“Chris and his team have a finger on the pulse of the industry. They know what’s going on in legal mediums and how to optimize legal sites for search engines and for our users. I don’t think I’ve ever met a team that understands that as well as Rankings.io.”
- Randolph Rice, Esq., Owner, Law Offices of Randolph Rice
Attorney Randolph Rice and his team are ranked among the best lawyers in Baltimore, Maryland. The Law Offices of Randolph Rice focus on criminal defense, DUI, DWI, drunk driving defense, traffic tickets, personal injury, car and truck accidents, and medical malpractice.
Highlights
Challenges
Finding an SEO agency that:
- Understood SEO for law firms and their users
- Would be responsive to the firm’s changing needs
- Were communicative and proactive problem solvers
Trying to maintain two websites and have both rank well in search:
- Keyword cannibalization between both websites
- Expensive to create content for both websites
- Link equity was diluted between both websites
Solution
- Hiring an SEO agency that only helps law firms
- Merging two sites into one site with more targeted content
- Optimizing link building to boost organic traffic
Results
- 72% increase in organic traffic
- 93% increase in contact form submissions
- ~40% more personal injury clients
year over year
Challenges
SEO optimization in the legal industry
Since starting his own law practice back in 2006, Attorney Randolph Rice has understood that his firm would live or die based on its ability to attract new clients through organic channels.
“Corporate firms can get away with a few big clients that have been their clients for the past ten years and will continue to be their clients for the next 30 years,” Randolph explains.
“We practice what you might call ‘street law,’ such as personal injury and criminal defense. Our cases typically last three months to a year at most. That means we have to work to gain new clients every day to keep our business going,” he adds.
Earning organic links was especially important to Randolph. He knew paid ads might attract some short-term clients, but he also knew that those leads wouldn’t last if he didn’t begin with a solid foundation: a good website and great content.
“I’m not a big fan of PPC. We used to spend thousands of dollars on PPC every month and it felt like throwing money out of the window,” he says. “I knew that my focus had to be on building a stronger site—a site that has the most up-to-date information and the best user experience.”
So, in 2009 Randolph began looking for an SEO agency that would help his website succeed in search and appeal to potential clients.
“I went through a series of four or five SEO firms from 2009–2016. It felt like we were going round-and-round with different SEO agencies every six months. They all made the usual promises and then failed to deliver,” he says.
What Randolph soon realized was that most SEOs didn’t know how to optimize legal websites. They might have achieved great results in other industries, but they had no experience when it came to optimizing for law firms and their clients.
“SEO in the legal field is very unique. Most SEO firms are not set up to handle law firms—but Rankings.io is,” Randolph says.
“Chris and his team have a finger on the pulse of the industry. They know what’s going on in legal mediums and how to optimize legal sites for search engines and for our users. I don’t think I’ve ever met a team that understands that as well as Rankings.io.”
“SEO in the legal field is very unique. Most SEO firms are not set up to handle law firms—but Rankings.io is.”
Randolph Rice, Esq., Owner, The Law Offices of Randolph Rice
The Law Offices of Randolph Rice
Solution
Merging two websites & eliminating keyword cannibalization
Not one to settle for second best, Randolph gave Rankings.io a challenge so that he could be sure they were the right fit for his firm.
“I actually A/B tested Rankings.io versus another firm over six months,” Randolph says. “We had two websites at the time, so I told Rankings.io that they’d be optimizing the criminal defense site while the other agency handled the personal injury site.”
“The difference was night and day. Chris and his team did so much better than the other agency. It got to the point where we were primarily a criminal defense firm. Giving everything to Rankings.io was an easy decision after that,” he adds.
In 2016, Rankings.io took the reins of both websites. They helped Randolph streamline his content, optimize for search, and improve the on-site user experience.
Then, in 2017, they convinced Randolph to undertake a very ambitious project: merging the two websites into one.
“We decided to consolidate everything on ricelawmd.com. I’d been thinking about it for a while, and Rankings.io reassured me that they could do it. It was the right move,” Randolph says.
“I realized that maintaining two sites meant doubling our efforts. If we wrote a great article on site A, we always needed to write an equally great article for site B. It was like trying to make lightning strike the same place twice—and it cost a lot of money,” he adds
Merging the two sites was a massive undertaking. Chris and his team needed to bring together the content and style of both sites and retarget all content for both personal injury and criminal defense.
The content overhaul also required them to weed out keyword cannibalization and duplicate content.
“We started with around 1,700 pages and we whittled it down to about 720 pages. That was all done by Chris and his team,” Randolph says.
“We had some good content spread across both sites. Now, it’s all working to make the main website even better. We’ve also added content that is relevant, but wasn’t performing well on its own, to existing high-traffic pages,” he adds.
Merging two fully developed sites wasn’t without its challenges, but Randolph knew that Rankings.io had the skills to help his website succeed—and the responsiveness he wants from a partner.
“Merging the two sites certainly causes some problems but their team does a great job fixing them as they come up,” Randolph says.
“Rankings.io understands how changes will affect your site from a holistic point of view and how they’ll further your goals. I used to send my other SEOs an email and never hear back from them, whereas Chris is always an email or a phone call away,” he elaborates.
To ensure that the newly merged site wouldn’t lose link equity, Rankings.io restructured Randolph’s permalinks to better target Maryland-specific demographics. They also performed .gov outreach to earn even more high-quality backlinks.
They completed the site merge in November 2017.
“Rankings.io understands how changes will affect your site from a holistic point of view and how they’ll further your goals.”
Randolph Rice, Esq., Owner, The Law Offices of Randolph Rice
The Law Offices of Randolph Rice
Results
72% year-over-year increase in organic traffic
Randolph has enjoyed extraordinary results since Rankings.io helped him merge his two websites into one.
“We made the merge back in November 2017. It certainly helped us out and we’ve been growing—and I think it’s really going to pay off in the long run,” he says.
The results of the merge are extremely positive. In just one year, the site’s organic traffic increased by 72%. It now dominates the first page of Google results for numerous high-value keywords.
Contact form submissions have also gone from 239 in November 2017 to 462 in November 2018—an incredible 93% year-over-year increase.
“We’ve seen a big increase since the merge,” Randolph confirms. “We’re now on the first page for keywords like Baltimore car accident lawyer, Baltimore DUI lawyer, Maryland DUI lawyer, and more.”
And on the conversion front, Randolph sees the tangible impact Rankings.io’s SEO has had on his business.
“When we first started out, we were primarily a criminal defense firm but it’s now shifted to the point where a majority of our work comes from personal injury clients. That tells me that the work they’ve put into the personal injury side has paid off,” he says.
In fact, Randolph estimates that his personal injury clients have increased by around 40% year-over-year since the merge. But as great as these results are, Randolph says he’s not surprised.
“I’ve developed friendships with lawyers in other states—other firms working with Rankings.io. I saw how well they were doing and I knew that Chris and his team would get us there too,” he says.
So does Randolph recommend Rankings.io?
“Not to other Maryland law firms. I don’t want the competition,” he laughs, “but I’ve recommended them to lawyers in other states. They’ve got a finger on the pulse of the law industry and they understand legal websites. They know their stuff.”
“We’ve seen a big increase since the merge. We’re now on the first page for keywords like Baltimore car accident lawyer, Baltimore DUI lawyer, Maryland DUI lawyer, and more.”
Randolph Rice, Esq., Owner, The Law Offices of Randolph Rice
The Law Offices of Randolph Rice
