Law Firm SEO or Search Engine Optimization is all about designing a sound strategy and implementing that strategy to perfection. At the end of the day, the strategy will tell you the who, what, where, when, why and how of how to improve your Google (and other search engine) rankings. So let’s delve a bit deeper into what’s required to come up with a winning strategy.
1. Know your products/services: your elevator pitch should be short and sweet. In but a few sentences, you should be able to describe your idea, the benefits to your target market(s) (i.e. your clients and customers), how you differentiate yourself from competitors (i.e. what’s your sustainable competitive advantage), the history or story behind the idea (this is always a great selling feature), the progress you’ve made, and your future plans.
2. Know your industry: This means that you should look around for competitors and figure out what services they offer, how they try to distinguish themselves from others. You should also know where the industry has been (e.g. new, old, dominated by a few player or fragmented along various lines) and what trends are coming down the pipeline.
3. Know your customers: You should not only be able to describe your ideal customer as much as humanly possible (e.g. 18 year old teenager living with his/her family in a certain city working part time and saving up for university and who takes the bus to work), but you should map out the different avenues they would take to find your product or service – both offline and online. This is very important: mass marketing your idea to the world unless you are a General Electric or Tata Consulting company with vast resources and omni-presence.
4. Pick a niche: The easiest way to tackle a market is to pick a niche. This strategy will put you at the top of your game and make you most memorable to your target market. Remember: most customers want to compartmentalize product/service providers in the marketplace as offering or being good at 1 thing only. Even though you may be capable of fulfilling multiple needs, it’s very difficult and not financially worth it to try to market yourself in that way. Remember: it’s better to be a big fish in a small pond instead of a small fish in a big pond.
5. Find your target keywords: by doing the 4 steps above, you should have come up with an idea of some keywords to focus on. These are the keywords that members of your target market will type into Google and other search engines to try to find your website. There are many software tools available for purchase to help you identify the keywords in your particular industry that you should be focusing on and which may be under-served by your competitors.
6. Repeat steps 1 through 5: nothing stays the same over time. In fact, that’s the only thing that does stay the same.
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