Law Firm Marketing: The 5 Major Mistakes Lawyers Make on Their Websites
Marketing for lawyers is an essential part of a law firm business. If you do not market your law firm, few will know you exist. Your law firm relies on finding quality prospects – and there is no better tool for this than the Internet (remember that referrals will likely check out your website prior to calling you to see if you might be a good fit for their needs).
Here are five law firm marketing mistakes many lawyers make on their websites:
1. Using legal jargon - Although your website is for a law firm, you will want to stay away from the legal terminology. You must remember that your potential clients are average citizens who do not have a law degree. Reading legal terminology is way too difficult for someone who does not have experience in this field.
More than likely, if you do create a website that is too hard to read, people will quit without getting too far. You actually only have about thirty seconds before they decide to either keep reading or move onto the next website.
2. Not targeting your Ideal Target Market (ITM) - Many times lawyers will not take the time to evaluate their ITM. This mistake can very well cost you quality prospects. Once you clearly define your target market you need to clearly communicate it on your website. Otherwise, you end up wasting time and energy on low quality prospects.
3. Using a legal directory website - This is not a good idea for your first website. They will set you up with a sub domain on their website. You must have your own domain. You should not lease, rent or license your website domain from anyone. Don't leave the chances of your success online in some else's hands.
4. Not incorporating a blog into your website – Google loves fresh content, and the best way to keep adding fresh content to your website is by incorporating a blog. Attorneys who consistently rank high in search add content to their site 3-5 times a week through blogging.
5. Not using the right keywords - This can be a very serious website mistake. Your goal is to have qualified prospects visit your law firm's website. Those people will be searching by typing in familiar words or phrases for what they need information on. These words or phrases are known as keywords. You want to include these keywords in your content, so that your website will be one that pulls you up on the ranking page.
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Phoenix Legal Networking Group: Learn about Advanced Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Strategies for Law Firms at our February 10 Meeting
At the February 10 Phoenix Legal Networking Group meeting, Stephen Fairley will make a presentation on Advanced Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Strategies for Law Firms.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the art and science of artificially boosting your website and blog to the top of the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, and Bing). Join us at the Phoenix Legal Networking Group and learn advanced SEO strategies to help you achieve first page rankings.
Whether you are working on a new website, launching your first site, or want to take your current website to the front page of Google, you absolutely need to hear about these strategies.
You will discover:
- 7 critical components of Google's search engine ranking algorithm
- How Google views your website
- Why “long tail” search is better and how to apply this secret strategy
- Does social media matter when it comes to search engine ranking
- Why Google loves blogs and how to leverage this powerful technology!
The networking event and marketing seminar will be held from 5:30-7:30 p.m. on Thursday, February 10 at Monti’s, 100 S. Mill Ave. in Tempe.
Cost is $20 per person if you register by February 8, $30 if you register by February 9 and $35 on the day of the event. This covers drinks, hors d’oeurves, the networking event and the workshop.
To register for our February 10 networking and legal marketing event, co-hosted by FindLaw, Attorney at Law Magazine, Coash & Coash Court Reporting and The Rainmaker Institute, visit www.therainmakerretreat.com/network or call 888-816-8935.
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Great little introductory piece! Although one thing to add. We see so many firms who simply don't rank for anything because they don't attend to the proper insertion of keywords in both their meta-titles and meta-descriptions. So easy to do, yet so many law firms don't do it.