Founder/CEO of Rankings.io, an SEO agency that helps elite personal injury law firms dominate first page rankings.
getty
Personal injury law is a big business in the United States. Analysis by industry market research firm IBISWorld shows that personal injury law has a market size of $38 billion—and, between 2016 and 2021 alone, had a growth rate of 1.6%.
It’s a competitive market. So, if you want your personal injury law firm to stand out from the crowd, you have to approach the SEO game differently from other types of law firms. Here are four key ways to do so.
1. Create Unique Content And Regularly Update It
When it comes to content, you should pay special attention to your practice area pages (which function as your sales pages) and blog posts (which function as informational articles for the top and middle of your funnel).
You (or your content and SEO team) should ask the question: “Is this the best piece of content in my geographic area about this topic?” Then, go through each piece of existing content and update it at least once a month, minimum. Of course, brainstorm new content as well.
MORE FOR YOU
Consider what new statistics, what new answers from different thought leaders, what new images, etc., you could use to differentiate yourself. Use your firm’s unique characteristics to your advantage. No two firms are alike, after all. Only you can speak tactically about your attorneys’ experiences winning cases and your firm’s success rate. Your attorneys are the ones who handle cases in strategic, innovative ways that give you an advantage over competitors. Highlight that in your content.
2. Optimize Your Site Architecture
Site architecture is an overlooked and underappreciated aspect of SEO. Your website’s on-site SEO and UX design will affect how easily your potential clients can find information on your site. That’s why you should optimize your website (especially your homepage, contact us page and navigation menu) so that your potential clients can easily navigate them.
The biggest challenge for personal injury law firms in this realm is building out the proper architecture of their website for navigation. Typically, personal injury law firms have multiple offices across multiple geographies; for example, one in San Francisco, two in the Los Angeles area and one in San Diego. To reach the right people, you must build the proper location silos.
So, how can you best accomplish this? By properly structuring your menu for navigation. The most successful way I’ve seen personal injury law firms approach this is by creating a “location” tab on their menu bar so that prospective clients can instantly find the right location.
3. Fine-Tune Your Local SEO Strategy
Google determines local rankings by relevance, distance and prominence. Let’s focus on the prominence factor. One of the most efficient ways to boost prominence is by acquiring reviews. When people are injured, they want to turn to the best personal injury law firm they can afford. Your reviews will help them determine if you’re their best option; they give your firm credibility that gives you an edge over the competition.
But first, ask yourself if you’re operating a high-volume settlement firm or a low-volume litigating firm that selectively takes cases. If you’re a high-volume settlement firm, you have more opportunities to get reviews from clients. If you’re a low-volume litigating firm, getting reviews will be more challenging (but you should still strive to do so).
Ask every happy client to leave you a Google review. As a bonus, you can then take a screenshot of that review or copy and paste the text into a nice backdrop and post it across your social channels. Also, be sure to create a testimonial section on your website and post the best reviews there.
Another key element of a successful local SEO strategy for personal injury law firms is having a dedicated team that proactively fights spam, from incorrect public edits to your address on Google Maps to fake reviews. If you take on a reactive approach instead of a proactive one, you’ll risk people getting the wrong impression and details about your firm.
4. Prioritize Link-Building
In some markets, link-building is an afterthought. In the personal injury law space, however, there should be an intentional push and effort in this area, as it plays a major role in building geographic authority and trust.
Ideally, you should get quality backlinks in all four of the following pillars (note that some links will fall under more than one pillar):
1. Niche Pillar: These are links from the legal industry (such as Avvo and Justia) that help you build relevancy from within the profession.
2. Local Pillar: These are links from the chamber of commerce, schools and other institutions in your area that help you build local relevance.
3. Trustworthy Pillar: These are links from Wikipedia, .gov websites, and reputable news sources. Often, these links will have no follow attributes and won’t pass along link equity, but they’re still useful because they signify trust.
4. Authority Pillar: These are links from authoritative sites with high domain ratings, like major news publishers.
By creating unique content and regularly updating it, optimizing your site architecture, fine-tuning your local SEO strategy and prioritizing link-building, you’ll place yourself ahead of competing personal injury law firms, putting yourself in the best position to help clients find you.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
Go to Source
Author: Chris Dreyer, Forbes Councils Member
