"I’m going up against competing firms that have multi-million advertising budgets – and we beat all of them."
- Gabriel Levin, The Levin Firm
Challenges
Two years ago, Gabriel Levin was facing a serious dilemma: his Philadelphia-based personal injury office, The Levin Firm, was struggling to compete against the million-dollar marketing campaigns being pushed by established competitors with deep pockets.
Despite their reputation for client advocacy and strong track record of winning cases, Gabriel and his team were having trouble bringing in leads – which spelled major trouble for the business.
Gabriel saw search engine optimization (SEO) as a cost-efficient way to get in front of qualified leads right at their point of need and decided he’d try his hand at tinkering with his site’s SEO.
His internal efforts paid off at first. For awhile, his site was ranking well and new cases were coming in.
A doomed domain and too few leads
- Million-dollar marketing competition in a major market
- Self-taught SEO led to website being blacklisted by Google
- Internal SEO efforts taking hours away from day job
- SEO firms offered little substance or transparency
"Lead generation is probably the top most important tool for building a private practice. The business really comes down to leads. You can be the best lawyer in the world, but if no one hires you, you go out of business. As a result of negative links, the site got blocked. Google turned the faucet off and we went from page 1 to page 7."
- Gabriel Levin, The Levin Firm
But not long after, disaster struck.
The quality of the links pointing to Gabriel’s site was considered spammy by Google, damaging the site’s authority and landing the domain on Google’s blacklist.
For Gabriel and his firm, the results were devastating.
All those new leads quickly evaporated.
Worse, the time spent working on SEO was taking Gabriel away from what he did best: defending clients.
He knew it was time to hire an expert – one who could build his site back into a lead-generating asset and free up his time to focus on advocating for clients.
After several interviews with firms that didn’t impress him, Gabriel knew he’d found the right fit when he spoke to Chris Dreyer from Rankings.io.
"I spoke to a bunch of people. I know a lot about online marketing, so I can tell if someone knows what they’re talking about when I’m discussing search engine optimization. It was clear after my conversation with Rankings.io that they were legit."
- Gabriel Levin, The Levin Firm
The business really comes down to leads. You can be the best lawyer in the world, but if no one hires you, you go out of business.
Gabriel Levin
The Levin Firm
Solution
After careful analysis, Chris and Gabriel decided the existing site was too battered to be revived.
For the Rankings.io team, that meant building up a brand new site’s authority from scratch – a serious challenge in such a competitive market.
They’d need to move quickly – without taking shortcuts or using unethical tactics – to catch up to their more established competition.
The Rankings.io team got to work, first determining what keywords and topic areas would attract the most quality leads for The Levin Firm.
Customized SEO for a brand new site
- Scrapped the blacklisted domain and started fresh with a new site
- Created quality content to share via social networks
- Worked to create hundreds of new links from authoritative domains
- Improved local rankings through citation building and cleanup
"The majority of my work is car accident litigation, so the scholarship helps raise awareness for safe drivers – but it has also led to a substantial increase in .edu referral traffic. Anytime I need something from Rankings.io, I just call. If I see something that needs to be fine-tuned, they make the adjustment and get right back to me."
- Gabriel Levin, The Levin Firm
After plotting out a new sitemap and keyword targeting, they began creating optimized, user-focused copy. The goal was to create content that would not only rank well but also answer every lead’s questions to help them convert.
To bolster rankings in Google’s local map packs, the Rankings.io team scoured the web for relevant places to list the company’s name, new website and address. They updated old listings as they went.
While this was happening, Rankings.io also undertook a massive link building effort – but this time, the focus was on quality.
This meant conducting professional outreach in the industry and the region, to earn links to authoritative sites that Google already trusted.
To capitalize on The Levin Firm’s specialization in traffic safety, Rankings.io also helped the firm’s lawyers create and promote a traffic safety scholarship, which a number of area colleges and universities picked up and shared on their sites.
Not only was this a positive community- and relationship-building move — it also netted the firm a strong profile of highly-trusted “.edu” links and genuine credibility with search engines.
While .edu domains aren’t inherently better than other TLD’s, they tend to be owned/managed by highly authoritative and trustworthy organizations.
Throughout the process, Rankings.io impressed Gabriel with their willingness to be held accountable, and their ability to be accessible.
What’s more, Chris and his team have proven to Gabriel that they can drive sustainable results over time, even as Google changes and tweaks their algorithm.
"There’s no expectation that you’ll stay at the top forever. You have to adapt. If you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backward. We’re constantly thinking of new ideas and implementing new things to help us stay where we are. Rankings.io is adaptable and ahead of the curve. We’ve really just had great results with them."
- Gabriel Levin, The Levin Firm
We decided to completely remove the tumor and start on a fresh domain, but that meant it had zero links in Philadelphia.
Gabriel Levin
The Levin Firm
Results
In just two years, The Levin Firm’s organic search traffic has increased an astonishing 3,440%.
The outreach and scholarship-driven link campaign have paid off in a huge way, and The Levin Firm now boasts one of the strongest (and cleanest) backlink profiles in their niche.
In fact, LevinInjuryFirm.com now ranks number one for all relevant search terms on Google Maps.
Gabriel estimates that this improved visibility has doubled the number of new cases coming from the site over the past 24 months, giving The Levin Firm the opportunity to expand.
Double the leads and 3,400% higher traffic
- 3,440% increase in organic search traffic in 24 months
- 50% more leads from website
- Number one in Google Maps for primary keywords
- Growth in opened case volume and staff
"The scholarship campaign improved my rankings for phrases that are even unrelated to scholarship – I now rank better for things like ‘Philadelphia car accident lawyer’ because I am getting all this other traffic."
- Gabriel Levin, The Levin Firm
"The total number of cases in the pipeline is probably 50% to 60% greater than it was 24 months ago. It’s allowed us to bring in new lawyers, and for me, to spend more time being a lawyer."
- Gabriel Levin, The Levin Firm
The proof is in the pudding, it’s the results. The true testament to any SEO firm is the cases they can generate for you. If you do that well, you’re doing a great job. And Rankings.io does that well.
Gabriel Levin
The Levin Firm
