The internet is bursting at the seams with search marketing information and too much of it is completely contradictory. Lawyers who try to do their own search engine optimization are often unaware of which tasks should take precedence, which have some value, and which are a complete waste of time.
Lawyers that decide to retain web consultants have the advantage of not having to make their own strategy decisions, but more importantly, they don’t have to spend the time executing the often time-consuming SEO work.
As with any professional dynamic, the relationship between a legal professional and its search engine professional must be based on mutual trust. While the law firm needs to be fully aware of the tactics, progress, and results being made by their search consultant, they also need to trust that the SEO knows what is needed for them to succeed and isn’t doing anything that will hurt the firm’s website and/or reputation.
“A change will do you (and your website) good”. If you are unwilling to have optimizations made, then you simply can’t have your site optimized. While link building, social media, paid-search, etc, are all key components to getting rankings online, if you want your law firm’s site to perform for your targeted keyphrases, you have to be willing to make keyword and structural modifications to the site itself. Change is good. Keep in mind that the goal here is not to just improve your search engine rankings, but help you increase your business. Too many attorneys (and their SEOs) lose sight of this point.
The net is a flowing, constantly evolving, place. New sites are going up, old sites are coming down. New stuff is added to the net every second. Combine that with the fact that search engine algorithms are in a constant state of change and you’ve got a roller coaster of rankings.
A lot of attorney sites, especially older ones, are built by designers that don’t know much about web marketing. These sites “look pretty” but don’t do so hot in search results because of bad structure and missing components. In extreme cases, you might have to be willing to abandon a site altogether. Other times the site may be salvageable with several structural and architectural modifications. Not making these changes can cripple your web marketing. Don’t be afraid to make the big changes needed to take advantage the benefits web marketing can have for your website.
To our dismay, many unscrupulous law firm SEO consultants sell magic claiming to be able to get your firm to the top of the search engine rankings in a very short time. As a result, many lawyers want immediate results and don’t trust search pros in general. They want to spend very little money and they have very high expectations.
Our attorney search program is based on transparency and accountability. With so many attorney search solutions out there over promising and under delivering, isn’t it time you tried one that is accountable to you?
