SEO On-Air: SEO for Lawyers

In this episode, we cover:

Today, we are talking to Seth Price, the Founding and Managing Partner of Price Benowitz LLP, a mid-size law firm with around 40 attorneys and the founder of full-service digital marketing agency BluShark Digital.

Seth brings a unique perspective to the intersection of law and the business of law, helping match consumers in need with high-quality legal representation. Seth is a sought after speaker who has keynoted at influential conferences across the country and in Europe.

In this episode, he will discuss SEO for lawyers.

Stay tuned for the next podcast episode, where our guest, Lance Bachmann, discusses conversion rate optimization.

Show Notes Explanation

Hey everyone, this is Senthil. Welcome to another episode of SEO On-Air. If you are a frequent listener of our show, you’d know that we’ve covered a lot of topics on e-commerce SEO. Of late, we’ve received a lot of requests on SEO tips for law firms.

According to research, around 96% of people seeking legal services use search engines in their research process, and almost 75% of people visit a law firm website to look for resolutions.

To speak more on this topic, we have Mr. Seth Price. He is the Founding and Managing Partner of Price Benowitz LLP, a mid-size law firm with around 40 attorneys and the founder of full-service digital marketing agency BluShark Digital. Welcome to the show, Seth.

Time Stamp: 02:42-06:35

What are the fundamentals of law firm SEO?

• I think SEO fundamentals are SEO fundamentals. Certain nuances are essential for legal SEO.
• If you are a lawyer doing SEO for bar licenses and use languages like “best lawyer” or any other substantiated claims, it can get you into a lot of trouble.
• Next, it can be hyper-competitive, much more than other areas.
• Therefore, I feel it is a combination of needing a very high level of expertise and implementation of that expertise combining with the nuances of bar regulations.
• The third contributing factor is that lawyers are themselves difficult to deal with. Not all lawyers are rational people.
• If you can handle high-quality content, authoritative links, a well-structured site, and a good focus on GMB and local SEO, you’ll be successful in any business. These four elements are the fundamentals of SEO.

Time Stamp: 06:51-08:32

What, according to you, is the right approach for keyword research for a law firm website?

•  I don’t think there’s a right keyword approach. It mostly depends on the market.
• As a lawyer, you know what types of cases you want and what words are relevant.
• I love the idea of “you know your money” keywords, and as you go up the hierarchy, you can go for longer-tail keywords that may not be high-volume, but you know if somebody searches for that, you could earn good ROI.

Time Stamp: 08:43-10:52

Can you suggest content marketing strategies for law firms? 

• Google is now savvy enough to understand where the content is written.
• The hardest thing to do in terms of content is to write content that resonates with the audience and the Google bots.
• I feel that writing high-quality content is one of the essential aspects of a law firm.
• The ideal would be to bring high-quality content and quality links together in a site together for law firms.

Time Stamp: 11:21-15:31

How do lawyers plan their content strategy around different areas of practice? 

• For personal injury and medical malpractice lawyers, most digital marketing money is spent.
• Criminal Defense is another area where people are most likely to go online to find answers to find solutions.
• For issues like same-sex divorces, one person can have a single resource on it, among other areas, while another one can have a library of resources of same-sex divorces only.
• When someone searches for same-sex divorces, you might have less search volume if you focus only on one area, but the information can be vast.

Time Stamp: 15:58-19:47

Is it advisable to go for exact match domains?

• Back in the day, exact-match domains dominated, but Google came up with an algorithm change, and they said we don’t want exact-match domain names.
• But then, Google said that was too much because the person with the exact-match domain must be an expert in that area.
• What Google didn’t want was to have single-page websites with an exact-match domain.
• Therefore, the exact-match domain is advisable if it doesn’t hurt your business. However, in today’s standard, brand beats exact-match. So you have to balance what makes sense given your situation.

Time Stamp: 20:24-21:46

What are the things that you’d recommend for law firms that are starting off just now?

• The first piece is getting the four basic fundamentals that we spoke of earlier.
• Then comes localized content and links, GMB, and every other tool that will enhance your local presence.
• You must strive to improve your local authority.

Time Stamp: 22:03-28:40

Is it a safe bet to follow sites that link best law firms area-wise? 

• Directories started as significant resources, but over the years, they phased out.
• Google algorithm has given a lot of love to directories over the years. They take up a couple of rankings in the SERP.
• I think that it is an entire discussion onto itself as far as whether or not you can get ROI by buying locations on those listings.
• As a law firm, in my opinion, there is no guarantee that it’s going to stay in that listing, and the conversion will continue to be that good.
• As an SEO, you don’t want to pay a monthly fee for a directory listing, but you have to do that because of lead generation through it.
• So my suggestion will be sometimes to money ball it.