Get More Clients with a Dedicated Law Firm SEO Expert
Want to rank higher and get more leads from SEO but aren’t sure which law firm SEO expert to work with or how much they should cost?
We’ll break all of that down for you and provide real opinions from attorneys dominating the rankings on Google in their market.
Results an SEO Expert Can Deliver
Most law firms out there have been burned by legal SEO services. Many attorneys give up on SEO because they didn’t get results with past campaigns.
The truth is that SEO does work, but only when it’s part of a strategy created and executed by people who know what they’re doing.
You have to spend time crafting the best strategy and focus on implementation and communication.
That’s what gets SEO results.
Take a look at what some of our clients have to say:
<div class="blog-post-body_content"><div class="blog-testimonial_flex"><div class="blog-post-body_left-column"><div class="column-left_inner-container"><img src="https://assets-global.website-files.com/6495917a9b1fcb0e0296b6f1/649daf0a6b317de32e04527e_andrew-finkelstein-circle.png" alt="" /></div></div><div class="blog-post-body_right-column"><div class="quote-text"><i><p>"Transparency is criticalwhen working with an SEO vendor and the entire Rankings team are just that."</p></i><p class="testifier">Andrew Finkelstein, Jacoby and Meyers</p></div></div></div></div>
<div class="blog-post-body_content"><div class="blog-testimonial_flex"><div class="blog-post-body_left-column"><div class="column-left_inner-container"><img src="https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/649210ea432c166a4b93e76d/64a9f26e8d8065f123f63ff2_levin-headshot-circle.png" alt="" /></div></div><div class="blog-post-body_right-column"><div class="quote-text"><i><p>"I'm going up against competing firms that have multi-million advertising budgets - and we beat all of them."</p></i><p class="testifier">Gabriel Levin, The Levin Firm</p></div></div></div></div>
Hiring a Law Firm SEO Expert
Most law firm staff or attorneys don’t have the time or interest to maintain the level of work required for ongoing SEO.
That’s why many hire expert firms to handle it for them.
You can’t just Google SEO for lawyers and call it a day. You need to know how much to budget and how to evaluate an SEO service provider.
Budget Expectations
At Rankings.io, we start with budget expectations to get everyone on the same page. Many companies have popped up claiming to offer SEO services for law firms in the past decade, but not all agencies are created equal.
It’s critical to find someone with a track record and a proven process; you can’t afford to be someone’s guinea pig as they attempt to figure out how SEO works. It’s far better to go with a team that knows the legal landscape.
A proven process means a return on your investment
Several factors influence cost, including:
- Current SEO efforts your firm made before hiring a team for SEO (such as existing organic rankings)
- The competitiveness of your local market (such as how many other law firms are competing for similar keywords and practice areas)
- How aggressively you want to pursue results
- Whether you’ll be focusing on multiple SEO aspects at once or ramping up slowly
Perhaps the most important thing to know about hiring lawyer SEO expert is that no matter what you pay for, it should be ROI-focused.
Get Referrals to Find Trustworthy Partners
As a starting place for finding the best SEO service for attorneys, look for referrals. A referral from another lawyer, such as a law school colleague or someone you used to work with, can cut down on your research time by quickly connecting you with a top firm.
When seeking referrals from people you trust, be specific with how you talk about what’s most important to you. Getting traffic is a useless metric, for example, if none of that traffic is relevant to your practice area. Leads and cases are the most valuable metrics to measure here, so ask your peers for specifics:
- How many new cases did they get?
- How many quality new cases (i.e., ideal clients) did they get?
- How much of a percentage increase in traffic did they get?
- How much in-house time was saved by outsourcing SEO work?
If what you hear from a referral source matches online reviews, that’s a great start.
Make Sure They’re a Good Fit
Possessing the skills to create and deliver on an SEO campaign is only part of finding law firm SEO services. That’s just the baseline. For the best results, qualify an SEO partner by thinking through the following:
- Define what a good partnership looks like.
- How will you define success?
- What services do you need and which ones are not important?
- How often do you want to receive reports or updates and in what format?
- Verify that a vendor’s offerings and style align with your goals
- Confirm they either deeply know your target audience already or have proven systems to capture this information.
- Do they have a background in personal injury law?
- What customer voice research will you share with them or will they create?
- What results have they achieved in similar competitive markets?
- Seek out performance-based pricing, if you can. This gives you confidence in the SEO firm and them an incentive to deliver on what they promised.
Warning Signs
You don’t want to get locked into a contract with an SEO agency that can’t deliver you the results you want. It’s a waste of money and, more importantly, time. Lost time is an opportunity cost. You’re delayed while the competition keeps moving forward.
Reviews Mentioning Communication Problems
Before you hire any law firm SEO service or legal marketing expert, do your own research.
Check multiple review sites like Clutch, Facebook, and Google.
If multiple other lawyers remark that they could never get an update on SEO efforts, that’s a big sign to run in the other direction.
There are a lot of agencies out there that are great at selling you on your dream but struggle to provide prompt answers to questions or regular reporting.
You need to know what’s going on with your SEO campaign and it should never be hard to get answers.
A Focus on Vanity Metrics
It doesn’t matter if you get 2,000 clicks a month to your website if none of them turn into clients. Getting to the first page of Google in a town of1300 people isn’t impressive either.
Business metrics matter, not vanity metrics.
Here are some metrics a good SEO company should be talking about instead:
- Revenue in the door
- Case velocity(leading indicator)
- Profit per partner hour
- Quality of leads received
- Per-case value
- Traffic clicks to calls
- Keyword rankings for high-converting phrases(leading indicator)
Disinterest in Your CRM or Tracking Results
You live and die by your CRM in your law practice to track all important details about clients.
You shouldn’t have to track and store that information somewhere else just so your law firm SEO experts can track metrics.
Both you and your SEO agency should be concerned about mapping results to your actual CRM.
To track those all-important metrics listed above, your SEO agency needs to see data on potential clients who converted from a lead to a case.
They can’t track lead quality or show ROI if they don’t have access to your CRM and Google Analytics.
If they’re not willing or able to do this, that’s one more thing that ends up on your plate—cases matter, not leads. You shouldn’t have to be the one telling SEO experts that, either.
High Employee Turnover
Why is an SEO agency’s toxic work environment or poor leadership your problem? After all, results are results, right?
High company turnover shows there might be major internal issues with the SEO agency. Since SEO is a long-term investment, it’s best to hire a law firm SEO service agency with a track record of happy employees who stay with the company.
If you spot multiple employees who have worked at that agency for a year or less only to transfer to a similar position elsewhere, there could be management problems.
Those only causes problems for you, such as not knowing who to get in touch with or a turnstile of new people who aren’t up to speed on your SEO efforts.
You don’t deserve to pay the price because an agency can’t manage retention issues.
Check out LinkedIn for employee tenure data and Glassdoor for real feedback from company employees.
No Reviews or Short Term Reviews
Someone without a proven track record raises some red flags, and most law firms don’t have the time or interest to be a test case to figure out if a new agency is the real deal.
No reviews? That’s a problem.
If they’ve been in business for over a year with no one who can say anything nice, it raises the question, “Are people following the doctrine of ‘if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all?” Most lawyers get excited when they see positive results rather than staying silent.
Reviews that mention things like “we worked with them for six months and saw some results” should only bring up more questions.
SEO is an ongoing effort, so either that agency didn’t understand how to structure campaigns properly or got fired midway through. Either way, that’s bad for you.
When someone has a proven track record over the course of years and, better yet, when they can keep those customers over that same period, add that SEO agency to your shortlist.
Overcomplicating Their Offerings
SEO is 80% strategy and only 20% actual execution, so it makes sense that some firms lean a little too heavily into the “Look how smart we are” direction.
They’re trying to earn your business by using jargon or overcomplicating how SEO works. But if they can’t explain it to you before you’ve even started, you’ll always feel like you’re in the dark.
You deserve to know exactly what you’re getting and why when you’re putting your company’s rankings and credit card on the line. Steer clear of anyone trying to make things more difficult than needed.
Tip: As mentioned, this isn’t a problem if they focus on business metrics instead. The language of business is one you can both speak and understand one another in.
The Best Law Firm SEO Company in 2023
There are plenty of law firm SEO agencies out there that you could hire and new players enter the game every day. Plenty of agencies fail to live up to their promises or to provide a great experience for their clients.
The good news? Rankings.io has been in this game for years, consistently exceeding our client’s expectations. And we don’t have to brag about it because our clients do that for us!
<div class="blog-post-body_content"><div class="blog-testimonial_flex"><div class="blog-post-body_left-column"><div class="column-left_inner-container"><img src="https://assets-global.website-files.com/6495917a9b1fcb0e0296b6f1/649daf0a6b317de32e045294_david-ables-circle.png" alt="" /></div></div><div class="blog-post-body_right-column"><div class="quote-text"><i><p>"Their optimization work has boosted year-over-year organic site traffic by 174%. Accessible and organized, the team fosters an effortless collaboration by hosting regular meetings and showcasing progress. They are reputable SEO experts who know how to deliver results."</p></i><p class="testifier">David Abels, Abels & Annes, PC</p></div></div></div></div>
You can see detailed case studies of the results we’ve delivered for law firms here.
If you’re ready to make an investment in SEO and become our next personal injury lawyer success story, we’re proud to stand behind our best-in-class services and systems.
Contact us today for a consultation about driving more cases and revenue for your law firm.
