This month’s Ask an SEO question comes from Heather, who asks:
“Do you find that, sometimes, even your best formula to rank doesn’t make sense? I advise employment lawyers on how to write. However, I find the “formula” doesn’t seem to work. Have you found you can’t even to get it to work? Loaded question, but I hope you know what I mean.”
Great question, Heather, and it’s not as loaded as it originally sounds. It’s an easy one to resolve when you don’t overthink it.
When you use the same approach for law firm SEO or any niche SEO, you’re creating the same experience for the search engines.
Search engines need the best experience – not the same. That’s why using similar strategies doesn’t work.
Look how each law firm is unique and use that as a strength.
Identify who in the practice can become part of the brand (including any partners with media potential), what their specialties are, and how to approach each law firm’s strategy differently.
The answer below also applies to ecommerce, service providers like your clients, and publishers, so this post benefits all readers.
But I will stick to lawyers since that is the example our inquirer mentioned. If someone wants ecommerce or another topic, feel free to submit it, and I’ll be happy to respond.
Why SEO Formulas Fall Short For Law Firms
The reason the same SEO formula does not work, even if they’re the same type of lawyers is because each firm is unique.
Unique in this sense is having licensed attorneys nationally and providing full coverage.
Some could be multi-location vs. single location in a city or state, and others can be a boutique law shop specializing in one niche. Each will have different needs and different abilities, so the formula has to change.
If you’re not creating original and unique strategies for each and every law firm client, you’re not giving search engines like Google a reason to show them. That is why the formula doesn’t work, and your clients are at a disadvantage.
Larger law firms have extra people to talk to the media; they can go out and litigate and get backlinks from the cases.
Firms with multiple locations have more Google Business Profile opportunities and more abilities to do community work and gain exposure.
They’ll also need individual location pages vs. a single location, providing them with more localized content for city-based queries. And firms that have won cases that go viral in their space may get media attention.
This results in an increase in branded searches and backlinks, which leads to easier SEO for competitive terms.
The clientele is also different. If the employment firm handles small business or personal injury vs. enterprise corporations and big four accounting, the language levels and terminology need to change because you’re writing for people using different jargon and language levels.
If it is an NGO vs. for-profit, there are other phrases and rules they need to follow. This means the writing levels, types of sourcing, and information they’re providing have to be different as the clientele and type of audience they want are different.
Going for huge corporate accounts means having content for the assistants that meet their needs when they research, and the executives where you have summaries that make sense as to why they’re searching for a law firm.
They have a general counsel that will review your casework and look for something completely different.
If it’s a small business, it’s easier to adjust to a single page that talks to the owner and builds their confidence. Same niche, different target audience, different site experience need a unique strategy.
Here are some of the ways I’d tweak the SEO strategy for law firms, if I only worked in one specific niche. Then, I’d implement unique strategies on top of it based on attracting their specific target clients, not in general.
Build Digital PR And Trust
I’m not talking about link building here; I’m talking about building a brand. When the lawyers and partners are known entities, it carries over and can help build brand trust.
Larger cities like New York, Chicago, or Dallas have more opportunities than smaller towns, but each region has media opportunities.
Build a list of media companies, bloggers, and community resources, including city and town-run government forums, and see who talks about employment and employment law.
Now, look at the topics they cover. It could be anything from discrimination to hiring, job loss and layoffs, or employee and employer rights.
These are hot topics year-round and opportunities to get your clients featured. Once they go through media training, get them on TV, in columns as experts, and on stage at community forums as experts.
This results in natural backlinks when done correctly, and it leads to people searching for them by name and brand, which may signal to the search engines there is something to it.