Tag Archives: legal marketing

Simple Ways to Improve Your Legal Marketing

Some attorneys believe that simply doing great work is enough to bring clients to their door. But that’s like saying being innocent is enough to gain an acquittal. The reality is, even innocent people need lawyers, and even lawyers need quality legal marketing professionals. businesslaw

One of the best ways that professionals at our legal marketing services firm have found to generate more leads is through legal blog writing. Some attorneys think they have to spend a fortune on advertising dollars. But the reality is, a blog is generally a much more effective means of reaching possible clients. Because think about it: You want to meet the clients who need you where they are. Yes, if you saturate a market with radio or television ads, you may retain some recognition that will trigger a phone call later on down the road. But there’s a good chance most people listening to that advertisement don’t need your services at that moment. However, there’s a much better chance that someone searching online for your practice area in your geographical location needs your help.

Legal marketing via blogging is one of the best ways to meet them where they are.  Read More ›

Legal Blogs for Law Firm Start-Ups: A Crucial Legal Marketing Tool

Launching a new law firm can be an exciting – but daunting – process. One element that you cannot overlook is legal marketing. suit tie

Legal blogs serve as one of the best online legal marketing tools available. Effective legal blog writing improves your search engine optimization (SEO), which means your law firm website will rank higher on search engines like Google and Bing. This in turn will improve the odds that a potential client will find you. Fresh, interesting, relevant content is also going to keep potential clients on your page. This works for you in two ways: It fosters trust and increases the odds readers will contact you for their legal needs. It also lowers your “bounce rate,” which is the rate at which readers “bounce” off your web page.

Sometimes referred to as “blawgs,” legal blogs have become a substantial source of information – and an effective form of legal marketing – in this new digital era. It’s true that there has never been more information so readily available. By some estimates, there are more than 200 million blogs that currently exist on the web – and a good chunk of those are law-related. However, not all of them are high-quality. This is where many new law firm start-ups go sideways. The failure to invest in online legal marketing often proves fatal to new firms.  Read More ›

Law Firm Content: SEO Spring Cleaning Time!

Spring has sprung, which means it’s the perfect opportunity to dust off your law firm content strategy and implement some fresh new ideas to your SEO approach. featherduster

Too often, we see law firms that keep the same stale content on their site for months or even years. In order to keep your SEO (search engine optimization) at high levels, you have to provide readers with content that is not only relevant and thorough, but timely and accurate.

If the information on your site is dated, readers will pick up on it pretty quickly, and you’ll pay for it with clicks – and new leads. The good news is, there are some fairly easy ways to boost your law firm content so that you can avoid some of the most common pitfalls.  Read More ›

Legal Marketing Must Keep Pace With Competitive Market

Employment prospects for new law school graduates have been abysmal in recent years. Newer and smaller law firms may wonder why they should invest in legal marketing when budgets continue to be tight.legal marketing

The answer is: You can’t afford not to invest in legal marketing. It’s one of the best ways you have to carve out an edge against larger, more established firms. In particular, online legal marketing is one of the best tools to boost your search engine ranking and online profile, which in turn helps expand your potential client base.

Plus, there is evidence the job outlook for new lawyers is improving. The American Bar Association reported in 2014 that 60 percent of all law school graduates that year were employed in full-time, long-term legal jobs that required bar passage. More recently, a study by the National Association for Law Placement revealed major law firms extended job offers to 95 percent of all summer interns.

Still, competition remains high for smaller law firms.

At Law Firm Ghost Writer, we offer legal marketing in the form of quality legal blog writing that has proven a major SEO benefit to law firms of all sizes. By organically raising your online search engine ranking with exceptional, recurrent content, we can help your law firm achieve its goals. This may include gearing up for growth or simply maintaining the client base you have.

Some law firms make the mistake of assuming that if they do good work, clients will automatically come to them. Unfortunately, this just isn’t true. In order to build your reach, you have to increase visibility.

The Pew Research Center revealed in a January 2014 study that 87 percent of adults use the internet, 90 percent of adults in the U.S. own a phone and 58 percent use a smartphone. Those figures continue to increase.

If you want to get your firm’s name in front of your target audience, you have to increase your online standing. This will require online legal marketing, and the most reliable way to do this is with continuous legal blog writing.

Another critical element of your website that probably needs attention is the copy contained throughout. It’s the first thing people see, probably before they even look at your blog. It should be polished and professional, yet easy to read and understand. It should offer insight and depth and give your target audience options to further explore topics of interest right on your site.

For example, if you are a personal injury lawyer, you might have a single page dedicated to the types of injury cases you take on. But it’s much more beneficial for your target audience – and for search engine rankings – if you offer a drop-down menu that breaks down each of these individual areas. So you might have one page each for topics like car accidents, bicycle accidents, premises liability and product liability.

You can take it another step further by delving even deeper into these topics. For example, your car accident content may offer links to content that specifically applies to drivers who have been rear-ended, struck by a large truck or hit by an uninsured motorist.

The bottom line is that in order to improve your odds of success in an increasingly competitive legal landscape, you have to provide frequent, quality content that addresses the needs and expectations of your target audience. We can help.

Contact Law Firm Ghost Writer to learn more about our legal marketing and legal blog writing services at 1.888.901.3939.

More Blog Entries:

Internet Marketing for Lawyers: Content Worth Sharing, March 6, 2016, Law Firm Content Writer Blog

Content is King for Legal Internet Marketing

I read with interest the informative article on legal Internet marketing in the February issue of Res Gestae. And I applaud RG for helping attorneys make sense of this New Frontier.

One critical piece of the puzzle that was not addressed is the need for high-quality original content in any legal Internet marketing strategy. As Find Law’s Erica Butcher points out, some areas are saturated on the web and “It’s very difficult to rank with DUI right now.”

Yet it’s not going to be any easier tomorrow! What if you are a Fort Myers criminal defense attorney and DUI is your bread and butter? (And I can assure you personal injury is no less competitive). Meanwhile, the competition for bankruptcy and foreclosure representation has skyrocketed since the beginning of the downturn.

It’s all about the content. The truth of the matter is that most of these mass-market platforms will suffice, whether Find Law, Justia, Scorpion, or an independent site builder who knows what she’s doing.

But attorneys typically buy these sites, leave them sit with several paragraphs of content on half-a-dozen pages, and complain they are not showing up in search results. Your work is not finished with the purchase of a site, it’s just beginning! Five years ago, a 30-page site was good enough to show up in some of the largest metro markets in the nation, including New York, Chicago, Miami and Boston. Today, those sites are 100+ pages. And, while a 30-page site still dominates a market the size of Fort Myers, the writing is on the wall.

“If you haven’t been going at it for the past four years, forget about it unless you want to spend a lot of money,” is fine as far as it goes. But it’s the sustained, ongoing effort that counts. Doing a great job on a website that has sat for four years is no better than the firm that spends $3,500 on a new site and expects to rule the world. Until law firms are willing to spend as much money online as they spent on yellow pages, many will continue to be disappointed with the results. It does not yet take that much money, but it does take that kind of commitment.

You want to show up well for DUI? Write 10 pages of DUI content. Or 20. “What to do if I get a DUI in Fort Myers,” “Second-offense DUI in Lee County,” “Underage drinking and DUI in Southwest Florida.” This gives you 10 or 20 more bites of the apple when it comes to Google and has the added bonus of addressing the various inquiries of potential clients. In that same vein, blogging is a great way to add content to your site on a regular basis. When you do so, Google scans your site more frequently, and ranks your site higher. There are also linking and other technical benefits to blogging.

Two-thirds of clients who are not getting a personal referral are finding an attorney online. And that number is growing by the day. Social media, website videos, website press releases and unique, quality content are all worthwhile investments. Beware of duplicative content. If your content exists elsewhere on the web, Google will ignore you. And why shouldn’t it? You have nothing to say.

Google wants to display the most relevant search results for a given term. Yes, researching keywords and finding a balance between relevancy and competition is critical. As is link building. But the overarching question when it comes to legal marketing — both traditional and electronic — has not changed. What can I do to best reach the client? If you are answering that question with a dynamic web presence, you are a step ahead of the competition and are likely to stay there.

Law Firm Ghostwriter is located in Fort Myers, FL and has provided website content and internet marketing services to law firms since 2007. Today we work with law firms in more than 30 states and in 20 of the nation’s 25 largest metro markets.