Saturday, June 20, 2015
Sunday, June 14, 2015
Lawyers: Get More Clients Online
Getting Clients Online
One of the biggest benefits of the internet has been opening up new and larger markets for businesses. Today, most attorneys will find that it is easier, cheaper and more profitable to focus more on getting clients online as compared to using traditional methods. Various online marketing platforms such as Facebook and Google give attorneys the ability to target high potential clients, thus reducing cost and increasing results. Whether you are in a big firm or you are running a solo law practice, the following 3 methods are certain to get you a good number of clients online. [optinform]Pay Per Click (PPC)
Pay Per Click has been around for many years with Google being the biggest player in this area. By bidding on certain keywords: search terms typed into Google such as “Chicago Divorce Lawyer”, you could get your ad placed on the first page of search engine results for those keywords. Yahoo Search and Microsoft’s Bing also have strong PPC marketing platforms. By marketing on these platforms, you can increase your firm’s visibility on search engines and increase site traffic. By converting this traffic, you can increase the number of clients.
A newer entrant into the PPC arena is Facebook. One of the best things Facebook offers to attorneys is the ability to fine target the right clients. Since Facebook knows the age, gender, hobbies, interests and many other things about their users, you can easily target the right demographic.
Before you embark on PPC marketing, it is important to have a budget and be aware of the market you want to target. Make sure you are targeting not only people that are likely to click on your ad but people that are looking for your services and are likely to convert into clients to ensure an ROI on your ad spend. It may be beneficial to hire someone to manage your PPC campaigns for you.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
While PPC ads are a way to pay to easily get ranked atop search engines studies have shown that organic listings: the sites that Google determines should be at the top tend to have a higher click through rate. The way to achieve these page 1 rankings is through the process of search engine optimization. It primarily involves optimizing your website for high search engine placement. This is achieved by optimizing the content on your website, including text images, and videos to focus around targeted search terms as well as building off site links (backlinks) and social sharing.
One of the best practices when it comes to SEO is to focus on the local market. This reduces competition and ensures that you capture highly targeted leads. So instead of optimizing for the keyword “Divorce Attorney”, “New York Divorce Attorney” would be a much better choice.
Secondly, make sure that your content is high quality and relevant to the clients you are targeting. Google SEO rankings focus heavily on the quality and relevance of content. So if you are a divorce attorney you wouldn’t want the content on your site to focus on criminal law for example.
Finally, go external through linking. Make sure that your content is shared on other websites and links back to your website (backlinking). Google and other search engines take these links as endorsements of your website thus giving you higher ranking and more visibility. This is a complex process done through a combination of press releases and powerful links strategically placed on high authority sites among other techniques. While this is by far the most important factor in SEO it is also the most difficult and if done wrong can actually be detrimental to your rankings, it is often best to hire an SEO agency that focuses on attorneys to do this sort of thing for you.
Social Media
Social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have grown into giants with millions of users and changed the way we communicate online. They have become ideal platforms for reaching out to new clients. As we discussed earlier there are options to drive traffic to your website with paid social ads, but social media offers a much wider variety of options to generate new leads and clients. By consistently adding content, communicating with your audience and the people in your area and having a strong social presence not only do you help your search engine rankings you begin to build trust with your perspective client base as they get used to seeing your face and hearing your name. This builds trust and loyalty and when the time comes that they need the services of an attorney they will trust you implicitly and be able to easily find you giving you the opportunity to convert them into clients.
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