Digital marketing for law firms is, in part, different from other industries. When you market your law firm, it’s best to focus primarily on local search engine optimization (SEO) because there’s less competition. Provided you’re on a budget, local SEO will yield better results in terms of the cost and volume of clients you acquire.
As a law firm, you don’t just want curious leads. You need hot leads who are looking for legal help immediately. To get hot leads, you need to target people who are in immediate need of an attorney, and that’s what local SEO is for.
If you’re ready to market your law firm with local SEO, here are some tips to get hotter leads from your efforts.
- Place your phone number in your website header
If your phone number isn’t clearly visible in your website header, you’re losing leads. When your potential clients land on your website – on any page – they’re looking for help. Placing your phone number in the header makes it easy for them to contact you immediately. For reference, the Vecchio Injury Law website has a great example of a clearly visible phone number in a contrasting color.
Some visitors will browse your site to find your contact information, but not everyone will do that. Even when people are willing to click around looking for your phone number, the experience will leave them feeling like they’ve had to work hard just to connect with you. If anything else about their experience feels like resistance, they might choose a competitor to represent them.
Having your phone number is also a great way to disqualify leads who landed on the wrong webpage. When they see the wrong area code, they’ll go back to searching, which means they won’t waste your time.
The most natural place for your phone number is in the upper right corner of your website header. There’s a reason most law firm websites place their phone number in this spot – it works.
- Run separate marketing campaigns for each practice area
You can reach your market better when your copy speaks directly to a specific problem. If you specialize in multiple practice areas, you’ll want to run separate campaigns for each practice area so that you can tailor your copy to the specific charges people are facing. At minimum, each campaign should consist of PPC ads and website copy tailored to each practice area.
For example, you’ll need separate web pages to generate clients for car accidents, dog bites, truck accidents, and premises liability. You can also run general ads and produce general copy for anyone who has been injured by someone else’s negligence.
When you write your copy, you’ll want to tailor it to speak directly to a local audience by using the names of nearby cities, counties, and even your state. This not only makes it clear who you serve, but it also helps search engines understand where your business is located, which helps your web pages rank in searches performed by local users.
- Track your performance
The only way to know which efforts are successful is by tracking all of your marketing efforts. At the very least, you need to have analytics installed on your website to know where your visitors are coming from.
Google Analytics is the most popular, but you can also go with a program like Matomo. However, you’ll probably want to use both tracking systems because there are insights you can only get from Google, and there are certain features you can only get from Matomo.
Track your PPC ads, landing page conversions, social media lead-generating campaigns, and any other campaigns you have going. You need to see which avenues are bringing you the best leads.
- Embrace split testing
Just because you’re leveraging local SEO doesn’t mean you don’t need to test your landing page elements. Start implementing split testing, also called A/B testing, on all of your landing pages connected to your PPC ads. You need to know what ads local users are clicking on, and how they’re responding to your landing pages.
You can alter page elements to get better results, but you won’t know which elements to alter unless you run split tests on your landing pages.
Leverage the power of local SEO
These are just a few tips for running your local SEO campaign. There are far more elements involved, like your Google Business listing, reviews, and more. However, the tips presented here are designed to help you manage your campaign to get better leads. If you’re not getting the results you want, you can always hire a professional SEO agency.
