SEO for Business Lawyers
Over the years, the legal industry has relied solely on various traditional marketing techniques. These include mediums such as print, television, and radio. They have also depended on other offline practices, such as referrals from previous clients, to reach more potential ones in the area.
Unfortunately, as modern technology evolves, digital marketing has shown the many limitations of different offline strategies. For instance, it would be difficult for the target audience to consume basic information, such as addresses and phone numbers, just by passing a billboard once. Through digital marketing, reach, and conversion have become much more accessible and affordable than most existing offline platforms.
End to End Solutions for
Grey Smoke Media is North America’s only full-service legal marketing firm, offering:
Media Buying
radio, tv, Out of Home
Digital Marketing
with a heavy focus on SEO
Content Production
Reputation Management
Management Consulting
We elevate law firms to the highest echelon through a multi-pronged, unified approach.
Our Results
Grey Smoke
Media grew an
injury firm
from less than
30 employees
to over
350 employees
Tripled a divorce
firm’s traffic in just
11 months
3 xgrowth
Our agency has
handled international
communications
for over
$3 billion in class action lawsuits.
Our agency has
negotiated legal ad
buys
with over
100different publishers across North America.
Grey Smoke Media has
negotiated brand
partnerships between law
firms and major sporting franchises such as
Our founders
have provided
commentary
to over
100
television and radio
stations, podcasts, and
newspapers globally.
They have given speeches
on digital marketing to over
3,000
attendees.
While the legal industry isn’t exactly the most tech-savvy of all fields, law firms today can benefit from various digital marketing practices, particularly search engine optimization (SEO).
If you’re a business lawyer looking to expand your reach and establish authority in your field, keep reading to learn more about SEO. Discover why you should include such a practice in your legal marketing efforts.
How SEO Works for Legal Firms
Search engine optimization (SEO) is an online marketing strategy that helps boost a site’s placement in search engine results pages (SERPs) from platforms like Google and Bing. It focuses on improving or optimizing various areas inside and outside the website to increase its SERP rankings so businesses can reach and convert more people online.
SEO also involves search engine bots that “crawl” (go through) websites to identify all existing ranking factors within. These bots help search engines understand and rank pages better. Plus, it helps them “index” or organize them in an online directory, which search engines will access once an online user makes a search query.
For instance, an online user utilizes the search term “corporate lawyers near me.” If Google’s algorithm has indexed your site well, it will appear as one of the top search choices, possibly on the first page of the SERPs. This means Google is telling your target audience that your content is relevant to the search query, which only happens if you have excellent SEO.
As mentioned, SEO involves optimization inside and outside the website. This is because there are various types of SEO that sites should integrate. Some of the most popular ones include on-site, off-site, and technical SEO.
Learn more about law firm SEO or what others also term as lawyer SEO and how it can benefit your business. Contact the professionals at Grey Smoke Media.
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Essential SEO Ranking Factors
Conducting an SEO campaign means incorporating various ranking factors into your law firm’s website. It also means leveraging all forms of SEO to execute the best campaign for your business.
With that in mind, here are some essential ranking factors you should integrate when launching an SEO campaign.
Content
Generally, content is among the most vital elements that help drive any digital marketing campaign to success, especially in SEO. When done right, content can help improve a site’s visibility, engagement, and authority in the niche.
In definition, content is any helpful information that aims to solicit or trigger a response. These items could be in any form, including texts, images, audio, and video, as long as they are relevant sources for an online user’s search query.
Additionally, content involves various elements to reach the target audience. On the surface, visitors may only look at a blog post as is. However, looking deeper into it, that blog post has various on-page optimization working simultaneously. These include keywords, multimedia assets, title tags, headings, snippets, meta descriptions, and internal and external links. Optimizing your content with such elements can help search engines crawl your site better and increase your rankings in the SERPs.
Meanwhile, apart from visibility, content can also establish a site’s authority in the niche. By publishing regular and quality content on your site, search engines and other sites could potentially consider you a trusted source of information. When that happens, you improve your online presence and convert more prospective clients.
Links
Besides visibility and authority, search engines also look at a site’s popularity when prioritizing pages for the SERPs. If you want to achieve search engine popularity, your site must attain quality backlinks from other websites.
Backlinks occur when other sites use your pages as references for their content. This means they’re using your content as a trusted source of information to solidify theirs. Every time you gain backlinks, you increase your chances of being noticed by Google’s algorithm.
However, backlinks are more intricate than one might think. Apart from quantity, Google factors in the quality of the links. In other words, to be considered popular, the site that links to your content must have an established authority in the industry. Meanwhile, low-quality or suspicious links could negatively affect your rankings.
In addition, there are other factors to identify link quality. Your links must come from domains in a similar niche instead of gaining them from random sites. Another is the trustworthiness of the link origin. If they come from trustworthy websites, they could positively impact your rankings.
Technical SEO
Quality content and links will only succeed if you have good site performance. User experience is a significant ranking factor that Google considers when crawling sites. This means having faster page speed, fewer broken links, and better structure or optimization.
Google wants to provide online users with the most relevant and valuable sites for their search queries. If they prioritize unresponsive sites with slow speed rates and confusing navigation, searchers will likely look for information on other search engine platforms. Search engines also look for signs of a strong technical site foundation when they crawl sites. This includes looking into the website’s design, security, and functionality.
Grey Smoke Media
in the Press
Jordan Whelan, a spokesperson for Diamond Lawyers and president of public relations agency Grey Smoke Media, told the Star Thursday night that “after consulting with counsel, we will be appealing the decision.”
Having worked with many brands in Canada, however, Jordan Whelan, president of Toronto-based Grey Smoke Media, doubts that his clients would embrace a programmatic exchange for podcast ads.
“Media buyers and marketing companies don’t want to stray from what’s working,” he said. As a media buyer for major Canadian brands, Whelan said that many are skeptical compared to similar media, such as radio.
I spoke to Jordan Whelan, Toronto Media Buyer at Grey Smoke Media and client of mine, who builds customized media campaigns. According to him, “ I’ve tested campaigns on Twitter that received more clicks but resulted in low conversions. Facebook capitalized on user psychology in a way that reached your target customer, despite the higher CPC.”
Featured in The Toronto Star
“‘We’ll get a client a media hit in a major news outlet and then also parlay that into getting them on page one of Google,’ he says, collaborating with search-engine-optimization experts in tandem.”
Read the full feature here >
Political clients (say John Tory for Mayor campaign) and leading law firms, including Personal Injury
Powerhouse and Diamond & Diamond Lawyers, trust Grey Smoke Media.
Benefits of SEO for Business Lawyers
SEO benefits sites in all niches, including law firm websites in different legal fields. The following are some of the known advantages of SEO for business lawyers.
Reach more potential clients
Generally, SEO aims to expand a site’s placement in the organic search results. Ranking higher means becoming one of the top choices for potential clients in the SERPs. When done right, you increase your law firm’s chances of getting more visitors and inquiries.
Optimizing various on-site and off-site pages helps law firms reach potential clients within their target areas. For instance, optimizing your Google My Business (GMB) and other online business profiles helps complement your law firm site’s SEO efforts.
Furthermore, by utilizing practices like local SEO, law firms can create more opportunities for users to find them online. Local SEO caters to local searches. These are queries conducted by the target audience within a specific geographical area. Optimizing your site for such a factor will enable you to help those in immediate need of legal services.
Become an authority law firm
Publishing quality content helps your site rank higher in the SERPs. It also helps your law firm become more authoritative in your field.
High-quality content helps demonstrate your expertise in the industry. Creating well-researched content mixed with the latest information in your niche and the newest SEO trends could catapult you as a trusted source of information online. This will increase your chances of online users and other sites using your content as references for their posts. Because of this, you increase your chances of earning backlinks and your search engine rankings going up.
Additionally, giving focus to your law firm’s content marketing enables you to become authoritative across different platforms and in various forms. There are many ways to showcase your authority in the field. Besides blogs, you can publish infographics, online videos, and podcasts.
Moreover, never rush your website content. To become authoritative, you must slowly build your library with knowledgeable and helpful content. SEO takes time to get visible results. Establishing authority online is one of the best examples of this.
The Marketing Agency of Canada’s Largest Personal Injury Firm
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Build an excellent online presence
Some people mistakenly think that establishing a digital presence is for online businesses only. However, marketers would tell you that even brick-and-mortar stores or enterprises that are not tech-related, such as law firms, must be active online to stay relevant in the market.
An active online presence in today’s digital landscape has become one of the keys to success for modern businesses. It helps bridge the gap between potential clients and business lawyers by making your law firm more accessible online.
Moreover, being active online is one of the best ways to humanize your law firms. People are becoming more distrustful of businesses on the internet, with many false and malicious sites existing today. Being active online helps communicate to your target audience that there’s a whole team behind your law firm, which eases their worries about stumbling across harmful websites.
You can improve your online presence anywhere online by leveraging various on-page and off-page SEO strategies. For instance, aside from integrating different SEO practices on your site, you’re also actively engaging in social media. Because of this, you gain more trust online, tap new clients, and increase your chances of ranking higher in the SERPs.
An excellent online presence could also urge your clients to leave honest feedback on your law firm’s web pages. If you’re a trustworthy law firm, you can expect many positive reviews that may boost your online image and potentially drive more traffic to your site.
“Legal marketing powerhouse”
Offer quality user experience
Poor website performance will put any business behind. With the aggressive nature of today’s digital world, having a website is not enough. For your law firm website to engage potential clients, you must offer a more seamless user experience. This means it must have functions such as faster loading times, mobile optimization, and responsive pages or buttons. Such features on your site will prevent visitors from looking elsewhere for helpful information.
Fortunately, by focusing on technical SEO, you ensure that your law firm website is of good quality. Optimizing your site for various technical ranking factors enables you to offer an excellent user experience that could prolong your target audience’s visit, which could help convert them to clients.
Achieve high ROI
Those unfamiliar with SEO usually compare it with the pay-per-click model (PPC), another timeless online advertising platform. PPC is where businesses partner with third-party websites or individuals to advertise their links or any material. If someone clicks through the ad, they will pay those separate entities. On the surface, it looks more cost-efficient than SEO since companies are only required to pay for every click. However, one of the most significant disadvantages of PPC is that online users tend to distrust online ads that demand them to click due to the fear of malicious links.
Meanwhile, SEO focuses on organic traffic. It caters specifically to search or user intent. The good news is that SEO is cheaper than other digital marketing practices but offers an effective drive of website traffic. It provides a considerable return on investment (ROI) for your law firm without spending too much on a campaign.
“Marketing tactics of the
elite class”
In-House SEO vs. SEO Agency
Running a campaign on your own and understanding Google Analytics might be tempting. However, if you want results fast, skip the practice areas and hire an in-house SEO professional or partner with an SEO agency.
If you’re planning to adopt SEO for your law firm, the ideal way is to let professionals help out. Below are some key points to consider when choosing.
Hiring an in-house SEO specialist
If you plan to go in-house, it’s ideal that you form a team of specialists to get the best SEO campaigns. Generally, an SEO team must have a team lead, marketing specialists, web developers, and content creators.
The best thing about going in-house is that the team’s efforts will center around your company and no one else. This means you’re well aware of all the work done to your site and the progress of your SEO campaigns.
Moreover, internal specialists often have a solid understanding of the company. They can take the time to study your field and come up with a solid legal SEO campaign. Plus, it’s easy for in-house teams to collaborate with other units within the business since they exist in the same workplace.
Unfortunately, the problem with in-house is the budget it takes to form a team. It’s unlikely that one specialist is knowledgeable or skilled enough in other SEO areas. For example, one expert could analyze metrics for your law firm, but can’t create the necessary content to attract the target audience. This is why you must invest in a whole team, which will be expensive.
Moreover, hiring employees takes time since you must filter the best ones out of many candidates. Plus, you must conduct orientation about your industry’s ins and outs. Also, you must conduct a hiring process, which means it would likely be a long time before you could benefit from SEO. A campaign itself takes a few months to a whole year to garner results.
Choosing an SEO company
Among the biggest challenges of partnering with an SEO agency is collaboration. These service providers work with different clients in various industries. Regardless of the agency’s size, more often than not, they could be juggling their time and attention between projects. Maintaining open communication could take a lot of work.
On the plus side, finding the right SEO agency for your law firm can benefit you in many ways. For one, they can help save time by eliminating the internal hiring process. Once you partner with them, they can immediately offer SEO campaigns for your business. Plus, once you do, you are guaranteed a team of SEO experts to provide you with all the ranking factors your website needs.
Agencies are complete with team leads, content creators, web developers, and analysts to help ensure SEO success. You won’t have to worry about scouring the market for professionals that conduct services such as keyword research, link building, metrics analysis, and site audit. Additionally, because you won’t have to build a whole team, you save your law firm money by avoiding hiring employees and paying their salaries. While they might seem expensive when you pay upfront, partnering with an SEO agency is a cheap solution in the long run, considering a campaign provides lasting effects.
Moreover, they’re knowledgeable of the latest trends in SEO. SEO professionals are always on the lookout for new SEO practices that can put their clients in front of their competition.
Contact Grey Smoke Media for a trustworthy SEO service provider for your law firm. Our team of professionals is equipped with the latest tools and know-how in the industry.
Our Testimonials
“Grey Smoke Media is exceptional and in a league of its own. Jordan has played a pivotal role in our explosive growth over the past decade. His raw creativity is inspiring.”
Jeremy Diamond
Senior Partner,Diamond and Diamond Lawyers
“Grey Smoke Media took me from 50 keywords on page one to over 250, more than doubling my traffic, in just 8 months. They are more than an agency. They are a business partner that I can depend on at 10pm on a Sunday. Their work is beyond reproach.
Barry Nussbaum
Owner of Nussbaum Family Law
“Fantastic work”
Thomas Grajek
Criminal Defense Attorney
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Exclusive Backlinks
We have secured links for our clients on some of the largest media outlets in the world. This marriage of traditional PR outreach and SEO has resulted in an indisputable and inimitable advantage for our clients.
Stay Ahead of the Competition With Grey Smoke Media
Today, SEO continues to be an effective strategy to market law firms in different legal fields. SEO provides opportunities to expand a law firm’s reach and establish authority in the industry. It’s also one of many affordable digital marketing options for modern businesses.
Fortunately, various SEO agencies worldwide offer services to help law firms build credibility and convert more people online. Through such service providers, potential clients can reach law firms and receive legal assistance immediately.
For SEO campaigns that perform above the competition, talk to our professionals at Grey Smoke Media. Grey Smoke Media offers many SEO services with the latest tools and techniques that can help boost your law firm marketing.
FAQs on SEO for Business Lawyers
Long-tail keywords are search terms which are more specific than shorter keywords. These keywords are used by visitors who are likely closer to a purchase or doing a voice search. If your target audience uses them for their Google search, they’re possibly looking for immediate legal services. Optimizing your site for long-tail keywords can help you reach these potential clients immediately.
A site audit is a vital practice that helps identify various issues within a website. This practice ensures that a site is optimized for multiple technical ranking factors that search engines require.
It might be tempting to duplicate content to double your Google rankings. However, it’s one of the most notorious factors that can negatively impact your SEO campaign.
Duplicate content is where the content is copied between two or more internal pages. Google knows how to identify duplicate content and penalizes sites that have it.
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