Why 99% Of Lawyers FAIL At SEO

If you run a law firm, you likely already know that search marketing is important.

Search engines drive 69% of the internet’s traffic.

You’ve probably already invested in SEO or PPC at sometime in the past, but it didn’t work out for you.

At WEBRIS, we audit dozens of law firm websites every week. We see first-hand the exact SEO strategies many other agencies and marketing professionals are using.

Frankly, 99% of law firm website’s we audit are flat our failing at SEO.

So many lawyers are missing out on critical pieces essential for showing up where it matters on Google.

Your law firm is struggling to get results because your search marketing strategy is outdated.

Hear me out…When you search for your law firm’s main keyword, what you do see?

• Ads
• Local listings
• Organic listings
• Local Service Ads
• Content

…there’s a lot of noise.

To get meaningful results, you need to show up in all parts of Search. We deploy a “Blended” strategy that puts your law firm everywhere, which can effectively optimize not just to drive leads, but high value cases.

This post reveals the blended search strategy we used to drive over 50,000 leads for our clients last year.

Let’s dive into it.

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What search marketing for lawyers looks like in 2024

Most law firms struggle to make search marketing work for them because they, or the SEO agencies they hire, are stuck in the past.

There were only two kinds of listings on Google back in the day—pay-per-click ads and unpaid, or organic, results.

Most SEO services focus only on the ten organic results to get top-position rankings.

However, search results have changed a lot since those days, and this approach is incredibly outdated.

For instance, when someone in your area is looking to work with a lawyer, they’ll now see:

• Two different types of ads
• A map with a handful of local attorneys
• Traditional organic results
• Answers to common questions
• Discussion and forum threads
• And so much more

Any strategy that only focuses on ranking at the top of organic listings is ignorant of everything else—and in this case, ignorance is not bliss.

Here’s how to show up everywhere that matters when people search for your services on search engines.

1. Local Service Ads (LSA)

When searching for attorneys, the first thing most people see is Local Service Ads, or LSAs for short.

These usually show up immediately under Google’s search bar and look like this:

LSAs are a relatively new product inside of Google – they were developed to make it easy for small businesses to purchase ad space (without the crazy complexity of learning Google Adwords).

We set these ads up for all our clients for free when they book any other service with us because they don’t require a lot of work to set up.

They’re purposely designed to be so easy lawyers can do it themselves. Sure, there are some nuances to the strategy and how to get them to deliver results. But in terms of getting started, it’s just a matter of:

• Creating your business profile on Google
• Building up your reviews
• Setting up your core business information
• Setting up the ads bidding and optimization
• Only paying for every call you receive

For law firms, we find the cost per call is generally around $150 – $250, depending on the practice areas you focus on. Some areas, like injury and accident law, cost much more to advertise than others.

It’s also worth keeping in mind that not every call will lead to a new client.

When you look at the acquisition life cycle of 8-figure firms, they focus on improving their intake process in order to close more of the leads who do call. That’s how you can make this type of advertising lucrative and profitable.

Check out our in depth guide to setting up your LSAs and fixing issues with your LSAs

2. Pay-Per-Click Ads (Google AdWords)

Pay-per-click (PPC) ads have been around for a long time in search engines.

PPC Ads give you the ability to bid on search queries and have your website show up.

Unlike LSAs, you don’t pay per lead but instead you pay per click on your ad.

You also have much more control over your keyword strategy and can gather data on which keywords are the best to bid on.

For example, you can see how many times a month people search keywords like “Miami divorce attorney”, or “Miami DUI lawyer” and so on. This data completely takes the guesswork out of your search marketing strategy.

The secret to succeeding with these ads is finding the best keywords to bid on.

The market determines the cost of each ad and how much your competitors are willing to spend for a click to their website. The more aggressive your competitors are, the higher the advertising costs will be.

So when choosing keywords, you’ll need to consider these factors:

• Relevance: Not all keywords about the legal areas you practice will be relevant to your law firm. You need to consider the intent of the person searching and whether they want to work with a firm like yours. If not, the keyword is irrelevant to your business and not worth bidding on.
• Affordability: Multiply the cost per click for each keyword by 10 to get a rough benchmark of what it might cost you to get a decent lead from this advertising method. We often see this go over $2,000 for lawyers in competitive markets. Don’t bid on the keyword if you can’t afford that cost.
• Conversion potential: Not all keywords are equal in their ability to generate clients for your law firm. Some keywords are too broad; others are so specific that few people search them. You need to find the sweet spot in between by testing different ad strategies and messaging.

Any keywords with low conversion potential should be added to your negative keyword list. This is how you control your ads so they don’t appear for irrelevant terms.

For instance, if someone is searching for “divorce attorney salary,” they’re not interested in hiring an attorney, so it’s not worth bidding on this keyword. In this case, you would add the word “salary” (and others like it) to your negative keyword list to ensure you don’t pay for ads appearing on these terms.

Read our guide to PPC Ads for law firms

3. The Google Maps Pack

The next thing you’ll see beneath the ads is a local map pack connecting to Google Maps.

Sometimes, you might see a small local ad here, though usually, it will be a list of the top three businesses in an area.

This feature is the first organic listing on most of the keywords that have high conversion potential for your firm.

To show up here, you need an optimized Google Business Listing with:

• Your business contact details
• Accurate opening hours
• Relevant and recent reviews
• Images of your offices
• Descriptions of your services

It’s worth taking the time to properly fill out this listing. We find over 50% of phone calls we get for our clients come from ranking in this feature alone.

It’s by far the best placement to get for search marketing. As an attorney, you’ll get most of your best leads from this feature alone.

4. Traditional SEO Results

Organic listings are the traditional unpaid search results most SEO agencies and freelancers optimize for. They’re often referred to as the “blue links” and look like this:

There was a time when these would drive significant amounts of traffic to websites.

However, Google has made many changes to its user interface. Now, searchers often need to scroll past three full screens of results before they hit the first organic listings:

Even if searchers did scroll past the ads and map results, the other thing your firm has to contend with is that Google frequently ranks sites like Justia at the top instead of a firm like yours.

Long story short, position one rankings don’t hold as much weight as they once did.

It’s by far the best placement to get for search marketing. As an attorney, you’ll get most of your best leads from this feature alone. To maximize your organic visibility, you need to diversify your SEO strategy and try to get as much coverage across all of the organic listings Google displays.

In order to show up for these traditional organic listings, you need to optimize your website’s content with the right keywords. But not all content is created equally.

You need to consider the keywords you’re targeting and the intent behind why someone is searching.

• Are they looking to contact a lawyer? → Optimize a service landing page.
• Do they have a nuanced question they’re researching answers to? → Optimize a blog post.
• Do they want to contact someone in their local area? → Optimize a location landing page.

Here’s the SEO keyword funnel we use to optimize our client’s content:

The keywords at the bottom of the funnel are often the most competitive, and you will most likely need to pay for ads to gain meaningful visibility.

Keywords in the awareness and discovery stages, however, offer more opportunities for organic search visibility. Usually, these keywords don’t have high conversion potential, so running ads to them is often a fruitless endeavor.

But they are a great opportunity for SEO. They allow you to connect with potential clients when they are early in their research process.

If you supply enough helpful information throughout their discovery process, you’ll likely be one of the firms they call when they are eventually ready to contact a lawyer.

5. People Also Ask Results

You’ll often see the “People Also Ask” section between organic results.

Think of this as Google’s version of an FAQ component that allows them to answer people’s questions about the keyword they searched.

To show up here, you need to be answering these types of questions in your blog content. You can either:

• Answer a single question in a short blog post
• Answer multiple related questions in a larger guide
• Answer questions in your knowledge base or support section (if you have one)

For each question you answer, make sure you include the question as a heading and give a short but direct response immediately underneath it.

Google will highlight the part of your answer it considers to be immediately relevant to a searcher:

6. Aggregator Website Results

Aggregator websites are like directories like Avvo help searchers find relevant local lawyers.

They often rank for competitive keywords because these sites are quite large and more authoritative than the websites of individual firms like yours.

The trouble is that these sites can often snag one, two, or all three prime organic positions.

So, even if you invested in SEO, in some cases, you may not be able to rank in the top spot if you compete with such large sites.

The good news is you don’t have to compete.

Instead, you can create profiles on each site and do whatever you can to get your listing featured as high as possible. Here’s what Justia’s profiles look like:

You could also consider paying for ad space at the top. It’ll often be cheaper than paying for Google Ads and give you a bigger or nicer listing, like these:

Think of it like creating a virtual business card on each of these platforms.

If you see them ranking for keywords related to your practice areas, your potential customers likely see them, too. Why not leverage their existing rankings to get more eyes on your firm?

Read our full guide on ranking your profiles with Parasite SEO

7. Discussions and Forum Results

Recently, Google has been including more user-generated content (UGC) in search results. This can show up in a few different ways, but for lawyers, we’re seeing sites like Reddit and Quora ranking for many related searches.

For instance, this Discussions and Forums feature shows up quite a lot for the keywords our clients generally target.

Google loves third-party user-generated content because it’s unbiased advice. It’s also information that’s shared between peers.

Think about it as a consumer.

If you’re looking for legal advice online and all you can find on Google is information from law firms, you may feel like:

• There’s an ulterior motive behind the information presented
• The firm will try to sell you their services
• The information may be more about what they do rather than answering the questions you have

That’s why people use Reddit to get unbiased advice from others with experience:

If you see Reddit and other platforms with UGC content showing up in Google results for keywords you’re targeting, your firm needs to show up in those conversations.

Don’t treat it like a branded activity.

For instance, instead of replying from a branded account use a personal account. Or, get friends, past clients, or close professional acquaintances to reply to threads and have them mention your law firm in a more conversational manner.

8. High Authority Press Results

Although less common, another type of listing you might see comes from PR activities. For instance, Forbes ranks in the #1 organic spot for over 1,000 keywords related to law services:

Here’s what that would look like in Google’s search results:

If you see Forbes or other similar websites ranking, it may be worth reaching out to see how you can get your firm listed in their articles.

Like with aggregator sites, it will be difficult for you to compete directly with Forbes. So why not leverage their existing rankings instead?

Get More Leads With Our “Blended Search” Approach

Modern search marketing needs to go beyond chasing position 1 rankings on Google.

The more places you show up, the more opportunities you have to connect with leads who are in the market and seeking to work with an attorney right now.

If you want help with your search marketing, we can install this blended search model into your law firm, as we have done for dozens of other law firms across the US. We’ll handle everything to get your firm maximum visibility on Google.

Let’s kickstart the process with a free analysis of your website, competitors, and market, which you can book below.

Book a free consultation