Co-Founder of law firm SEO company, Custom Legal Marketing, focusing on strategies for highly competitive practice areas.
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Personal injury law firms often spend December and January looking back on their successes while also making plans to increase the number of signed cases in the upcoming year. If your personal injury law firm is looking for inspiration, I’d like to offer five ways to jump-start your lead generation using search engine optimization.
Step 1: Think like your clients, not like a lawyer.
Whether you are just getting started with your law firm’s SEO or have an established digital marketing strategy, you should constantly revisit your content. I’m sure you’ve heard “quality content is key,” but what the hell is “quality content”?
Creating quality content essentially comes down to three things:
• Is it relevant to the type of injury cases you want to attract?
• Is it answering a question that your clients are actually asking, or are you just writing a page because you saw one of your competitors write something similar?
• Is your way of explaining a complex legal matter easier to understand than anything the user may find elsewhere on the web?
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Lawyers often like to dive into the nuances of the law and start out with their legal knowledge at the top of the page. But that’s not what clients are looking for. What they want to know first is:
• Do I have a case?
• Are you competent, experienced and successful?
After you establish that, then you can dive into more detailed information, like how your state handles certain types of injuries, answer questions about who can sue, how long it might take, if there are compensation limits, statutes of limitations … all of that is great knowledge to share on your website. But start with the basics and let the reader decide if they want to learn more. If you go too deep into the law too soon, your reader will get lost and look elsewhere.
Step 2: Diversify your content. Content is more than words.
Most firms think that content is just the written word. But content goes far beyond blogs, pages and Q&As. Video, audio, illustrations and presentations are all types of content.
In 2022, branch out. Create an infographic that illustrates the timeline of a personal injury lawsuit. Make a series of short videos that answer common questions that you hear during consultations. Consider starting a podcast. All of this content will not only help your website visitors but can also become powerful link-building tools.
Step 3: Do quarterly checkups on your Google Business Profile.
Nothing under the large umbrella of Google is static, and Google Business (formerly Google My Business) is no different. Google is constantly adding features, and if neither you nor your law firm’s SEO company is keeping up, you’re missing out.
Here are some things to review:
• Make sure your service area covers all cities and towns. If you’re only listing the city where you have an office, you could be missing out on exposure.
• Update your hours to include holidays and special events.
• Make sure you use the “Services” feature. As a personal injury lawyer, that means adding service categories like “truck accidents, car accidents, workers compensation, etc.” Just “personal injury lawyer” is not sufficient.
• Take advantage of the appointment link option. This is an opportunity for you to send prospects directly to a contact form or appointment scheduling app.
• Activate Call History. This is a relatively new feature that will help you track phone calls that are generated from your Google Business profile.
• Sync your blog with Google Posts.
Step 4: Get more reviews.
Make review requests a firmwide policy. Unlike other areas of law that carry social stigmas (i.e., bankruptcy, criminal defense), personal injury clients are often more than willing to share a positive experience after receiving a settlement or award. Keeping a steady flow of reviews into your Google listing helps your ranking and it helps sell your firm to future clients. You can never have too many reviews.
Step 5: Treat every page on your site like your homepage.
Far too often, law firm marketing companies give a ton of care and attention to the homepage and then let a basic template serve the secondary pages. This is a huge mistake! When someone does a search for a car accident lawyer or a workers compensation attorney, they might not land on your homepage. They will be landing on your car accident or workers comp page.
Every entry page on your site has the potential to be someone’s first impression of your law firm. Give every page the same attention to detail and user experience as you do your homepage.
The last two years have been challenging, but the world is opening up, becoming more active, and the pandemic could become a thing of the past in 2022. This could be the year your personal injury firm thrives through SEO.
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Author: Jason Bland, Forbes Councils Member
