When it comes to what we do, we strongly believe that the more you focus on the little things in your business, the more successful you will be. Think about a warm greeting by a receptionist when you walk into an office as opposed to the time wasted as you are placed on hold before your call is answered.
While these characteristics of a company may seem mundane and unimportant, the reality is that we live in a world that loves to criticize every aspect of our performance. As such, it’s crucial to build a solid foundation and focus on details from the consumer’s perspective rather than just yours.
Before we get into what we can offer you, it is important to understand that there is a big difference between simply having a website and having a website that will exponentially grow your firm.
If you aren’t getting what you need out of your firm’s web presence, we can help you to redesign your website, rank you highly in the search engines, and develop intelligent content to solidify your position at the top of the industry. Read on to learn more about our proven Internet marketing strategy for personal injury lawyers.
We can elegantly customize your website by allowing you to choose one of five beautiful layouts and your preferred colored scheme. That’s it. Our team will handle the rest. We will then implement an SEO strategy tailored to showcase your experience within your market, and our content editors will create authoritative content to catch and inform potential clients. It is important that you provide valuable, relevant information to prove that you know what you are doing. In this industry, credibility is everything.
Specifically, in terms of SEO for personal injury lawyers, we do not attempt to fool search engines, but we are still the best in the business. How is this possible? The aim of our company is to use our knowledge and experience to connect the attorneys at your firm to the people who need your legal services, rather than simply give you a jump in your Google Analytics data. You want clients and we bring them to you.
When clients reach your website, it’s imperative to establish credibility. No matter how high your website ranks on the search engines, clicks will never turn into leads if the content fails to focus on your clients and their needs. We know the industry inside and out, and we are confident that converting clicks into business depends almost solely on establishing trust. We will provide you with 100% original content that is free of keyword-stuffing, comprehensive, readable, and accessible for your target market.
How often do you find that you spend time and energy developing a video, only to place it on YouTube and watch it just sit there, unwatched and unappreciated by the masses? YouTube attracts over 800 million unique visitors each month – thousands of potential clients are waiting for you. Videos greatly increase traffic to your firm’s website, and statistics show that videos have the remarkable capability to generate leads. In fact, the SEO personal injury lawyer Internet marketing method we use with videos is the same as the one we use on your website, so there won’t be any surprises there.
Do you believe your web presence has been successful in generating leads, and you are merely looking for a few extra ideas? We can help there, too. We provide website marketing audits for law firms that want to check the success of their current SEO campaigns and also for firms who want additional ideas for their online personal injury lawyer Internet marketing strategies.
In terms of online marketing, Google is the king, and you cannot afford not to take advantage of its offerings. Because of the increase of search-engine-driven traffic, monetization methods have improved and more firms are learning the value of an Internet presence. However, many have taken to using black hat SEO tactics – methods that attempt to boost low-quality websites higher on Google’s ranking simply for monetary gain. By penalizing excessive advertising, misleading domain keywords, duplicate content, and affiliate links, Google has effectively eliminated the false successes of these “quality” websites. However, even if you have a strong website, you may have been negatively affected as well, and we can work to change that by filtering out stuffed keywords, eliminating excessive affiliate or spam-filled outbound links, and diversifying your anchor text.
I will come right out and say it: Juris Digital is not the cheapest law firm SEO company. However, we can provide you with one of the highest rates of improvement in the industry. Anybody can build a website for you and act as if they are promoting it to Google. Will you see results though? Probably not. Very few companies understand the authority and trust that must be built to ultimately persuade a consumer to contact you. We are one of them.
[juris_cta heading=”Ready to distinguish your firm from the rest?” content=”We’re ready to help. Complete our short form. We’ll review your information and follow up with you soon after to start a conversation.” button-text=”Let’s GO”]
I probably don’t have to convince you that your law firm’s Google rank matters. We probably aren’t even the first attorney marketing team you’ve dealt with.
You already know the internet is where clients and cases from in 2017.
But you also know most web marketing agencies are, well, awful.
Clients are constantly telling me about the terrible agencies they fired before they hired us. They’re flaky. They use tactics from 2012. Their bills are big but their results don’t match. And they can’t answer your questions (or the phone, for that matter).
Perhaps you’re ready for a different experience?
My name is Gerrid Smith, and founded Black Fin Marketing which has since be acquired by Juris Digital.
The story of how we got there is a long one, and I’ll share a reader-friendly version of it below. But fundamentally, it’s the story of any service provider able to actually make a difference for its clients — the story of hard work, hard-earned knowledge, and a commitment to kicking ass.
I don’t want you to hire us because we promise to make a difference. I want you to hire us because you believe we will. And on this page, I’m going to make that case. I’ll explain how attorney SEO works, why you’ve had issues in the past, and how we can help.
More importantly, I hope you’ll walk away with an understanding of why I am, what my company does, and why we’re a choice you can trust.
There’s a lot of information on this page, but think of it this way: if your law firm’s SEO and digital marketing is the thing that drives clients your way, is there anything more important to your bottom line?
I started in this business about twelve years ago, but back then I was merely a student (and a geek). I knew I wanted to become an SEO expert, but the entry to that market wasn’t clear. All I really knew was what my father told me: you have to give your career 110% for it ever to succeed — even if that means nights and weekends.
I went to every SEO seminar and training summit on my side of the Mississippi, pouring myself into the art and science of organic search marketing. And eventually, I created an online attorney directory. It quickly became the largest personal injury lawyer directory in the world.
But here’s the thing — I hated selling simple directory listings. In fact, I hated having to sell anything over the phone. It felt slimy.
The call that changed my life, though, was one where I was the buyer. The man I dialed owned a domain name I desperately wanted for my directory.
“What do you want to do with your directory?” he asked. “And how much do you think my domain name is worth.”
Clearly, I hadn’t read The Art of the Deal, because I put all my cards on the table. In great detail, I laid out my vision for the future, and I admitted his domain was worth a lot more than $1,000… but I was 20 years old and that was all I had.
“Keep your money,” he told me. “My son’s an attorney. Give his firm $1k worth of SEO services instead, and you can have the name.”
I improved that firm’s ranking in 30 days and found my calling.
Juris Digital followed. And that man’s son’s firm is still among our clients. We help them capture hundreds of new cases — online alone — every year.
“If you’re not first, you’re last.”
I might have heard that quote in Talladega Nights, but that doesn’t make it any less powerful. In six words, it sums up the biggest challenge in law firm SEO.
Google now displays four Pay-Per-Click ads — followed by three map listings — all before anyone can see what we used to call the “top hit.”
So even if you’re ranking at #1, you’re really #8. That’s a new wrinkle in the SEO fabric, and it has totally changed the game — both for marketers like me and for lawyers like you.
Attorneys take the bar exam. Doctors complete a residency. Even hairstylists have to get a license.
But SEO experts can just create a website and call themselves SEO experts. How can you possibly tell the professionals from the phonies? Is the whole industry as spammy as it seems? Is every SEO “professional” really the basement-dwelling equivalent of a used car salesman?
Unfortunately, there are tens of thousands of bad SEO professionals out there, and hundreds of them claim to specialize in legal marketing. But here’s the truth about what they’re doing:
Every week at work, I hear a different “SEO expert” horror story from a client. And guess what? I understand why.
I’m not going to lie. SEO is hard. Every part of SEO is hard:
There is no playbook. No magic bullet. There’s only hard work and smart strategy. That’s what I’ve learned, and that’s what I offer our clients.
In the online services industry, there’s a tendency for us all to see each other as email addresses. But I’m a real person and you are too. So are the many bright professionals working in your firm — and at our agency. And so are the clients you fight to serve every day. They deserve the best and so do you.
My passion is to help personal injury lawyers succeed.
Every time I bring a new member aboard the Juris Digital team, I make that same mission clear to them. This is about you, the client. You only hire us for one reason: to get you results. So we’re going to get you results. And if we don’t, I don’t expect you to continue on with us.
That’s why we don’t ask for long-term contracts, and we’ll never send you a monthly report or a bill that doesn’t make sense.
That’s why we don’t ask for long-term contracts, and we’ll never send you a monthly report or a bill that doesn’t make sense.
At Juris Digital, we’re people helping people, and I want us to help you. I believe that when you see your clients as people — and when you really care about those people — excellence follows. Especially when that care is coupled with real experience and know-how.
At the end of the day the best way to track performance is by number of signed cases generated by your marketing efforts.
To track and analyze SEO performance, you can use a variety of tools, including Google Analytics (GA4 now), which can provide detailed information about the traffic to your website and how users are interacting with it.
You can also use keyword tracking tools, which can show you which keywords are driving traffic to your website and how well your website is ranking (your local and organic rankings) for those keywords.
But really many of these metrics are all vanity metrics unless you’re tracking MQL’s (Market qualified leads), CAC (customer acquisition cost), and understand your customers lifetime value.
For law firms, signing new cases is essential to the success of the growth of your law firm.
Without new cases coming in your company may experience cash flow issues leading to other business operational issues.
However, one issue with finding new clients is knowing where to focus your attention to get the best results.
Many attorneys who have been practicing for 20+ years have seen major shifts over the years in the ways they acquire new business. From yellow pages to the Tik Tok it’s been a turbulent journey.
Not long ago in the late 2010’s, I was working with a personal injury attorney who was spending over a MILLION dollars a year on Yellow Page ads. They did recognize that they were not performing as well and started to pull out of the advertising method.
Luckily this firm was great at tracking their leads and determining their average cost per case. In California, they were paying $500 – $1,000 for serious injury cases on average through their Yellow Page advertising. By the time they left the Yellow Pages they weren’t getting any business at all.
We were able to shift a fraction of that budget to digital marketing channels primarily focused on Organic & Local SEO and achieve these results for around $300 a case.
Knowing where to focus your efforts will help your firm sign more cases and focus on marketing campaigns that work. Here are the areas where our clients are getting most of their cases.
Online search is still an area surprisingly that some attorneys just ignore altogether. Maybe they don’t want to get involved or think it’s too expensive or too late to start but that’s never the case. Even though showing up in Organic and Local search will take some time you can always start low and slow.
The majority of the cases our clients sign through Online Search are local results and organic results.
Local results (as shown below) typically appear when your potential clients are searching Google, Yahoo, or Bing with searches like: “Personal Injury Lawyer”, “Bankruptcy Attorney Near Me”, or “Lawyer Nearby”.
These results drive a lot of traffic and solid conversions. However, this strategy is limited as it’s strictly geared towards where you have a physical presence. If you don’t have an office in a city you want to rank in, it’s going to be a huge uphill battle.
The good news is that there are other “Free” clicks you can get from Google through standard Organic Results. These listings are seen underneath the local results and are usually at the top of the page underneath ads for nonlocalized searches. Take a look at the example below for a search I did: “Do I need a divorce lawyer?“. This example seems to answer that question so I’m likely to click on it.
Ranking in organic results presents a lot of opportunities. As a full disclaimer, my clients who are doing so well with organic search have typically invested in the resources necessary including a lot of content creation. However, this has created a lot of solid and relevant traffic from those interested in finding a lawyer.
You have to do a lot of things right to capture organic traffic and rank well enough to get the business but the work is worth the rewards and can have a strong ROI. If your business is focused on local business check out this article with tactical tips and strategies.
Ranking in at number two we have online search again but this time we’re talking about pay per click advertising. There are advantages and disadvantages to both SEO and SEM but if you do things the right way you’re going to see strong returns on your investment.
The firms who typically perform best in pay per click also rank organically or locally and command several positions in the search results.
Pay Per Click ads through Google or Bing’s ad networks can get pricey for lawyers. If you decide to take on pay per click make sure to get the right advice and pay close attention to your campaign. If you start and keep getting a lot of irrelevant clicks due to bad keywords you need to make some changes right away. Sometimes people ignore their keyword lists and negative keywords which can create a lot of room for error and mismanagement.
Below is an example of a Google Ad with the new green ad box outline.
One of the strong benefits to pay per click is that you can turn on the campaign right away and start generating leads if your website is up to snuff.
Google also offers a pay per lead service called Local Services Ad’s. These are a great way to get started and there are plenty of things you can do to enhance your performance here. Talk to a LSA specialist at Juris Digital if your ads are not performing as expected.
Referrals are not dead. Sometimes when you’re running an online marketing campaign you get too focused and ignore offline advertising and human interactions.
Many of our clients have developed strong referral relationships over the years with attorneys and relevant businesses to their practice areas. One of the biggest reasons people don’t get referral business is they don’t don’t ask. Don’t be afraid to pick up the phone or ask for business from other potential referral partners.
Another thing to remember when we’re talking about referral business is your brand. You are your own brand. That means every time you go out in public you’re representing your own brand. Make sure to think about the way you present yourself when meeting with potential partners, going to networking events, or other functions.
Building a solid brand and reputation means optimizing every experience potential clients and partners have with your business to be a positive and memorable one.
One of the keys to getting consistent referrals is to stay top of mind of your clients.
Did my Yellow Page Story scare you away? Although the volume is lower than it had been, I have worked with many attorneys who still use offline advertising effectively. Here are a couple commonly used methods that work:
Have A Local Operator Deliver Marketing Materials and Donuts
What? Really? Donuts? Yep, that’s right! We know a law firm that is very effective at building their referral network when they do this the right way. Have someone from your office act as a good will representative and visit corresponding offices delivering your marketing materials, books, and most importantly donuts.
If you’re interested in some other ways offline advertising can help your firm check out this article: Offline Marketing Ideas To Get More Clients
Email newsletters can be very effective but you do have to start off with a list. If you don’t yet have an email list you should work on building one. You can do this easily through your website by making newsletter sign up calls to action. You can also ask former clients if you can email them. If you’re looking to build your list you should start blogging useful content and take advantage of the WordPress plugin SumoMe.
Not long ago we had a client send out an email to his very small email list of under 100 subscribers. That email in turn generated a case that resulted in a multi-million dollar settlement.
Sending out email newsletters seem to have several strong benefits. They help people remember you and what you do. This opens the possibility of referrals.
Going back to online marketing again, sponsored listings can provide some strong benefits if you do your research. There are hundreds of legal websites out there like Findlaw, Avvo, and others where you can pay for a premium listing. The key to this strategy being effective is ensuring you’re only engaging in opportunities where there is actually relevant traffic and visibility.
To start you should conduct some searches for popular keywords you want to rank for and see who shows up beside local law firms. Do you see Findlaw or Yelp? If so you should evaluate those opportunities. Yelp has typically been a poor performer with ads in our experience unless you have the best review numbers and score.
I wrote this entire article on Avvo paid advertising and if it’s worth it that you should check out. We have not had much success with it.
Findlaw, on the other hand has produced a few leads for our clients although those listings tend to be more expensive.
Even though these directories do produce leads they’re typically never the top performers and inconsistent performers.
Social media is one of the most interesting parts of legal marketing. Some firms do it well and most firms do it well… not great.
Firms that put in the effort with an actual strategy and deliver high quality content that connects with their audience tend to see this as a strong lead source. This also of course depends on the type of firm you have as some will perform better than others.
The firms we have seen have the most success with this develop a strong strategy on how they can attract and stay top of mind with their IDEAL clients. They roll out the strategy and are consistent with it over time until they build the traction they desire.
In 2022 and 2023 one of the new channels we have seen some attorneys have great success with is Tik Tok.
Here are a few TikTok marketing tips:
There are a number of other sources attorneys are getting solid cases from. These range from Social Media to Lead Generation services. No matter what service you decide to participate in to find more clients for your firm you should make sure your firm is equipped to track the leads effectively to focus on the ROI of each channel.
Here are some other offline marketing tips to consider
How does your firm get the most cases? I’m interested to hear what’s working for you and your firm. Please let me know in the comments below.
Here is a list of the best legal directories for law firms in 2023 according to Juris Digital.
However, keep reading as there is more to the story and the traffic numbers alone don’t tell us the whole story.
This analysis was conducted and updated for 2023 with results based off of estimated traffic numbers from Ahrefs (seen below):
If you’re looking for which legal directories being listed in will actually bring you the most cases I don’t have great news for you.
That is because most of the directories rarely product leads and when they do they are low quality with some exceptions. The exceptions I have seen are:
If your law firm participates in online marketing effectively, you’re probably already listed on a lot of legal directories. Legal directories are an important factor in digital marketing that often goes overlooked and undervalued. This is typically because most of the focus goes towards optimizing your own firm’s website (which it should).
Additionally, there are also a lot of legal directories out there that won’t hesitate to rip you off by charging you a monthly fee but provide little value.
In this article, we’re going to look at why legal directories are important, the benefits of being listed in legal directories, and which directories are the ones you really need to care about.
FindLaw is a legal website that provides legal information, news, and resources to the public. It is owned by Thomson Reuters, a multinational media and information firm. FindLaw offers a variety of legal resources, including legal news, case law, legal forms and documents, a lawyer directory, and a legal dictionary. It also provides tools and resources for legal professionals, such as practice management software and marketing solutions. FindLaw’s mission is to help people and businesses find and connect with lawyers, and to provide legal information and resources to the public. While they get a lot of website traffic, the conversions from our tracking have been on the lower end for their paid products.
Super Lawyers is a rating service that recognizes outstanding lawyers from more than 70 practice areas who have achieved a high-degree of peer recognition and professional achievement. The selection process for Super Lawyers includes independent research, peer nominations and evaluations, and professional achievement in legal practice. Only a small percentage of lawyers in each state are selected as Super Lawyers, and those who are selected are recognized as being among the top attorneys in their practice areas. Super Lawyers also publishes lists of top attorneys in each state and metropolitan area, and these lists are often used by consumers and legal professionals as a resource for finding high-quality legal representation. This is one of my go to’s for finding great attorneys.
Legal directories are important in my mind for a very simple reason. That reason is Visibility. As an SEO nerd I’m usually talking and preaching about the SEO benefits of directories (Don’t worry. I’ll get there), however, there are other benefits as well. Many of these legal directories are older and well-established websites.
Avvo, for example has built their website to over 1.2 Million Estimated Monthly (Updated 2021 after a traffic decline) organic search visits according to SEMRush and they have become one of the top 2,000 most popular websites in the United States according to their Alexa ranking (shown below).
Based on that information alone you can probably guess why you need to be listed on the most popular legal directories. The reason is that people are spending time on websites like Avvo and they’re probably looking for legal answers or searching for attorneys.
In addition to this huge organic visibility, you have to remember that websites like Avvo and Findlaw also have large advertising budgets and are actively seeking to become hubs where consumers where look for attorneys.
So the long and the short of it is: If you know potential clients are here and you’re not listed or ranking well on the platform then you’re missing the boat.
Apart from the obvious benefit of the traffic visibility I mentioned in the previous section, there are actually a lot of other digital marketing benefits you get from being listed in quality directories.
One key point I want to cover here is that I mentioned “Quality Directories”. There are a lot of bad directories out there that are not worth the storage space they’re hosted on. We will look at how to identify those later. But for now, let’s focus on the benefits of being listed in the best legal directories:
Take a look at the screenshot below. SERP stands for Search Engine Results Pages and if you look at the screenshot below you will see almost 60% of the listings on the first page for this keyword (which was Encino Car Accident Lawyer) are directory listings!
So in addition to the traffic, those legal directory websites are getting on their own through pay per click, branded traffic, TV ads, or other methods, you can see they also get a large search share too.
I think it’s also important to note that while the vast majority of these directories are legal directories, you will see Yelp in there which is just a business directory. This means that in some cases the better legal directories may not be legal directories after all.
I told you that I’m an SEO nerd and that means I’m going to talk about links. While the average directory link is pretty well deep inside the architecture of a website they do provide some value. Some websites like Findlaw offer sponsored listings which are paid listings that also bring you up higher in their results and closer to their root domain as far as their website architecture is concerned.Getting links from legal directories is an important part of your organic and local SEO efforts.
Speaking of Local SEO, citations are also a foundational ranking factor for local SEO. Ensuring that your law firm’s business name, address, and phone number are accurate can help with your overall rankings in the 3 pack or Google’s local results. On the other hand, if this information is wrong you may find yourself with some upset customers going to the wrong address. Make people happy and be sure that the online data of your business accurately reflects it.
Last but certainly not least is credibility. Many of these legal directories also offer reviews. While the Avvo review score really means nothing in terms of how good an attorney is, consumers don’t really know that. They look for scores, client reviews, and any information they can find online before making a hiring decision.
After all, everyone wants to hire the best attorney for their case. Not to mention, the highest rated attorneys typically also show up higher in legal directory search results (depending on their own algorithms).
The point is this. If you’re going to get listed on a directory where a client might find you, you should also take the time to look good and put your best foot forward. Spend the time to get proper client reviews. Even if you just got one new client lead from a legal directory a year – what happens if you’re listed in 100 directories?
As I preach how you should be listed on great legal directories I should also remind you that you shouldn’t waste your time on those that don’t fit within your marketing goals.
The reality is that marketing goals vary from firm to firm based on realities. Some law firms might excel at getting Yelp reviews while others may not be able to get any.
If your law firm previously hired poor attorneys who got clients bad results, reviews might be difficult to get so your focus may not be Yelp reviews out of the gate and might instead be overall visibility.
Pro Tip: I should note that for most transactional legal keywords I track, I find that Findlaw, Expertise.com, Superlawyers tend to have the most visibility.
Here are some metrics you *might* want to look at to determine the top legal directories in your market.
Cost – The cost of the directory listing
Ahrefs Rank – The rank the Ahrefs gives the domain based on their algorithm
Linked Domains – The number of domains Ahrefs detected that were linked to the domain
Total Backlinks – The number of total backlinks Ahrefs detected linked to the domain
And how do you find them? Easy! Simply Google the keywords you want to rank for such as “Personal Injury Lawyer” and its variants. See who ALREADY ranks in your market and get listed. This is also a share of search / barnacle SEO strategy which you can read more about here.
Thanks for taking the time to read this. I would love to hear your thoughts on this article and other websites you think I should include in the comments below.
The value of link building for lawyers is greatly debated and in many markets you may not need them anymore.
However that is not always the case, especially when it comes to entity building. So…
If your Law Firm SEO provider tells you that links are not important, or that “link building is dead” what they really mean is that building links is too hard, and you should fire them. A strong link profile will help you beat your competitors in the local pack and in organic results.
Below, you will find a whole bunch of law firm-specific link building strategies. Rest assured, these are all strategies that myself or someone I know has executed with success.
Have fun building links! This list has been updated for 2023 with new tactics and revised strategies.
Note: These will tend to be the lowest value links, because, for the most part, any one can get them but it’s still a popular link building for law firms tactic.
1. Lawyers.Justia.com | Get the link
Justia is a big lawyer directory site. Every attorney can claim/create a profile on this site. Each profile comes with two (2) followed links (website, blog). Here’s a look at how to optimize your Justia profile.
2. Lawyers.FindLaw.com | Get the link
The best I can tell, unless you want to pay for a listing with FindLaw, you need to wait for them to add your law firm to their directory, at which time you can claim and update it. If you know something I don’t, we’d love to hear it in the comments.
3. Avvo.com | Get the link
We think claiming and optimizing your Avvo profile is well worth it. If you need help getting your score up, read this.
Note: Avvo may have already created a listing for you, in which case you won’t need to use the link provided above. To find out whether they have, search this in Google: site:avvo.com “your name”
4. Thumbtack.com | Get the link
This site is not specific to attorneys, but it sure does rank well for a lot of attorney keywords.
5. Yelp.com | Get the link
Same as Thumbtack; not specific to attorneys, but it sure does rank well for a lot of local attorney keywords.
6. Hg.org | Get the link
HG.org offers free, basic profiles for attorneys. The links are “nofollow”, but the site gets a fair amount of traffic, so there is no reason not to be listed.
Note: In addition to these, your firm should also be listed on all of the major internet yellow pages. Read Casey’s post on the best citations for attorneys.
7. LawyersandSettlements.com | Get The Link
SEMRush estimates this website gets about 10,000 visits a month. Not only can you get a good link, but potential clients might find you here and contact you as well.
8. LawGuru.com | Get The Link
Law Guru is an attorney network where potential clients can ask legal questions. They also have a directory that you can sign up for.
1. Lawyers.com | Get the link
Lawyers.com ranks really well for a lot of high value keywords. But is advertising on Lawyers.com worth it? Read that article and decide for yourself. Link building for attorneys commonly involves getting listed in different directories.
2. Nolo.com | Get the link
Nolo.com gets a TON of traffic (over 3 million unique visitors in February 2015). Truth be told, I have no experience advertising with them, so I have no data in terms of what you can expect in the way of direct traffic and leads, or what you’ll pay. But, the site has a Moz domain authority of 84, so it’s an authoritative legal site.
3. Superlawyers.com | Get the link
As far as I can tell, there are two ways to get onto SuperLawyers.com; the first is to go through their nomination process and actually be selected as a “Super Lawyer”. Here are the details of their selection process. The other is to just pay for an ad on their directory. Here are the different online profile options.
Update: You cannot just pay for a listing on Superlawyers.com. You must go through the nomination process and be selected to the SuperLawyers or Rising Stars list. Thanks to Ruben Pope from Kemp, Ruge and Green for the tip.
Note: FindLaw.com, Avvo.com, Hg.org, and Justia.com all have paid listings as well. We have left them out of the “Paid Directories” list because you can get a link from them for free. Keep in mind that there are also plenty of nomination directories where you can get a profile like on BestLawyers.com.
There are a whole heap of other lawyer directories where you can get links. However, most of them really won’t move the needle, in terms of link authority or referral traffic, like the ones listed above. At any rate, here is a big ‘ol list of those directories.
We’ve covered legal directories, which are low cost and (relatively) low impact links. Now let’s dive into the ways that attorneys can leverage their existing relationships to build links.
Do you have any friends who are also lawyers who have a website? Figure out a natural, mutually beneficial linking relationship with them.
For example, you could write an article for a friend which lends your unique perspective to an issue that her clients might have. If your friend is a personal injury attorney, and you are a tax attorney, you could write her a post on how personal injury settlements are taxed in her state.
You are a successful alumnus, The odds are that your law school would love to publish an article from you on their website or blog wherein you give advice to graduating students, or simply reflect on how your education prepared you to develop your successful law practice. Reach out to your law school and figure out how you can do something valuable for them.
Young lawyers and law students are all over the web. Find them and offer to help them with anything you can. These are the current and future publishers in your niche; make friends with them and links will follow.
Attorneys have valuable knowledge that others could benefit from. Start a Meetup group on a topic that you are passionate about and hold at least one event every month. Then, follow this guide for ensuring that those efforts turn into links for your website.
This should really be a part of a larger online networking strategy rather than just a way to earn one-off links. At any rate, engaging with other legal bloggers by commenting on their work is a great way to build links quickly – by dropping your website or blog URL in the appropriate field – and to generate higher quality links over time.
Holidays are a great time to get exposure to your website. Not only are most news websites writing about holiday activities, they are looking for community-centric events to promote. This generally means you will get free PR. One way we help our clients is by hosting free cab ride programs in a city.
To do this, start with a reasonable budget for your law firm. It could be as little as $1,000. Then you can create a page on your website dedicated to this program.
Once the page is up along with the reimbursement instructions you can promote the event by pitching it to news organizations, your local chamber of commerce, or other hyperlocal websites.
Most non-profits and charitable organizations have websites, and would be happy to throw your firm’s logo and link up on it in exchange for things like volunteering, pro-bono work, or a donation to their upcoming event.
Pro-Tip: Meetup.com is an authority site, and most groups on Meetup accept sponsorships from local businesses. These links are great for a few reasons:
Here is an example of a Meetup group that accepted a sponsorship from one of our clients.
*Disclaimer: Technically, these would be considered paid links. Proceed with caution. I suggest asking the organization to use a nofollow tag on the link.
Everyone and their mother does this, so truly valuable links are becoming harder to come by. However, there are creative ways to execute a scholarship contest that can generate impactful links.
For example, this lawyer offered up a scholarship to students who were willing to admit their drunk driving habit. The contest got picked up and linked to by the Wall Street Journal, The Denver Post, Above the Law, among others.
If you want more relevant and niche related links consider, creating a law student specific scholarship and pitching law schools to post this on their outside scholarship pages. For personal injury attorneys you could also consider a similar approach with medical schools as well.
There are so many great blogs composed of communities of attorneys sharing tips and stories to help their fellow lawyers run a more successful practice. Here are a few that come to mind:
Reach out to the editors at these blogs and tell them how your insight can help their readers. Maybe you have tips related to actually practicing law, like how you prepare for trial. Or maybe you have advice on limiting distractions in your workplace. As long as it’s valuable, offer to share it with their audience and they will love you for it.
Forum spam has a long history with SEOs. For years, spammy link builders nuked forums in every corner of the web with spam accounts and spun comments. But there is a way to leverage forums for links that adds real value. In fact, we have outlined our process for doing so here.
This lawyer created a Super Bowl ad which includes quotes from the bible, a flaming graveyard, and heavy metal, and also got links from dozens from online publications like Time.com and People.com.
In a more extreme example, this lawyer recently made headlines by placing stickers on store fronts in Austin, Texas which read: “Exclusively for white people. Maximum of 5 colored customers, colored BOH (Back of House) staff accepted.” The lawyer said he was trying promote the issue of gentrification in East Austin.
Bloggers like to find quality images to use in their posts. By always using quality, custom images on your website’s pages, and optimizing them for relevant search terms, overtime they will be found and used by legal publishers. Because legal publishers are hyper-aware of usage rights, they will often add an attribution link to your source image, which should be hosted on your domain, resulting in a link to your site.
You can take this a step further and use a tool like TinyEye to find where your images are being used, and then reach out to the publishers to ask that they add a link to your source image as attribution.
This lawyer used high quality images on his drug law pages, and has since gained links from several sites including vice.com.
We often observe that lawyers are hesitant to create content optimized for anything but “head terms” (eg. “Denver Personal Injury Lawyer”). While it’s important to optimize for these terms, it’s also important to have content optimized for what we refer to as “research keywords”.
As an example, if you specialize in drug crime defense in New York, you should have articles which address topics like “New York Marijuana Laws”. By doing so, the hope is that publishers who are researching this topic will find your article and link to you from their content.
I suggest using this method as a way to diversify your link profile. Come up with an offer that requires an entry such as a $250 gas card or a shopping spree in your town. You can then submit the giveaway deals to local giveaway websites. In San Francisco, SF Fun Cheap is an example of this.
With a small promotion and a little bit of outreach, you will find your firm with more links.
Link building is an important aspect of search engine optimization (SEO) for law firms. It involves acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to your own, and can be a powerful way to improve your website’s ranking in the search results. There are several benefits to link building for law firms, including:
Attorney link building is an important aspect of search engine optimization (SEO) for attorneys. It helps to improve the ranking of their website in search engine results pages (SERPs), which can lead to more visibility and potentially more clients. However, attorneys need to be careful about their link building efforts, as there are certain guidelines and best practices that must be followed in order to avoid any negative consequences.
One of the first things attorneys should consider when it comes to link building is the quality of the links they are acquiring. Links from high-quality websites, such as universities and government institutions, are typically more valuable than links from lower-quality websites. This is because search engines, like Google, use algorithms to determine the ranking of a website, and high-quality links are seen as a vote of confidence in the credibility and authority of a website.
Another factor to consider is the relevance of the links. Attorneys should aim to acquire links from websites that are related to their practice area and target audience. For example, a criminal defense attorney may want to acquire links from websites that cover legal news and issues related to criminal law. This helps to show search engines that the attorney’s website is a relevant resource for information on these topics.
It is also important for attorneys to be cautious about the anchor text of their links. Anchor text is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. It is used by search engines to understand the context of a link and the content of the linked webpage. Attorneys should avoid using anchor text that is overly promotional or spammy, as this can be seen as manipulation and may result in negative consequences from search engines.
Guest posting is another link building strategy that can be effective for attorneys. This involves writing articles or blog posts for other websites and including a link back to their own website in the author bio or the body of the article. However, attorneys should be selective about the websites they guest post on and ensure that the website is reputable and relevant to their practice area.
In addition to these considerations, attorneys should also be aware of the potential risks associated with link building. Acquiring low-quality or spammy links can result in a penalty from search engines, which can negatively impact the ranking of their website. It is important for attorneys to be transparent in their link building efforts and avoid any tactics that could be perceived as deceptive or manipulative.
Overall, link building is an important aspect of SEO for attorneys, but it is essential to approach it with caution and adhere to best practices in order to avoid any negative consequences. Avoid any black hat law firm website link schemes. By following these guidelines, attorneys can effectively improve the ranking of their website and reach their target audience.
If you have additional link building tactics for law firm websites that we’ve missed here, we hope you’ll drop them in the comments below. If your tactic is good enough, we’ll add it into the post!
At Juris Digital we can help your firm make more money by signing more of the better cases but we won’t engage a client for only attorney link building services as these goals are typically misaligned with desired outcomes 🙂
Last Updated: 05/26/23 by Casey Meraz
By now every business owner has heard “You should be blogging” at least a few times. Lawyers are no different.
A blog can greatly improve your organic search visibility and increase your visitor count dramatically.
But what should you blog about? How often should you post? How do you get people to read your content?
That’s why we’re here!
We’re going to break down a few important tips for your legal blog:
You will frequently hear this common advice, “post to your blog as much as possible, 4-5 times per week if you can.”
While it’s true that you should post fresh content often, you don’t want to post just to post. Every article on your blog should have a specific purpose.
Posting one high-quality article per week is more effective than writing 5, 200-word posts that don’t say much of anything.
So, is it important to have new content posted to your blog on a regular basis? Yes.
Do you need to make sure you’re adding a new post daily? NO!
Focus on curating content that people want to read. Answer potential client’s questions in your post – avoid regurgitating headlines that are tangentially related to your practice.
Why is quality more important than quantity?
The reality is this – Google and other search engines are striving to give people the best content for their searches. By providing great content that answers potential client’s questions – you are meeting this measure.
Like the point made in the last section – you don’t blog just to blog. Adding article after article of content that doesn’t serve an inherent purpose is a waste of your time.
You will see this frequently on legal blogs. Countless articles cover car wrecks in the area, discussing topics that are better suited for other blogs, or press articles about the firm and its attorneys.
I hate to be the one to break this to you – but a person looking for legal assistance doesn’t care about self-driving cars, the latest accident in the city, or the firm softball game.
Then what purpose should my blog serve?
Answer questions. Provide relevant information that you know potential clients will need. Understand your audience.
But how do you know what your potential clients are looking for?
First – use your own experience. What kinds of questions do you hear most often? What typically makes someone seek your firm’s services?
Next – turn to keyword research to ensure you’re targeting the right topics.
There are numerous tools that provide copious amounts of information regarding keywords and phrases. Unfortunately, most of them require a paid subscription to be useful. You do have options, though.
With no SEO experience, identifying the best terms to use can seem like a daunting task. But it isn’t as difficult as it seems to come up with a few solid topics.
Start by thinking of questions people ask on your own. For example, suppose you’re a personal injury lawyer. You frequently hear people ask, “how much will my car accident settlement be?”
Using a free tool, Ubersuggest, you can learn about the search volume of the phrase in question and get suggestions for phrases that work better.
You will also see phrases that may work well as a separate post!
Take a look:
Here we searched “car accident settlement.” The number below the keyword are the metrics you’re interested in:
In addition, Ubersuggest highlights other options:
As you can see, the tool gives several options that could be viable post themselves – and this is only a small sample of the provided list.
Note: For your blog, you should be focusing on informational keywords. Phrases like “Miami personal injury lawyer” should be saved for landing pages. The keywords can be used in your blog content, but should always be linked back to the practice area page.
Localization
It’s typically a good idea to localize your blog posts. When you’re writing on a broad informational topic, your post can appear in the top of search results nationwide. This means if you have a great post on “hiring a criminal defense lawyer for DUI,” it could show up in a city or state that you don’t practice in. This traffic isn’t what you want. Localizing to a state or city, for example, “hiring a criminal defense lawyer for DUI in Houston,” can help bring you the correct traffic.
You want your content to rank well on Google and other search engines. The best way to do that? Check the competition and see what you’re up against.
Of course, you never want to copy existing content. Your articles should be original and stand on their own. However, there is nothing wrong with observing what a competitor does and doing it better.
Let’s look at an example – the search results for “Do I Need a Lawyer for DUI?” display a featured snippet from Avvo:
Not only do I want to rank highly for this search – I also want to get that feature. More people will click on it, leading to more traffic to my site.
The result featured is an article from Avvo. The content isn’t bad, but it could be better. First of all, there are no images. By adding an image with an alt tag that contains your focus keyword, you give your article a better chance of ranking. The content could also be improved and laid out better. Don’t be afraid to use features like lists and charts to give your article more authority and a better appearance.
In content marketing circles, this is commonly known as the Skyscraper Technique.
Most of your traffic should come from organic searches. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t share your content wherever possible. The more reach – the better.
Additionally, sharing your content can lead to much-valued backlinks. These can raise the authority of your piece, giving you even more search clout, and in turn, more visitors.
So, where you should you share your article:
Essentially, you need to get the word out there about your posts. The more people you can get talking about it and sharing it, the better.
If you aren’t already using Google Analytics to track your website data, you need to be. You can see how many people have visited an individual page (or post) and evaluate what content is doing well and what should be improved.
Another immensely valuable tool for evaluating content is Google Search Console. Here’s a handy video for setting it up if you haven’t already:
Search Console is valuable because it tells you what people are searching for when they see your content. Even better, it tells you when you got a click vs. when it was simply an impression (someone saw your link in results). You can use this information to optimize for essential keywords.
Codedesign.org has a great guide on this process.
It’s important to remember that posting your content is merely the first step. You need to promote, monitor, and adjust based on the results you’re getting (or not getting).
Every-time a client calls you get a new opportunity to generate new clients through blogging. How? Write down the questions that your existing clients and new prospects ask you. If they’re asking you this question they may have already looked online and couldn’t find the answer.
This represents an opportunity for you to fill the void. Create a piece of content (written, audio, video, etc.) and answer the question better than anyone else. This leads me to my next point. Be the best.
When you’re forced to write you might feel like you’re making progress by quickly answering a question and hitting publish on your blog. But this may not be enough. See, Google is looking to reward the sites with the best answer in the search results. But more importantly, this represents an opportunity for you to get in front of your ideal clients and showcase your expertise.
So before you hit publish on that latest blog post make sure to ask yourself if the article meets your standards. Then do some Googling yourself. Do other people who already rank have better content than you? If so, go back to the drawing board and enhance it until you’re the best.
Thankfully adding images and video to your blog in 2021 is an easy task. If you need help creating images simply go to Canva.com and create something in a couple of minutes. If you want to include a video you can download the apps Soapbox or Loom. This will allow you to create a video explanation and easily include it in your blog.
Before you start writing, it’s important to understand who you are writing for. This will help you tailor your content to their needs and interests.
As an attorney, it’s important to maintain a level of professionalism in your writing. Avoid using slang or overly casual language, and be sure to proofread your work for spelling and grammar errors.
A good title can help draw readers in and encourage them to read your blog post. Make sure your title accurately reflects the content of your post and is attention-grabbing.
Subheadings help break up your content and make it easier for readers to scan and understand. Use them to highlight key points and help guide readers through your post.
Adding visual elements to your blog post can make it more engaging and easier for readers to understand. Just be sure to use high-quality images and videos that are relevant to your content.
While it’s important to provide detailed and accurate information in your blog post, it’s also important to keep it concise. Aim for around 500-750 words per post.
Bullet points are a great way to present information in a clear and concise manner. Use them to highlight key points or steps in a process.
At the end of your blog post, include a call to action, such as inviting readers to leave a comment or encouraging them to sign up for your email list.
Use keywords in your post to help it rank higher in search engine results. This will help more people find your blog post when searching for relevant topics.
Once your blog post is published, be sure to promote it through your social media channels and email list. This will help drive traffic to your blog and increase the reach of your content.
A blog is a critical tool for your website and your overall presence online. These are just a few tips that should help you get started or get re-oriented on your blogging journey.
Focus on creating helpful content that will establish you as an authority in your area of law. Aim to provide high-quality, useful information to anyone visiting the site, regardless if they’ll end up becoming a client.
Don’t worry about getting a new post up every day – create content that people want or need to read.
And if you need help with your content, that’s what we’re here for. Reach out today. We’re happy to help with a variety of digital marketing services for lawyers.
If you were looking for an attorney on Avvo, chances are you saw both reviews and a score of the attorney on their website.
If you’re wondering if the Avvo Score is reliable in terms of finding a quality attorney my answer to that would be no. Avvo uses a proprietary scoring system based on factors such as reviews, endorsements from other lawyers, and case results to figure out a score between 1 – 10.
Lawyers with low scores under 6 typically have some sort of disciplinary action. This is, of course, a red flag and something you should explore further before hiring that attorney.
However, outside of this, the score is not very valuable because it can be easily manipulated. So when it comes to hiring an attorney, don’t trust the Avvo Score.
But Avvo.com also offer client reviews. While attorneys are regulated in terms of false advertising, the reviews you read were probably left by their happy clients. Avvo reviews can be useful because they should be from actual clients, but they don’t tell you the whole picture.
Before hiring a lawyer based on their Avvo Reviews alone, I would encourage you to Google their name and add “reviews” at the end to see what other reviews on 3rd party websites as well as their law firm website come up for them. If you see them included in directories such as Superlawyers with good reviews that can be a good first step. One thing to consider is that like other review websites, Avvo can be manipulated and Avvo is used frequently in attorney SEO strategies.
Avvo is a website that gives people information about lawyers and lets people leave ratings and reviews of lawyers they have worked with. These ratings and reviews are called Avvo reviews. Avvo is meant to help people make good decisions when they are choosing a lawyer. The website also has legal forms and information about different legal topics.
If you’re an attorney wondering about your own score, you still need to focus on Avvo score.
The fact is, that potential clients can see your review or score publicly when doing research and may use that information when deciding on whether or not to hire an attorney. It really doesn’t matter if other attorneys think Avvo scores are not worth the ink they’re printed on.
Some attorneys need to have a bit of a paradigm shift and worry more about whether clients believe they should trust them as opposed to other attorneys trusting them.
The reality is though that consumers do trust these reviews or at the very least look at them. How do I know this? A quick search on Quora found questions like “Is Avvo a reliable source to determine if a lawyer is good?” where people are questioning the legitimacy of the reviews.
If consumers are asking these questions, then they’re viewing attorney profiles and reviews.
While this answer should just be a clean-cut one it’s not. If you are looking for consumer reviews on attorneys, Avvo should be a good place to start. The issue, however, is that it can’t be the end all be all.
The fact is that even though attorneys are held to ethical standards does not mean that their marketing companies are taking that to heart. It also doesn’t mean that there is not an unethical attorney out there trying to manipulate this information.
Whenever you’re making a decision on hiring an attorney you absolutely need to do your due diligence. The reality is that if someone had a bad experience with an attorney you should be able to find it. While AVVO might be a decent place to start you will also want to Google the attorney name and the law firm name with the word “reviews” following the name. This should come up with a variety of results from across the web where you can learn about their past history.
If the attorney was a sleaze-ball you should be able to find the complaints with little effort. On the other hand, if it’s hard to find a negative review or they are few and far between, it may be a good choice to hire them. Alternatively, you may want to think twice about attorneys that don’t have any rating as they may be new. One good thing about Avvo.com and Lawyers.com is that they indicate the year they were admitted to the state BAR so it should be easy to find as well.
It is generally a good idea to consider reviews and ratings when making any decision, including when choosing an attorney. However, it is important to keep in mind that reviews can be subjective and may not always reflect the experiences of others. Additionally, it is possible that some reviews may be fake or written by people with an agenda. It is always a good idea to do your own research and to consider multiple sources when making a decision. It is also a good idea to talk to the attorney and ask about their experience and qualifications before making a final decision.
Attorneys need to come back to earth and look at this problem from a different angle. If you’re an attorney or work for one you should not be concerned about whether or not the reviews are trustworthy. You need to be concerned about reputation management. If someone legitimately leaves a review about you or your law firm they have feedback they want you to see.
If its great feedback you should keep up the good work and take any criticisms as ways you can improve your practice. On the other hand, if it’s a negative review you should focus your primary efforts on making that client happy if possible, playing damage control, and learning from the mistakes made. You can then help refine your processes and improve your firm from this feedback.
It probably goes without saying that if you’re not tracking call sources you’re missing out on very valuable data including which sources are converting leads into your BEST customers. In this article we will cover some call tracking options along with our experience.
But first, let’s start off with some options.
There are several call tracking software options that may be suitable for law firms. Here are a few examples:
It is important to carefully evaluate the features and pricing of different call tracking software options to determine which one is the best fit for your law firm.
CallRail is a very effective call tracking software with a lot of powerful tools that allows law firms to track calls and determine the caller source.
At Juris Digital we have been using CallRail for several years with a lot of success. Although we originally signed up just to track clients phone calls we have found so many more uses for the well-designed cloud-based software.
Whether you’re starting a new firm and need a new phone number, or you already have an existing phone number you can use this software to figure out exactly where each and every call is coming from. This is essential for ensuring you can track the ROI of your marketing efforts.
After having worked with so many law firms over the years I’m well aware of the issue pertaining to call tracking and getting your staff to adopt a platform which will allow you to prove the return on investment from marketing efforts.
Not only does CallRail tell you the source of the campaign, you can easily create tracking numbers (more on this later, but be careful), and also track the status of the call on whether it’s a lead or not.
Configuration options for using CallRail vary greatly. For us, we like to start by porting our customers’ numbers into CallRail.
This allows us to view the time of the call, the caller ID, the source, and even record the call if the firm prefers. If we create specific marketing or PPC campaigns we can use CallRail to easily create a new tracking number which is specific to that online or offline marketing campaign.
If our clients have multiple offices or want to use a new office we can use a CallRail number to start a new local listing. This is a great scenario for us as we can prove the effectiveness of all of our online marketing efforts.
The goal of this, of course, is to provide a reliable way to track calls and give them proper attribution so our clients know where to spend their marketing dollars.
Planning how you want to use this powerful software is important. Here are some ways you can do it:
Using CallRail at your law firm is a pretty simple process. The most important thing is that after your numbers are ported over to the service is that your receptionist always has this open on their computer. Every call that comes in will be recorded like in the sample below:
You’ll notice that they provide a lot of information. The fields are defined below:
Clicking on any of the calls themselves will also provide you with a ton of useful marketing data as you can see in the example provided below:
From this view, you can easily see if they’re a return caller and in this case, above we use dynamic number tracking so we can see which page they visited that prompted them to call, the device they were on, and the operating system.
If you take a close look at this data and determine that you’re mostly seeing calls from one type of device you might identify usability issues on another device.
Getting the callers landing page conversion point is also super useful to make data-driven decisions on what’s working for your firm.
The procedure for using this simple and intuitive software for your firm is pretty basic for the front desk people. Basically, you need to do the following:
The first step to being successful with this is to start collecting data. Making marketing decisions based off of how you feel about it vs. cold hard numbers is not a wise choice.
Do this for at least 30 days and then start looking at the data for trends. Here are some questions you should be able to answer after the first 30 day period:
Tracking this over a period of 6 months of a year is so valuable. CallRail is a very simple solution to figure out your firm’s cost per case at a low cost with little involvement.
This tracking should also be combined with Google Analytics goal tracking, contact form submissions, and live chat’s to help you get a full picture of your entire marketing campaigns.
