Whether you’re presenting the reports to upper management or just want to create a consolidated view of your monthly goals, objectives, and their ROI – tracking is critical.
With proper key performance indicators (KPIs) in place, your law firm can easily measure your successes and failures. Without proper tracking it will be harder to determine what areas are doing well and which need the most attention moving forward.
Data also allows you to make better informed decisions and compare the outcome against previous benchmarks. In many cases, you might find that what you thought was a change for the better is actually performing worse than before.
When it comes to setting up tracking, there are three key areas that should be monitored.
Undiagnosed technical SEO issues can wreak havoc on your site. It is important to set up a routine check or even an automated monthly audit using a tool like Agency Analytics to make sure that as new issues arise, you are made aware of them.
Those tools should not be used in place of an in-depth manual audit when you are just getting started, but for the sake of monitoring, they work great.
In addition, within Google Search Console, you should routinely check the site coverage and the core web vitals section, look for any new or unexplained issues that require further review. Both of these checks can be made monthly while reviewing your updated audit report.
Content engagement metrics such as visitors, time on page, and bounce rates can help you in understanding how your content is being engaged with.
Other metrics such as total keywords associated with a page and total keywords in the top 3 will let you determine how your content is performing through an SEO lense. It will also help you uncover the need for new or different content on your site.
Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager are two free but powerful ways to measure how well your site is performing. While most people know the basics of setting up an account and adding the tracking code, there is a wealth of information that can be derived through proper goal and funnel tracking.
In addition, using third party tools like Ahrefs will allow you to track rankings for sets of keywords and see which keywords are associated with various pages on your site, helping to fill in the gap left by Analytics.
Your law firm may be doing SEO in addition to multiple other types of advertising, such as billboards or email marketing.
In order to see which channels are producing the best traffic, the most leads, and in turn, the greatest ROI, a comprehensive tracking solution is needed.
Specific to just SEO, your overall performance tracking should really come down to a few core questions.
Tracking the secondary metrics like rankings and total keywords are important to identify areas that need to be improved, to help in generating ideas to expand the areas that are working best, and to troubleshoot losses in rankings.
In many cases, we have found that targeting a group of keywords produced more leads, with better lead quality than targeting the “main” keyword alone. This means that tracking keyword groups instead of focusing on a single keyword per page is more practical.
If you have additional goals, such as to increase brand awareness, become the dominant law firm in your area, or to generate referral traffic from link outreach, be sure to let your law firm SEO company know about these goals during your intake call. This will allow them to set up additional goal specific tracking to supplement the big three mentioned above.
Now that we have covered the basics of SEO for your law firm, the only thing left to do is take action on what you have learned.
Yes, depending upon the platform your law firm’s website is built upon, you might find that you are unable to fix certain site speed and technical issues. This doesn’t mean that your law firm won’t be able to rank, it just might make it more difficult. We personally recommend using WordPress to build your law firm’s site since it is fully optimizable.
A lot of companies that offer SEO for lawyers work with competing firms. At Stellar SEO, we offer exclusivity and do not work with direct competitors of our clients. Once we establish your primary keyword and target locations, we are focused on helping only your firm rank for as long as you partner with us.
The cost of SEO for lawyers will vary greatly depending upon your practice area, location, competition, and goals. If you are a new solo practice in a small town, your SEO will typically cost less than a firm in LA or Chicago for example.
Our attorney SEO pricing typically starts at $5,000 per month and is geared towards law firms that are growth-focused. Our typical engagement is $5-20K per month.
Smaller law firm’s can expect to pay between $2500-$5,000 per month for quality SEO services.
A study by the Legal Marketing Association found that law firms allocate an average of 6.7% of gross revenue to marketing, which is a great rule of thumb to start your planning.
The most important thing is that you find an SEO company that can understand and help you achieve your goals. Price is part of the equation, but ROI and the ability to engage more potential clients should also be considered as you work to retain an SEO company.
There are plenty of cheap SEO companies in the market, with prices starting as low as $200 per month. In most cases, these types of SEO services only do a portion of what is needed and take shortcuts along the way.
Search engines like Google are getting smarter by the day. Shortcuts, black hat SEO tactics, and low quality work get less effective with every update. In the best case scenario cheap SEO services won’t work and more commonly, they lead to rankings drops, penalty cleanups, and lost revenue.
If the law firm SEO company you hire isn’t using safe, white hat SEO tactics, you are setting yourself up for issues in the future. It takes time, resources, and expertise to achieve Stellar SEO results. Small budgets do not allow for that.
SEO is a powerful driver of traffic, leads, and growth. However, we are big fans of having a diverse approach to marketing.
PPC advertising, content marketing, T.V. & radio, billboards, and being active in your community can all work together to increase brand awareness and engagement for your firm.
The old saying “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” sums up our philosophy perfectly.
Even though we have covered a lot of information in this guide, search engine optimization isn’t something you can master in a day, week, or even a month. It takes years of testing, learning, measuring, and repeating to develop your skills.
If you need help auditing your website, building out a full law firm SEO strategy, or simply getting high-quality links, we would be happy to speak with you and see if we are fit to work together.
Thank you for taking the time to read through our law firm search engine optimization guide and we truly hope it will help you pave a better path forward for your firm.
Achieving an exceptional digital presence requires experience, careful planning, and creativity.
