Getting potential clients to your firm’s website will always be one of the most important objectives of your law firm marketing strategy. But it has become more difficult than ever.
Let’s face it, every law firm wants to be number #1 for the keywords they’re chasing in the marketplace, but by and large there can only be 3 winners that count, those that rank 1, 2 or 3 and you can safely say, the others are forgotten (unless the searcher is yet to find what they’re looking for).
What is Law Firm SEO?
SEO (search engine optimisation) is a combination of strategy, competitor analysis, keyword analysis, website content architecture, content, link-building, and site-speed. It’s a complex array of things needing to be done frequently to bolster the prospects of your law firm’s website ranking in search engines, like Bing or Google for the keywords that your law firm is chasing in the market.
To step it down a level, if your law firm is a personal injury practice in Boston, then ideally for the competitive keyword search, “Boston personal injury lawyers” your law firm wants to be in the top 3 results that Google serves up to the searcher.
Sounds Easy?
We wish! There was a time when SEO was less competitive and less complicated. We remember the halcyon days when if you purchased a domain like, “personalinjurylawyersboston.
So, it was once easy, but now it is not only time-intensive, expensive, but it also takes a lot of patience.
Can Our Law Firm Rank for Competitive Keywords?
It’s not impossible to get great rankings. By way of example, the most competitive search term in Sydney, Australia is “personal injury lawyers Sydney” of which our client holds position #1. It took approximately 12 months and it takes considerable time and effort to remain there because the competition is massively keen to get that position.
So, to answer the question, it can be done, but it won’t happen overnight. Expect at least 12 months to rank for good search terms and potentially longer for those that are super competitive.
Should Our Law Firm Do SEO?
We believe that all law firms should be doing this work. The only other alternative is to run Google or Bing Ads, which you should also be considering. Whilst the cost of ads are expensive for competitive search terms, the prediction is that they will exponentially increase in the next 12 – 18 months, so having an SEO strategy in place in unison with your Ad campaigns makes good sense. You can read more about how to grow your law firm with Google Ads here
That said, you can fast-track great rankings deploying a few strategies, which we did very successfully for Erin Brockovich in the United States on a range of matters that ultimately ended up in class actions and in one case, even out-ranking a major pharmaceutical company for their own product.
Does Running Ads Influence SEO?
The search engines do not disclose this information, but in our experience and that of other agencies who do both SEO and Ads, we see an influence, albeit not dramatic.
How Does Our Law Firm Know if Our SEO is Working?
The easiest way is to simply run searches yourself on those search terms and see where your law firm ranks. If you are working with an SEO agency you should receive reports and make sure that the search terms they’re hunting for you have actual search for them. We have recently onboarded law firms who had SEO agencies working for them who consistently reported great rankings, but for search terms that received little or no search, not to mention, no other law firm were chasing them.
What Should We Do Next?
At Practice Proof, we can provide a free analysis of your current SEO and discuss ways in which we can work together, regardless of where your law firm is located in the World.
Need Help?
Dan Toombs
Lawyer & Founder, Practice Proof
Dan Toombs is a lawyer, law reformer and founder of Practice Proof. Admitted in 1997, he built his first career inside the legal profession — practising law, leading legal organisations and driving law reform — before building the marketing, technology and AI practice he has now run exclusively for law firms for 20 years.
In that time, Dan and his team have helped law firms grow from single offices into multi-office and national practices, ASX-listed brands and acquisition targets. That experience gives Practice Proof an unusually deep understanding of both sides of law firm growth: what happens inside a legal practice, and what it takes commercially to make one grow.
Thomson Reuters featured his law-firm marketing advice as early as 2014, on positioning firms to win business online, websites and social media. He is also the founder of FirmRanker, which researches how AI systems discover and recommend law firms. Dan is a Winston Churchill Fellow and Australia Leadership Award recipient, with national recognition for his work in law and human rights.
If you want to know what 20 years of growing law firms could bring to yours, talk to Dan and the Practice Proof team.