There’s one thing that every successful American law firm has in common: They all utilize local, law firm SEO. While this will help you build up your bottom line, there are a few things that you must understand about why you need this service before you rush out and hire someone to help you here.
Most People use Search Engines to Find Lawyers
While referrals are great, you won’t build a high-growth law firm this way. Instead, you must be visible in online searches – where people are searching for attorneys. In specific, you want to be visible in Google since they dominate 90% of the mobile search market today.
There’s More Competition Than You Realize
In New York alone there are over 179,000 attorneys which means that there are 92 attorneys for every 10,000 people. Even if you’re not in New York, you still have a lot of competition. Look at this. There are:
- 47,310 attorneys in Chicago
- 16,200 attorneys in Minneapolis
- 10,730 attorneys in Denver
The competition is here, which is why you need lawyer SEO today.
The Price You pay for PPC is Outrageous
When you run an AdWords campaign, you’re essentially partnering with Google. Herein they’ll send you clicks, but you’ll spend a lot of money for those clicks. In fact, the cost-per-click for most legal terms on Google’s Ads platform are the most expensive found anywhere online today.
If you’re still interested in running a successful pay-per-click campaign, there are several components you must take into consideration. These include:
- You’ll need to find someone who’s able to do keyword research and set up your campaign, bidding for the keywords that are relevant to your law firm.
- You’ll need to find another expert who can create ad copy for your landing pages. These will continually need to be tweaked so you optimize their conversion ratio and ROI.
Once everything is in place, you’ll have to be patient. Even so you should still know that the CPC for law firm SEO is AdWords’ fourth most expensive category. So, while it’s possible to get a good ROI here, you must invest a lot of time, effort, and money first.
Statistics Show law Firm SEO is a Zero-sum Game
For every 100 people who contact a law firm, only 87 will hire them. You should also know that 72% of those who hire an attorney only contact one attorney. This is why obtaining one of the top three spots in the SERPs is so important that you want to do your best to get into this position and take the leads from your competition. Hiring a “jack-of-all-trades” SEO expert won’t get you there. What you need is someone who has a great reputation when it comes to lawyer SEO.
You Must be in the top 5 of the SERPs
The first 5 websites listed below the local Maps 3-pack capture 67% of all the clicks on Google’s first page while those in positions 6 – 10 only get 4% of the clicks. You should also try to rank in the Maps 3-pack if you want any phone calls or website traffic to these search results. If you’re depending on people to click “More Results” to find you, don’t because they won’t.
Conclusion
Typically, when someone needs an attorney, they’ll go online in search of one near them. Since there are over one million lawyers at work in the United States today, competition for new clients is very intense. This is why pay-per-click campaigns are so expensive. However, unless you’re in the top 5 of the SERPs you won’t generate any leads. For help developing and maintaining a profitable lawyer SEO campaign, make sure you contact the Local SEO Company today.