The Five Parts of Law Firm Internet Marketing - LISI

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The Five Parts of Law Firm Internet Marketing

March 23, 2023 | Blog

Of the many business books I read, my current favorite is The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande. Its central premise is that, no matter what level of expertise you have in your craft or profession, having and following a simple checklist of steps is essential to avoiding costly mistakes, preventing oversights, and achieving true excellence.

In that vein, we, at LISI, have developed a checklist of the characteristics of what a law firm’s internet marketing should be. This checklist, if followed, will assure your law firm is well-positioned for success with online marketing.

The five parts are:

  • A well-designed, informative law firm website
  • Proper placement in search engines
  • Listings in law firm internet directories
  • Marketing presence in social media
  • Online marketing campaigns for your law firm

In addition to internet marketing, having a complete online presence will assist with offline marketing as well. When competing with other firms for a corporation’s legal work or attracting a high-net-worth person to your estates and trusts legal team, the prospect will almost always check out your firm online. Be excellent in the five areas I’ve described and you’ll be ready for the competition!

A well-designed, informative law firm website

Of the five parts, the most important is to have a well-designed, informative website for your law firm. Though the concept may sound obvious, it’s important to revisit why a website is so powerful in marketing your firm.

A website is your opportunity to frame your firm in the way that supports your internet marketing strategy. You are in complete control, having the ability to cast your law firm as you want others to see it — modern or traditional, dynamic or stable, entrepreneurial or old-school. The design of your site affords you the opportunity to show your firm in any light, creating an image of the firm you want to be.

And with this image, the website will reach far more viewers than any other medium. Online, a website knows no geographic boundaries, having the ability to make an impression in any city, state, or even country to which you want to send your message.

The website medium itself has virtually no limits for your message. Unlike print materials, a website can have (quite inexpensively) hundreds, even tens of thousands, of pages where you can post attorney biographies, practice areas, case studies, and legal alerts, and other information to make your firm’s marketing case. Furthermore, you can change the site immediately at very little cost — print materials, once produced, are permanent, destined for landfills if they become obsolete.

Finally, with the advent of mobile-friendly responsive design, your website viewers can interact with your site on their terms, whether on desktop, smartphone, or tablet devices. Print materials are not similarly friendly.

Proper placement in search engines

It may be self-evident, but it is essential to your law firm’s internet marketing success to have the proper presence in search engine results. Gone are the days of keeping meticulous lists of web browser bookmarks listing favorite sites. And people rarely enter website addresses in the browser’s address bar, especially for hard-to-remember domain names.

How do they, then, get to websites? Answer: Search engines.

Optimize Your Website

The power of finding internet resources by typing a few words into Google cannot be overstated. Search engines make an enormous effort to refine the searching systems (called the ‘search algorithm’) to meet the demands of their users. In fact, they zealously protect their algorithms as trade secrets, similar to the way Coca-Cola or K.F.C. protect their recipes.

But simply having a website does not mean you are going to be found by those you want to find your firm. You have to properly format your site (search engine optimization or S.E.O.) and communicate with the search engines about the information on your website.

Starting with S.E.O., your website should be optimized to ‘play nice’ with the search engines. This means lots of text on your law firm’s website is written with relevant terms that someone may search (e.g., “trial lawyer” in addition to “litigator”). There should also be great care paid to your title and meta description tags (built into a website page’s code behind the scenes), as those are important elements the search algorithms use in ranking sites. Finally, there should be effective cross-linking within your law firm’s website to allow the search engines to navigate the site and recognize the most-important information.

Alert the Search Engines

Once you’ve built a great, search-engine-optimized website, you need to interact with the search engines to have them recognize the work you’ve done. It’s a myth that a search in Google is a search of all websites on the internet. In fact, many estimates say that Google’s index — the database of website pages it has reviewed and is available to search within its system — includes only 4-5 percent of the information on the web. This means that you have to alert Google and other search engines that your law firm’s website exists so that those services can review your site and include it into the searchable index.

How is this done? A competent website development company will create systems to communicate with the search engines. One such website element is a sitemap.xml file, which is a list of the pages on the site and their relative importance in your website overall. Another is to set up a webmaster-tools account, which is a direct line to those services to help diagnose the health of the site and what could prevent it from being listed well in the search engines.

Without proper placement in the search engines, the work you’ve done to design, build, and write a great website may be out of view — a potential waste of time and money that does not move your law firm’s internet marketing plans forward.

Listings in law firm internet directories

Next up is the importance of your firm being properly listed in the various online directories, such as Google Maps, FindLaw, Avvo, Martindale, and others. If your firm is not correctly (or not at all) listed in these internet directories, it could have a penalizing effect on your search rankings, hindering those trying to do business with you.

Why are legal directory listings important?

Two reasons: First, and most obvious, is if you’re not listed in the directory your potential client is scanning, you won’t be found — just as if you were not listed in the white pages in the paper phonebook. (For Millennials who don’t know what those last two words mean, click here.)

But more importantly, the other reason is tied to how Google ranks businesses in search results. In order to show its users the most trustworthy listings for businesses, Google examines how a business’s name, address, and phone number (N.A.P.) appears across various directories. If the information is consistent, the Google theory goes, the business is worthy of a higher ranking. But if there are differing names, addresses, or phone numbers for the business, Google will penalize the business with not-as-high rankings.

What’s your firm’s score?

How do you know, without manually going to each directory, if your firm is consistently and accurately listed? There are tools, such as Moz.com/local, that scan the law firm internet directories and compare the information. Here’s how to check:

  • Go to Moz.com/local;
  • Enter your business name and zip code;
  • On the next page, choose one of the “Verified” listings for your firm; and
  • See your score and where listings are incomplete, inconsistent, or duplicate.

A score of less than 80 percent is an indication you need to do some cleanup work on your listings. Some of the directories allow you to directly change the information about your law firm; others are not as straightforward because they pull information from other sources (that they don’t always disclose). Refer to each directory’s listing rules to see how to fix the information.

Marketing presence in social media

Now we turn to what was once a brand-new development in law firm marketing: the social networks. Just as at one time it was unheard of to go without a business card, then a fax number, and then a website, it is now becoming essential that your law firm have a internet marketing presence on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook.

Oh, great, another thing, you’re saying. Why does my firm need to be on those social networks? Simple: that’s where the people are, and the people expect it. Each network has a distinct value to your internet marketing: LinkedIn is a massive business network and perfect opportunity to stay virtually in front of your network; Instagram and Facebook are vehicles to reach potential clients and communicate your firm’s culture to future hires; and Twitter is a place to share thought leadership with the media and other amplifiers.

Traffic, Traffic, Traffic

Like it or not, these social networks get a ton of traffic, especially on smartphones and tablets. LinkedIn has 100 million active monthly users, Twitter has 313 million, and Facebook has an astounding 1.79 billion. In addition, each of those networks are competing with Google and each other to be your primary source for information about your interests. If your clients or potential clients are using those networks and you’re not there, be assured your competition is and they would be happy to engage with them.

How to Start and Move Ahead

Steps to take to get in the discussion: Establish your law firm’s internet marketing presence on each of the services. Then, fill in information about your firm and update the standard graphics to match your brand. Finally, start reading, following, liking, and then engaging with your followers. You’ll attract attention and move your internet marketing goals forward!

Or, we can do it for you. One of LISI’s services is our social media marketing program where we set up and even run the social media accounts for our clients. We know the rules of the networks and the proper way to market legal services.

Internet marketing campaigns for your law firm

The fifth and final step is to have an ongoing internet marketing campaign to let the search engines (and the people who use them) know that your site is current and relevant. Parts of this ongoing marketing campaign involve taking actions on your firm’s website (onsite work) and others include making changes on other websites (offsite work).

Fresh content is better

Search engines like Google favor sites with updated and informative content over those that have sat static for a long period. So, adding news items, blog entries, case studies, white papers, and similar items will show Google that your law firm’s site is a source for new information on a frequent basis. This increases the chance for higher rankings in relevant internet searches. If your site is properly set up to communicate new material to the search engines — via Google Webmaster tools, for example — the new information will get into the Google index quickly and allow for better search-result rankings.

Inbound links are a must

One of Google’s core criteria for ranking websites over others involves links that point to your website from other websites. The quality and quantity of these links (in that order) are key factors Google and Bing use to determine whether your site is relevant for a particular search.

For example, let’s say you have a consumer bankruptcy practice and a website to market it. You (or someone helping you) get reputable websites dealing with bankruptcy issues, such as debt counseling sites or educational websites, to link to your site. Google will see those links from other on-topic websites and, by association, rank your site higher than those without inbound links.

(Google) Map your way to success

The importance of appearing in Google Maps cannot be overstated, especially if your practice has a great deal of local-to-you clients. You have probably noticed that Google has been showing maps on the search results page for many searches. If you haven’t claimed or set up your listing in the Google map system — controlled by Google My Business, you are missing a valuable opportunity for a significant presence in searches. Even if your practice is not based on local clients, it is still important to include accurate firm information such as telephone number and physical address, within Google maps for people who wish to contact your firm.

 

Woody Allen is credited as saying, “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” In our post, “The Five Parts of Law Firm Internet Marketing,” we’ve covered well-designed, informative law firm websites, proper placement in search engines, listings in law firm internet directories, marketing presence in social media, and online marketing campaigns for your law firm. If your law firm does well with the five parts, its internet marketing presence will be robust and poised to not just show up, but succeed!

We’re here to help. Contact us today to see what we can do for you.
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