Search Engine Marketing Strategies to Build Your Practice
Creating an effective digital marketing campaign for your law practice requires more than simply putting up a website and posting occasionally on social media platforms. Even with high quality content that informs web visitors, you need to know that your online presence is attracting potential clients—that you’re getting maximum traffic to your site. That’s the primary goal of SEM, or search engine marketing.
What Is SEM for Lawyers?
Search engine marketing refers to the use of online search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing, to attract clients. This is generally done with strategies that respond well to the search engine algorithms and cause links to your online content to appear at or near the top of a search engine results page (SERP).
There are two basic strategies typically employed to maximize your ranking with search engines:
- Search engine optimization (SEO)—A long-term approach, SEO is a comprehensive and integrated approach that includes specific keyword terms in your website copy, site navigation, inbound and outbound links, images, videos, and tags, among other things.
- Pay-per-click—If you look at the top of a SERP, you’ll notice that the first few entries typically have the words “Ad&” or “Sponsored&” on the listing. That’s because those advertisers have paid to be located at the top of the first page of search results. This approach is referred to as “pay-per-click,&” or PPC. The advertiser pays only if a visitor to the SERP clicks through on the link to the advertiser’s website. As a general rule, PPC is more expensive than SEO and is typically employed as a short-term strategy.
The Benefits of SEM Services for Lawyers
If you want to enhance your search engine marketing, it’s best if you retain a company, like GetLegal, to help manage your campaign. You can try to do your own SEO, and even your own PPC, but you’ll be hard-pressed to get the return on investment you can expect from SEM professionals. Here’s why:
- SEM professionals can help you fine tune your keyword research—You may be familiar with the common terms used in your practice and may be able to construct some fundamental keywords and key phrases. Unfortunately, those are likely to be the same ones your competitors come up with, so you won’t gain any advantage. An SEM professional will be able to conduct specific research and help you craft content that more effectively targets your desired audience.
- An SEM professional can tell you about your competitors’ strategies and how much traffic they are getting—That knowledge can help you make subtle or broad changes to your SEO or PPC plans in order to capture more market share.
- An SEM professional will know where to start—An SEM expert can show you what types of content are successfully generating a lot of traffic for other firms like yours. As a result, you won’t have to start from scratch. You’ll have a framework for success that you can tailor for your practice to meet your specific goals.
- An SEM professional can develop a link-building strategy—Inbound and outbound links are an integral part of a successful SEO campaign. The key question—how do you get them? An SEM professional will have the tools to help you find domains that are willing to link to your site, as well as other sites to which you can link. Such links can dramatically increase traffic to your site.
Let GetLegal Help You Build Your Law Practice by Improving Your Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
At GetLegal, we offer attorneys and law firms nationwide more than two decades of proven experience in digital marketing. We offer a comprehensive arsenal of online tools to help you build a profitable client base, including full website development with custom content and design, video production, search engine optimization, social media campaigns, directory listings, and online reputation management. To learn how we can help you generate more potential clients for your practice, go to https://glpbpro.wpengine.com/ or call us at 1-817-359-7077.
