Professionals Who Write with Search Engines in Mind Can Help Clients Find You
When you’re mounting an online campaign to build your client base, it’s important to view it as a two-step process:
- Driving traffic to your site—You may have an important message to deliver to prospective clients, but first they have to find you and your website. As a general rule, the way to bring visitors to your site is through the use of search engine optimization (SEO) (also referred to as search engine marketing, or SEM). The most compelling website content is meaningless if no one finds your site.
- Converting website visitors to clients—Once you get a visitor to your website, your content must persuade them to contact you, either by phone or e-mail.
In this blog, we’ll look at the importance of search engine optimization—what it is and why it’s essential to a successful online marketing approach.
What Is Search Engine Optimization, and Why Is It a Critical Part of Digital Marketing?
SEO consists of strategies to improve your web presence by ranking your site higher on the search engine results pages (SERP) in Google and other search engines. Your ranking is critical to driving traffic to your website, as research shows that about two of every three people click on one of the first five listings in their search results. Most web users trust search engines to provide links to sources that are relevant to their needs. By employing good SEO techniques, you increase your chances of being among those top five entries.
Integrating SEO with Blogs and Other Content
Search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, and MSN all have complex algorithms that give weight to a variety of factors when responding to an online search. With all of them, though, significant weight is given to the actual words people enter into the search box—in online marketing, these search terms are referred to as “keywords.”
It’s essential that your copywriter be able to anticipate the terms prospective clients are most likely to use when searching. When someone is looking for legal services online, here are the most common types of keywords used in a search:
- Language that references a practice area or a specific type of legal problem—The reason someone is searching for a lawyer online is because they have a legal problem but not the resources or knowledge to resolve it. Accordingly, you can expect online queries to reference keywords like “personal injury,” “divorce,” or “criminal prosecution.”
- The words “attorney” or “lawyer” (or both)
- Words limiting the geographic scope of the search—A prospective client wants to know that they can come see you.
At a fundamental level, then, including phrases like “Boston divorce attorney” or “Sacramento personal injury lawyer” can help improve your ranking. But the more specific your content is, the better your chances of standing out among your competitors and the greater the likelihood that the right prospective clients will find your website. That’s where knowledgeable and experienced copywriters can make a big difference. A blog that accurately and clearly explains what property you can and cannot keep in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy not only enhances your ranking with search engines, thereby driving more potential visitors to your site, but it also shows your expertise, which improves your chances of converting a website visitor into a client.
An experienced online copywriter also understands where to draw the line with respect to the SEO value of content. It’s not about how many times you get the keywords into a blog post—search engines give more weight to the natural use of keywords and penalize content artificially stuffed with them.
Contact GetLegal Practice Builder
At GetLegal, we have decades of experience providing digital marketing services and products to attorney and law firms nationwide. We offer a wide range of products and services, including website development, search engine optimization, social media campaigns, reputation management, directory listings, customized content, and full video production capabilities. To learn about the ways we can enhance your digital marketing efforts, visit GetLegal Practice Builder or call 1-817-359-7077.
