When humans have expensive problems, we like personal referrals. We want someone we trust to tell us who to hire to solve our problem.
SEO is an expensive problem for law firms. If you’re not bringing in new cases from organic search, you’re losing opportunity, market share, and money to your competitors who are.
My name is Matt Green (hi 👋). I am one of the co-founders of Juris Digital, and I’ve made SEO for Lawyers my life’s work. You might say I’m someone who is qualified to tell you who you ought to hire to run your firm’s SEO!
In this blog post, I will discuss what agencies you should consider hiring and suggest simple steps you can take to maximize the likelihood that your investment in SEO will pay off, no matter who you hire.
Important note: I wrote every word of this post myself. I didn’t outsource it to a content writer. I didn’t have AI do it. I wrote it, because I think people deserve to get excellent advice from actual subject matter experts. If you feel the same, I hope you’ll reach out to Juris Digital to discuss an SEO campaign.
▶️ From the author: Why you should trust the information in this post:
5 of the Very Best Law Firm SEO Companies – And the Key People Who Make Them Great
Isn’t it weird how concerned humans are with knowing what the best of everything is? Of course there is no objective measure of the best SEO company for law firms, just as there’s no objective best type of apple (I mean, there is, it’s honeycrisp).
The best SEO comany for your law firm may not be the best for another law firm. That’s why it’s a good thing that there’s more than one choice!
My list here is based on my personal point of view, taste, and first hand knowledge. There are without a doubt other law firm SEO companies that are awesome that I’ve never heard of and so can’t possibly be on my list.
1. Juris Digital
Wow. Bet you didn’t see that coming. I think the company that I co-founded and whose success I’ve made my life’s work is one of the best law firm SEO agencies.
It’s self serving, it’s not to be trusted, but I do believe it.
We have been at this for a long time relative to most of our competitors. We’ve helped hundreds of law firms achieve their growth goals. We’ve built a reputation as thought leaders in the SEO and legal marketing space. We really freaking care about helping our clients, being a great place to work, and living by our values.
I hope you’ll reach out to us to talk about your goals. You’ll find that we don’t do any hard selling. We strive to be of service first and foremost. If we know we can help you, we’ll do everything we can to earn a chance. If not, we’ll point you in the right direction. We’d love the opportunity to prove we are the best law firm seo company in this list.
- Key people: Casey Meraz, Matt Green, Leann Pickard
- Example work product: Check out our work for Tawney, Acosta, & Chaparro. I think it’s a great example of the full suite of our capabilities, and how tranformative our work can be for growth-focused firms.
2. LexBlog
LexBlog isn’t really an SEO company – they are a company that helps lawyers start an executed and effective blogging strategy. In other words, they are a content marketing company for lawyers. They do SEO minus all the spam!
LexBlog isn’t right for every firm or practice area. If my goal was to build and scale my firm as large as possible, LexBlog wouldn’t be my first choice. But if I were a solo attorney in a relatively niche practice and I cared more about earning high-value clients through thought leadership, reputation enhancement, and building a referral network, I would think hard about engaging with LexBlog.
- Key people: Kevin O’Keefe
- Example work product: Check out “The Field we Built” page on their website, which explains how LexBlog helped to bring digital publishing to the legal space from 20+ years ago.
3. AttorneySync
AttorneySync is one of those companies that’s hard to disentangle from it’s founder. Gyi Tsakalakis is that guy for AttorneySync. Gyi has been a friend of this writer – and AttorneySync a friendly competitor – for over a decade now.
Gyi’s is true expert and I’ve always admired his perspective on legal marketing. That expertise and perspective has resulted in AttorneySync’s long history of success in the legal SEO space, including happy clients, an insanely strong reputation, and sustained growth.
- Key People: Gyi Tsakalakis
- Example work product: Michigan Auto Law is one of AttorneySync’s cornerstone clients. They’ve been a source of inspiration for me many times over the years (ie. I’ve stolen I lot of ideas from them).
4. iLawyerMarketing
I’ve written about iLawyerMarketing before. Although they are one of our most direct competitors, their work has inspired me for nearly the entirety of my career.
What many folks don’t realize is that there was a time where SEO agencies really sucked at anything that wasn’t SEO. For a long time there seemed to be no one with any aesthetic taste in the world of search marketing. This has never really been the case for iLawyer. The websites they produce are so freaking pretty, and they rank well to boot.
- Key People: Mike Perez
- Example work product: iLawyer has a child company called 1Point21 Interactive. They bill this as a visual content and data analysis company. The work they do under that brand is so freaking cool. Here’s one of my favorite examples: https://safer-america.com/firearmsandfraps/
5. Sterling Sky
As with AttorneySync, Sterling Sky is a company formed in the mold of its founder, Joy Hawkins. Over the course of her career, Joy has built a dedicated following because she is always at the forefront of everything local SEO.
Unlike the other SEO companies on this list, Sterling Sky does not work exclusively with law firms but instead with clients across verticals, especially businesses for whom local search marketing is especially relevant.
Sterling Sky is a self-described local SEO company. Would I hire them to design my website? Probably not. But if your goal is to perform better in Google’s Map results, you won’t find a more qualified company.
- Key People: Joy Hawkins, Colan Nielsen
- Example work product: The best way to familiarize yourself with Sterling Sky is to read their blog. It’s so damn useful and demonstrates how on the ball they are when it comes to local SEO.
4 Steps to Take to Make Your SEO Investment Successful – No Matter Who You Hire
Back in 2020 I wrote a column for AboveTheLaw titled Law Firm SEO – How to Maximize Your ROI. In that post I outlined 7 key ways to enhance the probabilty that your investement in SEO doesn’t fail.
Below I’ve updated that advice, and narrowed it down to 4 key things to know:
1. Don’t hire a fly-by-night agency
The rise of generative AI means that there is officially zero barrier of entry when it comes to starting an SEO company. ChatGPT and similar tools can design and build websites, create SEO strategies, write and publish content, etc. This means that the zone has been flooded with new “agencies” eager to get your business and service your account with nothing but AI prompts.
I would suggest that, generally, you avoid these companies. By hiring a company like Juris Digital – or any of our top competitors for that matter – your investment is in the hands of a company that has been around for years, has established itself in the field by succeeding for real clients, and actually has something to lose if things go wrong.
2. Know the human behind your success
Hiring a good company matters, but what matters more is who will actually be responsible for the success of your campaign, and how much of a bad ass that person is. When you’re researching SEO agencies, ask who specifically you will work with. Ask to meet them, and to see examples of their work for other clients.
3. Make sure you can close the leads you generate
All of our most successful clients understand that an investment in marketing must be paired with an investment in sales. In other words, before you invest in SEO for your law firm, make sure that you have a system in place to respond to new leads immediately, and for turning those good leads into new cases. No matter the quality of your marketing, if you don’t do this, your investment will fall flat.
4. Tell your SEO company your goals, not what you want them to do
When you go to the doctor with terrible stomach pains, do you instruct her to remove your appendix? Or do you just tell her your symptoms and let her figure it out?
Over the course of my career I’ve found that when you – the client – dictates what specific services you want, things go south. Our job as marketing experts is to understand your goals, and then clearly articulate a strategy for achieving them.
For your investment in SEO to be a success, you must lead with your goals, and then place your trust in your chosen provider to determine the right combination of services to get you there.
Whether you are looking to move on from your current SEO provider or are new to the game and want to understand what it looks like to work with a law firm SEO agency, reach out and ask to talk to Matt. I’ll try to be helpful in whatever way I can.
