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11 Lawyer SEO Website Tips for 2019

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SEO For Lawyers in 2019  

Is your lawyer website ranked well at Google for both organic and local search terms?

First a lawyer comic strip…..

Now back to the business of getting new clients….

If you want to get more new clients online, you have to make sure your site is set up right and that you are creating an ongoing series of content and getting links from other relevant websites.

Here are a few lawyer SEO tips to help your attorney website rank better in the Google search results.

Top 11 Attorney SEO Website Tips

Search Engine Optimization for lawyers (SEO) consists of a lot more than setting up a few meta tags like in the good old days.  In 2019, you must create a lot of content, create a lot of videos, get social signals, get links from other sites and then do a lot more than that.  Its an ongoing thing with SEO but there are certain things that must be done if you want to have any chance of ranking #1 at Google for your law firms top keywords related to your location and practice areas.

Below are the top SEO tips for lawyers who want to try and do more with Internet marketing this year.  Organic SEO, Local SEO, Video SEO, Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing, and Reputation Management are just a few of the things that you must do in 2019.

Top Tips for SEO Marketing in 2019 for Lawyers

#1- Have unique Longer Pieces of Content Created (2000 words PLUS)

*** This post is over 2500 words and will be 3500 once I add to it, like Im doing here!

This should be the #1 tip on any list these days. Content is the key to success online and it always has been.  Lawyers are not very good at creating content for their own websites I’ve discovered and sometimes they won’t create any for years. To be fair, they have enough to do, yet it’s key that someone creates this content!

The more content you create, the better your SEO chances will be, simple as that.    Its key in 2019 to create longer blog posts that are over 1000 words long and contain images, videos and infographics whenever possible. 1500-3000 word posts are even better.

If you create content, especially good content that is long and unique, well that alone is going to help. Yet the added benefits are that people will stay on your site longer, people will more likely share this content, getting you links and social signals and also Google should reward you with some kind of traffic love.

** April 2019 Update:

You need to create a LOT of unique content for

* Blog Posts

* Guest Posts

* Social Media Posts

All of the content MUST be 100% unique and be able to pass the Copyscape test.  You need to have a paid account to use Copyscape but its worth to know if your content is unique.   If you put up a Blog post, you do not want to copy that same blog post to your social accounts or for a guest post you’re doing in order to earn some backlinks.

Also, you want to make your main blog posts longer than your competitors and usually at least 2500 words or more.  An example if this lawyers blog post on Personal Injury Timeline for a Car Accident Case.

This post has over 2500 words, has multiple embedded videos from YouTube, has external links to high authority sites and includes multiple images.  Usually, you want to also include an infographic, but you could also create a 2nd related post that covers a different angle and a different set of keywords.

#1A – Build Backlinks via Guest Posting at Relevant High Authority Sites

Building or earning backlinks to your site is the #1 most important thing to do in order to build your law firms SEO rankings at Google.  This is not an easy process at all and why its so important.

Buying links is against Googles guidelines, but if you create a good piece of content, a lot of websites want to give you a link in exchange for writing such a great piece of content.

So you need to create even more content for guest posts, and then do a link outreach program to find sites that will award you with an editorial link to a page within your site.

#2 – DO KEYWORD Research to find better keywords

Make sure your site is optimized for the best possible keywords. Doing keyword research is a very good idea anytime you want to do a new legal blog post.

You want to do research to see all the possible keywords related to your post and main keywords.  Then you want to find keywords that are bringing in traffic with low competition if possible.

Then once you identify the best keywords, you want to use them in your blog posts in strategic ways in the Title, description, headers, body, etc.

Some of the best Keyword tools are SEM Rush and Google Keyword Planner.  There are a ton of other keyword tools you can use but the key is using something to do some research and you probably will discover a bunch of keywords you never even considered using, but that could lead to some new quality traffic coming to your legal site.

*** 2019 Update —- Use Neil Patels free keyword research tool at https://neilpatel.com/ubersuggest to find relevant keywords and long tail keywords that you can and should include within your content.    This tool will give you an idea of how popular some keywords are and how much they cost on average at Google ads pay per click program for lawyers.

#3- Use Yoast SEO plugin & Optimize your TITLES and Descriptions

 Titles and Descriptions are still very important for SEO and you need to make sure EACH and every page in your lawyer site has a unique and optimized Title and description.

The title tag is probably the most important part of your overall SEO strategy and it determines how search engines display each page. Your title should always include a relevant targeted keyword phrase, but keep it short and to the point. There’s no need to stuff the title full of SEO keyword phrases, doing that usually hurts more than it helps.

The Meta Description is what you see beneath each title in the search results. It has no bearing on your search rankings these days, but it can determine if someone will actually click on your listing.  You need to grab the users attention and make sure you

Yoast SEO is the top WordPress SEO Plugin and helps you setup a variety of SEO settings and has a ton of built-in features that can help your SEO efforts.  You can use this to optimize the Titles and Descriptions on the different pages.

*** 2019 Update…. You do NOT need to upgrade to the Pro version of this software.  I use it, but dont find anything that really demands an upgrade.  The internal linking feature is good, but it can be done manually pretty easy.    The key with this SEO plugin, is to make sure that all of the settings are setup correctly.

#4- Do On Page SEO & Optimize Main Content (H1 and H2 Tags; Variations of Keywords)

The second most SEO relevant part of your page is the headline, or in coding terms, the “H1” tag. This tag is important for a few reasons.

First, Google gives it a lot of weight because of its prominence on your page. After all, it’s the one thing that every user will probably read because its so BIG.

You should tell your readers what the page is about and invoke some curiosity to keep them reading. You want to combine an H1 with a H2 sub-heading and try and get your main keyword that your focusing on, along with your geographic location.

Also you want to make sure that different variations of your keywords are included throughout the page.

If you have a page on “truck accidents,” you shouldn’t repeat “truck accidents” or truck accident lawyer excessively. Instead, use words like “truck crash accidents,” “truck wreck lawyer” “truck crashes,” and as many different variations as you can come up with.

Google is not dumb in any way, in fact you should just presume they are a straight up genius.

 So you don’t want to do anything that is spammy or seems easy,. Things like repeating the same keywords over and over, or anything you think might have worked 5 years ago.

The only thing that really works now is making sure you have a lot of high-quality content, and that you interlink that content together and make sure you use a lot of different variations of your keywords. That combined with getting high-quality backlinks and doing something with social media should help improve your organic SEO rankings.

*** 2019 update – You want to focus on LSI related keywords and to make your page follow a theme.   The best way to find what LSI related keywords that you should use on your post or page, is to do a Google search and at the bottom of the page, you will find a list of related searches that Google thinks are most related to your search. SO then you want to sprinkle these keywords into your content where they make sense.

You dont want to just put them one after another where there is no logic to them being on the page.  You must create new content around them usually and this can be a huge help, because by doing this, you now increase your word count by 500-1000 words or more.   You also might improve your pages dwell time, and then you should start ranking for more keywords if you sprinkle in these related keywords in the right way.

#5- Get More Social & Get More Social Signals to your site

Getting social signals tells Google that your site is being shared by others and is popular.  So the easiest way to do this, is to make sure you have social media accounts setup such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, AVVO, YouTube, Google, Pinterest and any other social media account you think might help your law firm.

Then do facebook posts, adding videos, images and a link to your law firms site. Do tweets at Twitter and utilize as many social media accounts as you can. Then the key is getting people to share and like your content.   The more this happens, the more Google will see that your being active and trusted by other users.

You want to get as many retweets, likes, views and everything else that goes with social media.  The more content you can create, the more chances you have at people liking and sharing your content.  You want to build all of your social media accounts over time, the key is making sure you keep them updated.  You want to have some kind of automation, so that when you do a blog post, it will automatically update your Facebook and Twitter accounts.

#6- Improve Site SPEED & Performance

More and more Google talks about how important a factor that Site Speed is. The faster your site loads, the better for everyone, including your organic SEO rankings.  Yet improving your overall sites speed is not always easy, and sometimes you can fix your speed issue, just to have something else create a problem.

So if your using WordPress, you need to use a good Speed and performance plugin such as W3 Cache or WP Super Cache.

#7- Site Security and making sure your site is locked down and SECURE

 This is becoming a big deal and yes Russian Hackers are real!   So are all other countries and who knows how they do it, or why they do it, but they do it constantly.  SO you must have your site secured in multiple ways.  There are some basic things you can do and then many more advanced things that really need to be done in order to lock down your site.

Even then its possible you can run into some kind of issue where you get hacked and malware is on your site.   Usually if you have a good web host, that problem will be solved and almost never an issue, IF you take all the needed steps.

 

Site security for lawyers is part of the overall SEO strategy because if your site gets infected with malware or has any other kind of issue, it can have a negative effect on your overall SEO rankings and it can bring your site down for days.

WordPress is an excellent CMS and very popular, yet it seems to be very vulnerable to hackers.  Ive seen more and more lawyer websites that get hacked and have this ugly message from Google…. “This Site is NOT SAFE or This Site May Harm Your Computer”…. Thats the last thing you want a client seeing when they visit your site.

Some WordPress Security Tips for Attorneys:

#8 – Have a Mobile Friendly Site

This goes without saying but your site must be mobile friendly and easy to read on any mobile device.  Google has put a big emphasis on this and will tag a site that is mobile friendly, so you want to make sure you get that tag because otherwise a potential client might just decide not to even visit your site.

Mobile is more important than ever and is accounting for over 50% of traffic in most cases these days. Everyone is on a mobile phone and it’s getting easier to read sites, so people have no problem viewing your site on a mobile device unless of course, it is not mobile friendly, then for sure, they are leaving to your main rival’s site.  So make sure you take all the steps needed to make your site mobile friendly and then some.

Most WordPress themes these days will be responsive and mobile friendly without much needing to be done.  Yet you can also setup a more custom mobile site using a mobile plugin and creating a custom mobile home page for your legal website.

#9- Create more Videos of Lawyers:

Create Videos of Lawyers in the law firm talking about the different areas of practice.  Videos are a form of content and the more videos you can create, the more content you will have to spread around.  Sometimes adding a video to a blog post can make it come to life and compliment it well.

Then sometimes you can do a blog post just around the video. If you have a 30 second video of a partner talking about a latest case or practice area, you can embed the video into a blog post and add some content of the transcript of the video.

You can not do Video SEO without videos. You need videos in order to come up in the YouTube search results.

You need to setup a YouTube channel that links to the firms website, and then every time you create a video, you would upload it to YouTube, and then you will be able to easily embed the video into your legal site, blog or social media site.

#10- Create Customized Images & Optimize for SEO:

You should have customized images created for all of your blog posts, and then make sure they are optimized for SEO by adding keywords to the alt image tags.  Your images can be found on Google image search if they are properly optimized.  You can use a wordpress plugin that will help you optimize your images for SEO.

Creating different images to use is a good idea, and you can have an image for your blog post and other images for different social media sites.  Some sites like Pinterest are all about images, so you will want to have a custom image created around your latest blog post, and then have an image that has the title of your post. Then when the user clicks on your image, it will goto that blog post.

Images are a good idea for multiple reasons and you should use one image for every 300-400 words of content.  Images can make your blog post easier to read and its a good idea to use as much media as possible, so images, videos and infographics.

#11- Do a Press Release for your Law Firm:

Press Releases are not just for bigger firms and companies. Anyone can create a press release if you have something newsworthy.  That’s the key, you have to have a newsworthy story with a catchy headline that will be accepted as a relevant news story.  There are a number of different reasons a lawyer would do a press release including:

  • Launching of a new website

  • Introduction of a new practice area

  • New Lawyers joining the firm

  • Awards for any of the lawyers

  • Any kind of Charity Work the Firm does

Once you have a good newsworthy story with a catchy headline, then its a matter of putting the press release together and if done right and accepted, you can get your news story in front of a lot of potential media sites, including affiliate sites of bigger news sites like ABC and NBC.

This can be a big boost for both organic SEO and Local SEO For lawyers. The press release would have a link to your website from a lot of potential high ranked and trusted media sites.  It would also have your firms NAP (Name, address and Phone #) and those citations could help your firms Local SEO marketing efforts.

LAWYER SEO IN 2019 CONCLUSION

Internet Marketing for Lawyers in 2019 is alive and well and there are a lot of things you can do to help promote your law firm better online. If done right, it can lead to a steady flow of new clients.  The real key is creating new content for your website on a constant basis, not just plain text, but also customized videos, images, and infographics.

You want to then also do a link outreach program and find sites where you can do guest posts with a link back to your websites power pages.

With links, in general, you do NOT want to use keyword rich anchor text for your links. You want to use your brand name, which will be your law firm’s name as your anchor text and have these links go to your home page.   \

Then you also want to get links to your subpages and blog posts and here you want to use a combination of anchor text including some blended keyword anchor text from some of your better link opportunities.

Lawyer SEO Marketing Services

We can help your legal practice with all forms of SEO Marketing. Contact us today for a free Legal Site Analysis.

—> Free SEO Analysis & Estimate

Phone: 630.393.0460
Email:   law@lawyerscourt.com

Lawyer Internet Marketing Services

 

Reasons why Chatbots Work for Attorneys

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Top 5 Reasons Chatbots Work for Lawyers

Chatbot for lawyers is a new evolving technology that solves the present market deficiencies through an intellectual software solution.  The main reason to have a chatbot setup is to not let any potential clients that come to your site just leave without possible leaving their contact info.   If they leave, they are gone. If the chatbot gets them to start chatting and leave the phone and email, then you can contact them and follow up and maybe they become client, thanks to your chatbot!

*** You can see an example of the Virtual Assistant CHATBOT setup on this site…. You can have the box come up automatically, or after a set time or when the user is about to leave.    The great thing about the BOT is that its a 24/7 assistant that can learn over time and is available right away to help any of your website visitors.

HERE ARE FIVE REASONS CHATBOTS WORK FOR LAW FIRMS

1. Chatbots are 24/7 Assistants that offer ease of access

Your Chatbot does not need a break or a vacation like the human workforce.  It works 24/7 to provide the customers with legal help whenever and from wherever they need it. This technology could add a lot to the legal firms’ services making them better, smoother, and more proficient.

You can train your chatbot, like you might train someone who is going to handle the live chats.   You can provide answers to a variety of questions your potential clients might have.   You could program the chatbot to give info on each lawyer in the firm, answers to questions about specific practice areas and many other things.   As time goes on, you can learn from the answers you get from people using the chatbot.   The chatbot also learns via Artificial Intelligence and can add new questions people might have.      This is a big difference from a chatbot for facebook, here the chatbot will only give answers that you program, their is no AI in that case.

2. Chatbots Are Quick to Repond to People

Chatbots understand natural language questions and are quick to respond with serviceable and supportive legal information in simple English. A user can chat with the chatbot to get whatever information he or she need.  They are also very beneficial for people doing introductory research. Its chief benefits are easiness and accessibility, which means that anybody can find appropriate legal information.

The bottom line is that if someone comes to the website after hours or really anytime, it looks good that the firm would have a chatbot setup that can potentially help someone answer a question they might have.    They might just need directions, or want to read your reviews, or want to know if you give a free consultation.       These questions can easily be answered by the BOT, thus taking some burden off whoever else might have to answer these questions.

3. Chabots help collecting data

Chatbots come equipped with a tool to gather, study, and optimize the data. By using a chatbot, a legal firm can go through the conversation record to trace and evaluate the engagement process of the users. It helps them in identifying users’ behavior and the potential leads. If the firm knows how often the clients make use the chatbots, what their queries are, and what motivates their continual involvement, it proves to be a very valuable asset, which offers new perspective for the firms and encourages them to enhance their commercial practices.

The chatbots can collect a users email address and phone # and email you right away with this valuable info.    You can also go back through the chats and gather info that you might otherwise have no record of.

4. Chatbot for Customer Service & Educational Purposes

Chatbots for lawyers can also be used to engage and educate a client. As modern technology, for instance natural language processing helps in developing clients’ online association with legal firms as it converts the one-way communication into a mutual dialogue. It helps the lawyers in demonstrating their expertise and share new and significant content pertaining to the laws and policies of their residing city or country.

You can setup the bot so it has a customer service script vs. a lead generation script if your main goal is to provide customer service to the people that visit your lawyer website or blog.   The customer service script is more setup to provide as many answers to potential questions a user might have.

5. Chatbot for possible Lead Generation

Chatbots can be used for lead generation by simply engaging the user on the website and getting them to leave their contact info.   Some people might not want to go through hassle of calling a firm or even filling out a contact form, yet some people like the idea of instant satisfaction to a question that is on their mind.    So if the chatbox comes up, they very well might start typing a question they have and then wind up leaving their contact details, as well as describing their legal problem.

Looking at it from the outsider’s point of view, chatbots are a win-win situation for both clients and the law firms as they help and improve clients’ engagement while providing a valuable tool for lawyers to generate fresh leads and expand the clients’ base of the firm.

In last few years, the chatbot environment has been flourishing in almost all the sectors. Legal expertise and digital revolution give lawyers vital competitive advantages over their competitors and also helps them in bringing in new clients with new cases. When a legal firm starts using chatbots, it sets free the lawyers or human representatives in customer support team from managing everyday repetitive tasks that are time consuming and allowing them to concentrate on more important tasks that are of higher value and effect for the firm.

HIRE US TO CREATE A CHATBOT FOR YOUR LEGAL WEBSITE

We can help you setup a bot like we have on this website.   Your bot can be pretty basic where its just collecting basic info from anyone who engages in a chat. It can also be more advanced where you program it with answers to questions related to your firm and practice.

—> Chatbot for Facebook Messeger

—> Fill out online BOT Contact Form

—> Chatbot Marketing For Lawyers

—> Facebook Messenger Chatbot (Use now)

 

Lawyer Google Local SEO Special

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Google Local SEO for Lawyers

Lawyer Google Local SEO Marketing Package

Is your law firm site listed on the Google maps when you do a search at Google for your location and practice area? You want to be found in the Google 3 Pack for local searches.

We have an excellent package designed for lawyers on a budget who are looking to get the most bang for the buck.    This package will help your law practice in a number of different ways including getting listed on the Google Maps and a great system that is designed to make getting 5 star Google reviews a simple process.

 

**** SPECIAL – Lawyer Local SEO Package – ONLY $399 Flat Fee




 

LAWYER LOCAL SEO & REVIEWS MARKETING PACKAGE 

Get Your Law Firm Ranked in the Google 3 Pack Local Listings.  Get 5 Star Reviews at Google and other key review sites.

—> Setup of Google My Business Account. Optimization of Google Account

—> Setup of other key Local Business Accounts including Bing, Facebook, Yelp and others.

—> Creation of images to use within Google account

—> Creation of Videos to use within social media accounts

—> Setup of Google Reviews Package for firm

—> Setup of Monitoring for Google Reports

—> CITATIONS Work – We obtain high quality local citations that make the difference!

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Top 11 Lawyer SEO Tips in 2018

#1- Have unique Longer Pieces of Content Created

This should be the #1 tip on any list these days. Content is the key to success online and it always has been.  Lawyers are not very good at creating content for their own websites I’ve discovered and sometimes they won’t create any for years. To be fair, they have enough to do, yet it’s key that someone creates this content!

—> Read More on Lawyer SEO in 2018

—> Free Lawyer SEO Analysis & Estimate

Lawyer Google Review Special

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Google Reviews for Lawyers – Sign Up Now

5 STAR REVIEW SYSTEM FOR LAWYERS

We have a Lawyer Review System that makes getting 5 star reviews a much easier process.  You can simply send clients a link to your review page OR send them a text with a link to your reviews page.

**** New Special Google Review System for Lawyers – $199 setup fee and $69 per month.

  • Setup of firm on Review System

  • Creation of new Reviews page with setup of forms, etc

  • Setup of SMS Message system

  • Setup of control panel so lawyer can enter clients phone # to send text message requests

  • Setup of followup messages and confirmation pages

  • Setup of Google instructional page and videos

  • Full Support and Training

SIGN UP NOW – $199 setup and $69 monthly.  FREE Videos & Graphic Creation for Review Pages




** 30 Day Money Back Guarantee – Cancel Anytime, No Contracts.

LAWYERS COURT
Legal Design & Marketing

PHONE:  630-393-0460
EMAIL:   law@lawyerscourt.com

—-> Free Site Analysis Form

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—> Read more about the process for getting 5 star reviews

—> Read why Getting reviews at Google is key for Lawyers

 

Getting 5 Star Reviews from Google

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GETTING 5 STAR REVIEWS FOR YOUR LAW FIRM

How do you get clients to leave Reviews? For starters make it SUPER SIMPLE!

Does your law firm have some kind of system for getting reviews from clients?   If not, they should because reviews are becoming more and more important.   Its key to get reviews from all the different possible legal review sites from AVVO to Lawyers.com and also at Yelp and a number of other bigger directories that let people leave reviews.

YET Google is probably the most important place to get 5 star reviews for your law firm.     They will show up when someone does a search for your firms name and sees the local google result listing.   It makes a huge first impression if they see you have multiple 5 star reviews even before they visit your site.

***

SIGN UP NOW – $199 setup and $69 monthly.  FREE Videos & Graphic Creation for Review Pages




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YOU WANT TO AVOID GETTING ANY BAD GOOGLE REVIEWS

ALSO You want to make sure your dont get many non 5 star reviews.  SO instead of sending everyone directly to your Google page, its better to send them to a reviews page and then if someone leaves a bad review, then they will NOT be sent to your Google My Business page, and instead will goto a thank you page that apologizes for any problems. Then you can try and defuse the situation by contacting client.

5 STAR REVIEW SYSTEM FOR LAWYERS

We have a Lawyer Review System that makes getting 5 star reviews a much easier process.  You can simply send clients a link to your review page OR send them a text with a link to your reviews page.

STEP #1- You would send your client to your review page that has a simple form they would fill out including giving 1-5 stars.

—> You can send the client an email, or better yet you can use the SMS system to send the client a text message, and also have follow up messages automatically sent. 

STEP #2- Then if they leave a 5 star review, they are directed to a page which has a direct link to your Google My Business page and also has an instructional video on the page.         IF They leave less then a 5 star review, they are then redirected to a page that then apologizes for any problems they had.

STEP #3- The client then visits your Google my Business page and then reviews box will automatically open. So if they are logged in with their Google account, the review box will open up so they can simply leave the review.

STEP #4- The client will then be sent a thank your text message and/or email.  You can also request the client leave a review at Facebook or other review sites, as well as like your facebook page.

That’s it!  You or your staff can simply enter any past clients that you think might leave you a review into a simple form and everything else will happen automatically.    Then after you completer a case, you can have your staff get into the habit of sending a thank your email with link to review page.

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—-> SPECIAL – Lawyer Google Review Campaign Signup

SIGN UP NOW – $199 setup and $69 monthly.  FREE Videos & Graphic Creation for Review Pages




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—-> Why getting Google Reviews for your Firm is Key

 

Google Local SEO & Reviews Marketing Package – Try FREE

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Lawyer Google Local SEO & Reputation Management

As a lawyer Im sure you have been told a million times how you need SEO this and web site that and no doubt there are a lot of possible things you could do with your website and online marketing efforts.     YET Im sure you would agree that being listed at the top of page 1 on Google and having an easy review system that results in your Google listing showing multiple 5 star reviews is something worth doing.

** SPECIAL Lawyer Local SEO & Reviews Package – 100% FREE FOR 30 Days, No Commitment and if your not satisfied with the results after the first 30 days, you can cancel and pay nothing.  We are confident that you will want to continue the service after you see the initial results.

LEGAL LOCAL SEO & REVIEW PACKAGE – Sign Up FREE for 30 Days. Then $499 and $99 Monthly




We have put together a package for lawyers that covers what any lawyer needs……..

#1- To have your firm listed in the Google Local 3 pack for keywords related to your practice

#2- To have a system setup to make it easier to get 5 star reviews at Google

* This is an advanced premium system that makes is as simple as it can be for clients to leave you a review.
—–>  Watch Video on how the Google Review System Works

#3- To have new Images, Videos and Content created and used on your blog and social media accounts

#4- To have your NAP (Name, Address and Phone #) all setup and consistent across all sites.

#5- To have high quality citations setup for your lawfirm at a number of different related sites and directories.

#6 – Having a Press Release done announcing any news related to your law firm. The press release will then be distributed to 100’s of news media sites and will contain a link to your website and your firms NAP, Name, Address and Phone #, which are then citations that are listed at numerous high ranking and trusted media sites.   This can have a big impact on your Local SEO results.    * This is an advanced feature performed after first month and part of ongoing monthly service.

** SPECIAL Lawyer Local SEO & Reviews Package – 100% FREE FOR 30 Days, No Commitment and if your not satisfied with the results after the first 30 days, you can cancel and pay nothing.

After the first 30 days, then it’s a $499 fee for the package and $99 per month for the ongoing Local SEO & Review work on your site.   You can cancel anytime and no contracts.

Sign up now below to start your free 30 day trial.  We will start the initial work to get your site better listed in the Google 3 pack, have the review system setup and create graphics and videos for your firm.    We are confident that you will want to continue the service after you see the initial results.  We then have a number of advanced things we will do including the creation and distribution of a press release with your firms contact information.

LEGAL LOCAL SEO & REVIEW PACKAGE




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—> Read more about the Reviews Marketing System for Lawyers

—> Watch Video on how the Google Review System Works

—> Why Getting Google Reviews is Important for your Practice

Moving Your Lawyer Site Away from FindLaw

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How Do You Move Your Legal Website away from Findlaw?

Ive had a number of lawyers tell me that they felt locked in to Findlaw and didn’t have  the slightest idea on how move their site to a new webhost.  I heard of one lawyer who said once he did cancel his contract and had to move his site, he found out it was a very difficult process that he had no idea on how to do.  They made it super difficult and you basically have to start over, yet I found out that is the best idea!

I have come up with a Super Easy Process for Moving your Lawyer Site to a much better webhost which is faster, more secure and setup for SEO. Its a total no brainer because of the simple fact your going to save HUGE Money bottom line.

Benefits of Moving Your Lawyer away from  Findlaw

I had a law firm contact me a couple of months back and they told me that the findlaw contract was expiring in a couple of months and they wanted to move the site and start over with a brand new site.    So I did some research and could tell there is a lot of lawyers who have had bad experiences with Findlaw and also who felt they paid a LOT of money for not that much in return.    So thats another post for another time but this post is about HOW you can move your lawyer site and WHY you should do it.

So the benefits of moving are MANY.  For one when I was reviewing the current site for this new client, I ran a Google Speed test and could see that the page was loading pretty slow, even though there weren’t many heavy graphics and it got a 33 out of 100 score at Google.   So once I moved the site to the new webhost, it got an 83 out of 100.  SO better Web Hosting and Faster Site Speed is a great benefit but there are many others starting with fact that with Findlaw, you don’t own the site, just some of the content. Its better when YOU the lawyer, own your own site.

Then being able to easily make updates to your site and blog is always good and the list goes on and its a no brainer when you consider the MAIN REASON to Move your site is to SAVE BIG MONEY!

Here are some other benefits of moving your site ASAP.

#1- YOU Will have TOTAL Control of your legal site and own it all.

#2-  I will setup your domain on the BEST Possible web hosting for WordPress Sites, which will give you better Speed and Security of your site, which in turn is better for organic SEO.

#3- I will setup WordPress CMS software, which will make it very easy for you and anyone at firm to login and make updates to the website and blog.

#4- You will have a SSL Security Certificate, so that your URL is https://yourfirm.com.  This is better for SEO and client confidence.  I will also setup Google analytics website stats for your site, which for some reason was NOT setup with Findlaw.

#5- New Legal Web Design that is better optimized for SEO and Local SEO.  Creations of New logo, Legal Graphics, Videos, Infographics and more.

There are a number of other benefits but these alone make it a total no brainer that you should move your Lawyer site away from findlaw.  You can save money, 50% of what your paying now or more. Then also you will own your website. You will have a way better web hosting setup and a brand new website that is setup with SEO in mind all the way.

BETTER ORGANIC SEO RANKINGS ALMOST INSTANTLY!

Organic SEO Marketing Focus

The one thing that the law firm wanted  to make sure of was that we would maintain the current organic SEO rankings.  So for sure with Findlaw, they did get some organic SEO rankings at Google and for example were ranked #9 for a bankruptcy term and a number of other terms.  SO the first thing we did here after setting up new site, was to setup 301 redirects so that all the pages they had before, were forwarded to the new pages we setup.

Bottom line is that within the first week of us launching the new site on April 1st, almost all of the organic SEO rankings have improved and the #9 ranking they had for bankruptcy term shot up to #2. This is the same term firm is paying over $12 per click for.    Plus they got a whole bunch of new rankings they didnt currently have and this is after one week!

So there are obviously a number of benefits here on top of saving a lot of money, since Findlaw is known as one of the more expensive SEO marketing programs for lawyers.   Not only are they pricey, but the sites arent setup that great for SEO, the sites are really slow according to Googles page speed tool, they dont have SSL security certificates and they were not setup in WordPress.

So I will do further posts here about the different benefits in more detail, and also more detail about how I have moved other lawyer sites from findlaw very easily. I will also post a case study on exactly how I moved the latest law firm and the savings the firm will achieve.

Want to Move Your Lawyer Site?

Lets us help you move your lawyer site to a brand new webhost, where you will have total ownership and control over everything.  We will also help you get better organic, Local and Video SEO Rankings. Contact us today for a FREE no obligation proposal.

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How to Improve Your Lawyer AVVO Rating

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Lawyer Directory Marketing – AVVO Ratings

Most lawyers dont even know they have an AVVO Profile and Rating or why they would possibly even claim and update it. YET it’s a really good idea and should be part of every lawyers overall Internet Marketing strategy.   If your a solo lawyer or smaller law firm, you must go the extra mile in order to succeed online today in the legal web marketing world.  So if you can improve your AVVO score by doing a few things, I say that makes big sense and should be a no brainer for every single attorney, I mean why not?!

So here are the different things you can do in order to improve your AVVO Rating.  The bottom line is if you do ANYTHING at all, your going to improve your score.  Yet you need to put in a little time in order to get your rating to the 9 or perfect 10 range but it can be done.

1. Sign up and claim your Lawyer profile

The first step toward increasing your Avvo rating is to sign up and claim your profile. You can start this process by searching for your name here: Avvo.com/for-lawyers/avvo-profile

Next, click on your name and then click “Claim my profile”.

You will then be directed to the Claim page where you can claim ownership of your profile automatically using either LinkedIn, Email, Facebook, or Phone Number.

2. Fill out your profile to 95%

Although it may take some time, grab a cup of coffee and fill out your profile to 95%. This means adding information for all of the following items:

You won’t see the progress bar get to 100%

To get the last 5% you need to add an Avvo Rating Badge to your website. I don’t recommend doing this, and it will not impact your ability to get to a 10.0 rating.

Fill out your practice areas properly

The practice areas that you use will determine what categories your profile shows up in.

Let’s say that you’re a personal injury lawyer: If you indicate that 100% of your work is car accident related, then you will only show up for car accident searches.

I suggest that you diversify this ratio by getting granular. If you’re a personal injury attorney you’ll want to show up in search results for other more specific practice areas like wrongful death, car accidents, truck accidents, etc. Take the time to determine how your case experience breaks down, and reflect that breakdown accurately:

3. List your work experience

Listing your professional work experience is not only essential to completing your profile, but it also will help onlookers understand your areas of specialty.

Pro Tip: Add start and end dates. Be sure to add start and end dates wherever Avvo requests them. This will actually add points to your Avvo rating.

4. List any awards you’ve won

This is another area where Avvo’s rating system falls down, in the opinion of many. Without having some sort of award on your profile, you likely won’t reach a perfect Avvo Rating.

However, the credibility of the awards that impact Avvo ratings the most (Super Lawyers, Million Dollar Advocates, etc.) is something that many of our clients question.

Regardless of credibility, legal awards have a significant positive impact on your Avvo Rating, so add ‘em if you’ve got ‘em.

Pro Tip: Add award dates. Avvo awards point value to each award based on a variety of factors, including date. More recent awards will get you more points than older awards. If you don’t add a date to each award, Avvo will assume the oldest possible date, which results in the minimum amount of points you can receive for that entry.

5. Add Cases to your Portfolio

Adding the details of your most impressive case work is really the best thing you can do to help people understand your qualifications. So I would add the adding cases to your portfolio as necessary to continue to increase your Avvo Rating.

6. List the legal and business organizations with whom you are associated

List any business or legal associations you can claim. Common examples we see are Million Dollar Advocates, State and County Bar Associations, and the Better Business Bureau.

Be sure to include the association name, position name, and the duration.

7. List any publications you’ve written

Have you written a book? Had a piece published in your local bar journal? Blogged on a popular website or provided an opinion piece on your blog or website? These ought to be listed under the Publications section of your profile.  *** Its hard to say how much this helps your AVVO score but it should help a lot!

8. List speaking engagements

Adding speaking engagements will moderately increase your Avvo Rating.

What I’ve seen is that you’ll get a +0.1 score increase for every speaking engagement, but you will only get it if you include a link to information about the event on the web.

If the organization for which you spoke does not list your speaking engagement on their website, you could create a press release or recap of the event your own website and link to it. However, in some cases this may not be adequate to get the rating increase. Avvo looks for recognized, authority organizations here so your own website may not qualify.

9. Get Peer Endorsements

Getting peer endorsements will raise your Avvo Rating for sure and this seems to be the thing that has always worked the best.

Peer Endorsements are votes from your peers that act as a vote of confidence in Avvo’s algorithm. Avvo asks two questions about every peer endorsement:

The options for the first question are:

  • Fellow lawyer in community

  • Worked for lawyer

  • Supervised lawyer

  • Worked together on a matter

  • Opposing counsel on a matter

  • Co-Worker

  • Friend

  • Family Member

  • Other

In my experience, Peer Endorsements indicating “Worked together on a matter” and “Opposing counsel on a matter” will increase the Avvo Rating 3x more than any of the other options.

This does cap-out over time. Usually when you get to the 15-20 endorsement range, additional endorsements do not add additional points to your Avvo Rating. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you should stop going after more peer endorsements after 15, just know they won’t impact your score.

I will do a follow up on this blog post with case studies of AVVO Ratings for Lawyer campaigns to show how all of this will work in real life. 

******

THINGS THAT DO NOT HELP YOUR AVVO SCORE…

This is an interesting post from Juris about things that might not help your AVVO Score, thing you might have thought but really do nothing, such as….

Answering questions

Avvo has a massive legal Q & A forum. When logged into your Avvo profile, you can contribute answers to questions categorized in your practice area. While this can help showcase your expertise, it will not help you increase your Avvo Rating.

Tip: If you do answer a legal question that an attorney has already answered adequately, you could compliment the attorney, say you agree, and you may be able to land yourself a Peer Endorsement.

Creating legal guides

Legal guides are probably the biggest waste of time of Avvo. Not only do they require a lot of work to publish, there are not a lot of opportunities for that content to get seen due to the volume of duplicate topics and content.

If you go through the effort of creating a legal guide it will have more benefit on your own website or another website where it can rank for the search queries and get you more clients. Legal guides also won’t help you increase your Avvo Rating.

Getting client reviews

Client reviews are helpful for making you look good but they don’t appear to have an impact on Avvo Rating.

Overall Contributor Level

The overall Contribution Level that you see when logged into your profile will not impact your Avvo Rating.

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SEO Marketing for Lawyers in 2017

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Search Marketing for Attorneys in 2017

SEO Marketing Services: Organic, Local, Video & Social Media Marketing

Marketing for lawyers in 2017 is more competitive then it has ever been before, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still dominate your competitors if you take the proper steps.  It’s just like preparing for a big trial, you have to do everything possible before hand so that you have a great result when you finally do goto trial and throw down.

*** Latest Blog Post: 11 Top Lawyer SEO Tips for 2017…..

Legal SEO marketing no longer means that your just going to be ranked #1 at Google for a keyword related to your practice.  Sure that still can happen and it’s a great thing but there is so much more these days that needs to be done other than basic organic SEO Marketing.  Even with organic search marketing, sure you would like to be on the first page for term like “Chicago Lawyers”, yet odds are that isn’t going to happen, and really what you want to happen is that your found for 100’s of different longtail keyword phrases, such as “personal injury auto accident lawyers” or “Locate a Chicago Illinois tax attorney”.

These are keyword phrases that will get less searches and have less competition at Google.  The only way to achieve this is by having a lot of high quality content on your legal site and blog.

Search Engine Optimization OR SEO for Lawyers is more important than ever for solo lawyers and bigger law firms alike.  These days when somebody is in need of a lawyer, the first thing they might do is consult the web, usually from their mobile device.  The yellow pages is dead, print ads are not what they used to be and consumers are skipping over TV ads with DVRs. So it is super key that law firms are able to reach clients and customers on the web.

Lawyer SEO marketing is one way to do this and in combination with a good Social Media strategy and high quality content, it can be done and can lead to new clients.   Yet you can’t just rely on having a good site and doing a couple of blog posts. You have to take a very proactive approach here and make sure things get done.  You have to make sure you create some high quality content and update your WordPress site and blog on a regular basis.

Below I have some information about each form of SEO marketing including Organic SEO, Local SEO, Video SEO and Social Media SEO. I then also have some SEO tips and tricks you can apply today to your legal practice.

What is ORGANIC SEO in 2017?

Lawyer Organic SEO is the OG of SEO and in 2017 it refers to the FREE listings at Google and other search engines that are usually below the paid listings.

These are the most coveted spots and everyone wants to have their website come up on the first page of Google for free. Yet it’s harder than it used to be, plus there are more paid ads and people search for a wider variety of keywords these days.  Another thing is that more people are starting at social media sites such as Facebook and never even doing a Google search.  Yet you still need to do everything you can to make sure your lawyer website is fully optimized for Google.

So while organic SEO for lawyers is still very important, there are a lot of other things to focus on these days.

Your competitors are already doing more and your site is falling behind, but no need to panic or sweat it, you just want to make sure that someone gets to it eventually. The sooner the better!

So the first thing to know is that there are a few different ways you can market your legal practice in 2017, no matter if you’re a solo lawyer just starting out, or a huge law firm with multiple locations.

Beyond Attorney Organic SEO, you want to make sure your lawyer site is setup for Google My Business and Local SEO. Videos are a total must these days and Video Search Marketing is becoming a bigger thing.  Social Media marketing is more popular than ever because everyone is on Facebook and it makes sense that your law firm should not only be on facebook but using it to promote your law practice to people looking right now for your legal services.

What is Local SEO for Lawyers in 2017?

Local SEO for Attorneys

Local SEO for law firms is a different animal than organic SEO, it’s more about how your legal site comes up in the local search results. Usually it’s a reference to the Google Local Business directory listings that come up when a user does a search of a local area or zipcode. The Google Map comes up along with 3 listings, otherwise known as the Google “3 Pack”, this has changed over the years and keeps going down. You want your law firm to be in these listings for your local city and zipcode.   

Visitors from your own city deliver high-quality traffic and leads to your law firm.  So you want to make sure for starters that your Google My Business is setup, verified and optimized.   Then there are a whole bunch of different business directories that you want to make sure your legal site is setup at.  Some are obvious like Yelp and AVVO, but there are 100’s of different possible sites that your site might already be setup at. YET the key with Local SEO is consistency and you want to make sure that your law firms NAP (Name, Address and Phone #) are all coming up the same at the different directories. This means the exact same spelling, same phone #’s and everything else. If you have older office locations still coming up, then you might have a more difficult time with Local SEO.

You want to get “Citations” of your firms contact info.  Citations are mentions of your law firm with your contact info at different sites and directories.  The more citations you have at high quality sites, the better your Local SEO results will be.   Getting citations from local area businesses can make a big difference in your Lawyer Local SEO campaign.

What is Pay Per Click Marketing?

Pay per click or PPC Marketing is a reference to paid advertising done at Google Adwords program, Facebooks advertising program and many other sites that offer paid advertising.  Usually it’s a you pay every time someone clicks on your sites advertisement and visits your website.  Other times you can pay just for showing an impression of your ad, or you can also do Facebooks ads and set specific demographics so that your ads only show up to certain people in certain locations.

 

PPC Marketing for Lawyers can get very expensive, so it makes sense to look at all of your options before spending a huge amount at Google adwords.  Sometimes it makes more sense to do campaigns at Facebook and LinkedIn, or even a YouTube video campaign.

Usually you want to test different campaigns and track the results to see what works best.  Sometimes when your first starting a site, it might be a good idea to invest a few hundred dollars in a PPC campaign just to get some traffic rolling into the site.  Its also a good idea to do PPC campaigns to test things out, you could run a campaign just on family law related keywords for 2 weeks or until your allotted budget runs out.  You would then monitor the traffic, calls and forms to see how well the campaign worked.

What is Lawyer Video SEO?

Video SEO is probably the least known version of Legal Internet Marketing.  It’s basically what it sounds like, your video coming up in the search results.  Yet it’s the search results of YouTube, Facebook, Google Video results and other video sites.   Just having a Video is a great thing for SEO in general but if you do additional things like setting up video on YouTube and optimizing the video listing, embedding video on other sites and doing a few other things with video syndication, you can get your video highly ranked, and in certain cases you can get the videos YouTube page to come up in the Google organic listings.

Video is becoming bigger year after year, and with mobile being such a big thing, video goes hand in hand with mobile. It’s easy to watch videos on a mobile phone, SO it makes sense that if you’re a lawyer, you want to get your message out via video.  Why? Because a client wants to SEE you and listen to you talk, so why not create a really good video and show off your expertise and instill confidence in the potential client.

Just that reason alone is enough for a Lawyer to want to at least put up one video.   Yet the better idea is to create a whole set of videos around the law firms practice and create a Lawyer Video SEO Campaign.

Having attorneys talk about personal injury, DUI, criminal law, etc can make a huge impact.    Attorney Videos can also make people stay on your site longer, which is a big factor with Google in your law firm organic SEO rankings.

Videos are a form of Unique Content

Videos are just like new fresh unique content. Even if you just create a 20-30 second video, that’s a new blog post of something unique, and then you can easily type out the content around the video.  Then the video can be put in your blog post, it can be used at Facebook and other social media sites and you can also run a video paid advertising campaign using the video.   One video can make a big difference, so why not create 10 as part of your new Legal SEO Marketing campaign in 2017?

What is Attorney Social Media SEO?

Social Media has just exploded and Facebook is a huge source of potential traffic.  You can get free or organic traffic from Facebook by doing posts or you can also do Facebook paid ads and promote your different posts on facebook.  Optimizing your social media profiles is key and you want to make sure you fill everything out and making sure you link to your legal website.

There are a lot of different social media sites and it makes sense to setup as many top profiles as you can manage. You do NOT want to setup a profile and then never update it.  This is different than say claiming your law firms listing at Yelp. That’s a one time thing, but if you setup a twitter account, and then have like 3 years between tweets, it just looks bad. So you want to setup accounts and then also apply some sort of automation that will help update your social media sites.

Its possible to tie your Blog to your Facebook and Twitter accounts and have them update automatically anytime you do a blog post.   You can also setup RSS feeds that will post to your accounts on regular basis in order to make your accounts alive and not just dead accounts.

Yet the bottom line is that you MUST create high QUALITY content and you want to make sure you update your social media accounts and share your content. Hopefully you will get some social signals and get people to view your videos, like your facebook posts, retweet your tweets, repin your Pins at Pinterest and everything else that goes with social media marketing!

—> Free Lawyer SEO Analysis & Estimate

*** Latest Blog Post: 11 Top Lawyer SEO Tips for 2017…..

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We can help your legal practice with all forms of SEO Marketing. Contact us today for a free Legal Site Analysis.

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