Developing an Effective Marketing Plan for the Law Vertical

Posted on October 27, 2009
Google AdWords, Pay Per Click, Ranking reports, Social Media Marketing, Toronto Marketing Consultant, Toronto SEM Consulting, Toronto SEO Consulting |

SEO - SEM Advice For Law Firms

Search engine optimization and search engine marketing within the vertical of law and lawyers is one of the most competitive areas within Google, Yahoo and Bing today.

Understanding what proper approach needs to be undertaken when utilizing online marketing is crucial to gaining the most exposure in a defined amount of time. Search engine optimization (SEO) for rankings to achieve free traffic does take time for organic growth and should be targeted at a 6-12 month plan. Search engine marketing through Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing or Bing Ad Center can start the flow of traffic happening at a quick pace but you will pay a premium price to get the top positioning that is needed.

SEO Advice – Organic Traffic for Law Firms

Undertaking an SEO campaign for the law firm vertical is by no means a short-term play. It involves a constant on page and off page factor that needs to be built out over a 6-12 month engagement. This time frame allows the search engine crawlers to see growth develop for the law firms web site and is the correct path for deeming any web site an authority within the targeted law firm vertical. Proper steps to research a search engine optimization plan involves the following:

1. Determine a minimum of ten long tail terms the firm wants to target. Each page within the web site should only have a one long tail term focus. This list will quickly broaden as content is developed

2. Determine your competition based upon the original ten long tail terms. Quickly doing search queries through Google will indicate which competition is scoring well. Target your findings to listing on the second and third page search results, since these sites are the most “in play”.

3. Determine your top three competitors the run those web sites through Yahoo to see what back link count they have achieve. Simply go to Yahoo and type in : site: http://sitename.com. Once the page returns, click “inlinks” to see the full count.

4. Start targeting all law firm directories, for a start some can be found here: Law Directories

5. Develop and manage a social platform that is publishing new content daily

6. Managed your expectations. Understand nowadays that the law firm promotion and new client acquisitions through organic SEO is not a easy task and typically calls for time and good budget. A five hundred-dollar solution offered by off shore SEO firms will not work, it has been proven

SEM Advice  – Paid Traffic for Law Firms and Lawyers

Since Google owns the most market share of all the search engines, the Ad Words approach has been the choice of most law firms and lawyers to execute a  large pay per click exposure campaign. However, Bing and Yahoo should not be overlooked, once you see certain areas of Google’s pricing (remember your paying full retail pricing), for example:

los angeles dwi lawyer $47.00 a click

dui lawyer in los angeles $37.00 a click

defense lawyer los angeles $30.00 a click

mesothelioma lawyer $ 27.00 a click

personal injury lawyer attorney $ 25.00 a click

As you can see, without applying a serious budget for those target terms no law firm can get market share on Ad Words. Thus, Yahoo and Bing might allow for lower prices with average demographics. Proper steps to research a search engine marketing plan with Ad Words involves the following:

1. Campaign set-up – Determine the first campaign base on the overall term focus

2. Create Ad Groups based on individual themes ( you can create more then fifty ad groups at any given time)

3. Create a minimum of four  ads per ad group – Test various ad copy

4. Create specific landing pages for ad groups. One landing page will not be enough in testing so remember to generate a few landing pages for split testing

5. Test, revise and test again. With Ad Words you can’t “set it and forget it”, you will end up with more cost then expected. Reducing cost works hand in hand with quality score.

6. Plan to manage your account daily. Daily revisions and competition tracking will only lead to successful pay per click campaign.

The bottom line for marketing a law firm or a lawyer online, is understanding that this vertical is in the top five most competitive verticals online today and simply dabbling in SEO and SEM will not work.

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