Do It Yourself Lawyer Marketing – A Step By Step Guide

Lawyers ask me all the time how they can market their firm on a budget. The best way is to simply do the work yourself. Years of experience in the internet marketing industry is not a prerequisite to market your website and firm. The single biggest ingredient is time.

Follow these 5 easy steps to market your own firm on the internet, and take your future in your own hands.

1. Research

The first step in marketing your firm’s website is by doing keyword research. SpyFu.com has an incredible keyword tool that allows you to see how many searches are done for a specific term. Make sure to find terms that both fit your firm’s strengths and have more than 100 searches per month.

You can look at your competitors’ websites to see what terms they are using as a guide for what will work for you. For example, if you are a Los Angeles Auto Accident Attorney simply put that term into SpyFu.com. Right now the term has 210 searches per month (next month that number may be different). Scroll down on the page and you will see “Most Successful Advertisers.” Those are your biggest competitors.

Make a list of keywords that generate a lot of searches, and your first step is done.

2. Use Free Tools

There are so many tools out there designed to help make your life easier and guide you through the process. Moz.com is one of the best places to find articles, products and guides to help you through each step.

Google offers Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools at no charge. They are very user friendly and give you a window into how Google will rank your site.

3. Ask Questions

Guys like me are always happy to answer your questions for one main reason – we are selfish. We know that if we help you now, you will come back to us later when you are ready to hire someone.

Ask lawyer SEO experts like myself questions. It doesn’t cost you anything, and it allows us to polish up our skills as well. Most people in this industry are willing to answer questions at no charge for the opportunity to earn your business later.

4. Track Results

The most popular tool to track results is also free. http://www.google.com/analytics is really easy to use. It requires someone who knows what they’re doing to install the code, but it takes about 1 minute.

GA (Google Analytics) provides data such as bounce rate and average session duration. Bounce rate is just a ratio of people who leave your site without going to an internal page. A high bounce rate means your site doesn’t appeal to your viewers.

Average session duration is how long people stay on your site—the longer, the better. That is why so many lawyers are putting videos on their site. Smart, huh?

5. Content. Content. Content.

The last step in building your own lawyer marketing campaign is by adding content. This is not just fluff content on your website. This is solid content that your website viewers want to read and text that actually educates more than blusters about your accomplishments.

Using this content on social media is also another trick not many attorneys understand. “I don’t use Facebook,” most say to me. Neither do I, but that doesn’t stop me from posting on all of the social media accounts I can. Why do I do it? Because Google said they will give me higher ranking if I do. Enough said.

Most lawyers don’t have enough time in the day to market their own firm and website. In this case delegation is the key. It is critical you first understand the methods and rules and then create a system that allows a staff member to do the work for you.

Don’t have a staff member to complete the weekly marketing tasks? Prepare to spend anywhere from $250 – $3,000 per month to hire a firm to complete the marketing for you.

LawFirmSites.com charges on average only $500 per month to market lawyer websites. Bigger, multinational lawyer marketing companies charge 3 times that in most cases. Their overhead is much larger than ours, and they have to charge a lot more to offer the same level of results.

Do. It.

My advice to the lawyer who wants to market their own website – do it. If you have very little ranking and traffic, you aren’t risking a lot except your time. Once you start, you will see that it isn’t all that hard to get your website ranked. Consistently working on the website ranking weekly will generate the results you want for the price that fits your marketing budget.

If you would rather hire an expert, call me at (800) 932-8242. I am happy to answer all of your questions and custom tailor a marketing solution that fits your budget and goals. In addition, I can answer most of your questions within about 5-10 minutes. Finally, the call will be no pressure and no obligation.

Daniel Todd
Law Firm Sites
Since 2001