Lawyers scooping up work online with the ‘long tail’

LAWYERS scoop up more work by targeting so-called ‘long tail keyword searches’ performed by Google users, say digital marketing experts.

Research carried out by Add People, the digital marketing specialists, shows that law firms are more likely to attract and convert clients searching for niche phrases than generic searches. The company tracked the conversion rates of more than 100 legal clients and found that niche keywords converted more clients compared to the generic keywords.

Grant Barton, managing director of Add People, the digital marketing specialists who manage search engine optimisation (SEO) for UK law firms said:

“Too many firms focus on being found for the wrong keywords. Being number one in Google for ‘London law firm’ doesn’t convert as many clients as being number one for something more niche like ‘dispute with fellow directors’ if you’re a business lawyer.

 “Law firms can gain a lot by being placed higher up the Google rankings. As well as the reputational advantage, the commercial advantage is that clients are being more specific with the phrases they search for. The commercial intent of a client is higher with long tail keywords. Concentrating on niche terms brings gets faster results than more competitive generic terms.

“To give a simple analogy, someone searching for ‘shoes’ is going to be less likely to be in buying mode than someone searching for ‘size ten tennis shoes’.  Law firms need to get to grips with the habits of internet users and ensure their services are easily found through SEO tactics.”

Top SEO tips for lawyers by Add People:

1)      Generate fresh content for your website on a daily basis   

2)      Focus on getting links back to your site from a diversity of different sites and blogs

3)      Use social media to ‘seed’ your content across the web

4)      Use keyword rich URLs for each page of your site

5)      Have unique page descriptions and titles for each page of your site

6)      Register your firm with Google Places so you can be found on map searches

7)      Create a blog and link back to your main site

8)      Encourage happy clients to link back to your own website by giving them useful content

9)      Create short videos relevant to your work and ensure they are tagged with target keywords

10)   Ensure an analytics package is installed so you can track all the visitors to your site

Ends

Peter Davies

Director

peter@rmspr.co.uk

0161 927 3131