Fundamentals of Creating an SEO Strategy
You already know that SEO is important. You’ve been told plenty of times. What you might not know is that over 50% of all total website traffic comes from organic search, and that SEO drives ten times more traffic than organic social media.
Current estimates suggest that roughly 1.2 trillion searches are made on Google worldwide every year and that 76% of people contact or visit a business within a day of searching on their smartphones.
By this point, you already know that you need to make yourself visible on search engines if you want to keep your client book filled and maximize your revenue.
You already know that stuff, so I will not try to reiterate it to you for the millionth time. Instead, I want to talk to you about all the components of an SEO strategy.
Because yes, while it is important to do SEO for your firm, you have to know what that means to get started (or understand what your marketing team is doing for you). And that is information you probably don’t already know.
What is an SEO Strategy?
An SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy is essentially a blueprint of actions and techniques aimed at improving a website’s visibility and ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs). The primary goal of an SEO strategy is to increase organic (non-paid) traffic to a website by optimizing various on-page and off-page factors that search engines consider when ranking web pages.
Keyword Research
According to a study by Search Engine Journal, about 36% of SEO experts say they allocate most of their time to keyword research. Why so much time? Well, that’s easy. Keyword research is the foundation of your entire SEO program.
But for the uninitiated, what exactly are keywords? And how do you research them?
Keywords (or key phrases) are the long & short-tailed phrases and terms people put into a search engine to get information. For example, say someone types something like “how to choose a divorce lawyer” into Google.
In that short phrase, there are a handful of essential keywords: lawyer, divorce, choose. Additionally, a keyphrase is a string of relevant keywords that are often seen together. Something like “personal injury lawyer near me” is a good example.
A digital marketing tool like SE Ranking then compiles all the trillions of searches made by everyone on the planet and lists these based on popularity.
The goal of this process is to quickly identify which keywords are getting the most traffic since they can inform you on what topics or information you should be focusing on in the rest of your digital marketing efforts.
You might feel that “international contract law in Florida” would be a good strategy for your firm, but if that combination of keywords only gets a couple dozen searches a year, it might not be an efficient path forward.
A benefit to working with a law firm SEO agency like Everest Legal Marketing is that our data on the industry is infinitely more comprehensive than anything you could find from multidisciplinary SEO companies. We also have the hands on experience and historical knowledge to know what works and what isn’t productive.
You can find some lists or free online tools that offer cookie-cutter solutions, but if you really want to differentiate yourself and reach as large of an audience as possible, you have to conduct your own research — including, as we cover in the next section, what your competition is doing.
Competition Analysis
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery — while it might not feel great when someone steals your favorite party joke or wears the same outfit to a wedding, imitation in terms of SEO and digital marketing can jumpstart your SEO strategy.
Digital marketers gave this practice a special phrase: competition analysis. But all it really is at the end of the day is finding a law firm that, in terms of SEO performance and website health, you would like to emulate.
Once you find them, well, you look at what they are doing on the front and back end, and you do it better.
Competition analysis has a lot of different components: keywords, on-site SEO, off-site SEO, technical SEO, social media, reputation management, ad campaign strategy, etc.
Unfortunately, unless you are into corporate espionage and going all James Bond, not all of this data will be available to you. But, to your benefit, a lot of it actually is.
You can very easily figure out through SE Ranking or your SEO tool of choice how your website stacks up against one of your competitors. It’s as easy as typing in the domain.
Once you do that, you will be given pages of information related to all the different macro and micro metrics that make up your performance and your competitors. You’ll be able to see how heavily they focused their efforts on phrases like “best family lawyer in OC.”
Then, you can use that information in conjunction with your own research to get a powerful idea of how to move forward with your own marketing. This process is known as content strategy.
Content Strategy
“Content strategy” is a phrase for an extensive series of on-site & off-site content related tasks.
The process includes taking everything you have learned in the Keyword Research and Competition Analysis stages and deciding how you would go about producing content that not only hits the keywords but best serves the audiences defined by the research you have done.
This means deciding on your website structure, blogging programs, email marketing, social media, ad campaigns, SMS marketing, and any other platform you use to communicate with an audience. Moreover, it means figuring out a strategic way to roll this content out in a way that can earn you clients.
Content strategy could have an entire textbook of best practices and implementation guides, but in the context of this article, you only need to know that a lot of backend time and brainpower is being spent deciding on what content will best achieve your goals.
Backlinking
Domain Authority (“DA”) is the numerical value that SEO tool MOZ assigns to websites based on its overall SEO performance. Backlinking is one of many important elements of an SEO strategy, and is an indicator that your site has information worth sharing with search engine users. and other website owners value enough to link to.
A backlink is a hyperlink is the technical name for a link from one website to another. This usually means someone used your site as a reference for something, which over time indicates to Google that you have content worth referencing and sharing.
Generally speaking the more links you earn from high Domain Authority websites that are relevant to your content, the more prominent your content appears on Google — and the more traffic you will get by appearing better in search results. It’s a simple concept but one of the most critical parts of your SEO strategy.
Website Analysis
Assuming you have a website up and running already, you’ll need to conduct a full website analysis to figure out how it is performing, which verticals are bringing you in the most attention and conversions, what content is not performing well, and a host of other metrics.
You should never skip this part because it can tell you a lot about what aspects of your law firm are successful and unsuccessful online.
If you’ve written five blogs about choosing the perfect custody lawyer but have only gotten two leads in three years for this type of work, something might be misfiring in your strategy that needs attention.
Only a comprehensive, under-the-hood look at your website can provide that insight. Think of it as a report card for your website. If you need some help figuring out where you stand, Everest Legal Marketing can help you with a free SEO audit. If you’re a law firm we can also schedule a Zoom and dive a bit deeper.
Contact Everest Legal Marketing
If you would like to schedule a call to discuss your SEO strategy, reach out to us at (909) 697-7484, or submit a contact form and we’ll get back in touch with you at a better time. We are local to Southern California and are happy to meet virtually or in-person.
President & Founder – Everest Legal Marketing, LLC
Doug Bradley is the Founder and CEO of Everest Legal Marketing. Doug has over a decade of experience specifically in legal marketing, and foremost with expertise in Search Engine Optimization for law firms. Doug has been quoted on numerous websites, co-hosted many MCLE sessions, and has advised law firms of all sizes on the topic of effective marketing and ethical SEO strategies.
