker and Aron Nimzowitsch were playing a game and Lasker

had agreed not to smoke his cigars during the game because the latter was

allergic to smoke. About six or seven moves into the game, Lasker pulls out his

cigar, bites off the end and puts it in his mouth. Nimzo immediately jumps up

and tells the arbiter "Look, he is smoking!" The arbiter says, “No, it is not lit,"

to which Nimzo replies, but he is threatening to smoke and you as well as

anybody else know that Lasker says the threat is worse than its execution!"”

Source: https://Chess24.com/en/community/general-Chess-

discussions/Chess-anecdotes--ii

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5) Improving Your Content Strategy

Content has generally been broken down into the following forms for

the law firms we’ve worked with, and I will elaborate on each one:

Practice area pages, broad and granular

When finding content ideas for practice area pages, we tend to start off

broad and then if there is content that warrants a more granular form

for more keyword opportunities, we will develop that as well. For

example:

• Car Accidents

o Rear End Accidents

o T-Bone Accidents

o Uber Accidents

• DUI

o DUI with Property Damage

o 2nd DUI

o 3rd DUI

As long as the site structure flows down in the granularity, we find that

making these pages bring in typically less traffic than perhaps some of

the main practice area pages, but the traffic that comes is higher

qualified.

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Case results pages

There are going to be ways that a potential client will A) confirm that

you are capable of handling their legal issue and B) confirm that you

have something that appeals to them more than the other lawyers

they’ve been looking at. It is important to keep in mind that not every

client is going to be an ideal client, and there are certainly ways that you

can manage a “good fit” scenario by including certain information on

your Homepage and your About Us.

Case results, verdicts, settlements, testimonials, reviews. These are all

ways people can qualify you to their scenario by either exemplifying

how an issue was handled similar to their current issue, or at the very

least exemplify the success of handling a multitude of legal issues to the

point of obvious authority or ability.

I strongly believe that there should be a dedicated page on the website

for your case results/settlements/resolutions – here are examples of

each:

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Though quick testimonials are reviews should be featured on a

homepage as well, a dedicated page is important to go into more detail.

Geographic pages

Most law firms service a geographic area, so it is appropriate that they

provide geographic pages for each city or town that would be within

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their “radius”. This has been a practice for content for a long time, often

times abused by way of creating geo-pages for basically every city in

the state, using duplicate content for each geo-page, falsifying the fact

that they have offices in each geo-page they create, and not adhering to

remotely the same standards of copy on the geo-pages as they do for

practice area pages. Abuse was further augmented in the past 10 years

with the growing trend in law firm virtual offices, a trend that has been

affected dramatically by Google algorithm updates in the past 2 years

and takes much more finesse and legitimacy to execute meaningfully.

To start, geographic pages are definitely an easy win for acquiring

qualified traffic in a real radius that you serve, often times around 15

miles (people don’t like traveling too far for any professional they can

mostly visit in their immediate area). Geo-graphic pages are susceptible

to fluff – talking about the local attractions, regurgitating the homepage,

half-heartedly rewriting practice area pages. What makes a good local

page is the genuine feel of being a part of the community, more

anecdotal instead of factual (think “The Town of Whomville was

founded in 1892 with a caravan of settlers looking for opportunity.

Now it is a robust population of 40,000. Who living in Whomville

would care about that?”). Building out these pages, often times with at

least some imagery of the town and surrounding area to make it

relatable, can go under a /locations/ or /areas-we-serve/ subdirectory to

make it easily crawlable. When done correctly, a good geo strategy can

account for a large chunk of your qualified traffic, as the searches cater

to all of the short-tail (city)(practice) (lawyer/attorney/law firm)

searches conducted.

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Another important factor in a good geo-page as it stands today are

actual and relative directions, which also establishes the fact (a fact you

should include not to be misleading) that your office isn’t in their town

proper, but not too far off. Including direction to your office more or

less from the city gives you a chance to include what Google has been

looking for more and more – a way to associate your business locally

and acknowledge the construct of your business and its breadth from a

position it is considering now more than ever.

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Articles

I’ve always looked at articles as more of a deep dive into any particular

subject matter. The way I perceive articles and include them into

content strategy is that they are more specific than a practice area page,

less casual than a blog, but also much more detailed than anything. For

example, let’s talk about DUIs – this is what the title would be in

different formats for each type of content we’ll discuss in this guide:

Practice Area Page: DUI

Geo-Page: Whomville DUI Lawyer

Long-Tailed Answer Blog: What if I refuse an FST at a DUI

Checkpoint?

Law Firm Newsworthy Blogs: Law Firm works with MADD on 4th of

July

Community News Blogs: DUIs on the Rise in Whomville during the

Holidays

Whitepaper: An Analysis of the DUI Arrest Trends in Whomville 2010-

2019

So that leaves us to an article, where the “guide”, “how to”, and deep

dive mentality comes into play:

Guide: Retaining Your License After a Habitual DUI Charge

How To: How to Get Your Hardship License after a DUI Charge

Deep Dive/Long-Form Article: Understanding the Breathalyzer and

How Its Flaws Get DUI Charges Dropped

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The article, though created much less frequently than other pieces of

content because of its requirement of time and research, also provides

other benefits that other content on your website is less likely to

provide. Some examples are:

• Article Structured Data

• Featured Snippets availability more often for this form of content,

resulting in greatly heightened visibility

• Ability to garner more backlinks naturally

• The ability to truly standout as an expert on specific important

(and hopefully searched) subject matter

• The additional ability to repurpose for social, video clips, and

newsletters

• The ability to even stand out in your community of peers

➢ Law firms with a consistent content plan consistently win.

➢ On-page optimization for existing content that has never been

optimized can easily increase traffic to your website by 100%. That

doesn’t even include links to build authority.

➢ Creating content doesn’t have to be complicated. Record yourself

talking about a topic and get it transcribed. Find consultants or

agencies that specialize specifically in legal content.

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6) Take Your Blogging Seriously!

I’ve seen focused law firms with great marketing teams let their blogs

go to the wayside. If you in your scope of SEO do support the timeless

mantra “content is king”, you know that your blog is ultimately the go

to when it comes to creating that consistent flow to keep that

philosophy alive. Yet blogging starts zealously at 1-2 a week (I see

some firms do 3-4 which I think is totally unnecessary), tapers to 4 a

month, then 3, then 2. Then before you know it the last blog was

several months ago.

There is an egregious amount of content on the internet, and believe me

in most cases, for every topic you come up with there’s already 50 blogs

on the topic, with a few of them already in your geography. I don’t

believe that to be an issue or a major reason to pursue it though, for

these reasons:

• Most blogs are bad

• Most blogs were written years ago and haven’t been updated.

They may not be factually correct any longer, and contain broken

images and links

• Google’s standards for content have changed so much, such as on-

page best practices and word count, that new blogs stand to take

better positioning just by virtue of being written with current

standards

• Many blogs are written without correct SEO practices in mind,

such as URL structure, meta information, proper internal/external

links, H tags (even if Google says they don’t have an impact, we

believe it is at least marginal), and EAT standards such as

authorship and authority

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Even with no apparent decrease in the importance of blogging, I think

there are some factors that contribute to blogging ceasing, which is

considerably the most proactive campaign with SEO in mind that

typically occurs:

• Can’t find anything to write about

• Can’t find the time

• Can’t see the importance/doesn’t fit into their 80/20 rule

• Don’t have a blog on the website

Let’s go through each step of this, in a format as if the lawyer is

divulging their frustrations directly to me.

“But Ryan, I can’t find anything to write about!”

As an in-house Director of Marketing for a Criminal Defense Law Firm,

I created about 400 unique pieces of content for the firm. In the first

year. Now, they have over 1200 pages on their website, each one

talking exclusively about specific topics people are searching for each

day. And they certainly aren’t just your “Man arrested for Assault with

a Deadly Weapon – an Alligator” (this firm is in Florida). Let’s look at

ways you can come up with topics:

• Rewriting local news via local news sources – this is the easiest as I

just mentioned, but can be elevated by offering you own opinion,

relating it to current content (internal linking), and some

commentary. Appropriate for the occasional casual blog.

• Searching Google News recently for keywords related to your

practice area.

• Going on websites where people are asking questions related to

your practice area for topic ideas, like Reddit and Avvo.

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• Using suggestive search to find more topics, like Answer the

Public.

• Looking at competition’s blogging strategy and see if you can

draw inspiration or take their topics and doing it better.

• Use social media where people are more commonly telling stories

of their situations, like Facebook and Twitter, to draw ideas for

content.

• Get retrospective and think of all of the interesting questions and

cases you’ve come across over the years that you can certainly

draw more topics from.

“I don’t have the time!”

By far the most reasonable response we get – we’re writing content

plenty for the people we work with, but if someone doesn’t want to

employ an agency for a full campaign, or really even for just a content

campaign, other options are:

When You Want Content Completely Written:

• Asking other lawyers in your circles if they have reliable

contractors

• Going to Upwork to find contractors/freelancers with a penchant

for legal writing

• Using a platform like Textbroker to defer your content, though I

wouldn’t recommend it much anymore since the quality has

diminished over the years. Certainly, cost-effective though

• Verblio, which many agencies similar to ours actually completely

outsource to. Fairly expensive though.

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When You Want Content Time Cut Down for You:

• Having someone (intern, paralegal, freelancer etc.) research and

paraphrase content for you

“Ryan, is blogging still that important?”

Have I taught you anything in this guide so far?! Blogging is essentially

for keeping your website fresh, timely, and consistent as far as getting

in front of long-tailed keywords. I would never recommend having at

least some sort of periodic blogging strategy in place.

“I don’t have a blog in place”

Being that the vast majority of websites are built in WordPress, you

probably have a blog. You just don’t have a link to it yet if you think

you don’t have a blog.

Even proprietary platforms, like the ones FindLaw build, still have a

blog in place. If they don’t, absolutely shame on them.

Next, we will discuss the mix of blogs you can write to keep your blog

not only consistent, but an interesting mix of content for your visitors

and your potential website visitors.

Forms of Blogs

• Long-Tailed Answer Blogs

This is when you answer many of the WWWWWH questions:

“Who can I speak to about a child custody case”

“What is the best way to get my record sealed”

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“When do I have to file a claim with my insurance company after a car

accident?”

“Where does divorce court typically take place?”

“Why do I have a warrant out for my arrest if I just ran a red light?”

“How do I know how much my case is worth?”

• Law Firm Newsworthy Blogs

Additional content can come in the form of new hires, community

events, sponsorships, awards, recognitions, speaking engagements, and

any other topics you would consider relatable to readers. This not only

provides additional content for your website and repurposing for social

but gives a more human element to your blog.

• Community News Blogs

Community news blogs are more of a way to discuss what’s been going

on in the community – creating content that semantically ties your

website to a certain geography. This is especially good content for

repurposing into social media.

➢ The blog isn’t dead – it’s just the name of the place you do all of

your long-tailed content and answer questions.

➢ If you have a WordPress website, it’ll have blog capabilities

already built in (WordPress is, after all, originally a blogging

platform).

➢ It’s not uncommon for a law firm’s blog to bring in the majority of

traffic, along with plenty of niche, quality leads.

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7) The State of Links and Building Authority

Agencies putting the burden on law firms for link building

One of the biggest trends I’ve seen in the past few years is agencies

putting many of the responsibilities of link building on the law firm.

This aligns with the fact that in most cases, unless you’re a large agency

that has painstakingly built a network of legal resources to access, link

building isn’t that easy and is often extremely time consuming (and

potentially expensive). It doesn’t take a massive amount of links to

move the needle, as link building is very much quality over quantity.

But from discussions I’ve had with dozens of marketing managers and

lawyers, practices like scholarship links and essay contests have

continued even though they’ve existed for years and years even though

the. edu’s and. org’s have caught on. These types of links have either

been denied, have been featured on buried pages, or most commonly,

simply no followed and therefore completely mitigating their SEO

value.

The burden of setting up these link building directives is often

burdened on the law firm without a process. Not only scholarships, but

forms of outreach, community events, and speaking opportunities.

What law firms need is clear documentation and guidance on how to

make these campaigns actually happen, and while link building always

has the ulterior motive of pushing the success of your website and

digital presence, we’ll discuss how taking a more genuine and selfless

approach to link building can benefit you more in the long run.

Link building increases the number of inbound links to a website.

Google views these links as site recommendations. It suggests that

searchers have found value and relevancy in a website’s content. The

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website’s ranking increases because Google feels confident that other

searchers will also be interested in the website. Is your law firm using

link building? More importantly, are you using the right link building

tactics? If not, your firm is missing out on a huge opportunity.

Understanding That Link Building Can Be Your Website’s Best

Friend

Link building is almost always a part of SEO because of its ability to

propel a website quickly and efficiently to the top of search engine

rankings. But the benefits go beyond just rankings and organic traffic.

Having your link on a well-respected site isn’t just for Google’s eyes.

It’s also for the visitor’s eyes. It tells them that your content is valuable.

They’re more likely to click your link and visit your website because it’s

being offered via a source they’ve already utilized and likely trust for

information. In a nutshell, such well-placed links offer

recommendations that expand the reach of your sales funnel and boosts

your credibility for the client to enter it.

Link Building Is Dangerous With The Wrong Tactics

While link building is clearly a critical component in attracting new

clients to your law firm’s website, it’s important to understand that the

wrong link building tactics can have the opposite effect on your

website. Thought it is difficult to get manual penalties from link

building strategies, they can still occur, and you should be mindful of

them.

Your most important decision is in using the right link building

strategies and partners, and these don’t include places where the sole

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purpose is strictly to link back to you. Links should always occur

naturally as set by Google’s guidelines. Most link building strategies are

inherently focused only on the link. It is better to completely engage in

opportunities where the ulterior motive isn’t the backlink, but possibly

an unexpected byproduct. The right tactics will boost search engine

rankings, organic traffic, and secondary traffic from other websites

without the possibility of harm.

Such links come from reputable sites with a cross relevance to your

own. Remember, Google judges you by the company you keep.

Always Vet Sites Before Placing Links

Link building is composed of two prongs- unsolicited and solicited.

You’ll find that some websites naturally link to you as they build their

own network. Social media sharing will also be a source of unsolicited

link building. Use your analytics to keep a check on referral backlinks.

Then you have solicited link building. This is where you choose

strategic sites to place your links. It’s imperative that you vet any site

you’re placing your link.

Look at the site. It should be stellar in maintenance and display and be

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low in ads. It shouldn’t have seedy content or anything that’s in

opposition to your law firm’s ethics. Watch out for sites that overuse

linking or have an array of linking topics, which usually indicates

they’re selling links. Outbound Links, or OBL, are a huge factor in how

much benefit you will retain from a backlink.

Dig deeper, too. Research the authority and reputation of the domain

with tools like Moz Domain Analysis and/or Ahrefs Website Authority

Checker. Such tools will give you a domain rating, the number of back

links on a site, number of unique domains those backlinks originate

from, number of keywords a site ranks for, spam score, etc. so that you

can solicit placement on the most effective sites.

Placement and Structure Equal Effectiveness

Link building goes beyond just having the right host site. It’s also about

placement and structure, which both denote value.

Body links with relevant anchoring are generally more valuable than

editorial links in bylines and bios. Vary the anchor language to

keyword phrases that point to your niche and target market (such as car

accident attorney, vehicle accident attorney, attorney for car accidents)

verses trying to have one particular keyword phrase across all your

links.

Law Firm Link Building Methods

Now that we’ve established the approach to acquiring links we have in

mind; we can now look at the different places where we can

appropriately venture out to.

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Directory Listings - get your NAP+W (Name Address Phone + Website)

out to help establish credibility with search engines. Use an array of

popular and credible free verses paid, do-follow verses no follow, and

general verses legal specific directories. Be consistent in NAP+W format

and keep it up to date. Work to qualify for specialized directories, and

don’t forget to have a presence on niche and geo specific directories.

Don’t just focus on legal directories, though, because Google My

Business and others carry heavy weight for ranking in local pack search

results. Free directories can do wonders for law firms that want to

thrive in digital marketing and in search engine optimization or simply

"SEO." There is an abundance of directories that list all sorts of law

firms and their specialties. Law firms should make a point to set up

listings through directories on the Internet such as Yelp.com, Avvo.com,

LawGuru.com and, finally, Thumbtack.com.

Try Out Paid Directories - Getting on free directories can make an

excellent starting point for law firms. Law firms that are trying to take

things to the next level should opt for paid directory listings. There are

a number of legal directories that require payment for listing purposes.

These directories include but are not limited to Lawyers.com,

Superlawyers.com and even Nolo.com. Lawyers.com is known for

strong rankings that involve keywords that do well. Nolo.com is a site

that receives substantial traffic day in and day out. Literally millions of

people check out Nolo.com on a monthly basis.

Guest Post - be careful because guest posting has become affiliated with

spam. Make sure guest posts add high value content and is placed on a

reputable site that’s relevant to you through subject and/or location. Do

it sparingly, with good SEO practices, and with only a couple of links to

your website within each post. Otherwise, you risk your backlink

efforts backfiring into a spam can.

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(Side note) Have Your Own Content - whether it’s a video, blog, or

infographic, creating and promoting your own content should adhere

to the same guidelines as guest posting.

Think about headline, graphics, format, plug-ins, and other components

that encourage viewers to share it. While the goal of the content is to

add value for onlookers, don’t be afraid to use it as an opportunity to

connect with prospects in a meaningful way. Show your firm’s

personality and empathy on pain points.

Become A Sponsor - your firm can get quality links (and word of

mouth publicity) by sponsoring local and national events like

fundraisers, conferences, sports teams, and so forth.

Become A Contributor – do-follow links and linkable bylines aren’t

always a part legal directory contribution, and newspapers often keep

contributor content behind a paywall that search engines don’t crawl.

Yet, in the age of influencers, even if you don’t get a physical backlink

out of it, contributing to respected publications is still a link building

opportunity. You’re still cultivating industry credibility and authority,

and you may even get some referrals out of it. Ever wonder how legal

analysts and network news contributors find themselves on television?

It’s because they’ve built a contributor resume.

Seize Recognition Opportunities - whether it’s a local Chamber of

Commerce listing of best of the best, a state bar association honor, or a

national legal organization recognition, industry-centric awards mean

publicity links to organizations that potential clients use as their own

vetting tools and sources of referral. Make sure your law firm’s

marketing team is always making your firm visible to recognition

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opportunities.

Concentrate on Relationship Link Building - Lawyers can utilize any

and all relationships they have as a means of building links.

Concentrating on relationship link building can often go a long way for

law firms that are driven and serious about attaining outstanding

results. Lawyers should go above and beyond to request links from any

of their buddies. It can help to request them from fellow attorneys who

are at the helm of their own sites. It can be wise to come up with linking

interactions that seem effortless. It can be wise to come up with

interactions that can be helpful to both parties. A lawyer may want to

volunteer to pen an in-depth piece for a pal. If you're a lawyer who has

expertise in a certain legal field, doing this may work out in your favor.

Lawyers who work in separate fields can often get a lot out of

establishing relationships that can enhance all of their digital marketing

and SEO efforts.

Lend Your Law School a Helping Hand - It can be a kind and smart

gesture to show your gratitude to your law school. If you want to thank

your alma mater, teaming up with it may assist you significantly with

all of your link building aims. Ask your school if you can pen an

exhaustive legal article for its official blog or website. You may be able

to offer sound suggestions to pupils who are on the verge of

graduating. You may be able to talk about your legal education in

general. Contact your law school in order to get a feel for this concept.

You may be able to do your school a favor that can also accommodate

your specific objectives.

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Assist Up-and-Coming Law Students and Attorneys - Legal

professionals who are keen on moving up in the world may want to

assist law school students. They may want to assist up-and-coming

attorneys who haven't been working for too long, too. It can be easy to

locate people who are part of both of these categories on the Internet.

Locate them and ask them if they want any assistance from you at all.

Network with these individuals. If you do so, then you may be able to

get on the path to attaining the links you deserve and want.

Establish a Meetup Organization - It can be a terrific idea to establish a

meetup organization. Lawyers naturally are equipped with insight that

people often want to get. That's why it can be wise to establish a meetup

organization of sorts. Make sure this organization revolves around a

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subject that gives you a feeling of enthusiasm. Set up events monthly if

at all possible. It can even help to set them up more frequently than

that.

Read Blogs That Focus on the Legal Realm - It can help lawyers greatly

to check out blogs that concentrate on the legal realm. After you read

these blogs thoroughly, then you may want to leave in-depth comments

that showcase all of your thoughts. Doing this can be suitable for legal

professionals who want to network on the Internet. Although it can do

wonders for online networking purposes, it at the same time can do a

lot for link building applications. People should go above and beyond

to interact with bloggers who have a lot of legal savvy on their sides.

This approach can do a lot for people who are keen on building links in

rapid and meaningful ways. It can pave the way for particularly strong

links.

➢ Good link building is tough. Getting quality links with link

building is tougher. This one I would not burden a lawyer with

proactively working on.

➢ Buying links is universally considered black hat. But buying

sponsored content to get backlinks is the same thing. Creating

scholarships to get backlinks is the same thing. It’s better to just

consider everything as a part of staying relevant and being able to

compete with other firms that would like nothing more than for

you to be prudent about your link building strategy.

➢ Read my guide on why your link building isn’t working!

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8) Structured Data for Lawyers

A lot of law firms understand the concept of how SEO and help them

generate leads and find new clients, but they might not be taking it to

the next level and using structured data markup to enhance their

digital marketing efforts more effectively. If you’re one of those law

firm, now is the time to start thinking about what it can do for you in

2020.

In fact, optimizing for enhanced search results and increased click-

through-rates should be SEO for Lawyers 101. That’s why it’s

important for your law firm to understand what structured data is,

and why it’s so important for your ongoing search engine

optimization.

How Does Structured Data Help Law Firms?

With more than 1 billion websites available to users today, law firms

need every advanced SEO tool available to help them cut through the

competition and ensure they’re ranking well in local and general

searches.

Using Structured Data and Schema.org is going to help you maintain a

competitive edge moving forward.

Think of structured data markup as a code placed on a site that

provides search engines with more information about your website.

This code is designed to make it easier for Google to search, index and

categorize the information you’re making available on your website and

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in your content. Essentially this code then provides more data to user’s

courtesy of what you’re marking up with structured data code.

Structured data is particularly important for your local SEO efforts, and

it can be used effectively on:

• Google My Business optimization

• Website audit

• SEO 101 implementation (title tags, meta tags, page speed, etc.)

• and then schema code.

By prioritizing structured data in the top five objectives for your

website, you’ll end up increasing the rankings, drastically enhance your

listings in SERPs, or at the bare minimum provide your clients with

more information. Furthermore, it’s a way to present information to

Google bots that’s easy to read and index. Bots can read the selected

data more quickly if you’re using structured data, which leads to higher

rankings in SERPs. It also increases your chances of getting featured

snippets, which are located at the top of a lot of Google searches,

providing more detailed information about specific subjects.

Schema.org is also important because Google looks for schema and

structured data to index your information more easily, so by using it,

you have a tool for boosting your SEO marketing naturally. What you

want to be certain to avoid is putting in incomplete or incorrect data.

A key aspect of structured data is it needs to be inserted correctly to

be effective, so Google bots know what type of information it is.

Incorrect coding can confuse Google, which runs the risk of decreased

SERP rankings for your site.

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How Does SEO for Lawyers Get Enhanced through Structured Data?

If you’re still not certain how Schema.org can help your law firm

website, think of it as a joint effort. Getting visibility and traffic from

search engines is usually done in two ways, through paid searches or

organic searches using SEO. The key to an effective SEO strategy for

any law firm has been to produce quality and authoritative content for

users.

Structured data takes it to the next level. Schema is designed to

communicate information to Google more quickly and effectively

through snippets of information to search engines, helping bots index

your information more quickly. Your on-page markup assists the search

engines, making it easier for people to find relevant information on the

web. Using Schema markup, you’re providing a stronger meaning to

your content. That enables Google to better understand your legal

website and improves your online brand identity, which can increase

quality traffic to your law firm website.

Structured data is particularly important for a law firm’s website SEO

efforts, and it’s particularly valuable for enhancing click-through-rates

by providing more accurate information for searchers. It becomes

another tool for standing out in a highly competitive digital world.

Snippets help define the relevancy of your page to prospective visitors,

helping to persuade them to choose your site over another.

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How Do You Start Using Structured Data Code for Your Website?

These are four good places to start, along with marking up your address

using the schema.org Local Business markup and company bio profiles

with Person schema. You then want to test your pages using Google’s

Structured Data Testing tool to be certain it’s working.

When it comes down to local structured data and your Google My

Business page, the information you provide should be matching the

public information of your company. If your PostalAddress structured

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data is on your site, that code should match the information on your

listing to help with the search results. The same can be said for

companies with multiple locations which may even include elevation

and latitude for Geocoordinates structured data.

One of the more important schema write ups for local businesses is the

review structured data which may look like:

<div itemscope itemtype=”https://schema.org/Reviews”>

<span itemprop=”itemReviewed”>Criminal Defense Attorney Law

Service</span>

<span itemprop=”reviewAspect”>This Review or Rating is relevant to

this part or facet of the itemReviewed.</span>

<span itemprop=”reviewBody”>”I’ve never seen an attorney care so

much about my case before. They are amazingly good people that

genuinely want the best for you.”</span>

<span itemprop=”reviewRating”>5</span>

</div>

What are the most common ones being used today though? Certainly

“LegalService”, “Reviews”, “FAQ”, “Article”. Authorship is likely

totally deprecated at this point.

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➢ Structured data is absolutely a gamechanger for click-through

rates on search results

➢ The rate of new structured data categories while discontinuing

other categories is pretty brisk. It’s good to stay on top of the new

rollouts happening continuously.

➢ Structured data is considered to be the bridge to the new ways

people will search online, such as using voice search.

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9) Voice Search for Law Firms

Voice has become the fastest-growing method for online searches

today, and the trend is increasing, and fast. It’s been projected that

voice commands will be used to initiate half of all internet

searches. And the more frequently they get used and more

commonplace voice searches become, the more crucial it’s going to

be for your law firm to take advantage of this key tool.

But it’s also critical for law firms to fully understand just how

different voice search is from text and keyboard searches. Because

make no mistake about the vital importance that voice search is

starting to have on digital marketing, and the advantages it can

provide to law firm marketing.

And there are proven ways for law firms to take full advantage of

this tool in your marketing strategy heading into 2020.

How is Voice Search Different from Traditional Searches?

What’s most effective about voice search is we know people using

digital assistants are doing so because they intend to take specific

actions or are looking for immediate answers. So, it’s time to start

thinking about your voice search strategy.

A key part of that is anticipating your users’ needs by thinking

about how they might seek information when they’re conducting

a voice search. For example, if people are doing a Google search

using texts, they might be most likely to type in a few keywords.

In a voice search, they’re going to ask a specific question.

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And voice search will be particularly important as more and more

users get information from their smartphone rather than a

laptop. Voice truly is the New Mobile, and as mobile devices

increasingly dominate search results, law firms need to optimize

for mobile searches or risk a drop in traffic.

Bottom line: your law firm’s SEO strategy is no longer based solely

on text and keywords.

How Do I Optimize for Voice Search?

Voice search through smartphones and smart speakers is becoming a

popular way to find law firms online, and they’re changing the way

people look for an attorney.

If your search engine results have been targeted to getting at the top of

the search engine results pages (SERPs) as prospective clients search

for an attorney in your area, your law firm will be highly affected in

the next few years by the way AI assistants deliver information to

smartphone users.

So now is the time to start making changes to your website to ensure

you’ll get found by those searchers. Think of it this way: when an AI

like Siri or Alexa gets asked a question and needs to provide accurate

information, where do their answers come from? AI assistants process

the spoken question and use it to locate useful answers. So, for example,

if someone asked, “Siri, what’s a good personal injury law firm near

me,” Siri could use your keywords and location to provide an answer.

Typically, they pull the top results.

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What’s different is that AI voice search makes it easier to search for full

sentences or longtail keyword phrases, like asking where the best

divorce or car accident attorney is rather than typing in “divorce lawyer

Orlando.” So, smartphone users are going to be searching for products

and services using full sentences and questions. For law firms, that

means it’s critical to know what kind of questions prospective clients

will be asking and to have that information in their content.

That’s particularly true for the summary of information at the top of

your results, in the featured snippet that provides a direct answer to a

question. That “position zero” spot on Google is what digital assistants

are likely to pull answers from, so you’re going to want to be certain

your content is carefully targeted and highly engaging.

Your content creation should optimize featured snippets with a focus

on conversational long-tail keywords centered around frequently asked

questions. Once you’ve been able to determine what your clients are

asking (or likely to ask), your web content should be focused around

this information, from blog posts to FAQ pages that offer those specific

answers. And using photographs and graphics to enhance the featured

snippets will also help.

Why Has Voice Search Become So Important?

Google has already indicated that searches on mobile devices have

exceeded searches on desktops, and Google is responding. Google is

now working hard to provide the right answers to those using voice

searches, so they’re looking to get those answers from sites with very

concise information. That provides your opportunity.

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To enable your content to match longer queries (“Where is a good

criminal defense lawyer near me?”), use your content to answer

questions rather than just focusing on short keywords, and think about

the natural phrases that people use.

Aim for the exact words that you know clients use to ask a question or

describe their dilemma. Answer those questions on your website in

real-world language.

Besides content, it’s also important to use schema markup on your

website to give search engine bots semantic information in the exact

language they understand. The right legal service markup should

provide specific information about your law firm business to search

engines, telling the search bots information such as:

• Business name

• Address

• Office hours

• Phone number

• Upcoming events and activities

• Google map links

• Awards

• Attorneys at the firm.

After giving this information to Google, the markup passes on those

findings to the person doing the search. This is particularly important

for voice search. Schema markup helps search engines better

understand the content of your webpage, and appropriately structured

schema markup essentially means you’re optimized for voice search.

That helps you rank in voice search.

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You also want to be certain that your directory listings are accurate.

➢ As mentioned before, Voice Search may tie in heavily with

structured data.

➢ Content should include some phrases that align with how people

perform more inquisitive queries.

“Akiba Rubenstein was playing in a tournament and had the point lead with one game to go he was playing against Wolf and needed a draw to win the tourney. about 15 moves into the game Wolf offered Rubenstein the draw. Akiba declined and played on till he had a slightly superior position then offered Wolf a draw, which Wolf gladly accepted. After the game Akiba was asked why he declined Wolf's draw offer and then played on till he was winning then offered a draw to Wolf. Rubenstein's reply was with Wolffe I draw when I want to not when he wants to.”

Source: https://www.Chessgames.com/perl/Chessgame?gid=1003775

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10) Analyzing All of Your Paid (and even organic)

Opportunities

Digital marketing ROI tells you if your digital marketing campaigns are

paying off. A positive ROI means you are making more than you are

spending on the campaigns. But, how do you measure this kind of ROI?

And how do you improve those numbers?

Measuring Your Digital Marketing ROI

No one has an unlimited marketing budget, especially small to

medium-size businesses. That's why every dollar you spend on

marketing needs to generate a profit. If you don't measure ROI, you

don't know whether your marketing efforts are positive or a negative.

It's not as easy as comparing revenue increases to marketing spend,

especially if you can’t predict what the outcome is going to be with

certainty (personal injury). Marketing campaigns have different goals

such as increasing conversion rates, building product awareness, or

pulling traffic into the sales funnel.

How you measure ROI depends on your ultimate goal. It also creates

benchmarks so you’re always working towards better numbers and you

and your team have goals you want to hit. Not just “20 clients a

month”. It is important to eventually say “My average client signup, or

CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) should be $1,000 or less”. “Our conversion

rate of leads is currently, 18%, let’s get it to 25%”. Let's look at some

frequently used digital marketing metrics you can use.

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#1 Conversion Rate

Conversion rate tells you how many visitors become leads, and how

many leads went on to become clients. Check conversion by channel to

see which channels are most effective. Leverage conversion by device to

see if your mobile campaigns are successful vs desktop.

#2 Cost Per Lead

You can calculate cost per lead by dividing the total ad spend for a

campaign by the total number of leads attributed to that campaign.

#3 Lead Close Rate

This key metric measures the rate of closing by the number of leads

generated. If your sales team closes 10 sales out of 50 leads, the lead

close rate is 20%.

#4 Cost Per Acquisition

How much does it cost to get a new customer? That's the cost per

acquisition measure. Divide your total ad spend on a particular

campaign by the number of conversions caused by those ads. If your

cost per acquisition is higher than the amount the customer brings in,

your ROI is negative.

#5 Average Lead and New Client Value

You need to know how much, on average, a new client could bring

your firm. Divide the total revenue by the number of retained clients.

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That's the average client value.

#6 Client Lifetime Value

How much do you expect a particular client to spend over a lifetime of

being a client? Let's say your cost of acquisition for a new client is

$1,000. That client retains services totaling $500 in legal services, or

billable hours. ROI is negative initially. But, if that client signs up again

for $500 next year, the long-term ROI would be breakeven so far.

Intangible value would of course be providing a great client experience

and getting referrals.

The metrics you use in a particular marketing campaign will depend on

the tactics you use. You won't use the same mix of metrics for an email

campaign that you would use on a social media campaign.

Here's a snapshot of metrics used in different types of campaigns.

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• Social Media - Clicks, click-through-rate, leads acquired,

engagement rates, new followers/fans

• Email - Open rate, bounce rate, click-through rate, conversions,

leads acquired, unsubscribe rate

• Blogs - Traffic, clicks, unique visitors, returning visitors, time

spent on page, actions taken, conversions

• Landing Pages - Traffic, total page views, unique visitors,

returning visitors, conversions, time spent on page, actions taken

It's important to take a long view when it comes to tracking digital

marketing ROI. Trying to compare month-to-month isn't as effective as

long term, because the short timeline doesn't account for seasonal

demands or odd occurrences. In some decisions, especially paid, you

would want to make some decisions in at least 3 months if you have a

high marketing spend, but it's better to measure year-to-year. This

longer view gives a more accurate representation of progress.

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Improving Your Digital Marketing ROI

The next step is to take action to improve those metrics. Here are four

tactics to improve your digital marketing ROI.

Know Your Goals

You need clearly defined business goals that you can measure over

time. That needs to happen before you define metrics and take

measurements. Without clear goals, you don't know where your digital

marketing needs to go. A good goal might read "Convert 25% of leads

into clients in the next three months."

Define Clear Key Performance Indicators

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Next, you can decide which KPIs you need. How can you measure

progress on your marketing goals? The KPIs need to be clearly defined,

quantifiable, and measurable. You also need to be able to act on them.

Use five to eight metrics to measure progress.

Test Your Campaign Details

Which parts of your digital campaigns are working, and which are not?

An effective way to do this is by testing them. Do an A/B test on every

element to see which offer the best results. For example, change a color

and CTA on a landing page. Then, test the original and the one with the

new color. The page with the best results is the one you go with.

Typically, it’ll be something more significant than a “bigger button”, so

use what we’ve mentioned previously in this guide from engaging

content to imagery to make larger improvements right away if your

conversion rates are woefully low.

Seize Opportunities for Improvement

You've defined goals, set up KPIs, and tested your campaign details.

Now is the time to act. When you see an opportunity for improvement,

adjust. You need to do this continuously throughout each marketing

campaign for maximum success. When it comes to paid campaigns that

have poor metrics that need to get off the ground, it is important to

commit to daily adjustments, so your marketing dollars aren’t wasted.

With SEO, you will need to practice more patience until you are

confident your website and digital assets are definitely getting qualified

traffic that simply isn’t converting.

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➢ In the words of other Market My Market co-founder Chase

Williams, “don’t even bother doing marketing if you don’t plan on

tracking everything.”

➢ You can go crazy with metrics all day, especially if you’re more

financially minded, but there are a few you can’t pass up. Many

people in the advertising space focus almost exclusively on ROI

(Return on Investment), rightfully so – simple, elegant, and logical.

I say go for CLV (Customer Lifetime Value), where you can

measure potential recurring value and referrals, when your client

experience is of course top-notch.

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➢ I suppose this is a cop out, but it’s worth mentioning again. If you

are going to engage in advertising and not both analyzing what’s

working and what’s not, why bother.

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Conclusion

I’ve had to stop and rewrite this guide several times. In fact, ideally I

wanted this done the beginning of 2019 (since it’s a guide I would love

for someone to have to kick of the New Year Jan 1st-style) but life and

the minutiae of the day-to-day gets in the way.

I know from working with lawyers that they really are among the

hands-down most busy, hard-working people I’ve ever met. So how do

we take the parts of this guide that resonate and actually apply them?

The first step is knowing that you probably can’t do everything, and

certainly not everything at once. I would review the guide and take the

top 5 most important things you need to work on this year, order them

descending in perceived importance, and work on them one at a time.

Some may take a couple weeks. Others may take 3 months.

2020 has been an extremely difficult year so far, putting it lightly. I

have removed/added some things to make this as relevant for current

COVID-19 conditions as well as how law firms will operate successfully

post-COVID, whenever that may be.

It’s hard to continuously stay motivated with so much uncertainty

ahead, but our clients need us to be focused and capable now more than

ever. That applies very well with our own clients, where our team has

been working easily 120% to help clients with every technology, every

marketing approach, every unique opportunity to hopefully help them

see increases in revenues during tough times.

In addition to this guide being finalized, we have put out an excessive

amount of information in the form of videos, blogs, articles, webinars,

podcasts, and case studies that have tirelessly gauged what approaches

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to marketing work now, and what we can accurately predict in the

future. Simply search on our website MarketMyMarket.com and you’ll

see quick access to many of these resources.

I imagine that this guide will continue to grow over time, so you may be

receiving a version that has been updated several times already, always

proceeding with additional information and likely not removing

anything already included. 2020 has been a year of drastic changes, so

it is only appropriate that a guide like this, with bold claims and

trending strategies, be updated appropriately and regularly.

It’s my passion to help lawyers secure the right information they need

to make the right decisions about their marketing. If you ever have any

questions, you’ll have my attention.

Ryan Klein

Co-Founder of Market My Market

ryan@marketmymarket.com

Version 1, July 5th, 2020

P.S. If you’re still reading, I’d deeply appreciate your feedback.

Please take 5 minutes to provide feedback using the following link:

https://www.marketmymarket.com/checkmate-legal-marketing-guide-feedback/