Sustainable SEO for modern law firms.

Search engine optimization (SEO) means executing specific web marketing tactics with the express goal of generating traffic from search engines.

For law firms and other for-profit organizations, the goal of SEO is to generate positive business outcomes – most commonly, direct leads that become paying clients.

Simply put, SEO for law firms is marketing for law firms, and the primary marketing channel is search engines, especially Google.

SEO is an effective way for law firms to generate new clients because people who need an attorney often use search engines to research their issues and to find a lawyer who can help.

The honest answer is that I don’t know if you should choose Juris Digital. As an attorney, you understand that every client brings unique goals, preferences, values, and eccentricities. You know that no single attorney or law firm is the right choice for everyone. It’s no different for us.

With that being said, below I’ve sketched out a rubric that ought to help you determine whether a partnership with Juris Digital is the right choice for your firm.

• You are more interested in growing the value of your business over the long term than making a quick buck.
• You understand that SEO is an investment in your firm, not a business expense.
• You share our core values of empathy, honesty, quality, generosity, gratitude, communication, and respect.
• You want a partner who will take the lead and guide your SEO campaign rather than a vendor who must be managed.
• You care more about outcomes than outputs.
• You either have, or are willing to invest in, a system for effectively responding to, qualifying, and closing new leads.
• You are willing to engage with us regularly (if not for extensive amounts of time) to provide critical insights and feedback that we need to maximize the efficacy of your SEO program.
• You understand that our team is made up of true law firm SEO experts. We only care about your success and you take our trusted advice.

If you found yourself nodding in agreement with these points, I hope you’ll reach out to start a discussion about SEO for your law firm with Juris Digital. If not all of these concepts appeal to you, we might not be the right fit, and that’s ok too.

How long it takes before your SEO investment begins to bear fruit depends on the state of your website when we begin. A brand new website will take more time to gain steam than a site with a long history. Generally, SEO takes anywhere from 4 to 6 to 8 to 12 months to begin working. For a more detailed explanation, click here.

Effective SEO campaigns are not cheap. More and more law firms are entering the field every day and that means greater competition. In general, our ongoing SEO programs begin at $2,000 per month. At this cost, we’d be able to produce for a single area of practice in a single market. As the number of practice areas and the competition of the market increases, so do our rates. The majority of our clients are in the $5,000 per month range. Our biggest clients spend $30,000+ for attorney SEO services.

The short answer is, no, you won’t be locked into a contract. But because SEO takes time to bear fruit, we ask that the firms we work with sign a basic agreement committing to a 12-month campaign. This ensures that we get a fair chance to show you an exceptional return. That being said, we understand that sometimes things change and you have to make decisions for your business; we’ll never hold you, hostage, if, for whatever reason, you’re not able to complete the 12-month term. As law firm SEO experts our goal and focus is mutual success. We grow your law firm and you love working with us.

Many of our clients initially came to us because their current website prevented them from achieving the SEO results they were looking for and need advice. If this is the case for you, we’re going to be honest about it and recommend that we re-build your website on our framework. Alternatively, if your current site is solid and simply needs tweaks, new and/or improved content, and backlinks, we’re happy to hit the ground running with it.

[ RELATED: What Makes a Lawyer Website “The Best”? ]

We limit the number of competing law firms with whom we’ll engage within any particular market. Our limited competition policy is intended to balance two important company missions:

1. To ensure fair and effective digital marketing services for every client, and;
2. To help as many law firms as possible grow their reach through digital marketing

The policy is straightforward: No matter the size of your primary market, or your marketing budget, we will never work with more than three competing firms in your area of practice and your market. Specifically:

• If your primary market’s population is less than 500,000 we will take on no more than one competing firm in your market.
• If your primary market’s population is between 500,000 and 2M we will take on no more than two competing firms in your market.
• If your primary market’s population is over 2M we will take on no more than three competing firms in your market.

In general, more content equals more traffic (which equals more leads) and so naturally our potential clients want to understand how much content they’ll receive based on their investment with us.

The short answer is, that the amount of content we recommend will depend on your desired outcomes (your goals), your area of law, and your budget.

So for example, if you tell us that your goal is to get 10 new divorce clients per month from the web within 12 months, our proposal for how much content you need will be based on producing that outcome. We know that divorce and family law lends itself incredibly well to using informational content marketing as a direct lead generation source, and so content will constitute a large portion of our focus.

Next, we need to understand your budget. If your budget is low, then it’s our job to make sure your stated desired outcome is realistic given your budget limitations. Generally, higher budgets mean more content because producing high-performing content is expensive.

At Juris Digital we have a team of 30 plus attorney-writers on our staff, who write hundreds of thousands of words of content for our clients each month. We pay them a fair rate because t’s a serious matter to give people legal information on your website. We know that we can’t be scraping the bottle bottom of the barrel when it comes to writers, and so our content isn’t cheap.

[ RELATED: How Much Should You Pay for Legal Content Writing? ]

But we know – and we help our clients understand – that a single piece of content can transform your business. A single piece of content can drive new clients to your firm who seriously impact your bottom-line growth.

All this to say: The amount of content we will produce for you each month depends on your goals, area of law, and budget.

Your monthly SEO budget pays for the expertise, technology, and time required to execute the work that’s necessary to achieve your desired goals. So what does that mean specifically?

Our team is a group of search marketers who specialize in organic search optimization for law firms. Every person on our team has multiple years of experience in doing the sort of things required to generate new business for your law firm from a search. So we have to pay those people for their expertise.

Effective lawyer SEO also requires continual education and training which we provide our staff to ensure we are always leveled up with the latest best practices and advanced techniques.

SEO also requires specific technology, software, and tools that we need to do competitive research, understand the search landscape for our clients, and most effectively execute our content strategies and our link-building strategies.

Finally, your monthly fee pays for the time – the people hours – required to execute the work that needs to be done to achieve your goals. So that work means everything from:

• Keyword research
• Content strategy development
• Blog content creation
• Website usability analysis
• Website design and graphic design
• Development in WordPress
• Making website changes, additions, and tweaks
• Managing your Google Business profile
• Executing link building campaign
• Publishing and formatting content creating graphics for it, linking it within your site
• Optimizing page titles
• Optimizing URL slugs,
• Optimizing headings
• Drafting new content
• Advertising
• etc.

Those are the three major areas where your investment goes: The expertise, the technology, and the time required to do the things necessary to achieve your goals. During the sales proposal process, we’ll break down for you specifically what portion of your budget goes to which of these areas each and every month.

Whenever we’re redesigning a law firm’s website, our operating principle is to do no harm. Before we do anything we assess the performance of your current website. What pages are most important? What pages get the most traffic? What rankings do you have for what specific keywords?

Only once that assessment is complete will we create our new website strategy with the understanding that – first and foremost – we won’t make any changes that will have a potentially negative impact on what’s already working well.

Now, no one can guarantee that you won’t see dips in rankings for certain pages and keywords once your new site is launched, but we do everything we can to prevent that. I would say that in 95% of cases, we not only maintain the performance of your most important pages, we actually see an improvement upon the launch of the new site.

[ RELATED: Check Out Our Portfolio of Law Firm Websites ]

It makes sense that law firms who are looking to grow their practice are interested in whether they can bring in new clients from locations beyond their primary market. The answer to whether SEO makes it possible for your law firm to bring in clients from locations where you don’t have a physical office is, yes, but with limitations.

Let’s look at exactly where the opportunity is for lawyers to bring in clients from locations where they don’t have a physical location using SEO.

The red results highlighted in red are paid ads. The ones highlighted in blue are Google Maps results. The results highlighted in green are traditional organic results.

When someone conducts a search for attorney’s in Google or Bing – say they search something like personal injury lawyer, or best DUI attorney or divorce attorneys near me, 10 times out 10 the first results on that search result page are ads (local service ads and PPC ads). In other words, NOT SEO.

Underneath the ads, you get Google map results (ie. the map-pack). You cannot show up in Google Map results if you don’t have a physical office in the city that that person is searching from. So, if you don’t have a Google Business Profile – for which a physical office is required – then no, you are not going to be able to rank in those set of search results.

Below the map pack is the traditional organic results. This is where you absolutely can rank in organic search results even if you don’t have an office in the relevant city. However, there is one big limitation here: After the ads and then the map pack, there are very few clicks left for the traditional organic results for these types of keywords.

[ RELATED: Click Study: Traditional Organic Results Recieve Less Than 20% of Clicks for Common Lawyer Searches]

Generally, our approach is to dominate your backyard first, which will allow us to understand the size of the total capturable market, and set a benchmark in terms of how close that gets us to your goals. Then once we’ve achieved that, we can turn our attention toward attracting clients from outside of your physical location.

When we begin looking at expanding your reach into places beyond your physical office, we need to look beyond the obvious keywords like DUI lawyer near me or personal injury lawyer dallas. Not everybody who might need a lawyer begins their search like that. A huge portion of folks who might ultimately hire a lawyer begins their search with an informational keyword.

For example, someone who has been in a car accident in Texas might search average car accident settlement. Or someone injured in California might search statute of limitations for personal injury claims California. By investing in website content optimized for these informational keywords, you can absolutely rank and bring in new leads from all across your state.

At Juris Digital we start by owning your backyard for those obvious, transactional keywords, and we simultaneously deploy content marketing to rank for informational keywords which allow you to be found by folks across your state. This delivers a well-rounded set of leads not from folks in your immediate market but from throughout the state(s) where you practice.

We report to our SEO clients on a monthly basis. Our reports include an analysis of metrics that matter most to you. They are written in plain English and include the following details:

Key Performance Indicators:

• New cases signed
• High-value cases
• Keyword rankings
• Online leads generated (website forms, phone calls, live chats, etc.)
• Google Analytics traffic trends (traffic by source, compared to the previous period, etc.) and Google Search Console trends

Details of Monthly Work Completed

• Details of all content marketing including new content published
• Details of all link building efforts including all-new links placed
• Details of all website and optimization changes

Agenda for Month Ahead

• Details of all initiatives and areas of focus for the coming month

If you’re ready to discuss what an SEO campaign with Juris Digital will look like for your law practice, there are two ways you can reach out:

1. You can complete this short form
2. or you can give us a call at 888-509-8964.Generally, we think the form is the way to go because it means that you won’t have to do things like spell out your email address and website address to the folks who answer our phones, but if you are just a phone person, we get that too.

After we get your basic information you’ll be contacted by Peter Kerlin. Peter will ask you questions about your law firm and your goals and give you the opportunity to ask any questions that you have. Based on that discussion, if it makes sense, we’ll prepare an SEO campaign proposal.

Your proposal will be tailored to the specifics of your firm and your goals. Our director of SEO, Steve King, is involved in every proposal we craft. Once we deliver the proposal to you, we’ll schedule a call to talk through it. Both Peter and Steve will be available on this call to answer your questions.

Once you sign on the dotted line, we don’t waste any time: We get started with the onboarding process and get to work!

At Juris Digital we specialize in SEO for Lawyers. It’s what we’re best at and we hope we can get a shot to help grow your firm.