How content marketing from Juris Digital propelled Vantage Group to 200+ leads per month
Setting your law firm apart requires more than traditional methods in the fast-evolving legal marketing landscape. While many firms understand the importance of an online presence, only some have fully embraced the transformative power of law firm video marketing. This medium offers an unparalleled opportunity to convey your firm’s message and expertise in a compelling, visually engaging manner that resonates with potential clients.
But how do you find the best video production companies? Welcome to your comprehensive guide on video marketing for lawyers. We’ve curated this list with objectivity and years of industry insight. We’re delving deep beyond the surface to identify the best law firm video production agencies. Making an informed decision for your company’s marketing needs is crucial.
At Juris Digital, we have over a decade of experience in legal marketing. Our experience is backed by a track record of creating impactful digital content beyond mere visibility.
Our list isn’t just a random compilation of “best video production companies.” We bypass the typical listings you find in a basic internet search. Instead, we have meticulously selected these companies based on thorough research, industry analysis, and tangible outcomes they have delivered. Our list is a product of our commitment to helping law firms like yours find the perfect video production partner.
Read on to learn more about our top 6 picks for law firm video marketing companies.
Website | Projects | LinkedIn | Contact Information
COLDEA Productions is a video marketing agency that can create brand videos tailored to lawyers and attorneys. They excel at simplifying complex legal services into visually engaging narratives that resonate with your target audiences.
Their approach to video marketing for law firms goes beyond just producing content. They look to weave a story that connects with your audience personally. They help lawyers turn complicated legal jargon into a video that’s informative and desirable to watch. Firms looking to differentiate themselves, especially in highly competitive markets, will find COLDEA Productions an ideal choice.
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Beverly Boy Productions is one of the earliest adopters of video marketing for law firms, with more than 20 years of experience. Their longevity in the industry is a testament to their adaptability and commitment to excellence, making them a trusted name for law firms seeking top-tier video production services.
They specialize in various video production services tailored to the legal industry. Their services include everything from full production crews for comprehensive projects to commercial-ready options designed for broadcast. Their expertise covers a broad spectrum, including client testimonials, law firm overviews, lawyer profiles, and case study videos.
Beverly Boy Productions understands the evolving landscape of technology-driven marketing. Their approach to video production is rooted in a deep understanding of the legal market’s nuances and the critical role of video in reaching out to current and potential clients.
By offering full-scale production capabilities, Beverly Boy Productions can handle projects of varying complexity, ensuring that each video reflects the professionalism, expertise, and branding of the law firm it represents. Whether you’re looking for online commercials or full-scale documentary-style features, Beverly Boy Productions might be just what your firm is looking for.
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Demo Duck has been creating engaging marketing videos since 2011. Initially focusing on explainer video production, they have grown into a dynamic team of marketers, advertisers, writers, animators, designers, editors, directors, and producers. While still widely known as an animated explainer video company, Demo Duck’s expertise extends far beyond. Available services feature various video production styles, including live-action and motion graphics.
They do not specialize in law firm video marketing like other agencies we’ve listed. However, Demo Duck has worked with some notable companies. Their portfolio boasts projects with renowned clients such as GoFundMe, Dropbox, Blue Cross Blue Shield, FEMA, Google, Netflix, Canon, and Geico.
For law firms, hiring Demo Duck means tapping into a decade of storytelling expertise and innovative video production. Whether showcasing your firm’s unique approach to law topics, highlighting client testimonials, or explaining legal services, Demo Duck’s creative team is adept at producing content that informs and connects with its audience on a deeper level.
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Explain Ninja specializes in explainer videos for companies. If your law firm only wants to add this format type to your marketing, Explain Ninja might be a great option. They handle everything from storyboarding and scriptwriting to animation and sound design.
Explain Ninja’s animated videos are designed to attract and engage, helping you make a solid first impression. These videos can also be valuable tools in your website’s digital legal resources section.
Website | Projects | LinkedIn | Contact Information
Verdict Videos offers video production services tailored specifically for the legal sector. Their ‘Day in the Life’ videos are admissible in jury trials. They demonstrate a deep understanding of the legal process and the stringent guidelines for court-admissible content.
Their skill in producing settlement video brochures is another standout service. These 15-20 minute presentations portray a client’s life before and after an incident, addressing liability issues through police reports, accident scene photos, medical reports, and expert witness interviews.
Verdict Videos also offers more general marketing video services, such as animation and trial graphics, translating complex legal matters into clear, visual representations. While their expertise lies in videos for litigation, these can be great marketing tools for your website to showcase why a client should hire your firm over anyone else.
Website | Projects | LinkedIn | Contact Information
BluBlu Studios is a global design-driven animation production company. They craft top-tier animated content for renowned brands. Their work has resulted in numerous mentions and awards, including The One Show, The Telly Awards, Berlin Commercial Awards, W3 Awards, and the German Design Award Winner 2020.
BluBlu Studios’ client list is a testament to their high-end production capabilities, working for prestigious entities such as The Academy, Twitter, The New York Times, Uber, Samsung, Moderna, Universal, Lenovo, Riot Games, Deloitte, L’Occitane, Singapore Airlines, and the Washington Post. Their experience with such a diverse and high-profile clientele speaks to their ability to deliver content that meets the highest quality and creativity standards.
For law firms with the budget and desire to stand out in a crowded market, BluBlu Studios offers a unique opportunity. Whether explaining complex legal concepts, showcasing firm accomplishments, or highlighting client testimonials, BluBlu Studios can significantly elevate a law firm’s digital presence.
Choosing the right video production company is crucial. Law firm video marketing can enhance your online presence and client engagement. However, poorly done videos or ones that offer no benefit to the viewer can send potential clients looking for representation elsewhere. Here are some essential tips to keep in mind when vetting different video production agencies:
By considering these factors and thoroughly vetting a company, you can narrow options for the best video production companies more easily. If you plan to incorporate brand videos into your marketing plan, ensure they align with your ultimate business goals.
This study was originally published in August 2021 and has since be updated for clarity.
We do marketing for law firms. As such, there is nothing more important for us to understand than how people find and hire a lawyer.
We have a ton of data and fancy tools that help with this. But their numbers don’t always tell the whole story. Sometimes, to better understand how people think and why they make the decisions they do, you have to do something crazy: Ask them.
So that’s what we did. We gathered 25 participants and we conducted a good old-fashioned focus group from a specific market. The video below is about 30 minutes long and contains every single response to each question that we asked all of our participants. We suggest you start here, as there are so many great nuggets that ought to get your creative juices flowing:
Next, we’ve distilled all of the responses below so that you can glean quick insights into our findings:
11 of the 25 participants answered that they had hired an attorney before. Here’s how those 11 found the attorney they hired:
A key takeaway here is not to assume that all clients do not define success by the same metrics. Using data like this can help you tailor your marketing efforts to address not just one, but all of your potential clients pain points in your messaging.
An interesting takeaway from this data is that even though many of the participants would ask a friend or a family member, they would also look online as a part of their search to make sure they were hiring the right attorney for them.
“I would start with a broad search and narrow it down from there.”
“I would look up a local attorney online.”
“I’d look for a lawyer who I have seen on billboards and commercials.”
“I would want to know if they give a free consultation.”
“I’d Google names of people that I’ve heard on the radio.”
“I would Google local people and read reviews.”
“I would talk to my accountant/financial advisor to get a recommendation.”
“I would use Nextdoor.com and look at the Florida Bar website.”
“I would use the term lawyer accident injury.”
Notice how prominent Google was. It’s also interesting that some people already have an idea of where to look online. This goes back to our theory of barnacle SEO or share of search. You want to be everywhere your potential clients are looking (if it makes sense in your market/budget).
This one is for SEO nerds. We asked the same question but got a variety of different responses. A few things to highlight here are:
If you have the time, make sure to watch these videos. Search behavior is very interesting. Some people skip the ads, some click on the ads and then click to organic, but the search behavior is different between each person.
Key Takeaway: Don’t make assumptions in your market! Test! Also focus on being everywhere you can 🙂
“I wouldn’t click on Google screened right away because I know those are ads.”
“I would specify car accident lawyer and look at ratings. I’d start with the first entry and realized they had a free consultation.”
“I would check to see how their website looks and how long they have been in business.”
“I would ignore the ads, ignore super lawyers.”
“I noticed the words free and legal.”
“I would want to educate myself on what they do.”
“I immediately noticed the amount of 5-star reviews it has.”
“I would scroll down past the ads.”
Don’t ignore the importance of reviews from these answers 🙂 but while reviews are important for some, other factors may be important for other clients.
Interestingly this aligns with our current data where most of our clients cases are signed from phone calls vs. other electronic methods. Make sure you answer your phone promptly and with a personal touch.
“I don’t like live chat because I know it’s not a real person”
“Before calling I would want assurance that it’s not a call center”
“I would use send a call request function on Google screened”
Was there anything you found especially surprising? What changes would you make to your digital marketing efforts based on these responses? Please let us know in the comments!
If your law firm is looking for a partner to handle your website design and digital marketing, it’s likely that you’ve come across Scorpion.
Scorpion Marketing is one of the longest-standing players in the law firm digital marketing space. It has grown into a sizeable company in part by deploying aggressive sales tactics (at one point sending tablets to potential clients).
Since you’re reading this, perhaps you’re being actively pursued by Scorpion, and maybe you’ve even been treated to a delicious cookie basket (several times a year we are informed by our clients of this solicitude 🙂 ).
Because of the scope of Scorpion’s reach, our potential clients frequently ask us for our thoughts on the efficacy of their service offerings and our overall assessment of the company.
While it might seem strange for us to be giving free ad space to a competitor, we are content marketing evangelists, and we make it our policy to identify questions our clients ask a lot and then answer them in public right on our website.
We give our clients this advice all the time, so why wouldn’t we follow it ourselves?
My name is Matt Green, and I am the Chief Strategy Officer at Juris Digital. I have spent the last 12 years of my life helping law firms grow their business online. Over that time, I have analyzed hundreds of Scorpion law firm websites and marketing campaigns. In this post, you’ll find 7 of my top insights for law firm owners and legal marketers who are considering working with Scorpion Marketing.
I hope you find this information helpful. If you have more questions about Scorpion, or about our thoughts on the most effective marketing for your law firm, I hope you’ll reach out to start a conversation.
I caught you off guard with that one, didn’t I? This is not a hit piece. Scorpion is a solid company with solid leadership. You pretty much have to be to have been around as long as they’ve been and to have achieved the growth that they’ve achieved.
Over our years in business, we have lost bids to Scorpion, and we have also gained (and kept) clients who weren’t satisfied with their experience with Scorpion.
The fact is, there is no single provider of law firm marketing who is better than the rest. The experience that any given law firm has with any given marketing agency will depend on a myriad of factors. For every dozen clients who we’ve delighted we’ve have one who – for whatever reason – things don’t go as well. Sometimes in the world of B2B services, companies just aren’t a good fit, and that’s ok. Just like other companies, Scorpion Design gets complaints.
If you’ve received a proposal for Scorpion, I hope you’ll pause before signing on and reach out to us as well. We’d be happy to speak with you about your goals, review what Scorpion is proposing, and give your our thoughts for the approach that will be most effective for your law firm.
In the early days, Scorpion niched into legal marketing exclusively. As happens often, their growth ambitions seemingly led them into other industries. On their website, Scorpion states that they help law firms, home service businesses, dentists, franchise businesses, multi-location brands, and other businesses:
At Juris Digital we are often asked why we exclusively work with law firms. After all, folks say, don’t you have to turn down a whole lot of business from companies in other industries? The answer is simple: We don’t believe we can be the best in the world at digital marketing for all types of service businesses. But we know that we can be the best in the world at digital marketing for law firms, so that’s all we do.
I am sure that there are good and valid reasons why Scorpion chose to build their own website content management system (CMS) instead of using an open-source CMS like WordPress. However, I don’t know what those reasons are or what benefits Scorpion’s clients gain from this proprietary website backend.
But I do know that the key upshot that law firms need to understand is this:
Because Scorpion builds its client’s websites on a proprietary CMS you won’t be able to take your website with you. If you decide to stop working with Scorpion. In other words, no one outside of Scorpion’s organization will be able to make meaningful changes to your website. If you move on from Scorpion you are necessarily signing up for a new website.
Again, I am sure there are good reasons why Scorpion operates this way. However, we have worked with several law firms who were frustrated when we informed them that we would be unable to execute our SEO and digital marketing services using Scorpion’s website for the simple reason that we could not access the backend of the website. This is one of the most regular things mentioned in Scorpion marketing reviews. It’s also a reason they can be more flexible on scorpion web design costs.
At Juris Digital we build our law firm websites on WordPress, which is the most popular website CMS in the world, powering nearly 40% of all websites on the web. It’s used by brands like The New York Times, Microsoft, Etsy, and FiveThirtyEight. What this means for our clients, if nothing else, is that they truly own their own website, and can take it with them even if they decide to move on from our services. Click here to check out our portfolio of law firm website built on WordPress.
If you’re considering Scorpion, you’re likely interested in what their SEO capabilities look like. The overarching trend that I’ve seen – through speaking with clients and prospective clients of Scorpion and through my own competitive research of their client’s websites – is that they are prioritizing paid search methods (Google Adwords, social media advertising, display advertising, etc.) over organic search and SEO.
I do believe that for their highest-paying clients, Scorpion does execute aggressive SEO campaigns with local SEO, content marketing, link building, etc. However, it would not at all surprise me if Scorpion has decided that – for law firms with smaller budgets ($1k – $5k per month) – it can be far more profitable managing paid advertising campaigns than it can be with full-service SEO and organic online marketing.
I have seen Scorpion websites rank high in organic search results many times. I have no doubt that they have capable SEO professionals on staff who are able to drive real results with search engine optimization. What I do doubt is that Scorpion is committed to SEO over the long term.
Simply put, SEO is hard, it’s time-consuming, and there are no shortcuts. If Scorpion has made the decision that it can be more profitable by focusing more and more on paid advertising over organic marketing, I would expect its interest and investment in the latter to dwindle.
At Juris Digital we are committed to SEO for our law firm clients. While we certainly advise our clients to pair SEO with paid search marketing (PPC and Local Service Ads) when appropriate, we generally believe that SEO creates long-term value and so should never be fully neglected in favor of paid advertising that produces little residual value.
This is probably the most consistent feedback we have heard from Scorpion clients: That they don’t know exactly how much of their total investment with Scorpion is going towards actual ad spend vs. what they are paying Scorpion for its services.
Our understanding is that Scorpion makes little or no distinction between what you pay them vs. what you are paying the various ad platforms they use (Google Ads, Facebook Ads, etc.). Some clients find this frustrating, especially when they aren’t necessarily satisfied with the results from their paid ad campaigns and want to understand exactly what they are spending on ads compared to what they are paying Scorpion for managing those campaigns.
At Juris Digital it’s our policy to only bill our clients for our services. This means that we don’t pay advertisers directly out of the retainer our clients pay us. Instead, our clients pay the advertiser separately, which means they always understand exactly how much they spend on paid ads.
I mentioned earlier that Scorpion routinely sends out cookie baskets to try and poach our clients. Our clients have been sent iPads loaded up with video testimonials from Scorpion clients. We’ve also known Scorpion to send Montblanc pens to prospective clients, which can cost upwards of $500 apiece.
In addition to spending big on outbound sales, the company is also aggressive with acquisitions of both competing and industry-adjacent companies. A quick Google search reveals that the company has acquired 3 marketing agencies and an SEO software company in the last few years, and that’s just the deals they’ve made public by issuing press releases.
Let me be clear: There is nothing wrong with any of this. Scorpion is an ambitious company that invests aggressively in its own growth.
At Juris Digital we value growth as well, but these sorts of tactics don’t align with our ethos. We rely almost exclusively on inbound marketing and word of mouth to earn clients because that’s the sort of marketing we believe in, and it’s the sort of marketing we do for our clients. We are also conscious of our client-to-employee ratio. While we embrace automation where it makes sense, we fundamentally believe that exceptional marketing requires time and attention from creative and strategic human beings. For this reason, we prioritize investing in our team while working towards sustainable growth, which keeps the interests of our existing clients at the forefront.
Scorpion Marketing is not the right choice for every law firm; neither are we! No single agency is the right choice for every law firm.
We believe there is a lot that Scorpion does well, and we know that many firms have a positive experience with them and see solid results. However, we have also worked with many law firms that did not have a positive experience with Scorpion for various reasons, some of which I’ve recapped here.
Whether or not Scorpion is the right choice for your law firm depends on what you value, both in terms of client experience and in terms of marketing strategy. At Juris Digital, we are evangelists of holistic, organic search marketing because it’s what we know, it’s what we do best, and it’s what we believe adds the most long-term value for our clients.
Scorpion’s approach here tends to be different. Scorpion bets more on paid advertising on the big tech platforms, and they tend to put less emphasis, in general, on organic lead generation channels, particularly for law firms with smaller budgets.
At Juris Digital everything we do is driven by our core values: Empathy, Honesty, Quality, Generosity, Gratitude, Communication, and Respect. We believe in building relationships with our clients that are rooted in trust and a shared commitment to a common goal. If that sounds like the sort of company you’d like to do business with, I hope you’ll reach out to discuss your law firm’s marketing.
In the ever-evolving world of law firm marketing, standing out is about digging deep to rise above all the noise. In more tangible terms, it’s about striking the right chord with your audience through strategic content marketing.
The challenge, however, lies in finding an agency whose creative ideas align with your vision. Scrolling through pages of search results isn’t necessarily a practical use of your time to find the best content marketing companies.
That’s why we’ve prepared a quick resource to help you narrow your options for content marketing agencies that can help grow your firm’s business.
At Juris Digital, we have over a decade of experience working in legal marketing. We aren’t just another agency in the search results; we specialize in content marketing for law firms with a heavy emphasis on SEO. Our team has written thousands of practice pages and blogs while scrutinizing thousands more. We know how to create content that converts and helps lawyers connect with the potential clients they’re seeking.
Our rigorous selection process for this list veers away from the predictable path of an online search for the “best content marketing companies.” Our choices are the product of exhaustive research, in-depth case studies, and proven industry performance.
Now, let’s explore our top picks for agencies that tackle legal content marketing with an iron fist.
Company Website | LinkedIn | Contact Info
Cofounded by an attorney, NOMOS Marketing stands out with its unique blend of legal expertise and innovative content creation. This 50% female-owned, bi-coastal agency prides itself on crafting narratives that resonate with clients and search engines alike, guided by the principle: “We write for people, not search engines.”
Their approach is both human-centric and SEO-savvy. The in-house content team comprises active lawyers who have worked at law firms nationwide. They are committed to creating content that is legally and ethically sound. Clients also have direct access to the agency’s content team so that they can discuss any concerns directly.
NOMOS aims to build credibility and trust through content that informs, empowers, and converts. The result is content that captures attention at all stages of the client journey.
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The Content Bureau is a women-owned agency that excels in creating high-quality B2B content. Law firms catering to business clients might especially be interested in The Content Bureau’s services. They have more than two decades of experience, and most of their staff has been there for at least eight years.
They focus on crafting campaign, industry, and product marketing content for global tech companies, financial businesses, and professional services firms. Their expertise in B2B marketing content is evident in their long-standing relationships with clients, some of whom have engaged their services for over two decades.
Content marketing options include ads, blogs, case studies, ebooks, emails, infographics, web design, and white papers. The Content Bureau’s success is also highlighted by its client loyalty, with many clients hiring them at multiple companies, showcasing the agency’s ability to adapt and grow with their clients’ evolving needs.
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On the Map Marketing is a full-service law firm digital marketing agency with a proven track record in the most competitive U.S. legal markets. Distinguishing themselves from agencies that rely on vanity metrics, their focus is squarely on delivering tangible results. While lead generation is a big part of their business, they do full-service content marketing.
Their marketing services cater to new and established law firm websites, encompassing SEO, design, content writing, and PPC advertising. On the Map Marketing’s decade-long experience has seen them adapt to every shift in the digital marketing landscape, ensuring they offer the most up-to-date strategies and techniques for law firms.
They emphasize the importance of digital marketing in an era where most prospective clients begin their search for legal services online. Recognizing that many law firms lack the tools and knowledge for an effective digital strategy, On the Map Marketing offers education-based consulting and transparent project management to help law firms craft digital marketing strategies that target ideal clients and grow their online presence.
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The Modern Firm is a content marketing agency that provides practical digital solutions for small law firms. With a track record of launching over 1,500 websites, they have a strong understanding of how solo practitioners and small law firms operate. Their legal content marketing services include website design, online marketing, branding, and content writing.
Smaller law firms might have unique needs or lack the budget that some larger marketing agencies require you to spend. Hiring an agency specializing in smaller firms means you can achieve impressive results without the unaffordable minimum spend or complex requirements typical of larger agencies.
The Modern Firm has an undeniable passion for small law firms. They appreciate the challenges and rewards of being in business for themselves and commit to making a real difference by working directly with small law firms. For over two decades, they have been champions for solo practitioners and find their work with these firms impactful and rewarding.
Company Website | LinkedIn | Contact Info
Atrium Digital is a Canadian marketing agency with offices in the United States. One thing that helps them stand out is their unique micro-targeting and multimedia approach to content marketing. This firm specializes in tailoring content for micro-audiences. This hyperfocus is ideal for law firms aiming for specific results to ensure their message resonates with the intended demographic.
This marketing approach is not just focused on reaching an audience; it’s about assisting firms to reach those people who will take action and hire a lawyer. Atrium Digital helps law firms out-communicate their competition and solidify their digital footprint by producing, customizing, and distributing branded content.
Atrium Digital’s strength lies in its diverse content offerings, which include highly engaging video content, podcasts, and vlogs. The agency excels in multimedia content production, enabling law firms to engage with customers across various platforms.
The firm’s professional team comprises video producers, graphic designers, and artists. They focus on crafting messaging for unique, niche, or distributed target audiences. They develop the content and manage post-production and distribution, tailoring each campaign to specific media and audience needs.
When assessing content marketing agencies, it’s crucial to select one that understands rules and regulations specific to the legal industry. Why? It’s because content marketing for lawyers is very different from marketing for other industries. Here are key considerations and questions to ask during your initial discussions with potential agencies:
By carefully considering these factors and asking the right questions, you can find a content marketing agency that aligns well with your law firm’s goals, understands the legal landscape, and can effectively enhance your online presence and client engagement.
Want more DUI cases for your criminal defense law firm? You’ve clicked on the right article.
I’m here to spill the beans on how to market your services effectively. After a quick Google search on ‘marketing for DUI attorneys’, I realized there’s a lot of generic advice out there. You know, the usual spiel about SEO and being visible online.
But let’s be real – you need more than just a list of tactics. You need a strategy that works, one that’s tailored for DUI attorneys like you. So, let’s dive into the nitty-gritty of how you can attract more clients and make your mark in the competitive world of DUI law. Ready to get started? Let’s roll!
Keywords are at the very heart of an effective attorney SEO campaign. They are the foundation of the entire concept: People need something, they go to Google, they search some words, and they browse the results to find what they need.
So what are those words? What words are most likely to be used by people who could be potential DUI clients?
Transactional keywords are searched by folks who are ready to talk to you about their DUI case. These people are at the bottom of the sales funnel:
They know they need a lawyer, so they search things like:
These keywords are highly competitive. Unless you are a lawyer AND an SEO professional, you will need to hire a competent search marketing agency to get first page Google rankings for these keywords. Below I’ll layout a process for ranking for these bottom-of-funnel DUI lawyer keywords.
Whereas transactional keywords are searched by folks who are ready to talk to a DUI lawyer, informational keywords are searched by folks who want information about DUI laws, the DUI process, penalties, defenses, etc.
The people who search these keywords are generally going to convert into a lead at a lower rate because the intent is more ambiguous. For example, someone who searches “dui penalties in colorado” may be someone who has been charged with DUI in Colorado, OR they may want that information for a myriad of other reasons: They are a student writing a research paper, they are a journalist writing a story, or they are just a curious person.
For this reason, informational keywords tend to less competitive than transactional keywords, which represents an opportunity for your DUI firm to get in front of more people with a smaller time / financial investment.
Most transactional keyword searches for a DUI lawyer trigger Google’s local “pack” of results. This:
In other words, this is what most people see first when they search Google for a DUI lawyer. So clearly, you want your firm to show up here. You can do this by optimizing the heck out of your Google My Business listing. To learn how to do that, read the following articles:
When someone searches for a DUI lawyer on Google, they’ll likely see the local pack results first.
Next, they’ll see traditional Google organic search results. Whereas the local pack results are Google My Business listings, traditional organic search results are webpages:
In my experience, the best way to rank here is with an epic piece of content that explains what folks should be looking for when they consider which DUI lawyer to hire, and puts forth the case for why it’s essential that people charged with a DUI hire an attorney (you) to represent them.
Here are some really solid examples of this sort of content:
And here’s a post to read that will help you understand how to differentiate your content and give it the best possible chance to rank: Improve your rankings by delivering content with unique value →
Now that you’ve published your epic piece of DUI lawyer content, you need to get other sites to link to it. One of the most effective ways to do that is to sponsor local organizations that will link to your site as one of their sponsorship benefits.
Link building is an essential part of effective attorney SEO. Here’s how we find and build sponsorship links at Juris Digital:
The idea here is simple: you give worthy local organizations your money, and they link to your website. Technically, Google says that these sorts of links don’t get counted as positive ranking signals. In practice, Google is wrong. This tweet sums up my thoughts on the matter:
This is an amazing way to get links and local citations (not to mention great PR and brand exposure) that will help your website rank for your primary transactional DUI keywords. Here is an example:
And here are examples of the types of local links and citations that this sort of initiative can generate:
This one is super simple. Search for the main keyword you want to rank for, eg. “dui lawyer denver”. Check out the directory websites that rank well:
Go to each site and figure out how to get your firm listed. Not only will you get a local link and citation, which will help you rank organically, but you’ll also get referral leads directly from these sites. This is a tactic known as barnacle SEO.
Informational DUI keywords are searched by folks who are looking for information about DUI laws and penalties in their state. In order to rank for these keywords you need to do two things: Know the right keywords to rank, and; write expert, authoritative content that delivers real answers.
Here’s a list of informational DUI topics that data tells us to get searched with regularity:
DUI in [State]
Example content: DUI in Virginia – The Basics That You Need to Understand
First DUI in [State]
Example content: First Time DUI in Colorado: Understanding the Penalties
Second DUI in [State]
Example content: Nebraska DUI Laws for a Second Offense
Third DUI in [State]
Example content: Third Offense DUI in NJ
Get DUI Reduced to [lesser charge] in [State]
Example content: Getting a DUI Reduced to Reckless Driving in Illinois
What Happens if You Get a DUI in Another State?
Example content: Out of State DUI – Virginia License Suspension
Underage DUI in [State?]
Example content: The Penalties for Underage DUI in California
This last point is short and sweet: Don’t hire your nephew to write regurgitated crap on the topics above and expect it to rank in Google.
Google rewards expert, authoritative content, especially for your money your life (YMYL) topics. Take the time to write this stuff yourself. Think about what information the user really needs when they search these topics and deliver better answers than anyone else.
If you combine expert content with the link-building tactics mentioned above, you will rank for these informational DUI keywords. Here are some additional resources that will help you write awesome informational legal content:
Does this sound like a lot of work? Well, it is. It’s not magic, you don’t have to be an “SEO ninja”, but you do have to have the time and knowledge to do it well. If you don’t, we are ready to help.
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In today’s digital age, podcasts and video recordings have emerged as a powerful medium for lawyers to connect with their audience.
That’s why I’m excited to introduce our latest guide on the best podcast equipment for attorneys.
In this comprehensive guide, I will walk you through the top choices in podcasting gear, ensuring that your message is delivered with clarity and professionalism. And I’ll keep it on a budget – under $600 all in for a professional setup.
Every attorney should consider having a podcast setup, not only for the marketing and brand exposure it offers but also for the ease of creating FAQ videos to engage and inform your ideal clients. Plus, being able to quickly record videos takes the stress and expense out of the old ways to do it.
I’ve come a long way since 2020 when I first started The Lawyer Mastermind Podcast out of Covid where I started with my iMac’s built-in camera and audio (it’s a bit cringey now).
Now lets dive right in!
Audio-Technica ATR2100x-USB Cardioid Dynamic Microphone
Estimated Price: $70.00
The Audio-Technica ATR2100x-USB Cardioid Dynamic Microphone is an ideal choice for attorneys seeking a straightforward, user-friendly podcasting solution. Its plug-and-play functionality, enabled by both USB and XLR outputs, allows for seamless integration with a computer or a mixer, making it highly accessible for those who are not technically inclined. This feature is particularly beneficial for busy legal professionals who need a reliable and easy-to-set-up audio solution.
Additionally, the cardioid dynamic nature of the microphone ensures that it captures sound predominantly from the front, significantly reducing background noise. This leads to clear and professional audio quality, which is crucial for attorneys who require crisp and intelligible recordings for podcasts, client communications, or other professional engagements. The inclusion of essential accessories like cables and a desk stand further simplifies the setup process, making it an excellent choice for attorneys looking for an uncomplicated yet effective podcasting microphone.
Estimated Price: $20.00
The QuadCast Boom Arm offers a user-friendly and efficient solution for attorneys looking to enhance their podcasting or video conferencing setup.
This boom arm is noted for its affordability and practicality, especially for those who are not technically inclined. It provides ample flexibility, allowing easy movement of the microphone to desired positions. The arm’s smooth vertical movement is particularly beneficial for adjusting the mic to the right height and angle during recordings or calls.
One of the standout features of the QuadCast Boom Arm is its C-clamp design, which enables easy installation on table edges. This design simplifies the setup process, making it more accessible for attorneys who may not have the time or expertise to deal with complicated equipment.
The arm’s functionality in providing a hands-free experience and keeping the desk free from cables aligns well with the professional needs of legal practitioners, who often require a tidy and efficient workspace for their recordings and virtual meetings.
Estimated Price: $179
The El Gato Key Light is a top choice for attorneys looking to enhance their virtual presence, whether for podcasting, video conferencing, or streaming. This lighting solution is revered for its high-quality output and user-friendly features. It produces a well-diffused light that enhances video quality, crucial for maintaining a professional appearance online.
The Key Light boasts adjustable brightness up to 2800 Lumens and a color temperature range of 2900K to 7000K, allowing for customization to suit different environments and preferences. Ease of use is a significant advantage of the El Gato Key Light, making it ideal for attorneys who may not be technically inclined. It offers wireless management, allowing users to adjust brightness and color temperature from a PC via the Elgato Control Center app.
This feature eliminates the need to manually adjust the light, saving time and effort. Additionally, the setup is straightforward, with a quick assembly and a clamp system for mounting the light to a desk or table. The Key Light also incorporates superior diffusion, preventing harsh light and reducing strain during extended use.
Notably, it produces low heat compared to typical soft box lights, ensuring comfort during long streaming or recording sessions. Overall, the El Gato Key Light is an excellent investment for attorneys seeking a reliable, high-quality lighting solution that is easy to set up and operate, enhancing their professional presence in the digital space.
Estimated Price: $175.00
The Lumina 4K Cam is a top-notch webcam that’s perfect for attorneys who need to look and sound professional during video calls, podcasts, or when streaming. This webcam stands out for its superb image quality, similar to what you’d get from a fancy DSLR camera.
It’s also really easy to carry around because of its compact and lightweight design, and it comes in four stylish colors to match your workspace. What’s great is that it’s not just about good looks; the Lumina 4K Cam is packed with smart features. It automatically adjusts colors to make you look your best, even if the lighting in your room isn’t great.
Plus, it has this cool feature that keeps you perfectly framed in the video, so you’re always the center of attention. Setting up the Lumina 4K Cam is a breeze, which is great news for busy attorneys who don’t want to fuss with complicated tech stuff.
You can easily attach it to your laptop or monitor, and it even comes with a cover for when you’re not using it, keeping your privacy in check. The Lumina 4K Cam lets you control a bunch of settings through an app, like how bright or colorful the video is. This means you can tweak things to look just right for your calls or recordings.
The camera also has some really good microphones built in, which means you’ll sound clear and crisp without any annoying background noise when traveling with your laptop or if you don’t have the budget to buy the microphone. Overall, the Lumina 4K Cam is a fantastic choice for attorneys who need a reliable, easy-to-use webcam that delivers both great video and audio quality.
Estimated Price: $85.00
The PlexiCam Pro mount is a game-changer for attorneys like me who often participate in video calls. It’s a simple, yet ingenious device that lets you mount your webcam at the perfect eye level. This means while I’m looking at my screen, I can also make eye contact with whoever I’m speaking to, without my eyes appearing to be looking above or below the camera.
This setup has significantly improved my virtual interactions, making them more engaging and professional. What’s also impressive is the personal touch of the company. After my purchase, the CEO reached out, which I found to be a remarkable customer service gesture.
It’s a worthwhile investment for the level of professionalism and convenience it brings to video conferencing. For attorneys who need to maintain a polished appearance in virtual meetings or court sessions, the PlexiCam Pro is an excellent choice.
For those who are passionate about podcasting, the sky’s the limit when it comes to equipment.
Whether you’re considering building a full studio or investing in top-notch gear, there are endless possibilities to enhance your podcasting experience.
I’m always experimenting with new tools and techniques to elevate my own podcast, and I believe the recommendations I’ve shared here are an excellent foundation for any aspiring podcaster.
Moreover, if you’re an attorney with a compelling topic idea and interested in being featured on a podcast, I’d love to hear from you. Please reach out to me at casey[at]jurisdigital.com, and we might just get you on the Lawyer Mastermind Podcast.
Your insights could be incredibly valuable to our audience, and it’s a fantastic opportunity to share your expertise.
Keyword research is figuring out the exact words and phrases your potential clients type into search engines.
It’s important because with the right strategy it helps your website content appear higher on search results pages. That way, more people find your firm above other firms in your market.
But there are some inherent problems with it (mostly on the data side).
When you think of someone doing SEO do you imagine a nerd (like myself) behind a computer typing away?
You’re not alone.
In fact, many self proclaimed SEO experts come from technical backgrounds. And the problem I see time and time again is I find people who are technically great at SEO… but just bad at actual marketing.
And why does that matter? The purpose is to rank right?
Wrong.
The purpose is to sign more of your better cases (for most of our clients. Your smart goal may be different and that’s ok!)
And ranking high is only half of the battle. The other half and arguably the more important half is understanding your customers needs, pain points, and how you will respond to those.
I think the purpose of keyword research is to not only find the right keywords that will drive business to your firm, but also to go deep and learn how you can become the go to expert in your market. If you a great job you will build topical authority and be able to generate more of the higher value cases you desire.
Good keyword research is the foundation to the success for any effective SEO strategy.
However, all humans are different and therefore may search for the same thing differently online. However normally when a searcher is looking for something they are trying to solve a problem or looking for an answer.
In fact, if someone that resides in Los Angeles, they may type a number of different things to find a personal injury attorney. Here are some examples of these variants.
Did you know that there are over 1.275 billion unique queries every day on Google and 15% of all Google searches have never been seen before?
Here is how we do keyword research at Juris Digital. This process will give you an idea of what we do for our bespoke local mastery clients.
Think of seed keywords like the main ideas for a personal injury lawyer’s website.
It’s like having a few big signs that point you in the right direction. For a personal injury lawyer, these main ideas or seed keywords could be the big topics they deal with. Examples include:
You want to make this list as exhaustive as possible.
One of the unique ways we do this is for our clients is to access their Google Search Console Data, Callrail Data, and CRM. We feed these reports using advanced data analysis to truly understand the questions potential clients have already asked the firm and data mine the topics they talk about.
We love data – but we love it more when it comes from your ideal customers mouths 🙂
Go to Ahrefs.com and click on keyword explorer, enter your seed keywords and hit the orange search button.
Next, you will want to click on Matching Terms on the left. Select phrase match and you will be given a long list of keywords. Millions in fact.
But here is where we start breaking things down.
The devil is in the details here and you can use the exclude function to remove keywords that are not matches for your smart goals.
Use the include filter to only include keywords that match ones important to you (accident, injury + lawyer, etc.)
Make sure to take advantage of searches and use an asterisk to include plural keywords.
Example: Attorney* will show results for Attorney & Attorneys.
Pro Tip: Use law*, attorn* to include lawyer, lawyers, law firm, attorney, attorneys, etc.
After you have spent some time with the filters you need to narrow down the list to keywords that you think your potential clients will actually be searching.
Don’t limit yourself to just the head keywords like:
Instead also include long tail keywords and tool the content on those pages for where they are at in the buyers journey.
After you are confident you have a great list – export the data as a CSV.
Keyword tools provide a lot of data, but who else has access to this exact same data? Every other SEO on the planet that pays for a subscription. That’s why we like to dive deeper before we consolidate this into topic clusters for our website.
Get Search Console Data
Go to Queries > Max Rows > Export to get a list of keywords your site already ranks for.
This is the minimum data set we recommend working with. But we will talk about ways you can go deeper later in this article which will help you become the true topical authority.
Topic clusters for SEO in the context of a criminal defense law firm work by organizing the firm’s website content into related groups, focusing on various aspects of criminal defense law.
Think of your law firm’s website like a textbook on criminal defense. In this textbook, each chapter (or cluster) covers a different area of criminal defense law.
The main chapter, or the “pillar content,” is a comprehensive page on the website that provides a broad overview of criminal defense services. For example, it could be a detailed guide titled “Understanding Criminal Defense.” Around this main chapter, you then create smaller, related articles or blog posts.
These could be about specific types of criminal cases the firm handles, like DUI defense, assault charges, drug offenses, white-collar crimes, etc.
Each of these smaller pieces is like a section in the chapter, diving into specific details of each case type. They all link back to the main pillar content and to each other.
This setup helps search engines understand that your main pillar content is a thorough and authoritative source on criminal defense law. It’s as if you’re showing that your main chapter covers everything one needs to know about criminal defense because it’s connected to all these specific, related topics.
By using this method, the law firm’s website becomes more organized and easier for search engines to understand. It also helps demonstrate the firm’s expertise in various areas of criminal defense, which can improve the website’s visibility in search results.
It’s important to use topic clusters to make sure you don’t build competing pages on your firms website.
How to Create Topic Clusters
There are many ways to create topic clusters. If you were only working with one data source like Ahrefs you can actually buy a subscription.
However, since we take a multiple data source approach we have to use our proprietary in house tools to process massive amounts of data.
But for the sake of this you can refine ChatGPT to help get you there. Start off with your data sources and GPT4 Professional. From here you will use this prompt (or something similar) and upload your data.
*Note you may hit the token limit so make sure to limit the size of your list.
Once you have passed this step you should have everything you need to start with a content plan.
These keywords, grouped based on their search intent and relevance, provide a roadmap for creating diverse but interconnected content.
This approach ensures comprehensive coverage of the theme, enhancing SEO and user engagement.
Each piece of content, whether a blog post, video, or infographic, addresses a specific keyword in the cluster, but collectively, they work together to strengthen the authority of your website on the central theme. This method not only attracts a targeted audience but also establishes your brand as a thought leader in your market.
If you’re looking for additional keyword research tactics to use, look no further.
Have you ever started to Google something and not pressed enter just to read the results that pop up? This is Google auto suggest. Google Auto Suggest is a very powerful tool to see potential searches clients may be already looking for.
Wait… How can you do keyword research offline? If you employ a staff or a front desk person they might be a treasure trove of information.
I like to interview these people and find out exactly what questions people are asking them most commonly. If they’re having to answer the same questions over and over it might benefit you to put on your website as a content resource.
I had success doing this recently by interviewing the paralegals in the firm. They tend to answer the most case related questions and they were able to provide a lot of valuable insight and good content ideas without leaving the office or going online.
This one here is a bit of a slippery slope. While it’s always good to know what your competition is doing you must not assume that they’re being successful doing it. We just can’t know with complete certainty. That being said its a good idea to review competitor websites within your area and outside of your area of direct competition. Look for things that are different and see what content they produce that’s actually useful.
One way to do this is to review the practice area pages they have and see if they have subtopics on these pages. In addition you can scour their blog to see if they’re creating just catchy click bait headlines like “5 reasons to hire a PI attorney” (ugh boring), or something better.
PRO Tip: You can also plug your competitors website into SEMRush or Ahrefs and see what keywords they already rank for.
The goal of most keyword research should be to figure out how you can sign more of your better cases. And even though this is one way way you can do it, it’s not the only way. This approach is good for many law firms, but not for all.
If you keep in mind that all SEO should be about being better than everyone else then you will be successful. If you try to take shortcuts it may not work out so well for you in the long turn.
If you’re looking for help on how to do keyword research differently than all of the rest of the agencies out there and sign more of your higher value cases, give Juris a call.
We pride ourselves in understanding your goals and tailoring custom digital marketing campaigns so you can focus on doing the things you love at your firm.
If you invest in content marketing and SEO it’s likely that blog posts constitute a huge percentage of your website’s total traffic. We often see blog posts making up 70% or more of our client’s total organic search traffic!
Yet law firms rarely create custom, intentional designs for their blog posts. Instead, the bulk of design resources is directed at places like the homepage, attorney bio pages, case results pages, etc. And while these pages are certainly important they generally don’t come close to blog posts in terms of total pageviews.
Because such an outsized percentage of law firm traffic goes to blog posts, we have an opportunity to drastically impact the website’s performance by improving the design of a single page – the blog post.
What follows is a comprehensive guide that will help you make your legal blog post design more effective. By using this guide to refine your blog post design you can achieve better SEO (higher rankings and more traffic) and deliver a better user experience (improved brand perception and ultimately, more conversions).
This post contains over 4k words that will help you create a more effective design for your law blog posts. But to be honest, exploring the links below is probably a more valuable way for you to learn what makes a great blog design than reading this guide word for word.
Check out these examples of really well-done law firm blog post designs:
The most essential design element of law firm blog posts is typography. If the goal of your blog posts is to help folks better comprehend their legal issue, the most fundamental way to achieve that is by presenting the information in a highly readable way. The quality of your typography will largely determine the readability and thus the usefulness of your content.
Most likely your website already utilizes specific typefaces and so you aren’t going to choose an entirely different typeface for your blog posts. Typically, website developers (and some designers) advise using the fewest typefaces possible. The primary reason is that typefaces tend to be a heavy asset for browsers to render, and so fewer fonts generally mean a faster loading website.
My basic rules for typefaces for law firm blog posts are as follows:
To my eye, the typeface used in the first example – Inter – is far easier to read than the second example, Josefin Sans. While Josefine Sans may be an interesting choice to use for headings or other highly styled text, it’s not a good choice for paragraph text.
Regardless of how readable your typeface is, your blog content may lack readability if you don’t get the spacing right. When I think about typography spacing for law firm blogs I focus most on two elements: Line height and paragraph spacing.
Line height refers to the distance between lines of text. In school when you would double-space your Word documents to meet the minimum page requirement, what you were doing was increasing the line height.
The ideal line height for text is will vary slightly based on the size of the text. For instance, large text generally requires more line height, whereas smaller text doesn’t require as much spacing.
For paragraph text – which should normally be either 16 or 18px in size – I like to use a line height of between 180% and 200%. The screenshots below show paragraph text that is 18px in size. The first image shows the line height set at 120% and the second shows it at 200%. Which would you rather read?
In my personal opinion, it’s far preferable to go with too much line height than not enough. However, if you tend to prefer less line height, my suggestion for maintaining readability is that you go no lower than 160%.
Paragraph spacing refers to the distance between paragraphs. More specifically, it refers to the amount of margin that is added to the bottom of the paragraph, which creates space between the end of a paragraph and the following element. As with line height, you want to be sure that your paragraphs have adequate space so that the reader can easily distinguish one from the next, and so that eye is not subjected to a “wall of text”.
On the web, paragraph spacing is achieved by adding a bottom margin to paragraph elements. My preference is for the bottom margin of paragraphs to be set at 2 times the font size. So if your font is 16px, your paragraph spacing ought to be 32px.
The examples below display a few paragraphs of text from a law firm blog. The first has no additional margin added. The second has 32px of margin added. Which would you prefer to read?
As you can see, simply adding a small amount of margin to the bottom of your paragraphs can make a big difference to the readability of your blog’s content.
More on spacing: In addition to the proper spacing of your paragraphs you also want to make sure that your headings and your structured lists are spaced properly. For headings, this means having the same about of space between the heading and the following paragraph as between the preceding paragraph and the heading. For lists, this means having adequate space between list items and having the same spacing above and below the list.
The purpose of headings is to organize your law blogs into subsections of a parent topic. Because headings are such an essential part of the information you are presenting, it’s crucial that they be styled in a way that is intuitive and allows the user to scan the post for the information most pertinent to them.
There are a few decisions that must be made with regard to the styling of heading tags:
In general, the size of your headings should go in descending order, with your H1 being the largest:
In the case of this blog, we made the decision to use a single typeface and color for each heading, with the only difference being the size. For each heading, we added 32px of margin to the bottom so that there is a nice bit of spacing between the heading had the following paragraph.
It is not at all uncommon to see headings styled with a different typeface, color, and font weight than the paragraph text. Just be sure to use common sense and style your headings in a way that keeps readability – and indeed “scanability” – as the primary goal.
One of the biggest mistakes you can make with your law blog’s typography is using a font color that fails to create adequate contrast with the background. In general, there is rarely a good reason to use anything but a white background for your blog posts. Against a white background, I generally use a dark grey color and a medium font weight.
The text you are reading right now is dark grey. The hex color code is #2f2f2f. The font weight is 600. I think this is probably a bit too much font-weight, but it’s better than the alternative…
The text you are now reading is a lighter grey – #b3b3b3 – and the font weight is 400. This is a bit more of a strain to read, eh?
Be intentional about the color that you choose for your primary paragraph text, and about the weight that you choose. Be sure that the color and weight you select contrast well with the background and make it easy to read your paragraph text.
The general rule with link styling is that it should be obvious that links are links. It’s common to see links styled to be a different color from the rest of the text but without any other indicator that it’s a link. This is problematic for accessibility reasons because a not insignificant percentage of the population has some level of color blindness.
My best practices for link styling are as follows:
Once again, common sense is king here. You want folks to know that a link is a link. Style them accordingly.
This is by no means a comprehensive or even expert guide to typography for the web. However, by following these simple rules you can make sure that your law blog posts aren’t hindered by simple typography mistakes that render your content difficult to read and understand.
Here are additional resources that I have found immensely useful for better understanding effective typography:
Now that we understand the critical typographical elements of an effective law blog design, let’s look at some of the other important design elements that go beyond the aesthetic of the words on the screen.
For your legal blog posts to be effective – which is to say, to turn readers into prospective new clients – they must inspire a sense of trust in the reader. In other words, the reader must feel that the information in your blog post is authoritative and accurate.
Ultimately, the substance of your legal content is what matters most in earning the trust of your readers. But we can help instill this sense of trust with intentional design elements as well. Let’s have a look at blog elements that convey trustworthiness.
Legal information is generally of significant consequence. If you need to know what the statute of limitations is for medical malpractice claims in New Jersey you don’t want someone’s best approximation. You want an authoritative explanation from someone who understands the statute and the nuance around it.
The first essential way to convey that the information in your blog posts can be trusted is to attribute an author. You can find an example of this at the top of this very blog post where you’ll see this:
It’s not hard to understand why readers will be more apt to trust the information on your blog when you attribute the name and face of a real human being to that blog post.
But what should you do when your blog content is largely written by folks who are outside of your law firm (like Juris Digital’s legal content team) and whose names and faces you aren’t able to display on your site? What we advise in these cases is to explain that honestly to readers with a callout like this:
As you can see in this example the firm is being transparent with the reader by telling them that the article was written by the “legal content team”, while also explaining that the piece was “reviewed for accuracy” by an actual attorney at the firm. By being honest about who wrote the post the firm automatically gains credibility with the reader, and then by mentioning that an attorney at the firm reviewed the post, they have the opportunity to add the attorney’s name and photo which enhances the perception of trustworthiness.
One of the things a discerning legal blog reader will look for is when the post was last updated. After all, laws change and folks who have questions about their legal issue want to be sure that your blog post contains up-to-date information. Including a publish date in the design of your blog posts helps instill trust in the reader that the information is current and can be relied upon.
When the subject of your blog post content is an evergreen topic – eg. “are non-compete agreements enforceable?” – it makes a lot more sense to use the language “Last Updated” rather than “Date Published” in your blog design. With evergreen topics like this it doesn’t really matter when the post was first published; what matters is how recently it’s been updated. Here’s an example of what this might look like:
On the flip side, there are some topics where it makes a lot more sense to tell the reader when the post was originally published. For example, any blog topic that deals with a current event where the date of that event is relevant should include a publish date rather than a last updated date. Here’s an example of blog content where a publish date makes more sense:
Indicating to the user when your blog post was either originally published (in the case of content where the date is a relevant factor) or when it was last updated (in the case of evergreen content) is a great way to inspire trust in the reader.
I am including calls-to-action (CTAs) in the section about making your blog content more trustworthy because bad CTAs can have the opposite effect; they can make your blog content seem less trustworthy.
In my experience there are a couple of keys to effective CTAs in blog content:
Here is an example. As you can see this CTA is both relevant to the topic of the blog post and it tells the user what they are signing up for by reaching out:
I am a proponent of placing CTAs directly in the body of the blog post as opposed to exclusively in the sidebar or some other static element. I also like placing the CTA just after you have delivered valuable information to the reader, but not before.
In other words, you don’t want to shove the CTA into the top of the post before you’ve delivered any value to the reader. Here’s an example of delivering value first and then prompting the reader with a CTA:
By delivering value before you pitch the reader to reach out, you instill a sense of trust that you are the right firm to help them with their issue.
The type of CTA you prompt your readers with should be guided by what you believe is the best way for people to contact your firm. Some of our clients believe that they can provide the best experience to potential clients over the phone, and so for those clients, we will prioritize phone numbers in our CTAs.
For other clients, form submission is a more ideal first touch point with the client, and so for those clients, we’ll either link to a form via a stylized button or we’ll include the full contact form right in the body of the post. Here’s an example of a firm that includes the full contact form right in the post body:
Another creative form of blog post-CTA that we’ve deployed for some of our clients is what I call an explainer CTA because we are explaining to the reader at the very top of the post why the law firm is blogging, what the law firm does, and how the reader can reach out if they have questions. Here are a few examples of explainer CTAs:
As you can see there are lots of options for including CTAs in your law blog post design. The CTA that will work best for any given law firm can really only be determined by experimenting and measuring the results.
So far we have examined typography – which is really what will most determine the efficacy of your law blog design – and we’ve looked at three elements that can effectively build trust with the reader – author information, published/updated date, and calls-to-action. If you get both of these right, you are going to be well on your way to a highly effective blog design.
Now we’ll get a little less structured and look at a smattering of additional design elements to be intentional about when creating your law blog design.
The biggest mistakes you can make with the styling your blog post title are:
It’s a general SEO best practice to include a custom image in each law blog post, and some blog topics (like the one you are currently reading) naturally require a large number of images to be valuable.
With that being the case it’s important to consider the styling of your in-body images. I personally like to ensure that in-body images are styled with:
Here are two examples of images in law blog posts. Which do you think looks more appealing?
VERSUS:
Another Image Tip: Create custom images for your blog posts. This doesn’t mean you can’t use stock photos, but you should always make customizations to the stock photos that you use to make them custom to your law firm. The example above demonstrates the difference in aesthetics between using a plain stock photo and creating a customized image.
(Another) Another Image Tip: Make sure that the caption text for your images is styled intentionally. Generally, image caption text ought to be smaller than the default paragraph text. The image caption text on this blog post provides a good example.
I generally find that it’s rare to write a legal blog post that doesn’t have bulleted and/or numbered lists. Lists are a great way to make your content more readable. As such, lists ought to be styled intentionally.
At a very minimum, your lists should inherit the best practices from your other typography. For example:
If you are so inclined you can also experiment with different styles for the actual bullet points. You can see that on this website we use dashes with a color gradient rather than traditional bullets. Here are some other examples of creative bullet styling:
As with so many of the elements discussed here, there is no single “best” way. What’s important is that you be intentional about designing and styling these elements and that you always keep readability and accessibility top of mind while doing so.
It’s a good idea to intentionally style blockquotes. Here is what our blockquote styling looks like:
This is a blockquote. The styling is used to make it clear to the reader that this is a quote from someone. It can also be used simply to draw attention to particularly imporatnt information. Make sure you are intentional about styling your blockquote.
– Matt Green
I feel somewhat ashamed that I have not yet even mentioned mobile blog post design. As a general rule, we assume that around 50% of all of our client’s blog traffic is going to come from mobile devices (for some clients it’s higher, for others lower, but 50% is generally the medium).
For this reason, it’s essential to consider the mobile layout of your blog posts. Now, with most of the elements, we discuss here if you get them right on desktop you’ll get them right on mobile as well. But make sure to check. Review your blog posts carefully on mobile devices to ensure that your content is just as readable and accessible as it is on desktop resolutions.
Especially if your blog posts tend to be on the longer side, baking a table of contents into your blog post design can be a great way to make your content easier for readers to digest.
If you scroll to the top of the blog post you are reading you can see an example of including a table of contents in the design. Here is an example of how we designed a table of contents into the blog post design for one of our clients:
The primary reason to include a table of contents in your blog design is to help the user navigate long-form content. It has the added benefit of qualifying your posts for this search enhancement in Google’s results:
A sticky CTA is a call to action that “sticks” with the user as they scroll the page. This very blog post has one (in the desktop version). Here are links to a couple more examples of blog post designs that utilize interesting sticky CTAs:
Earlier, we discussed the importance of attributing your blog posts to an author. Sometimes it makes sense to include a full author bio in your blog post design. For an example of this, see the bottom of this blog post.
I have seen this becoming increasingly popular on long-form content in particular. The idea is that there is a sticky header on your blog post that contains the title of the post and a progress bar so that folks know how close they are to the end.
Here’s an example from ZoomLegal:
For sites that have lots of blog content, it might make sense to bake a “related articles” section into your blog post design. The key to an effective related articles section is to actually link to articles that are related and that might appeal to the reader of your blog post.
Here’s an example of what that might look like:
I hope you found this guide useful and that you bookmark it to use as both a best-practice reference and as inspiration when you’re tackling the challenge of creating a compelling and effective blog post design for your law firm.
What Prospective Clients Need to Know About Hiring FindLaw for Website Design, SEO, and Digital Marketing
FindLaw remains one of the largest providers of law firm SEO, websites, and digital marketing. On its website FindLaw claims to have over 17,000 small law firm clients.
If your firm is currently – or ever has been – in the market for SEO or website marketing services, you’ve likely come across FindLaw.
At Juris Digital we have spoken with dozens of past, current, and prospective FindLaw clients. Between those discussions and our extensive competitive research on FindLaw client websites on behalf of our own clients, we understand the pros and cons of working with FindLaw.
In this post, we’ve done our best to give a useful review of FindLaw’s marketing services. The review is broken down into two parts:
If you are a current FindLaw customer or considering hiring FindLaw, this article is for you.
Disclaimer: FindLaw is one of our top competitors, and as such, we are not an impartial source. Our goal with this FindLaw review is to earn the chance to show you, specifically, why we’re a better choice to be your Firm’s SEO and digital marketing provider.
By far the most common complaint we hear about working with FindLaw concerns its service agreement.
Specifically, clients say that FindLaw almost always requires a 3-year term, which is nearly impossible to get out of early.
Time and again, we’ve heard from clients who are unhappy with FindLaw’s services and want a new agency but are only a year or 18 months through their contract with FindLaw.
Of course, FindLaw can’t prevent you from engaging with another digital marketing provider, but there is nothing cost-effective about paying two different companies to do the same job.
If you run a small law firm, you understand the importance of flexibility. You may be comfortable signing a 3-year lease on your office, but a 3-year obligation to work with a marketing agency without any legitimate avenues for ending the agreement early? For many small and start-up law firms, that’s a commitment they simply cannot abide.
Here’s the critical thing to understand about FindLaw’s service agreement: FindLaw will enforce the agreement, and they will not hesitate to litigate if you try to leave early.
Don’t expect any good faith or understanding if things aren’t working out; FindLaw will attempt to compel you to pay every last dime required by the service agreement.
At Juris Digital, we ask that our clients agree to a commitment of 12 months. Because we focus so heavily on generating new business for our clients through organic channels (like local SEO for lawyers and content marketing), a 12-month term ensures that those efforts can fully bear fruit before the client decides.
Furthermore, we treat our clients how we want to be treated. Though it is rarely the case that clients choose to cancel services before their 12-month term is up, if this is ever the case, we listen to the client to come to an agreement that is fair for both our company and theirs.
Another one of the most common complaints that we hear from FindLaw clients is that FindLaw will work with their top competitors. We recently earned the business of an employment law firm in Glendale, California, who was considering going with FindLaw.
During the sales process, it took us 2 minutes to see that FindLaw was engaged with at least 5 of the Firm’s top local competitors.
While we don’t believe that it’s impossible to achieve strong results for multiple competitors in the same local market and practice area, we do believe that our clients deserve to work with a marketing agency that is not simultaneously working with a dozen competing firms in their city.
At Juris Digital we make the following promise to our clients:
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.
FindLaw’s service agreement makes it incredibly difficult for you to keep the content and the website that you paid for.
FindLaw builds its websites on a proprietary content management system that cannot be transferred to a third party when you part ways in the future. This means that, regardless of your satisfaction with the FindLaw website, “taking it with you” is not an option, as no one else can edit and update the content on the site as you move forward.
As with the term and stringency of FindLaw’s service agreement, the issue with the proprietary system it uses to build and manage your website can be summed up with a single word: inflexibility.
Perhaps this is not as big of a concern for your firm as it is for others, but for a company that professes to provide services for “small law firms,” it seems strange that they would place such little value in granting its clients a baseline level of flexibility.
With us, you will have complete ownership of every digital asset that we produce for you during the course of our engagement. This includes all blog posts, articles, infographics, videos, images, designs, and anything else that’s published on your website.
[ READ: What Makes a Law Firm Website “The Best”? ]
Additionally, we build all of our client’s websites on WordPress, which is the most commonly used content management system in the world. This ensures that should you ever choose another digital marketing provider, you can take your website and all of its contents with you.
FINDLAW SEO CONCERN #1…
One of the advantages of working with FindLaw is that, as a website and SEO client, FindLaw will add you to its network of law firm directory websites, which include sites like:
Being listed on these directories is beneficial in two ways:
Because FindLaw a) owns and operates these very powerful lead generation sites and because b) it is cheap to add new clients to them, FindLaw seem to over-rely on them. And why not?
If FindLaw can generate new leads for clients simply by adding their information to a few legal directories, what incentive do they have to execute more advanced SEO and digital marketing activities for law firms, like content marketing and advanced link building?
I know what you’re thinking: So what? If FindLaw can bring me relevant leads, why would I care how it does it?
This is the problem: there are only so many “top-spots” on their directory pages. Not all of their clients can hold a high enough position on the directory pages to see consistent leads.
So what does FindLaw do?
FindLaw waits for you (the client) to express concern over the number of leads you’re getting from the web, and then they move you to the top of the list in the directory. Invariably, you’ll soon start seeing more inquiries. Once you’re placated, another client will make the same complaint, and FindLaw will move that client to the top of the list, and once again your leads will shrink.
Understand that this is not a random assertion. This is something I’ve been told personally by more than half a dozen FindLaw clients.
We believe in investing in marketing initiatives for our clients that will outlast us. That is to say, when our clients decide to leave us (on average, ~3.5 years after starting with us), they will leave with a website that continues to produce consistent and valuable leads.
Let’s say that 90% of the value that FindLaw provides your firm is a result of your listing on its directory sites. When you leave FindLaw, you lose your place on those directories. Essentially, you will have rented web real estate, and once you stop paying rent, that real estate will no longer be yours.
At Juris Digital, we focus on building an online real estate empire for you that will last long after you stop paying us.
FINDLAW SEO CONCERN #2…
In order for law firms to gain maximum exposure to their target clients from organic SEO, they must publish content that is optimized for keywords that their potential clients are searching.
Keyword research is absolutely essential to SEO success. Without conducting strategic keyword research to determine the precise terms that your potential clients are searching on Google, all of your other website efforts will be futile. You can create the most amazing website and content imaginable, but if there is no strategic keyword research behind that content, it will not get you results.
In my experience analyzing FindLaw client websites, one constant that I see is random, unidentified keywords, which signals lack-luster content marketing efforts. It’s true that SEO takes time and that some keywords are more valuable than others, but an utter lack of significant organic search traffic indicates, to me, a lack of strategic keyword research.
We were recently approached by a FindLaw client – a personal injury and workers’ compensation law firm in Maryland – who wanted to understand how we might be able to improve their return on investment. When I used my favorite SEO tool (Ahrefs.com) to analyze their site’s performance, I was shocked by the lack of meaningful traffic:
Remember that FindLaw has been working with this particular client for *years*, not months. The client is paying several thousands of dollars monthly for SEO and web marketing services. The fact that their total organic traffic is valued by this SEO tool at just over $100 is frankly absurd, and it indicates a complete lack of strategic keyword research content marketing.
Let’s look at an example.
The screenshot below shows a recent blog post that was published by FindLaw on behalf of the client in question:
This is a blog post entitled: Stay Safe During Summer Driving. It contains just under 300 words. It has no headings or images. It’s simply four paragraphs of *worthless* content. It gives no actionable or unique insights.
Now, I do see that there is some search volume around the keyword [summer driving tips], but so what? Even if this post gains a high position for this keyword (which it won’t because the content quality is paltry), what purpose will that serve? How will getting traffic from people searching [summer driving tips] help this firm get more clients?
The answer is, it won’t. This type of service simply does not justify the several thousands of dollars per month it’s costing this firm.
As I mentioned above, at Juris Digital we consider keyword research to be absolutely foundational to the success of our clients. When effective keyword research is paired with exceptionally useful and well-optimized content, the sky is the limit in terms of organic search results.
Compare the numbers for the FindLaw client above with the numbers for a Juris Digital client who has been with us for just 8 months and who came to use without an existing website:
While we still have a long way to go with this client, we have been able to rapidly gain valuable organic search traffic by publishing high-quality content based on strategic keyword research.
FINDLAW SEO CONCERN #3…
The ability to gain a large number of high-quality backlinks is absolutely essential in ranking your website highly for competitive, valuable keywords. Additionally, the more competitive the industry, the more essential high-quality backlinks become.
If you are in a competitive area like personal injury or criminal defense, you will not get far in SEO without an investment in advanced link building.
In my experience examining the link profiles of FindLaw client websites, I have rarely seen examples of backlinks that are earned through advanced campaigns. Rather, the links I most commonly see result from the simplest, cheapest type of link building: directory submissions.
Make no mistake: directory links are an important component of a well-rounded, robust link profile. But, in almost every case, they are inadequate for gaining high rankings for big-time keywords.
Here’s my guess why FindLaw doesn’t strive to build high-impact links using advanced link-building strategies: It’s really difficult, which means it’s expensive. Whatever the reason, FindLaw appears to shy away from putting adequate investment in their SEO deliverables, and its link-building is no exception.
We understand that link building is what separates good SEO results from exceptional results. Many SEO agencies and digital marketing providers shy away from link building because it’s difficult and expensive. Not us.
Directory submissions essentially make up the entirety of FindLaw’s link building services. For us, directory submissions are where we start.
Here are some examples of links we’ve earned for our clients recently:
In my opinion, there are four significant drawbacks to hiring FindLaw as your SEO and digital marketing provider:
FindLaw is an old company with incredible brand recognition. It has the ability to sign new clients based on its name, and to retain old clients by enforcing a stringent contract and by leveraging the powerful legal directories that it operates. To date, FindLaw has had zero incentive to invest in improving the quality of its SEO offering, and so it hasn’t.
At Juris Digital we help law firms rank in Google’s local search results and localized organic results for competitive practice area keywords in very competitive markets.
Ranking in the Google’s local search results your clients are already looking for you might provide the highest ROI of any of your marketing channels. Once you rank in these results for important keywords you will start seeing more qualified leads and signing more cases.
The process of getting ranked here is known as local SEO for lawyers. It’s the only law firm SEO guide you need to start earning free clicks and signing more cases.
If you’re looking for local SEO services for law firms, contact us for a free marketing analysis.
But if you’re ready to dive in this article will serve as a guide to local SEO for law firms. Now let’s get started!
Below is a visual example of what we’re talking about regarding Local SEO. You may have heard this called the 3 pack and some people refer to it as the map pack although that’s a different view altogether.
In this guide we are going to cover how your law firm can rank for important keywords in your market and sign more cases.
This is the complete and most comprehensive guide covering Local SEO Services for Law firms on the internet.
In this guide we will cover everything you need to know from start to finish to optimize your Google Business Profile (Previously called Google My Business / Google Places)
Put simply, Google recognizes authority in local search by measuring three factors: relevance, proximity, and authority. Google needs a way to identify which law firm websites deserve to rank above others.
Here are how these three factors are defined in attorney local SEO:
In reality Google uses hundreds of different ranking signals, all of which carry a different weight. Factors related to user experience, such as site speed, relevance, and well-written content are essential.
If you are doing things the right way and earn authority, you will have the ability to rank for important keywords. Now let’s look at the different type of keywords you have the opportunity to rank for.
When someone conducts a search in Google, they will type in a keyword. A keyword can be one-word, multiple words, or a sentence. These are sometimes referred to as key-phrases as well.
Here are two different types of keyword potential clients might type into a search engine, and it’s how we will refer to them moving forward in this book.
Car Accident Lawyer – this is a transactional keyword where a potential client is likely to be at the bottom of the funnel looking to find a car accident lawyer. People also call these “money keywords” or “head keywords”. There are also many variants of these such as:
Then there are long tail keywords like: Do I Need a Lawyer After My Car Accident? – this is a question-based keyword that is more at the top of the marketing funnel. This potential client has not yet decided if they need to hire a lawyer and is doing research. These are typically called “long tail keywords”.
Here is where your firm has the opportunity to rank in a standard search results page:
Local Service Ads: These are new for attorneys and it’s offered through Google’s
Local Service Ads product which is a pay per lead service. This is different from local SEO for law firms.
Paid ads (also called Google Ads, Pay Per Click [PPC], or Search Engine Marketing [SEM]) – these are marked by green “ad” text as shown below. These ads show up at the top of the Google Search Results page.
The local pack (also called the local pack or local results) – Sometimes four results will show here if there is an advertisement in the 3-pack. It will be marked by an “ad” text.
These typically display underneath the paid ads when a search query has local intent. Please note that some keyword searches will not contain a 3-pack. If you search for a longer tail keyword or a non-transactional keyword, you might not see a 3-pack in the search results at all.
Organic results(these are the blue links) – the organic results typically display underneath the 3-pack. There are usually 8–11 of these that will show up in a search. Organic search results typically take up most of the search real estate.
Many results that rank in organic search results will show up based on the location you are conducting the search from.
This means that if I search “Personal Injury Lawyer” from Houston and Boston I will see results for the city closest to me blended with some national rankings (firms that rank everywhere).
An example of traditional organic results are below:
The Local Finder – if you were to click on a local pack listing on a computer, you would be taken to a longer list of law firms. This is called the local finder and it’s where all local results for that search query are displayed, along with ads. Ranking here is important for legal SEO. You can see an example of ads in the top two firms in the local finder below.
Potential clients can also search from the Google Maps website or phone app, where the display of the results may differ from the 3-pack and local finder even though the data is all connected through your Google Business Profile (Previously called Google My Business).
Other features can show up in search results. These include features like:
Answer boxes:
Featured snippets:
Google Maps:
There are also a variety of search features that can enhance your click through rate (CTR) on your organic rankings above that of your competitors. These include features like:
Review schema — will appear in organic search results if you add a piece of code to the HTML on your page.
FAQ Schema — is also a piece of code you can add to specific pages to take up more search real estate.
There are more features, but those listed above are the most important to know about for now. Also, it’s possible to rank organically in the local pack with a featured snippet and FAQ/Review Schema.
The more real estate you have in the search results, the higher your click-through rate (CTR) will be. With good local SEO for attorneys your firm can outrank your competition and increase the number of qualified leads.
Rank tracking is how well your law firm’s website ranks for a particular keyword. For example, if your firm ranks #1 for “car accident lawyer,” that can be a good thing. However, it’s important to know that traditional rank-tracking software can be very misleading.
Google is better than ever at understanding where a person searching online is located. They have pinpointed the searches location before they hit submit on a search. Now, the searcher’s proximity to a law firm plays a big part in which results Google decides to show.
There are a lot of choices for rank tracking software out there, and the problem with most of them is that they use a single GPS location (usually the city center) to show you where your website ranks for a certain keyword. A potential client looking for a personal injury attorney doing a Google search from a hospital may see a different #1 ranking firm than someone searching a few blocks away.
The fact is that many law firm marketers have a poor understanding of how much visibility they have in a market because of misleading traditional ranking reports. This is also dangerous for strategy development because it’s easy to focus your marketing efforts on new geographic areas, when instead, you should be focusing on a strategy that allows your firm to rank in as many places as possible within your target city.
In many cases, law firms could double, triple, or quadruple their leads just by focusing on strategies that help them dominate one geographic area instead of spreading out before they’ve reached their maximum potential.
To illustrate this point, let’s use a visual example.
In the map below, I’m using a tool called Local Falcon. Local Falcon allows you to visualize where you rank as if you were searching from a certain GPS location.
Do you see where “GJEL Accident Attorneys” ranks in maps results for the keyword “Car Accident Lawyer”?
This is a competitive keyword in a competitive market (San Francisco). The colored map icons with corresponding numbers represent the ranking position if I was conducting the search from that specific geographic location.
Simply put, if I were to do the same search from two locations two blocks away from each other, I’m likely to see different results!
Notice how there are different color categories:
Each map marker is a specific place where a search is conducted. As you can see, the results are all over the place.
If you check rankings from your computer or a software that only tracks from one GPS location (which is typical) you are not getting the full picture.
In fact, you are more likely to rank for keywords in the local pack if you are searching from your office because Google may display the closest business.
This may feel rewarding, but it probably won’t generate much business if you’re not ranking well from where actual clients are looking.
Pro Tip: If you want to see where Google thinks you are physically located open up Chrome and do a Google search. Scroll to the bottom and it will tell you the location it’s showing results for.
Searcher intent has a lot to do with how Google decides to display local pack results. While Google is going to serve local results for many law firm keywords, they also understand when a search should be even more localized.
One example of this is if I searched for “Car Accident Lawyer” and “Car Accident Lawyer Near Me”.
The “Near Me” search is explicitly telling Google that you’re looking for a car accident lawyer in close proximity to the location you’re searching from, whereas otherwise they understand you’re probably just looking for a lawyer in your general area.
There are many different keywords a potential client might type into Google. Let’s look at a few examples and see how they differ:
Keyword searched: “Car Accident Lawyer”
Keyword searched: “Car Accident Lawyer Near Me”
Keyword searched: “Car Accident Lawyer in Parker”
In the above examples, “The Fang Firm” showed up as an ad in all three searches. However, for the typical 3-pack results, we see a different mix of firms in each result.
All of these searches were conducted from the same place within the city on a desktop computer.
The type of device the user is searching from can also have an impact on how you rank. If you have a slow loading website, you are less likely to rank well on mobile search results.
Why? Google correlates slow site speed with a poor user experience, so website visitors will be more likely to bounce (or leave the page).
Google is primarily crawling the mobile version of your website to determine how they should rank your site.
In my experience, the answer to this is no. At least for many important search terms that will drive a lot of new business to your law firm.
The example below is for a competitive keyword in a competitive market. If you’re able to rank organically and locally for your important keywords, you can get similar results.
Thankfully, there are a lot of cool tools out there that help you diversify how you track rankings. You will be able to track mobile and desktop rankings by:
There is a plethora of tools out there you can use to track rankings, but here are some that we and our clients use with success:
I also feel obligated to cover the danger of rank tracking. If you are looking at your rankings daily, you will drive yourself crazy and miss the forest for the trees.
Rankings change daily, even multiple times in a day. Don’t get caught up in small tactics, instead, keep a long-term strategy in place to drive results.
In this section we will cover things to consider if you’re opening a new law firm and you plan on using your Google Business Profile to get a step ahead of your competitors.
If you already have an established law firm, this section may not be the most important for you.
However, there are a lot of good nuggets of information in here that make it worth reading!
Whether you have an established or brand-new law firm, your business name will play an important part in how you rank in search results for important keywords that can bring your firm new business.
If you are just setting up, there is no doubt you should brand your firm in a way that will serve you long-term. The more of a niche you have, the easier this gets (e.g. Motorcycle Joe). For established firms, it’s a question for very careful consideration.
First let’s get frequently asked questions out of the way…
Yes, it has a strong impact. This may be because Google wants to serve the most accurate results for brand searches. By naming your firm “Denver Car Accident Lawyers,” Google may assume that “car accident lawyers” is an integral part of your business.
You should not unless you can prove that it’s your actual business name. Otherwise, you risk temporary or permanent suspension.
In fact, according to the Google Business Profile Help section, “Your name should reflect your business’ real-world name, as used consistently on your storefront, website, stationery, and as known to customers. Accurately representing your business name helps customers find your business online.”
This is something I would recommend you discuss with a branding professional to understand all of the pros and cons before making a decision, but in the meantime, here are some that come to mind.
Pros of changing your name:
Cons of changing your name:
Although it’s a bit complicated to do the right way, there are still many cases where I recommend firms do change their name. It works best for firms that have small budgets and a lesser known brand.
As a marketer at heart, I have a real love for brand names and keyword rich business names. With that said, you should realize you’re up against firms who are already using keyword rich names such as these guys:
There’s also an organic search benefit to having a keyword rich law firm name, but it’s not something that can’t be overcome by investing more into building your brand.
My very simple and general answer to whether you should have a keyword rich law firm name is:
If you have the option to choose where your office location, pay close attention, because this is very important.
Selecting an office location for your firm has changed over the years. Many years ago, Google used to use the city “centroid” and ranked law firms closest to that location higher in search results. Now, Google ranks law firms that are the closest to a searcher’s exact location.
You should select an office within the recognized city limits of where you want new clients.
Also, make sure there are no other competing firms in your building using the same primary category, or prepare for an uphill battle.
Do:
Do Not:
The biggest takeaway from this section is that you should not share an office building with a law firm that also takes the same type of cases.
Google will only show one of the listings in the 3-pack at the address.
If the other firm’s listing is more established, it will be a long and hard fight to overcome them.
Your Google Business Profile (previously called Google my business for lawyers) profile is your calling card for local searchers looking for something close by and tangible.
GBP attributes let customers know what to expect when visiting your establishments. Take a look at the listing below and you will see Online Appointments. This is a rather new attribute allowed for Law Firms.
Attributes are just one step that Google is taking to help businesses meet the demands of its users.
While these attributes won’t help with your law firm organic rankings, they do have some impact on local pack rankings. If potential customers type in keywords that match your factual or subjective attributes, you may show up in that search.
There are also two categories of attributes that merchants can display on their GMB profile, and these readily depend on your selected GMB category.
These types of attributes are:
Some of the factual attributes available to most law firms include:
In the past, there used to be issues tracking phone leads from your Google Business Profile. Thankfully, these days, you can track every call from a that comes through the listing.
If you already have a phone number you’re using for your office, you can keep it. But, I don’t recommend using it for your profile since you will not be able to track phone calls generated from this lead source.
If you have an existing number, you can either:
At this point, I recommend setting up a new tracking number and connecting that to your listing.
When setting up a tracking number for your business listing, we recommend the following.
A proper phone number for your business is also a potential branding opportunity. A memorable phone number that you use across all your marketing campaigns will be helpful in the long run, but keep in mind that it will also be difficult to track the results if you use the number on multiple marketing channels.
Proper planning prevents piss poor performance.
There is no sense in shortcutting the work in building an effective business listing. In this section, we will discuss the specifics of everything you need to build an effective 3-pack presence.
Having great pictures is important for your listing optimization. Pictures help build the authority of your business by proving you exist, and they increase potential client’s confidence in you.
Whatever you do though, don’t use stock photos!
Prepare everything you need up-front so the rest of the process is a breeze. This prep work will save you a lot of time later.
Here are some important points to remember for photos and videos:
Most law firms do the bare minimum when it comes to uploading photos, so you will already be a few steps ahead of your competitors if you follow these guidelines.
As we mentioned, photos are important because they help prove that your business exists in the real world.
When Google can match exterior signage pictures with street view photos, you tend to have fewer issues. I suggest taking the following photos for your Google business profile listing:
There are certain videos you should have on your listing also. Videos are typically harder to manipulate than photos. Video uploads are now limited to 750MB for the size of the file.
Having the following pre-recorded videos on your listing will help legitimize your business:
You can make a free video of your active listing using this resource.
This is a no brainer. As a legitimate business, you should have a city business license with your exact business name.
While this is not important for setting up Google Business Profile, you should have this handy incase Google ever asks for it. Google may ask for a business license if your listing is suspended and you apply to get it reinstated.
Your Google Business Profile is connected to your website. These landing pages will likely be the reason potential customers contact you. In this section, we will discuss technical and user experience best practices you should follow to ensure your page converts website visitors into clients.
Your landing page is the website page that you link to from your GBP listing. This is the first page users will see on your website if they click on the website link in your listing.
At this time, Google allows for one main URL which will go under “website” and an appointment URL, which we will ignore for now.
It’s important that the information on your landing page is optimized for that specific location. Not only is this the first page visitors coming from your GMB listing will see, it’s also the page Google will draw authority from.
If your location landing page lacks authority and link equity, it will not perform as well.
Pro Tip: The better optimized your GMB landing page is and the more link authority it has, the more likely it is to rank well. In many cases, if you’re operating a single location business, it makes sense to use your homepage as a single landing page.
As with everything in SEO, there are different schools of thought when it comes to location landing pages.
Here are the best practices that I have personally tested and currently follow with new listings.
This question comes with a lot of “what ifs,” which is one of the reasons it’s hard to answer with a blanket statement.
Here are my best practice recommendations:
In SEO, on-page optimization refers to optimizing the content on your website or website optimization for lawyers. In our case, specifically, you should optimize the page connected to your business profile.
If there is one area that requires a lot of time and attention, it’s your local landing page. This is the page potential clients will see before making the decision on whether or not they should contact you.
This page should be the best representation of your firm and your expertise. It should not be a page filled with generic content just to rank. That won’t help you in serving your actual goal of signing new clients, even if you do get lots of website traffic.
When designing your page, make sure it flows well and that you use relevant imagery such as award badges, localized photos of your office, or local landmarks. A local landing page is also a great place to include case studies and client reviews.
Below, we cover the specific aspects of on page optimization for your location landing pages. If you have multiple locations, I suggest setting up landing pages for each city using these guidelines.
Make sure you know your top keyword priorities before starting your on-page optimization. While your local landing page can rank for a lot of keywords, it’s typically best to focus it around the primary keyword.
For the purposes of these examples, I will be focusing on the keyword: “Personal Injury Lawyers”.
Did you know you can get mobile search results to display a picture in the search results? This takes up more real estate as well as increases click through rate.
So how do you do it? Start by adding a square image near the top of your content on this page. It’s important to keep it square as if Google decides to pull it when it’s not square it will crop the photo.
Meta titles are important for local SEO and should be focused on the location page and its top keyword(s). Google reads your meta title and to get an understanding of what your page is about. If you use a CMS such as WordPress, your meta title is easy. It’s even easier if you’re using an SEO plugin such as RankMath or Yoast.
Title tags are also the first thing a potential client will see in Google’s organic results.
Google will typically display the first 50–60 characters for title tags. However, on mobile, they allow longer snippets, so longer title tags are not necessarily a bad thing as long as they are still useful when truncated.
Keep in mind you don’t have full control over meta titles. Google may add your brand name or other words to your title without your permission.
You don’t want to keyword stuff your title tag, but the location and keyword are the most important elements to include.
Here are the optimization elements I typically include in a local landing page title tag:
Here are a few examples of title tags that use some of the elements above:
Remember that title tag optimization is an essential step in SEO for attorneys.
The meta description is the text that Google will show below the meta title in search results. While you can provide this information (and you always should), it does not mean Google will display it.
They may input other text from your page depending on what keywords the searcher used.
Google generally truncates what they display to 155–160 characters.
Below is an example of a meta description in Google organic search results.
Meta description example:
[Law Firm Name] is a top-rated personal injury law firm serving Los Angeles since 1999. Get a free case review today. 99% success rate.
Pro Tip: Did you know adding phone numbers in your meta description can increase phone call leads? We have tracked calls from meta descriptions and seen people calling these numbers directly from the search engine results page.
Using H1s is still important as far as SEO is concerned. I have seen cases where simply replacing H2 heading tags with H1s had a significant impact on rankings, although there is a lot of debate about this in the SEO community. But in my experience, they are crucial.
Here are some suggestions for strong H1 headings on your page:
Here are some examples of strong H1 tags:
Sometimes the SEO mindset goes too far. In my experience, this usually happens when people get in the mindset of creating content for SEO and separate themselves from actual business goals.
When you’re creating content, your sole focus should be on creating the best content for the topic. It should represent your brand and your brand message. If you’re a volume firm taking soft tissue cases, you will want to indicate that. On the other hand, if you are only interested in serious injury cases, you really need to separate your brand from the other firms out there.
Pro tip: If there is one place you should not be cheap, it’s content. These pages might generate hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars for your law firm. These are the pages that potential clients will land on and then decide whether or not to hire you. Poor content is going to get you poor leads.
Think about the purpose of the content.
Is it to generate new leads?
If the purpose of your content is to generate new leads, your potential clients want specific and relevant information about the keywords they typed in. They may look for a reason to trust or use your services. Here are some of the things they might be looking for:
Here are some helpful content guidelines you should try to follow:
Depending on the purpose of the page, here are some other content pieces I include:
As long as it needs to be. When I build out a page that is full of useful resources, I typically find it ends up having over 1,000 words. But don’t stress about this if it’s longer or shorter. Don’t miss the forest for the trees.
If you’re really concerned about this, you need to spend time analyzing your competition in search results. See how firms rank for keywords you’re interested in and analyze their strengths and weaknesses to build a plan.
After creating the content, look at who’s already ranking in the top ten results and compare it to see if your information is more valuable to potential clients.
A professional video on this landing page can make a big difference to the user experience. It can help potential clients get a feel for what it’s like to work with your firm.
If you can include client testimonial videos, that is also very powerful. Videos help create human connection and build trust.
Looking for a good video provider? Reach out and I will be happy to refer a video production agency to you.
Written and video testimonials are trust signals that help instill confidence in potential clients.
Client testimonials are also a great place to add review schema. From our testing, we believe that review schema increases the click-through-rate in organic search results.
Although embedding a map can slow down the site speed, I believe it provides a good user experience. If it does significantly slow down your website, I would recommend removing it.
You can test your website speed page-by-page through Google here: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/.
At Juris Digital, we typically recommend embedding a map on your location landing pages. If users are looking to visit your office, this can provide an easy user experience for directions.
Whatever CMS you use make sure Google likes your site speed. You can figure this by checking out page experience in Google Search Console.
UTM codes are used to track which website visitors have come from a specific source, such as visits from your Google Business Profile. A UTM code can be appended to the end of an URL and should use lower case letters, have the source set to Google, and the medium set to Organic.
Depending on how many locations your law firm has, it might be best to use the homepage or a local landing page. We will discuss this in the “Homepage vs. Local Landing Page” section.
Here is a builder you can use to create your own UTM codes.
Your Google Business Listing is the heart and soul of ranking in the 3-pack, local finder, and Google maps. Making sure your listing is accurate, up to date, and optimized properly is crucial.
Before you get started, it’s important to ask whether or not you should even have a listing for your law firm.
If your business meets the GMB requirements, then the answer is probably yes. But what about individual lawyer listings?
Individual lawyer listings, or practitioner listings as we call them in the industry, seem like a good idea on the surface. However, in most cases I advise against creating listings for every lawyer in your firm.
The biggest reason I do not suggest this is that it can cause data confusion. When Google is analyzing two listings using the same address, phone, and category it will typically pick just one to display.
I have seen many cases where practitioner listings create enough confusion to outrank your original location or in some cases hide them both altogether. – Casey Meraz
I recommend you only create one GMB listing for your business at your address.
If you already have practitioner listings, please read the section about “Practitioner listings” so you know how to minimize them.
This is very important! If you already have a business listing, do not create a new one. You should also consider that you may have one even if you didn’t create it yourself.
Google uses data aggregators and services to get information about businesses. If your business information was ever scraped by these data providers, you may have an active business listing.
The easiest way to find out if you already have one is to do several searches on Google Maps.
To do this, simply visit maps.google.com and search for your business.
If you have ever moved, changed phone numbers, or changed the name of your firm, you will want to search for those variants as well.
If you your firm has a listing that you didn’t set up, then you will need to gain access to it before you can alter it.
If you already have Google Business Listing login credentials, you can skip to the next chapter.
If you don’t know who owns the GMB listing, but it shows as “claimed,” you can get a hint to find out who the owner is.
If the listing is unclaimed, you can claim it directly from the search results by following a step by step process. You can tell if a business is unclaimed if there is a link in the panel that says “Own this business?”, shown in the image below:
Here are the steps you need to take to get a hint:
Then, if the listing is claimed, Google will give you a hint as to the email address of the entity that claimed it.
If you don’t already have a listing, and you’ve conducted the searches above, you can move on to creating a new business listing for your law firm. Customers will not be able to see the listing until it’s approved. Follow these steps to create a new listing:
Pro Tip: The postcard verification method expires so you will want to enter the code as soon as you get it.
Pro Tip 2: If you use an online phone service like CallRail, you may not be able to get the auto verification text messages. In this case you will need to wait for the postcard.
Now that you have a Business Profile, it’s time to optimize it for ranking and lead generation.
In this section, we will go through the different optimization steps you need to take to make your GBP listing perform exceptionally.
To access your profile and make these edits, login to your business at: Google.com/MyBusiness and open up the appropriate verified location.
This should be the business name that accurately reflects the name of your business license and signage as we discussed in detail in the “Choosing a Name” section.
Pro Tip: Don’t stuff keywords in your business name. You risk suspension! (But weigh the risks!)
Setting up the proper categories for your business will ensure it has the ability to rank for keywords that are most important to you.
Here are the categories available for personal injury law firms at the time of this writing:
Categories will change over time. More categories are typically better.
Here is my advice and guidelines on choosing categories for your law firm:
Some advice out there will say you should limit the number of categories.
A word of advice: Unethical marketers or competitors may go in and change your business category to something irrelevant such as “Law bookstore”. Sometimes these edits are auto approved. If your rankings tank overnight, you should check your category.
It’s very important that your business address is accurate. Your business address should be the physical location where your office is. It should also be somewhere you can get US mail.
This address will be used to build citations for your business and it’s important that this information is consistent.
Typically, when entering the address, the best format is to put your address on line one and your suite number on line two.
In the old days, we used to stay away from tracking numbers because it would mess with the data accuracy. Google business profiles now provides a way around this with the GMB platform.
Whether you have an established law firm or a new one you, can keep your old phone number and track GMB calls.
To do this you will enter the number you want to track calls from in the “Primary Number” field in GBP.
You will then add your original local landline number which may be associated with old citations by clicking “add number.”
This new feature allows you to select a shorter name for your business that can be searched easily.
Example: @law-firm-name
Early feedback from this rollout shows that businesses who stuff keywords in the short name of their business have gotten their listings suspended.
For now, I recommend using your brand name.
We don’t typically use service areas, although investigators for personal injury attorneys will commonly visit a person’s location.
I have not seen a ranking benefit from using this and adding additional city locations or zip codes. Sorry, this is not a secret ranking tactic.
The Google guidelines say you should “Provide your regular customer-facing hours of operation. If applicable, you may use your current seasonal hours as your regular hours. You may also specify special hours for particular days, like holidays or special events.”
Google really wants you to keep business hours to when the office is physically staffed.
You will see many law firms set their hours to “24 hours” because they answer the phone 24/7.
This is a risk that some law firms choose to take. If someone reports your listing, your business hours can be changed to what is reflected on your website or your listing could get suspended.
Google Business Listings also offers a place to enter special hours for holidays. I recommend you enter your holiday hours here.
You will enter your firm’s landing page URL under the website URL. For many single location businesses, this is the homepage. If you have multiple locations, I recommend creating a specific landing page for this.
Pro Tip: If you change or update the URL in Google business listing, it will force Google to crawl the URL. This usually happens within minutes. If you make any on-site changes and want Google to see them, you can simply re-renter your URL and hit save for Google to crawl it.
This is a newer area in the profile management. As a law firm that offers services to clients, this is a great place to explain what you do.
While I have not personally seen great ranking gains from this, it’s here for a reason. I suggest adding your practice areas and descriptions here to help Google understand your law firm better. To do this:
This section is for physical features of the location. Simply select the options that are relevant to your premises. Here is a list of currently available accessibility options in Google Business Profile:
While we have not seen this field have an impact on rankings, it is a great place to tell users about your business.
Typically, we recommend a 250-word description since that’s the maximum word count of what will appear in the knowledge panel.
Although its placement isn’t very prominent, it’s worth making sure you cover your unique value propositions and why potential clients should call you.
This field is used for setting the date when your firm’s office opened for the first time.
Beware: Shady internet marketers have used this to move open dates to the future. This causes the listing to disappear until the opening date passes. **This may be fixed now.
This is where you should add the photos of your law firm. Below are the categories that are currently available, as well as the type of photos you should upload to them:
I believe it’s worth renaming these photos using important keywords. Although Google appears to strip file names when they upload images, I used to be able to get listings to rank for keywords using this tactic. Maybe old habits die hard.
This is especially important for your practice area photos. Here are a few best practice tips.
Example Photo Optimization:
Img_001.jpg should be renamed to san-jose-car-accident.jpg
Google has now rolled out a products section in your Google Business Profile. This is important because if you offer products, you will have the added benefits of having your products show in the local panel for your business and the ability to rank for more product-based keywords.
This is also a section where you can reinforce relevance for your listing.
For personal injury law firms, I recommend adding your practice areas as products with pictures here. This is because they are given prominent visibility where as “services” are not in your local listing for brand searches.
The services section is also a new section in Google Business Profile that should not be ignored. While it’s more relevant for PI firms to use this section, it does not carry the same visibility as products do.
You should add each of your practice areas and injury types you handle to this services list along with a short description.
If your listing is not already verified, you will have to go through a verification process. Typically, Google will ask you to verify the listing in one of three ways:
Important Note: If you are using CallRail or some other call tracking service, the text message or phone call option will not work if the numbers have been ported over to CallRail. You will have to go with the postcard verification option.
Once you get your code, you will enter it online to verify your listing. At this point your listing is now verified and will start showing up in Google search results within the next few days.
In this section we are going to cover what you need to know to build relevance and authority to dominate local search over time.
Uploading and optimizing images to your Google Business Profile on a regular basis needs to be at the core of your local SEO strategy.
Businesses with more images get more visibility.
When I first started in SEO, images were primarily understood by the file name and alt text. Now Google can actually view the images and reach a conclusion about what that image is showing.
With these major increases in technical abilities, it’s important to adapt. In my opinion it’s best to use your own photography. Otherwise you’ll be using images that every other personal injury lawyer downloaded from the same stock photo website.
All photos you add to your Google Business Profile listing should be optimized using the guidelines we covered above.
As a personal injury lawyer, here are several types of images you could upload that would help establish relevance for your firm:
Google Business Profiles now show a public facing questions and answers section where people viewing your listing can ask a question that will show up in your local listing.
At the time of writing, most of these go unanswered by law firms. Using this section of GBP is a good way to stand out from your competition and make information more accessible to potential clients.
This also helps to reinforce relevance.
The biggest problem with Questions & answers for GBP is that other Google users can also provide answers. This opens the platform up to a little bit of spam and potentially inaccurate answers. That’s another reason that these should be closely monitored.
To take advantage and optimize for Google Questions & answers, start by creating a list of the top five questions potential clients ask you.
Once you have the questions, you should develop thorough relevant answers that will help you stand out from your competition.
Here is how you can do this:
One of the most important yet ignored areas on Google Business Profile is responding to customer reviews.
As a general rule-of-thumb, you should respond to all reviews posted for your law firm regardless of if they are good or bad.
Many people are more willing to be aggressive behind a keyboard, so if it’s ever possible to get the upset person on the phone, try to resolve their complaint and they may be more likely to change their review from a negative to a positive one. Still respond to the complaint online, owning up to mistakes and noting that you have resolved the issue offline.
Let’s look at an example.
Let’s say that you receive this negative review for your law firm: “[Law Firm] was very hard to work with and never answered my calls.”
Your response to a negative review should acknowledge their frustrations, offer a solution, and take the conversation offline.
Here is an example of a good response:
“[Client Name], I am sorry that you had this experience with our firm. We are constantly striving to be the best law firm and it’s clear we let you down. I would like to personally make this right. Please call me at xxx-xxx-xxxx or email me at xxxx@xxxxxx.com so that I can rectify this situation.”
The above response effectively owns up to the mistake, offers to help the client, and takes the conversation away from a back and forth on a public forum. It also shows that your firm cares about their clients and that you would be a good business to work with.
Remember, when it comes to reviews, there are two types of people. One type reads the positive reviews first, while the other type reads the bad reviews first. How you represent your company online and respond to customers will either help or hinder your online presence.
After your GMB listing is live it’s important to build citations for your law firm. At the very least it’s essential to have your business name, address, and phone number correct on the data aggregators as this is how information spreads. While the value of citations are greatly diminished in 2020 I’m a firm believer you should show up (and show up well) anywhere your potential clients are looking for you.
Citations are your business name, address, phone number, and website details listed on directory websites like Yelp, FindLaw, or Avvo.com (citations are also commonly referred to as NAP [name, address, phone number], directory listings and local listings).
There are two types of citations which include:
While the importance of citations has been greatly reduced over the years, I still believe they’re important for local rankings for mainly two reasons, those being:
There are many local listing management software companies out there that claim to update and add your business to the top business directories, typically for a monthly fee.
These companies, like Yext and Synup, are legitimate and can do this for you, but if you don’t plan on moving your office is it really worth the cost at $500–$600 a year?
“In my opinion the answer is no. These people are really just ripping you off” – Casey Meraz
I think it’s always best to build these citations manually (or find a company to do it manually), unless you plan on moving regularly (which you should not as that can easily create data confusion and tank your rankings).
Here are a few companies I would recommend you reach out to if you want someone else to handle this part. If not, we will cover how you can do this yourself in the next section.
Recommended companies for citation building:
The most important citations for your law firm are going to meet one or all four of the following criteria:
To help make your life easier, I have created a top list of citations you can focus on for points #1 and #2.
You can use my citation building search method to find new opportunities that will help you with #3.
Based on experience, I can tell you these are the most important things to do when listing citations:
Luckily for you, I have done a lot of the leg work and created a list of the top citation directories in the United States for law firms, which you will see below.
You can use this guide to simply visit the citation website and fill out the information for your business listing.
Start with the data aggregators. These include:
To find state, local, or county citation sources, simply conduct the following Google Searches and record the information in a spreadsheet.
Searches to find city specific citation sources:
Wherever you go about creating or updating a citation, it’s important that you track the most important information.
This will ensure you can edit it again in the future and check that it went live.
As a bare minimum, here are the fields you should track in a spreadsheet:
So, now all of your citations are live? Great work! Citations only help how well your website ranks if Google knows about them and adds them into their index. If Google is not indexing your company Yelp page, it will not be doing you any favors.
I tested how well Yext citations got indexed, and after 3 months, only around 20% of them were seen by Google.
The same thing can happen if you build them manually. Luckily, there is a workaround for this.
A quick disclaimer: I would try the following method in small quantities of links. Don’t add 1,000 links to a page and expect Google to crawl them. Furthermore, an influx of recognized links could appear unnatural and spammy, so be careful.
When it comes to listing your business, it’s important that you are ranking in the places where potential customers are looking for your law firm.
There are four additional websites that you will want to prioritize your data on before moving onto the general citations for your business.
As with citations you want to be sure to add as many relevant categories as possible to your business listings.
Being listed on Bing Places for Business is very important to the success of your local campaign.
While only a small percentage of traffic goes to Bing, some people have it set as their default browser. Ranking in Bing can provide some new leads for your law firm.
Bing now allows you to import your business details from your profile, which will help keep the information accurate and consistent.
You can find and manage your listing online at BingPlaces.com.
Make sure your profile is 100% filled out.
Sometimes when looking for a business, potential clients will use their Map app. We have you covered here in Google Maps, but what if they are using the Apple Map app? The business data from Apple Maps typically feeds via Yelp. However, it’s still important to make sure your business is listed on Apple Maps.
You can do this through Apple Maps Connect which can be found here.
Once logged into this website you can see what data (if any) Apple has on your business.
To use this simply sign in with your Apple ID. From here you can click “Add a place” in the upper right corner and go through the claim or addition process.
Once you claim your Apple Maps listing make sure to optimize it and fill out as many details are you can.
Although I don’t typically recommend paid BBB listings, showing up on their business directory and having a positive rating is a good trust signal.
If you are a member or have the ability to incorporate their trust signal into your design, I do recommend using this. It is a well-known logo and can increase consumer trust.
You can find out if you have a listing or create a listing at BBB.org.
Different chapters run these, so the information requirements might be different by region.
Yelp is an important one to fill out because not only will your star rating on Apple Maps populate from Yelp Reviews, it also ranks highly for many important searches, such as “best car accident lawyers” and “personal injury lawyers near me”.
It’s important that you set up a business account with Yelp and keep the login readily available. From time-to-time, clients may even try to contact you through this platform, even if you’re not paying for their ads.
You can find out how to claim your profile and manage your business account here.
If you’re wondering if Yelp ads are worth the money, I say don’t waste your time. You can read my latest study on Yelp ads here:
With so many potential clients researching law firms before making a hiring decision, it’s essential that your law firm has a strong reputation online. Reviews are a big part of this.
Not only are potential clients using this information to decide whether they should contact you, they are also a local pack ranking factor. So these need to be a key part of your Local SEO strategy for your law firm.
A recent study from Spiegel Research Center aimed to determine what average review rating instills the most trust in potential customers.
This research focused on higher price items since purchase decision making is different for lower prices items. The results were surprising:
“Is five stars ‘too good to be true’ in the eyes of consumers? According to our research, it is. Across product categories, we found that purchase likelihood typically peaks at ratings in the 4.0–4.7 range, and then begins to decrease as ratings approach 5.0.”
This makes a lot of sense to me because when I’m shopping, I personally look at the bad reviews and see how a company responded to them. Real companies make mistakes.
I’m sharing this information in the hope that you understand that while five stars may not be all it’s built up to be, you also need to make sure you’re getting consistent good reviews. If you only have five reviews and two of them are bad, you will have a poor rating well below the 4–4.7 range.
Reviews need to be a part of your culture. If you answer the phone harshly and hang up on people, it doesn’t matter how much internet marketing your firm does. The word will spread online and your potential clients will be choosing other law firms to work with.
Getting reviews where nobody is looking is a waste of resources. Where you need to get reviews depends on what review websites are ranking for your brand or for your important practice areas.
Once you know your most important keywords, these are easy to find. Start by conducting the following Google Searches for your priority keywords in your geographic area:
Make a list of the websites that consistently show up in the top three positions and on the first page. If they are websites where you can get reviews, then these should be a priority.
Outside of the websites you’ve identified in the above steps, you will also want to focus on Google Business Profiles and Yelp, in that order.
Google reviews are typically easy to get while Yelp seem to be the hardest. This is because Yelp heavily restricts reviews and upholds certain rules, such as you can’t solicit reviews for Yelp (that’s because they want them to be all “natural”).
While many people have found workarounds and gamed the systems in the past, attorneys have more restrictions than most. Those strategies typically backfire, resulting in reviews that are filtered or listings that are suspended.
Reviews are very important because having review text that mentions a keyword can help your business rank for that keyword. Notice the example below that showcases a review right in the 3-pack.
Pro Tip: The easiest reviews to get will be Google Reviews. Anyone with a Gmail address can be sent a link that opens the review window. We will discuss this in the “How to get reviews” section.
Here are a few important considerations you should be aware of:
Getting legitimate reviews is difficult and, in some cases, you might be limited in the action you can take according to your State Bar. Below are proven strategies that have been extensively tested.
The easiest way to get reviews is to go after people who have already used your services. While Google does not allow review gating, the following process is a solid strategy to get an influx of reviews:
Pro Tip: Keywords in actual client reviews can help your local listing rank better for important keywords. Notice the keywords highlighted in bold above.
One of the most effective review techniques I have seen by law firms is simply listening to new callers and being as helpful as possible, even if they don’t become clients.
By training your staff to help everyone who calls in regardless of whether they’re right firm for them or not will build a stronger brand.
Here is an actual review for RMD Law, a personal injury law firm in Irvine, California, received after using this method:
“INFO:
I contacted them to get information about a collision case that I am currently trying to settle.
I was rear-ended, and you see that the other insurance party is not giving a fair offer.
John spent his valuable time with me, educating me on the procedures as well as through the process of the importance of getting with an attorney to help you. Long story short, he explained to me the benefits and the increased settlement offer that you could potentially gain if you knew within attorney from the start.”
In the example above, the attorney knew that he was not going to take the case pretty quickly after talking to the client. However, instead of hanging up on him, he offered the caller something very valuable. This was his time and expertise.
Many attorneys do this every day, but they don’t do the most important thing, which is asking for a review. By simply collecting the caller’s name and email after providing professional guidance, you can ask for a review and send a follow up reminder.
One method we tried years ago for a Californian personal injury law firm was to deliver settlement checks to the clients once their cases were settled.
In these cases, we would send out an investigator with an iPad connected to cellular data (as a backup) and ask the client if they would be willing to leave a review for us on their home computers. If the client did not have a computer, we had an iPad ready.
Does your law firm host any free community classes? We will discuss this review building option in more detail in the link building section, but it allows you to kill two birds with one stone.
Let’s say, for example, your personal injury law firm decides to host a class at your office once a month called “Safe Teen Driving Habits” where your firm provides tips, tricks, and practical advice for one hour a month to help keep the roads safer.
You could ask the attendees to rate the firm and perhaps leave a review based on their interaction with your law firm.
The easiest way to get reviews is to go after people who have already used your services. While Google does not allow review gating, this is a solid strategy to get an influx of reviews.
In 2019, link building is a fundamental requirement for law firms to be successful in ranking for competitive keywords. Link building comes with a lot of different names. You may have heard it referred to as “backlinking,” “linking,” or a variety of other terms or phrases.
Backlinks are links from other websites that link back to yours, which act as a vote of confidence for search engines because getting links from authoritative websites is not easy to manipulate. You have to earn them. For example, CNN.com is not going to link to just anyone and the webmaster has to make the change. Having a strong link profile is essential to ranking in competitive areas.
Link building is working towards getting other webmasters to add these links. There are many different types of links you can get, and the quality sometimes depends on how easy they are to get.
Here are some examples of links a link builder might go after:
I wanted to dedicate a whole section to this because it’s so important. When you are link building you need to focus on Quality over Quantity.
100 directory listing links that everyone can get are not as powerful as one link from Trust.org.
We will address how to find the best links, but remember that you only want to focus on quality links.
The problem with link building is that there is a lot of terrible information out there from people who don’t really know anything about SEO for law firms.
Here are some things that you should know about links:
Not all links are created equal, and there are a lot of bad links out there on the internet. Good links are:
Law Firm Link building tactics change from time to time, but here is an article we wrote on methods you can use to earn high quality links in 2020.
The SEO industry is full of snake oil salesman. While I could dedicate a whole chapter to tactics that don’t work, I thought it would be more helpful to explain my thinking on how to identify bad tactics.
If you hear about a “new” tactic that can get results quickly, run for the hills. At the end of the day, you’re putting in the work to optimize your visibility the right way because you want it to pay for years to come.
I have worked with law firms that have been too aggressive and tried black hat techniques. The result every time was a suspension.
If you were to turn off the source of new leads coming to your law firm, how would you survive? Simply put, these rash decisions are poor business decisions and have no place in your firm.
The most successful law firms I work with are the ones that understand the importance of sticking to an effective strategy and putting in the work.
The biggest problems I see getting in the way of law firms being successful online is bad advice and not putting in the work. It’s important to remember that your website is an investment and an asset. If you try and take shortcuts, you risk putting everything on the line.
If you’re a law firm owner, there is nothing more frustrating than watching your business trickle down and then going to Google to find a negative review has just dropped your rating.
However, it’s even more infuriating when that review simply doesn’t make any sense and doesn’t reflect the service you provide.
For example, have you ever received a Google review like this:
“I hate these law firm ads on TV”
It’s obvious, right? It’s someone who probably has never even worked with you!
However, it gets worse. What about reviews that simply don’t help anybody?
“They denied me entry because I wasn’t wearing a mask. It should be illegal to treat customers this way!”
Again, it has nothing to do with your service but the policies of your state on wearing masks during COVID-19. Large and small businesses receive complaints like this that threaten their livelihood though it has nothing to do with the way they operate or treat customers. As an attorney SEO company, we are starting to see the Covid posts more frequently.
Google has policies in place to prevent these kind of reviews from hurting your business, and you can remove them just by knowing this simple process.
Addressing these reviews is important because they can show up on your business profile listing or Local Service Ads.
Before you lose it, just laugh at these reviews. They don’t mean anything about your business, and Google knows that. We live in a strange time where anyone with any kind of opinion can leave a poor review, even when you gave excellent service and product quality. For some people, leaving negative reviews is their entire goal in life, and it has nothing to do with you.
If you ask for reviews, you’re trying to improve your business rank in Google, and that’s commendable, but you’ll likely get 1 negative review for every 5 4-star or higher review.
In other cases, the negative reviews may be a sobering reality if they all mention the same employee or faulty product that you need to fix. There are ways to respond and neutralize these legitimate reviews.
But that’s not the type of review we’re talking about. You can simply remove reviews that don’t make any sense or violate Google’s “content and review policy.”
However, inappropriate, political, social commentary, or personal rants are not allowed in Google reviews. You only have to flag these reviews for them to be removed.
Before flagging the review, you should make sure that it violates Google’s policy. Here’s where to see if this content can be reported:
There are a few different categories for content that you can flag, including
If you find that the content falls into any of these categories, you can simply find the review and click the “flag” icon above it to report it.
You don’t want to flag a review in Google Maps as it’s not as fast as flagging the review through your Google business profile. It’s also an essential step in law firm local SEO.
To find the review, you’ll need to login to your GBP dashboard. Here’s a step-by-step guide to remove negative reviews the right way.
You can simply navigate to business.google.com to load your business profile. Once logged in, locate the business profile you want to remove the review for.
At the top of the page, go to the left-hand menu and select “Reviews.” You’ll scroll down through your business’ reviews and find the post you want to remove. Before removing, check that there are no responses to the negative review. If so, remove the response first.
Once you’ve found the negative review, click on the 3 dots in the upper right corner of the review, then click the “Flag as inappropriate” link to get started.
Google will take you through a dialog box that asks what policy was violated. Click “Continue” and then write in your reason for flagging the review.
Google hasn’t updated these reasons to always reflect the problems with the review, so you can always select “Offensive or sexually explicit” to report content that falls into “political, social commentary or personal rant.”
If you find that the review violated another one of Google’s policies, use that for your reason instead. This is why you should look at the guidelines beforehand.
For those reviews that don’t match any, you can still just flag as “Offensive” and click “Report” to finish.
You only need to flag the review once. Google actively and individually reviews every flag, so you’ll receive an email from Google with the status of your removal request.
This is only true if you go through the Google Business Profile dashboard, which has priority over simply flagging through Google Maps.
Hopefully, the Google reviewer sees your pain and takes the review down, but if not, there are a few things that you can do.
It’s best for a manager to respond to these reviews and slightly point out why the review is illegitimate. This is so that other readers see your point of view and understand that the negative review is unwarranted.
For example, you can use language like “We’re sorry this happened and want to make sure you have a safe experience at our location. We’re required by law to ensure that all patrons wear a mask at our law firm.”
In other cases, the negative review may be about the service or product, in which case Google may not want to take the review down if it’s a legitimate complaint. In this case, you may want to develop a professional response like this:
“We’re sorry about your experience and would love an opportunity to make it right. Please contact us at (Phone Number Here) or email the manager at XXXX@yourlawfirm.com so we can help.”
This short, quick reply shows that you’re being proactive and hopefully if you’re doing everything right, more positive reviews will push down this negative review so that it doesn’t even matter.
Finally, this is the best option if you need help removing reviews and neutralizing negative threats to your business. At Juris Digital, we can help you with getting positive reviews and creating the best responses to make these negative reviews no big deal.
Also, if you need help with local or Google Maps SEO, we’re here to help. Give us a call for a free site evaluation today.
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