(Updated 02nd Feb 2021)
Have you wondered how law firms of any size can get real results from SEO?
I’m going to share with you the five main steps we used to increase the number of free website visitors to our client's legal website, from less than 10 visits a month, to nearly 1000 visits per month (Update 1950 visits in January 2021).
I'll even show you which website it is, so you can see for yourself.
Oh and it's not just about traffic... from a standing start (of zero website enquiries earlier in the year), the website generated over 120 enquiries last month. All from SEO traffic.
It's been amazing. Might have to employ a first response admin staff to take instructions at this rate!
Natasha Batty ‧ Principal Solicitor at Natasha Hall Law
The problem you're probably having
Natasha Hall Law (NH-Law.co.uk) had spent the previous couple of years investing time and money in social media content creation. The impact of this approach on enquiries was minimal. We wanted to shift the marketing focus to SEO and search engine marketing, where there is an audience actively looking for legal services. As part of this strategy, we needed to;
- Create a high performing, SEO optimised website, including a logical structure with easy ways to add new content.
- Research keywords that match the need of a potential client, with the law firm's services.
- Review competitors and see what opportunities are available for keywords and links.
- Create valuable content. More valuable than competitors' - via both user experience and expert insight.
- Improve the website's backlink profile.
*Data from the Google Search console. Blue line = Clicks from Google. Purple line = impressions (how many people have seen one of our website pages in Google search results).
How to address the challenges
No website analytics, no SEO history, thin website content and the uber-competitive nature of the legal services they were trying to sell; all represented big (but not unfamiliar) challenges.
Strategy matters
At the start, they were a small, local law firm with a handful of staff.
This was turned into a strength by using the personality of the Principal Solicitor, Natasha, to build trust, especially compared to big, national law firms that can often appear faceless and volume-driven.
Once we built up the promises we were confident we could keep to potential clients, we needed to find a way of reaching them, engaging them and making sure they enquired.
What's the strategy?
We just needed to document the experience of working with the firm, through creating great website content that ranks in Google, attracts and then engages the ideal type of clients.
This is where reaching the right type of potential client is vital.
Getting loads of websites traffic isn't as difficult as you might think. Getting the right type of website traffic, the type of traffic that is likely to convert into an enquiry, is the tricky bit.
Natasha Hall Law provides cost-effective legal services, complete with better customer service than most competitors.
The five step action plan for results
New WordPress Website
If you don't have full control over your website, including how it looks and how users interact with it, then it's time to move platforms.
Moving the website to WordPress, we were able to keep the desired look and feel, whiles adding all the on and off page elements that go into making SEO work. Including;
- Website tracking code - to measure visits, enquiries and where they came from.
- Add and amend on page content like headings and content blocks to make content more engaging.
- Option to add and test enquiry forms anywhere we like.
- Option to add meta data and internal links between pages to tell Google what each page is about and encourage more click-throughs from search engine results.
Keyword Research
For every service we wrote down a list of things that potential clients might be searching for. We used SEO software to see what popular search terms our competitors were ranking for, to see if we could also rank for any of these search terms.
The SEO software will also identify related search terms. We used this as the basis for optimising "service-level" web pages. For example anyone searching for "no win, no fee solicitors".
These are the sales pages where we want to show people that we can help them and encourage them to make an enquiry.
Step 4 is where the real real keyword research magic happened.
Website Structure
Next we took all the services that the law firm provide to clients and made sure that each one had a landing page that told visitors exactly why they should work with Natasha Hall Law and made it really easy for them to enquire.
Each service page would act as the parent page or "hub" for any content created on that topic.
For example, the "no win no fee" page would link nicely to content about "no win no fee personal injury claims" or "no win no fee dental negligence claims" .
Simple Content Creation
In step 2, we did some keyword research using SEO tools to spy on competitors. This helped create the sales pages for services.
But here's the interesting thing... The bulk of SEO website visitors and vast majority of subsequent enquiries don't come as a result of people landing on the sales pages.
The bulk of SEO traffic comes to blog pages.
We then link, nicely to the sales pages from the blogs.
For example, one of the most popular pieces of content is the blog "Can I sue my landlord in the UK?".
This blog then links back to the main "Legal advice for tenants" page as well as having strategically places calls to action, that allow the visitor to make an enquiry.
So how did we know that this would work? Our old friend Google of course.
Simply head over to Google and let them do the hard work for you.
Enter a search term that is relevant to your legal service and you'll find loads of suggested questions in the "people also ask box". Take a few of those as blog titles and boom!
If you can answer any of the questions in the "people also ask" box and if you can do it better than what is already ranking in Google. Then you're onto a winner.
Links
You may have heard about the importance of links for SEO. These come in two forms:
For Natasha Hall Law, we started by making sure that we have lots of quality links coming from relevant business directories. Particularly directories that are specific to law firms.
This is where the SEO tools mentioned in step 2 come in really useful. They'll tell you popular links that your competitors have, you can look to see which sites you can request links from.
Results
From Oct - Dec 2020, the organic search engine traffic increased by over 900% compared to the previous month.
From Oct - Dec 2020, the organic search engine traffic increased by over 900% compared to the previous three months.
You'll notice the blue line increasing more and more with each month (in December the increase was actually over 1000%).