Ever wonder why you prefer one law firm website design over another?
The answer: Simplicity. Or, in other words, “less visually complex”.
Simplicity in a law firm website doesn’t mean your homepage has to be nothing but white with black text, or extremely minimalistic in the aesthetic.
Rather, simplicity refers to a design which facilitates seamless communication between the eyes and the brain, allowing us to process information quickly and effectively. This 2013 Harvard study taught us that humans generally make a decision on a website design within 1/50th to 1/20th of a second based on the “visual complexity” of the design.
Below is a perfect example of how use of white space and typography can completely alter the emotion that a word evokes:
Despite being the same word, our minds react differently to the version on the left than the one on the right.
Again, this doesn’t mean that your website’s homepage must be nothing but a white background with black text. Rather, I’m suggesting that you simplify the “clutter” (which evokes feelings of anxiety and stress), using enough space to help the user gather what is being communicated within the content and aesthetic of the page.
The whole idea of “web experience” is not to make the viewer feel “trapped” or “run away” but to feel comfortable enough to read your content and find out what your law firm is about. The attorney-client relationships require a certain level of trust and comfort, and you want to evoke those feeling with your website’s design. White space can help achieve just that.
If you invest in content marketing (articles, blog posts, videos, infographics, etc.) it is likely that the majority of your site’s visitors are interested in learning something. That’s why at Juris Digital we prefer simple design places our best content at the forefront of our client’s websites.
When a design is stuffed with decorative, flashy, blinking, moving, bright colored icons or elements, it’s can be easy for the user to become distracted from the task of navigating the site to find what they are looking for.
Who doesn’t want more conversions, right?! At Juris Digital we have simplified the structure of a law firm homepage into four parts:
Web design and conversion optimization go hand in hand. A user is expecting to do something on your website, to take some sort of action. It’s our job to create a simple flow to help the user accomplish that goal.
We generally suggest that a law firm website’s primary navigation include no more than six parent links. This should include Home and Contact links. You don’t need excessive links to complicate or clutter a navigation system. How is this done?
Simple Navigation:
Overly Complex Navigation:
We loooove fast load times. Simplistic design normally correlates with page speed, and page speed normally correlates with websites that people love. Elements such as image borders, drop shadows, extra illustrative images, big images, image calls, video embeds, social share buttons, parallax scrolling, giant background images, all increase page load times. Most web design companies add this “flare”, which commonly accomplishes nothing but slowing down the site’s page load times.
Just remember your homepage is often your law firm’s first impression. Strive for simple, elegant design which evokes the emotions you want your clients to feel.
Whether you’re using WordPress, HubSpot or Webflow it may be time to seriously consider how your site is designed to attract ideal clients.
Today I was doing some research on legal content writing providers and I came across a company called Lexicon Legal Content.
The first thing I noticed is that in their homepage title tag the company makes this claim:
As both attorneys and legal marketing professionals know, claiming that you are the “best” in your marketing materials is, at best, misleading, and at worst could result in disciplinary action by state bar associations.
But, I thought, perhaps there is some independent, trusted source that has actually reviewed legal content providers and concluded that Lexicon Legal is in fact the “#1 best rated” legal content provider. So I poked around.
The first thing I did was put lexiconlegalcontent.com into Ahrefs to see what websites link to them, my thought process being that this would be a quick way to find any sources that mention Lexicon Legal Content as the “best” legal content writing service. The first thing I found was this post from AttorneyatLawMagazine.com:
I noticed that that posting was part of a collection of posts categorized underAttorneyatLawMagazine.com’s “Legal Vendor Authorities”:
Ok, soAttorneyatLawMagazine.com rates legal vendors that they consider to be the “best” and writes posts about them on their website. Perhaps this is what Lexicon Legal is referring to when they call themselves the “best” legal content writers? Maybe.
This begs the question, how doesAttorneyatLawMagazine.com come up with their list of “best” legal vendors? Well, on their best legal vendors page they state the following:
If you are a legal vendor and you don’t see your industry above, please reach out and we can look into adding the industry. Then we can vet your company to see if you are a good representation for your specific industry. If you do see your industry above and it is not filled, please reach out and we can vet your company!
Ok, so the assumption here is that, at some point, someone from Lexicon Legal Content reached out to AttorneyatLawMagazine.com and asked to be vetted for inclusion on their best legal content vendors page.
So, I clicked the “reach out” link to see what that process might have looked like. When I did, I was taken to this page:
As you can see, this page allows you to contact the legal marketing team atAttorneyatLawMagazine.com. What this indicates to me is that the best legal vendors listed byAttorneyatLawMagazine.com are not really based on any sort of unbiased assessment of legal vendors, but rather, are purely a pay-to-play marketing service.
Based on this, I’d conclude thatAttorneyatLawMagazine.com’s rating of Lexicon Legal Content as a “best” vendor is not adequate for Lexicon to be able to refer to themselves as such.
Next, I turned my attention to online reviews of Lexicon Legal Content. Perhaps their claim of being the best legal content writers is based on an overwhelming number of positive, third-party online reviews, I thought.
I first checked the most authoritative and common online review sources: Google, Facebook, and Yelp. As of the time of publishing this post, neither their Facebook page nor their Google Business Profile contained any reviews, positive or otherwise. I did not find a Yelp listing.
I dug deeper in the search results, looking for any third-party sites where I might find reviews of Lexicon Legal Content. I found none.
So ifAttorneyatLawMagazine.com’s designation of Lexicon Legal Content is little more than a pay-to-play nod, and the company has precisely zero customer reviews from trusted online review sites, what is their “best” claim based on? Did they simply make it up to try and stand out in search results? And if so, is that the sort of company you want to trust with your legal content writing?
If not, I hope you’ll consider reaching out to Juris Digital’s legal content writing team instead. We don’t claim to be the best, but we do take a great deal of pride in the awesome responsibility that lawyers and law firms place in the hands of our capable, ethical team. We also have far less than zero real client reviews.
It’s no secret that Google has been continuing to reward bigger law firms and bigger brands with more search visibility. The competition in all search mediums for attorney’s is very stiff and a great example of this is just looking at the costs per click if you do Google Ads.
In 2021, for personal injury attorney’s these clicks can range from costing $20 – $1000+ just to get one click. This also trickles into the organic and local side of the search algorithm that causes some attorney’s and unrepeatable SEO companies to participate in shady tactics. The good news is that Google is getting better every day at catching these goons and is rewarding the legitimately powerful websites.
Simply put, Barnacle SEO is leveraging other websites rankings for your benefit. Basically you want to be anywhere your potential clients are looking for your services, whether it’s your website or someone else’s.
Almost every-time one of your potential clients searches for a keyword, they will be given several options such as:
These are the pay per lead program results that show up. See the example below:
These are the pay per click product Google offers. You will notice these are marked by the word ad.
This is where we find most clicks with local intent go. Getting listed here is free, meaning you won’t pay per click or lead (although competitive).
Below the ads and the local results you typically see local law firms and other websites such as legal directories, award sites, and more.
Barnacle SEO and Share of Search is being listed on each of these websites that you’re able to. So wherever your potential clients are looking, you show up.
No obviously it would be nearly impossible to rank on your competitors website, but there are typically many other options to show up and get listed.
Time and time again I see law firms who participated in shady link building tactics or other manipulative behavior get penalized for trying to game the search engines.
If your company website is your main source of case leads, what would happen if it were to disappear off the search engines tomorrow? Barnacle SEO acts as an insurance policy.
Tracking leads by source is essential to help measure any marketing campaign. If your firm is setup to collect details on exactly where the lead came from you can help justify any investment in these areas.
By having strong visibility on these other properties you will get more calls and click throughs to your firms website.
Sometimes potential clients “shop” around for the right attorney. While doing this they typically visit multiple websites to do their research.
If they see you on Avvo.com when they click on that result and then notice your firm’s website next on the list they are going to be more likely to click on your website since your name seems familiar.
Websites likes Lawyers.com and Avvo.com give a place for clients to leave review for you. If you have a high rating on these sites you will be more likely to get a call.
This is especially helpful when potential clients are researching your name. They will look for customer reviews and ratings across the web. You can learn more about how to get a 10 AVVO rating here.
This question is a bit complicated since it can involve so many aspects of search. That being said there are some things you can do right away to help increase your presence. There are two ways you can go about this. They are:
You can optimize your attorney or law firm profile on the third party websites like Avvo.com and Lawyers.com. The higher you rank the more visibility you will get when potential clients click through to that page.
You can play off of their domain authority and build up your profile page to rank for your desired keywords.
Each of these methods require two very different approaches which I will cover below.
Most searches performed in the attorney landscape will come up with one to three websites that are heavily prevalent in almost all searches. These websites are Avvo.com, Lawyers.com, and Yelp.com. This means that if you were to conduct almost any commercial keyword search for an attorney you would find one to five of these websites listed in the search results.
Now since each of these properties are each independently owned and operated they each have their own algorithm which will dictate who shows up where. To make this simple I have broken down these sites with the most common things you should do on each of them to reach your desired position. If you want more details please feel free to message me directly.
Avvo.com has been a growing player in the legal marketplace for quite some time. AVVO.com typically shows attorneys by geographic area and then rating. Avvo provides a 1-10 rating score you can gain and increase.
If you’re not a 10.0 you likely won’t show up on the first page of results. Even if you reach the coveted 10.0 Superb rating you will also have to continue to be active to stay on top of your competitors. In a nutshell this is what you should do to reach that 10.0 rating on Avvo.com.
Doing these things along with being active in the Avvo community can increase your score. Once you reach the 10.0 position you will be getting more click throughs and traffic from searches that rank above the fold like the example above. If you want a more in depth guide on what to do you can also read my full guide and learn how to get a 10 AVVO rating here.
Lawyers.com and Martindale.com commonly appear in the search results pages. Martindale has a strong search engine that I speculate uses a variety of factors to rank your position. These are the things you can do to stand out on Lawyers.com
It’s no secret that Yelp.com has been growing in popularity. Just because most of their users use it for restaurant reviews does not mean it should be overlooked one bit. Consumers already have confidence in Yelp and with their strong review filtering, their reviews can go a long way in the consumers eyes.
Yelp is also a bit tricky. Their review algorithm is very strong and filters a lot of reviews including legitimate ones. In addition to this you’re not allowed to ask for Yelp Reviews per their terms of service. That being said there are some work arounds you can do to get reviews including logging into your Yelp Business Dashboard and getting the provided Yelp code. If this is visible on your website it’s fine.
You just can’t solicit clients directly and ask them to review you. You also can’t provide any incentive for a review. With Yelp.com there are only three things I look at.
Typically I am hesitant to share this with SEO’s because I have seen some SEO’s using it for evil. The good news is that with Google’s advanced algorithms I feel more and more comfortable everyday that people who try to manipulate this will get caught.
That being said, let’s roll right in. Advanced Barnacle SEO in my eyes weighs much more heavily on traditional organic SEO ranking factors including strong quality link earning. Let’s look at a quick example.
If we know that Google already rewards high quality domains and your law firm already has a profile on that domain, then it should be easier to increase it’s visibility given the domains trust. What you need to do is first identify the websites that are appearing for the search terms you’re most interested in (1 or 2) and optimize your profile page using standard organic SEO best practices around it.
Although you won’t have full control you usually have some control over the elements that appear on your page. Once this is complete you can then build and earn links to your specific profile page. Usually I ask my clients to link to their attorney profile pages from their website and all other attorney pages that allow them to have outgoing links. This will increase your page’s authority and in time will allow your profile on a site like Avvo.com to rank for your desired keyword.
While some people are afraid of this because your visitors will likely also see your competitors you have to realize this can be a good thing. If all your reviews and trust signals across the web are positive towards your firm, then your potential can do their research and they will still pick you. Some of the attorney clients I advise also purchase ad’s on these 3rd party sites to get more visibility. While we have not had luck with lead generation through typical 3rd party Pay Per Click ad services, the impressions will count towards a client selecting your firm.
Is barnacle SEO hard?
Right now surprisingly there is still not a ton of competition in this field. If you take the basic steps I mentioned above you will be ahead of 90% of your competitors. If you want to get more serious about it, talk to an experienced SEO or have your in house team research it in more detail.
How Long Will This Take?
Barnacle SEO is like organic SEO. It’s not a sprint but rather a marathon. If you’re not trying to manipulate the search engines it will take time, but the investment is well worth it.
It’s my opinion that barnacle SEO needs to be a part of every successful law firm internet marketing campaign. Overlooking this now will shoot you in the foot later. Also, given the chances of penalties and other shady tactics out there it’s wise to diversify your investment. Also consider that in this article I only touched on the very basics.
An advanced Barnacle SEO plan can involve creating additional websites with great content that serve a purpose and help users in need. If you can think of a resource that will be of value to people and actually help them the possibilities and ideas to dominate in this space are endless. Remember to focus on training and preparing for the marathon and not just a sprint or you’ll end up back where you started.
Working with law firm clients on their digital media strategies, the question always eventually comes up:
A great question, especially considering that law isn’t exactly a “sexy” social media topic. So normally the question turns from how should we post on social channels to what should we be posting to get the most out of our social channels? Let me give you some guidelines as to what type of things you should be posting and how often you should have self promotion posts.
Before we dig into what you should be posting I want to be clear on the mentality to achieve success on social media channels. Social media has many uses but one that isn’t effective for anything but big brands is the soapbox method.
Too often we see companies only doing self promotion on social channels. We refer to this as the “soapbox” method. This isn’t being social, but rather just making regular announcements, which for some companies is all they want to use their channels for and that’s fine, but you most likely will not increase followers or engagement on your posts taking this approach.
The mindset you will want to adopt to help create a working social presence on any channel is to be social with your topics. So not just using your own promotion, but instead contributing to other discussions/posts outside of your own.
What I mean by “being social” is picking topics that you are interested in and can contribute either a unique thought or fuel a discussion with your followers. This is the most effective way for a company to find their place in the social landscape, and the success of this will help direct your social strategy with what your followers want to see.
Now that you have a social mindset, let’s introduce balancing your social posts with targeted promotion for your firm.
Normally my recommendation for most companies are to have 70% of your posts be informative, entertaining social posts to stir discussion and 30% (or less) promotion.
I normally encourage a certain amount of tact when doing self promotion for lawyers especially, because in many cases their services are used strictly out of need and talking about things like bankruptcy, car accidents, or civil litigation aren’t always the best social posts.
Most people don’t like to advertise their personal issues on social channels so the self promotions have much less engagement than other topics like case discussions or legal issues. After posting regularly for a while you will just find a more natural balance to talk directly about the firm and still maintain social topics to gain followers and regular engagement on your social channels.
Speaking of social channels, sadly they are not all created equal. What you post on Facebook may not engage as many users on Google+ or Twitter, so conquer one channel effectively with your followers and tailor your discussions to your followers on each channel. I know this sounds like a lot of work and IT IS, but to be most effective with your marketing especially socially, you need to take the time to consider your audience’s demands first.
Now for the good part, actually posting. Common questions I get are how often should I be posting or since I’m supposed to be posting more than just law firm news what types of posts should I have?
All great questions and if you have a social media director, they should be able to answer these quickly. I went ahead and broke down both of these topics for you giving you both suggestions for posts and the best time/frequency to make these postings.
Want more? Read out full list of social media tips for lawyers here.
This is a very tough question to ask because it really depends on a bigger question: How many quality social posts can you create? Don’t concern yourself with how often you are posting. The important part is that you are being effective with the posts you are making and taking time to create them.
Some companies can be content machines and put out many good posts weekly and even daily. However, I also do not want to discourage you from posting so if you have something to say to your followers or an interesting topic others might enjoy post it; these are often the best posts. After all, if you find the topic/post engaging and interesting most likely so will your followers/peers.
Statistically there are two ideal times to post content for followers: In the afternoon and in the morning depending on your target audience. As a rule of thumb, if you are targeting your peers or professionals networks post in the morning (7am-11am).
If you are targeting customers or using more entertainment oriented networks do these in the afternoon(1pm-4pm). This will help to maximize your exposure to your follower engagement.
To be most effective with your post times run some tests on different channels, days of the week and times to see what your particular followers are most receptive to.
Obviously I can’t tell you exactly what you need to be posting, but after talking about how your posts shouldn’t be entirely about promoting the firm you might be wondering what you should be posting 70% of on your social channels. Here are some suggestions to help guide social postings for your law firm:
These are just a few places to help guide your posts and shares, but the bottom line is to be SOCIAL, if you are genuinely interested in what you’re posting, most likely so are your followers.
In 2021 there are a lot of different social networks you could be posting on. But just because there are a lot of options does not mean that you should.
Our clients who are the most successful in terms of engagement and brand awareness focus on the channels they’re best at. It could be Youtube, Twitter, Facebook or Tik Tok. But you have to put in the effort.
As I said earlier this can be a lot of work to be genuinely social, but it is important to build a community and followers who are engaging with your posts otherwise you might be just wasting your time on your social channels.
I also wanted to give a quick mention to Bryan Townsend for giving me a reason to create this post and being proactive about socially posting as a lawyer.
Does your law firm take advantage of Google Posts?
The Google My Business dashboard that allows business owners to post updates about their business and have them appear directly in the search results. At the time of this writing there are five different Google Post categories your firm can take advantage of. These include:
There are a few different places where these show up in the search results, depending on where you are looking. Below are a couple of examples:
You will notice that I didn’t quite get the picture formatting right on my first few posts which cause the text to be cut off in the picture.
This feature can be used for a variety of reasons with the options Google My Business provides. By default, you can have the post display as text, text with an image, an event, or an offer or special. The event option allows you to set a date and time and the specials or offers section allows you to link to specific website pages.
Here are a few of the intended uses for Google Posts:
To make your first post, start by logging into your Google My Business dashboard. Once you’re logged in you will want to navigate to the new “posts” option on the right side.
Once you click here you will be given a variety of options and fields to fill out. First, you need to decide what the post will be about. By default you will be given two post options:
Pro Tip: Keep in mind that any image you upload will only show the middle 1/3 of the image in the search results.
Half of the fun with new features is getting to play with them and testing how they will perform in search results. Thankfully the posts also have their own insights where you can see the views and engagements for each post which you can see below.
There are many ways you can take advantage of this new feature. Below are some ideas on how you can use this feature:
This example shows how we’re testing showcasing Awards and reviews to give them, even more, prominence in the search results for potential consumers wanting to contact the firm.
I would love to hear how you’re using this new feature and what benefits it’s brought you. Please let me know in the comments below:
“Why should I hire you?”
Anyone who is responsible for bringing on new clients knows about this bone-chilling question. After all, there are a lot of other lawyers who can do what you do, right?
That’s where client success stories come in.
A well-crafted client success story can answer this question before you even speak to a prospective client.
Furthermore, most law firms won’t publish client success stories (or the ones they do publish are so poorly done that their value is near-nothing) making them a differentiating factor that could win over new clients simply by virtue of having done it.
Our clients often express surprise when they have achieved high search rankings for their main keywords and they are getting solid levels of qualified traffic, but they still aren’t signing up quality cases with consistency. We have found that investing in client success stories is an effective way to solve that problem.
I’m going to walk you through how to create compelling legal client success stories that help you earn more of your best clients. Let’s go.
Before you write a word…
I am going to get into the weeds and give you tactical advice for writing, designing, publishing, and distributing your client success stories.
But first, let’s look at what I consider to be the two “must-haves” for writing effective legal client success stories:
The sure-fire way to make sure your client success stories don’t produce more of the clients you want is to write about cases you don’t actually want.
In his excellent post 3 Steps to Writing Case Studies That Compel Clients to Hire Your Law Firm attorney and entrepreneur Wayne Pollock explains that:
“Compelling case studies are mirrors, not windows[…] When prospective clients learn that another client who’s been in their shoes turned to your firm to help them successfully resolve their legal issues, those prospective clients are going to, naturally, believe your firm can do the same for them. For that reason, your firm’s case studies should strategically spotlight the clients you want to attract.”
This is exceptionally good marketing advice for lawyers. In fact, we just published the results of a focus group that found that specialization is one of the most important factors that folks consider when looking for an attorney.
And what better way to show that you specialize in your prospective client’s matter than by telling them a story about someone you helped who was faced with an issue similar to theirs?
At Juris Digital we are always asking our clients one simple question: What does your ideal client/case look like? We ask this question because we need to know the answer to create content marketing strategies that actually produce the sort of leads our clients want.
Even if you are a young lawyer and perhaps you’ve only worked on a single case that you consider to be your ideal case, you ought to write your client success story about that case, rather than focusing on cases that are a dime a dozen (even if that’s where the bulk of your experience lies).
It’s crucial that you get consent from your client before telling their story. It’s important from an ethical standpoint, obviously – you don’t want to run afoul of the rules.
But getting consent and buy-in from your client is equally important for the efficacy of your final product. In the absence of quotes and anecdotes that come directly from the client, your client success story will fall flat.
From this point forward we are going to assume that you have already chosen the right clients/cases to highlight and that you have received consent and buy-in from your client to tell their story.
Here’s how to take action and produce and distribute effective legal client success stories.
You have chosen which client and case to spotlight. Now you need to find the right angle – you need to choose a single story or narrative that you want to tell.
This is important because the impact of your client’s success story will largely depend on people being able to follow the story.
It may well be the case that your representation of your client was complex and that you achieved wins and overcame adversity at many points along the way. But your client success story isn’t a novel. Don’t confuse your potential clients by telling them 10 different narratives.
Instead, choose the one story you want to tell and hammer it home. This will make for a more compelling client success story that is accessible and comprehensible by your potential clients.
You’ve reached out to your client to get them on board. Now you need to collect interview responses from them that will enrich the story you are telling, and lend the social proof required to sway potential new clients in your direction.
Keep in mind the primary goal of the interview: To collect compelling quotes and anecdotes from the client which enhance the credibility and the ethos of the story.
The key to asking effective interview questions is to keep in mind the concept before, during, after. That is:
The specific questions you ask the client should be crafted on a case-by-case basis and should be informed by the details of their actual experience and by the story that you are telling.
In general, I suggest that you limit your interview to 10 to 15 questions. This is a number that we have found will get you all of the detail you need without overwhelming the client and taking up too much of their time.
Before working with us
During your work with us
After working with us
To be clear, the interview questions that you ask should not be set in stone. Rather, they should be adjusted based on the specifics of each client story that you are telling. However, if you follow the before/during/after format, and ask specific questions that evoke emotional and truthful responses, you’ll be on the right track.
You’ve completed the client interview and you have some terrific pull quotes to enhance your story. Now it’s time to draft your narrative. There will be two parts involved here:
As with so many things, there is no one correct way to write up your client’s story. However, there is one sure-fire way to get it wrong, and that is to make yourself/your law firm the hero of the story, rather than your client.
This may feel counterintuitive. After all, the point of the client success story is to show how awesome you are, right?
The point is to paint a picture for potential new clients of what their life can look like if they hire you. And the best way to do that is to make your client the hero of the story.
Take the following examples:
When Walter White was diagnosed with lung cancer his entire life was turned upside down. He was lost, making destructive choices, and in a constant state of anxiety over how his family would get by if he were to die. In his desperation, he called our law firm, and that decision saved his life. Saul Goodman, Attorney at Law, began investigating the cause of Walt’s lung cancer, and we discovered that the car wash where Walter worked was using a specific, illegal chemical that caused his cancer. Through our hard work and dedication to Walter, we were able to prove that A+ Car Wash was liable for Walter’s cancer. We convinced a jury to award Walter $757,000 in damages; the precise amount he needed to ensure that his family would avoid destitution upon his passing. We are so proud of our work to help this helpless man and his family.
A bit heavy-handed, but you get the point. Here, the law firm paints itself as the hero that saves the day for the client. Your potential new clients aren’t going to be nearly as likely to be inspired to action with this sort of narrative. Why? Because they see themselves reflected in the story you tell, and they don’t want to be seen as the helpless victim.
Let’s try again.
When Walter White was diagnosed with lung cancer his entire life was turned upside down. In the period that followed, he fought cancer with stoic determination, and he made incredible sacrifices to ensure that his family would be able to get by financially, should he succumb. Eventually, Walter decided that he needed a helping hand in his fight to secure his family’s financial future. He felt that there was something amiss with his cancer diagnosis, and he reached out to our law firm to share his thoughts. We listened to Walter’s story and worked with him to investigate the car wash where Walter worked. Together, we found that the car wash was using a specific, illegal chemical that caused his cancer. Because of Walter’s tenacious determination to succeed, and the opportunity he gave us to deploy our experience and insight on his behalf, we were able to prove that A+ Car Wash was liable for Walter’s cancer. Working together we were able to convince a jury to award Walter $757,000 in damages, the precise amount he needed to ensure that his family would avoid destitution upon his passing. We are so proud to have had the opportunity to fight alongside Walter.
In this version, the client is clearly the hero. The quality of the representation by the law firm is no less evident than in the braggy version, but this narrative will be far more compelling to potential new clients because it makes them feel like they will play a leading role in their own story.
You went to all of the trouble to craft great interview questions and get responses from the client. Now it’s time to extract the golden nuggets from the interview and use them to make your story shine.
First and foremost spend some time listening to the client’s interview responses. Internalize their emotions and their words to guide you as you craft the narrative of their story.
Then, look for opportunities to use call and response to highlight the client’s most compelling quotes, while driving the story forward. For example:
The most important attribute of your headline is specificity. The headline needs to convey exactly what the story is about because your potential new clients what to know that your experience is relevant to their situation.
As with the narrative, you also want to make the headline personal and you want the client to be the hero.
Here are a few examples:
Walter White – Father, Husband, and Teacher – Gets Justice After Being Exposed to Cancer-Causing Chemicals
How We Helped a Father, Husband and Teacher Secure His Family’s Financial Future Following Cancer Diagnosis
How a Father, Husband, Teacher and Cancer Survivor Secured His Family’s Financial Future with the Help of Our Firm
In each of these examples, the most important details of the case are made plain, and the client sits at the center of the narrative, as the winner.
The hard part is over! You’ve created a compelling client success story that is going to help you sign more of your best cases. Now, it’s time to get that story published.
The first place to publish the story is on your website. It’s fine to simply post it as a blog post, though if you are working with a digital marketing agency, they may have some more specific ideas in terms of how to organize the story within the hierarchy of your site.
In addition to the page or blog post on your site, you’ll also want to repurpose the content into a variety of formats such as:
Once your client success story is published, it’s time to promote and distribute.
First and foremost, you’ll want to link to the client success story prominently from relevant, traffic-generating pages on your website. For instance, if your client success story is about a case involving exposure to toxic chemicals you’d want to link to it from other pages on your site that address this topic (a practice area page, blog posts, FAQs, etc.)
You’ll also want to link to the client success story from the bio page of the attorneys who worked on the case. This way anyone who is researching specific attorneys will be able to see a real-world example of their work.
Next, share the client success story widely on all of your social media profiles. Even if you don’t have a big following, that’s ok. Simply by having your case study posted to your channels, you’ll improve your digital footprint and maximize the odds that anyone who is investigating your firm on these channels will be swayed to contact you about their case.
Another great way to distribute your client success story is to feature it in your email newsletter (if you have one).
Finally, make sure that you are sharing the client success story with your prospective clients directly. If you are in talks with a potential client, but they haven’t yet signed up with you, shoot them an email with a link to the client success story (or attach a PDF). This will reinforce to them that you have experience in their case type and that you can get them the outcome they are after.
A well-crafted client success story can transform a lurker on your law firm’s website into one of your best clients. If you are already investing in getting eyeballs on your website, an investment in client success stories can push your return to the next level by drastically improving your ability to convince your best clients that you are the right firm to help them.
Interested in creating client success stories for your firm? Let’s talk about it. Reach out to discuss how we can help.
In this post, I’ll walk you step-by-step through a process for strategically implementing FAQ Schema to maximize positive outcomes.
Since around the summer of 2019, Google has been rewarding pages that have FAQ Schema with extra SERP real estate. It looks like this:
By now, much has been written in the SEO world about how FAQ Schema impacts the performance of web pages. Some have found that the feature has a negative impact on clicks. Others have found the opposite.
At Juris Digital, we utilize FAQ Schema for our clients because we believe in making the content we publish as accessible and valuable to the end-user as possible, and we feel that having quick answers to questions right in Google’s search results achieves that aim.
That said, we recognize that when you mark up your pages with FAQ Schema, you are giving the user the opportunity to benefit from your content without ever having to click through to your site. (I would argue that anyone who is actually going to hire you will click through to your site, whether you answer their preliminary questions directly in Google’s SERPs or not, but that’s a different discussion.)
So the question is, if you are going to use FAQ Schema in your website content, how can you implement it in a way that maximizes positive outcomes for your law firm? Glad you asked.
The term “keyword” as it relates to search marketing is somewhat misleading. People don’t use search engines to search keywords. They use search engines to get answers to questions. Even when we don’t format our search as a question, we are still looking for an answer(s).
For example, the primary keyword that we optimized this blog post for is “non-compete agreement texas” (which is not a question). However, we know that people who search that phrase have some specific questions in mind related to Texas non-compete agreements, eg:
Naturally, we are going to address these questions and more on the page itself. But how do we prioritize which question to answer in our FAQ Schema? The answer is, we use Google Search Console data.
How to find what questions to prioritize using Google Search Console data:
Head over to GSC for your site. Click Performance, then Pages, then select the page you are working on, then click Queries. Once you do that, you will have a list of all the keywords that bring in traffic for your page:
As you can see in the screenshot above, this page gets lots of traffic from folks who search someone ambiguous keywords – ie. keywords that don’t tell us specific questions they want to be answered. However, the single keyword that brings in the 4th most clicks to this page is “are non-competes enforceable”:
When I expand my list to the top 100 keywords that bring in traffic to this page, and I do a search for “enforceable” it becomes clear that this is a primary question that people have when they find my page. Indeed, 18 of the top 100 keywords for this page contain the word “enforceable”:
It is abundantly clear that I should answer this question using my first FAQ Schema slot.
Since Google now only shows 2 answers, you only need to identify one more question to prioritize in your FAQ Schema. So, simply repeat the process to find another question to prioritize.
Now that we know exactly what questions we should be answering in our FAQ Schema, we need to present our answers in a way that the user finds highly valuable.
What that means first and foremost is doing your best to actually answer the question. Now, in the legal space, this is especially difficult because few legal queries have a simple black and white/yes or no answer. But that doesn’t mean you can’t try to be as precise and valuable as possible.
In this case, the primary question we are answering is “are non-competes enforceable in Texas”. An example of a less-than-ideal answer to this question would something like:
“The only way to know if your non-compete agreement is enforceable in Texas is to have your agreement and your situation analyzed by a lawyer. CONTACT OUR LAW FIRM NOW.“
While this answer may not be wrong, it’s not going to earn any goodwill or trust with the user, because it doesn’t give them any further insight into whether Texas non-compete agreements are enforceable. In my opinion, a better answer would be:
“While Texas courts tend to favor employee mobility, non-compete agreements can be enforceable in Texas under certain circumstances. There are many factors that come into play. The best way for you to understand whether your non-compete agreement is enforceable is to speak with a qualified attorney about your situation.”
This answer is going to go a long way towards building goodwill with the searcher because it gives a real answer to the question. The trust and goodwill earned by providing a quality answer like that will make it more likely that the searcher decides to click through to the actual website.
The final step in this process is to add a link (or multiple) in your answer to inspire the user to click, thus leaving Google’s search results and entering your website. This is both a technical process (you have to use the correct code without your schema for your links to display) and a creative one (you have to choose an effective page to link to, in addition to using compelling anchor text and link positioning).
Here’s what it looks like to have a link in your FAQ Schema answer:
There are specific characters that must be added when using HTML within your schema markup. Ie. if you just paste your HTML directly into your schema answer, that code will not be validated, and consequently, Google will not display your FAQ schema in search results.
I am not a developer, so I am not qualified to explain how exactly to code the links in your FAQSchema so that they validate. However, our lead developer built a tool that allows your to generate FAQ Schema and automatically formats your HTML so that it validates.
Ok, so now we know how to add links in a way that is technically sound and will enable your schema to validate and be used in search results. Now let’s take it a step further. You want to use links in your answers that you can track. Ie. you want to use unique links so that when you look at your Google Analytics or Google Search Console data, you can know whether people are actually clicking these links, and what (if any) action they take when they do.
To accomplish this, simply use this campaign URL builder tool to generate a unique, parameterized link.
Note: In addition to adding links within your answers, you can also format your answers by using this same process of pasting the full HTML directly into our schema generator. By doing so, you can add elements like bolded headings, structured lists, and paragraph breaks to your answers, rather than them being just large chunks of text. Check it out in the wild!
The other side of the coin here is the creative process of determining 1) what page to link to, 2) where to link from within your answer and, 3) what anchor text to use.
So, when you are deciding what page to link to ask yourself, based on what I know about what the user is looking for, what is the most relevant and useful page that I should link them to? Is it a contact page that has my lead capture form? Or is it a blog post that goes into more detail on their question? Or should I include both, so that people who want to read more can, and people who are ready to contact me can as well?
When you are deciding on the placement of the link, I would encourage you to think beyond just inserting the link as early as possible in the text. Instead, think about the answer that you are providing to the user, and at what point in the answer the user might think to themselves, “ok, what I have read so far is helpful. What should I do next?”. Right at that junction is where you want to insert your link and prompt the user to take the next action.
Finally, when you are deciding on anchor text, make it as relevant to the page that you are linking to as possible. The searcher should be able to accurately guess what sort of page they’ll be taken to by reading the links anchor text. For instance, if you’ve decided to link to your contact page, your anchor text should be something like “speak with a lawyer” or “schedule a consultation“. Alternatively, if you decide to link to a related blog post, you should use anchor text that describes the precise topic of the blog post.
As I was writing this I realized that it’s pretty dense and makes a lot of assumptions about what you already do or don’t know about FAQPage schema. So I made a video of me talking through this process as I actually execute it which I hope makes this more actionable.
In today’s digital world, nearly all advertising for all companies and organizations, including lawyers, is done online. It’s becoming rarer for the majority of lawyers to turn to TV, radio, or billboards, let alone Yellow Pages, to promote themselves anymore.
Instead, most lawyers choose to advertise themselves by maintaining law firm websites, posting content regularly, and perhaps even being involved in social media. In some instances, attorneys may also choose to run paid ads online.
While the advent of the internet has no doubt added convenience and made accessing information instantaneously, so too has it turned the ethics of marketing and advertising on its head.
Today, the ethics surrounding online marketing for attorneys are often muddled by the desire to gain leads and acquire clients. Some of these ethical requirements and missteps have even been so severe that they have been tested in court.
The following seeks to explore the ethical issues in online marketing for attorneys, beginning with a brief history of marketing for attorneys and touching upon common problems in online marketing, proposed limits on online marketing, and general good practices for online marketing for attorneys.
Before the days of the internet, how exactly did attorneys market themselves? And were there any rules for marketing?
Prior to the 1970s, legal marketing was practically banned throughout the United States. In 1976, two lawyers took the chance to advertise themselves despite the risk of penalty from their state bar. While the advertisement was successful, they were indeed reprimanded, which included a six-month suspension.
Ultimately, the case made itself to the Supreme Court, which concluded in Bates v. State Bar of Arizona that truthful advertisement of services was protected under the United States Constitution.
The Supreme Court decision opened the floodgates to legal advertising. Prior to the 2000s, the primary forms of lawyer advertising included newspaper ads, ads placed in local phone books, radio and television ads, and billboards.
In 2021, most law firms maintain their own websites, and legal advertising has reached a whole new level.
As lawyers seek to be competitive, new and potentially unscrupulous tactics have been devised to attract potential clients. Some of the most common problems and ethical issues that are seen with attorney SEO programs, particularly legal advertising, include:
● Claiming to be a specialist or expert. Most states’ bars have rules that prohibit an attorney from claiming to be a specialist or an expert. These rules are in place to prevent false and misleading claims.
● Blurring the lines of the client-attorney relationship. In a world of instant communication, the lines that distinguish the formation of the client-attorney relationship can be blurred. This is especially true when clients ask online questions and lawyers post open responses, often through social media. It is important that online communications contain a disclaimer, and that communications are taken offline as soon as possible.
● Posting deceptive or misleading information. Unfortunately, advertising can often be deceptive. Even something like writing the word “lawyers” when the firm only has one “lawyer” can be misleading.
● Claiming to offer legal services in an unauthorized jurisdiction. In today’s day and age, geo-targeting is an important part of effective online marketing. But lawyers must be wary of promoting themselves in jurisdictions where they are not authorized to practice.
● Making unsubstantiated claims. Using qualifiers like “best” and “most” can be problematic. A law firm should refrain from saying things such as, “The most reputable law firm in…” etc.
● Making unfounded promises or citing victories without qualifying them. Finally, legal marketing may make unfounded promises or talk about legal victories without qualifying them with a statement explaining that an outcome is not guaranteed and that outcomes vary on a case-by-case basis.
Clearly, the ethical issues are myriad, and surely the list above is not inclusive. Other potential issues include online reviews and blurring the line between personal and professional via social media.
Due to the large number of ethical objections that are raised as a result of online marketing, many states’ bars have attempted to place limits on the ways in which attorneys can market themselves online. Some of these proposed limits include the requirement for content to include certain disclosures, the prohibition of client testimonials, the exclusion of any of the law firm’s past results, limits on the use of the word “specialist,” and more. It is important to familiarize yourself with any standards set forth by your state bar.
To not advertise is unthinkable for the majority of law firms and could be extremely harmful to a law firm’s success. Fortunately, ethical advertising is very possible when law firms and lawyers adhere to a set of guidelines and general good practices for online marketing. Some tips for ethical marketing include:
● Apply guidelines to all online activity. If you’re not sure whether or not what you’re doing online is considered advertising, it’s smart to assume it is as an added layer of protection.
● Know the rules. Know the rules for your state bar. The more you know, the more confident you will be in your ability to meet guidelines.
● Be honest. The best way to avoid an ethical issue is to make sure that everything you say online or post on your website is honest. This ranges from the number of years you’ve been practicing to the number of cases you’ve won to the type of law you’re most experienced in and more.
● Work with a reputable and knowledgeable marketing company. Working with a knowledgeable marketing company who is familiar with the laws for your state and is aware of ethical issues in online marketing for attorneys can provide peace of mind.
Finally, remember that everything that you do online has a permanent digital footprint. Before you post any online content, familiarize yourself with ethical issues and ensure your content is in compliance. The best way to avoid a problem is to stay educated and informed.
Back in February 2021, Google rolled out the “About this result” feature on mobile search results. It looks like this and gives the user basic information about any given search result:
As of a few days ago Google has expanded this feature to include information as to why a given webpage ranks for the query. This new feature is denoted with the “Your search & this result” heading.
Here is an example of this feature triggered by a legal-relevant query, that our very own Ashton Goad found in the wild:
As you can see Google is providing the following information as to why this page ranks for the search term “what kind of lawyer should I hire”:
In other words, in order to rank in Google for a specific search, it’s important that you:
None of this is really new information. We know that in order to rank in Google you must produce content that is relevant to specific searches. We know you need to use keywords, related keywords, get links, and localize your information.
However, as SEOs we are always looking for confirmation from Google as to what factors they use to determine where a given page ought to rank for a given query. With this new “Your search & this result” feature, Google is offering transparency into why a certain result ranks for a certain query, and we are all about that.
Have you seen examples of this feature for other legal keywords? We’d love to see what you found in the comments below!
