Next up the great Harlan Schillinger, “The Grandfather of Legal Advertising” came out to introduce Chris Dreyer for his presentation all about the power of SEO. Dreyer broke his presentation into many different sections all with the goal to give as much value as possible.
He broke down how Google analyzes local results, emphasizing three main factors – relevance, distance and prominence. By focusing on these three areas (with relevance being the most important), you can dominate the search engines.
As an example, Dreyer shared about a firm that properly implemented a DBA into their Google Business Profile listings, allowing them to match the intent of the searches they were targeting. The search term was Michigan Auto Accident Lawyer. At the time, the two firms competing for the top position were Michigan Auto Law Accident Attorneys and J Trucks and Associates. Michigan Auto Law Accident Attorneys had fewer reviews and wasn’t closer to the search location; however, it matched the searcher’s intent more closely.
If you just stuff keywords into your business name that aren’t a part of the legal name, you will be flagged by Google. In order to do this correctly, you need to go through the legal process of filing a “Doing Business As” and have the paperwork to prove it. In theory, you could implement a name change tomorrow and instantly boost your rankings.
When it comes to relevancy, reviews are the number one factor. Matching the intent of the search is key, but if you don’t have the reviews to back it you won’t rank. Dreyer states that a 4.9 rating or higher is critical. If your ranking is below this, he said fixing it should be your first priority before you do anything else or hire an agency.
In fact, Dreyer recommended internally hiring someone who is just focused on the customer experience and on gathering reviews. Another tactic he shared was creating an incentivization plan for your staff to get reviews.
Distance is the next factor to consider. If your firm is in an area densely populated with other law firms, you will have a lot of catching up to do before you ever rank. The firms with thousands of reviews and a 4.9 rating or higher will show up above you forever.
Dreyer recommended using tools like LocalFalcon to drop a grid over your location to see how well you rank compared to your competition. This can be a key part in determining where to open your first office or any additional locations.
Dreyer then dove into the content side of your website. Content has always been a major stressor; however, unique, personalized content from the expert should now be the priority. To make it simple, go through all your content and implement changes to create a unique outlook that only your firm could provide.
He recommended you have an in-house content writer as part of your internal team (even if you use an agency). This will allow you to create more unique content and put a touch of personalization into every piece of content written.
Dreyer also touched on content pruning in this segment. He recommended taking a look at your content to determine what is evergreen and pruning anything that is no longer relevant. During the process of evaluating, he noted that you should be re-evaluating and updating all the evergreen content so it can remain fresh. Google has a crawl budget. You want to prune items you don’t want Google crawling and refresh the good content with updates and updated outlooks to keep Google crawling the good content.
Dreyer concluded his presentation with some ways lawyers and law firm owners can help their agencies. He mentioned monitoring your brand mentions and asking companies who mention your brand to link back to your firm’s website. Some easy ways to get natural backlinks include appearing on podcasts, sponsoring local high schools, winning awards or pushing out press releases. The key was to keep an eye on some of these opportunities that your marketing agency may not be aware of.
Lastly, he left us with one golden nugget, “It’s not the brand itself that impacts rankings, it’s the click and the click being known by Google. Title tags, page titles, and meta descriptions are absolutely important in enticing these clicks. Additionally, if you rank number one, you capture more clicks, and it is easier to maintain your number one position than if you did not. Make your firm click-worthy!”