Lawyers.com ranks well for many of our client’s target keywords, so naturally we wanted to understand its efficacy as a barnacle SEO site.
Below, we’ve broken down the results of one of our client’s advertising on Lawyers.com, in an attempt to answer the question:
“Is Lawyers.com Advertising Worth the Money?”
Keep in mind that this is just one (1) example; not nearly enough data to make any kind of blanket statement about how “worth it” lawyers.com advertising is, but enough to give a helpful example of what to expect at a particular price point.
If you have experience advertising with Lawyers.com and have seen drastically different results, we sure would like to hear about it in the comments of this post!
The Basics of Getting Started
Here is what the process of purchasing a listing on Lawyers.com will look like:
- You’ll call 1.877.495.8659 because you want to speak with a legal marketing consultant:
- After about a minute of going through automated directory options, you’ll be prompted to leave a message about your sales inquiry. In 24 hours or so you’ll hear from a representative and talk about what you want; a listing on lawyers.com. If you happened to be a personal injury lawyer in Houston (as this client is) you’d want to be listed highly on this page:
- You’ll call 1.877.495.8659 because you want to speak with a legal marketing consultant:
- You will be given a quote that looks something like this:
- With the “Listing for Lawyers.com” what you are paying to have a listing on the site (example listing).
- With the “Preferred Placement” you are paying to show up on the top of your relevant [location + practice area] listing page.
We chose only to invest in the “Listing for Lawyers.com” at a cost of $277/mo with a 12 month commitment. Below we have detailed the data after six (6) months of advertising under this package.
The Results after 6 Months of Lawyers.com Advertising
Direct Benefits
When your listing is activated, you are given access to a dashboard (csc.lawyers.com) where you can update all of your law firm information.
This dashboard also contains details for any leads generated from your profile (phone calls and contact forms). Our dashboard is reporting on 35 leads over the 6 months:
We also tracked 31 referral visits from the lawyers.com listing to the client’s website. This resulted in 1 lead:
Indirect Attorney SEO Benefits
We are of course interested in understanding how the listing affects the organic search performance of the client’s site.
What we know is that the investment we made comes with listings on lawyers.com and martindale.com We get links from each of those profiles, PLUS we get links from each lawyer’s individual profile. Here are the authority metrics for each:
Backlinks from Lawyers.com
This is the main law firm profile
This is one of the attorney profiles
This is the other attorney profile
Backlinks from Martindale.com
This is the main law firm profile
This is one of the attorney profiles
This is the other attorney profiles
So what we are getting is 6 links from 2 domains. The MOZ page and domain authority for each link is about 36 and 86 respectively. These are impactful links to be sure, regardless of what Google say about buying links.
Structured Citations (Local SEO)
We are also getting citations from each listing, which is a positive local search ranking signal for law firms.
A citation, in the context of local SEO, simply refers to a mention of the business Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP). With citations, consistency is the key.
BE AWARE: Because these listings come with tracking phone numbers, this will cause inconsistency with your NAP. To avoid this, tell your representative that you’d like to opt out of call tracking, and simply use your primary (local) office number on the listing instead.
What are these 6 links and 2 citations worth?
It’s hard to say exactly what the return on investment is on these 6 backlinks and 2 citations. What we do know is that these are links and citations that many of this client’s top competitors have, which means if we are to pass them up, we better have a plan for replacing them with equally valuable links and citations.
So, is Lawyers.com Advertising Worth It?
That depends. The data here is from just one (1) client and it represents only an investment in a basic listing. The cost per lead was roughly $48.
When we calculate the cost per lead for our clients, we normally see about $42 per lead, after 12-14 months. The advantage of advertising with lawyers.com is speed; you get leads as soon as the ad goes live.
The downside is that, once the ad is turned off, you get zero (0) leads per month.
When you invest in SEO, if you stop paying after 12 or 16 months, you will keep getting leads from your site (though, the total may dwindle over time), and overtime, the cost per lead becomes exponentially cheaper. This is why you always here us SEOs saying annoying (but true) things like, “SEO is a long term investment”.
Again, we would truly appreciate if anyone who has experience advertising on lawyers.com would share in the comments below for the benefit of us all! You can also get a lawyers take on the different review services here.
