Today we welcome Guest Blogger Mike Ramsey, President of NiftyLaw. He writes and speaks across the nation about all things search, social, and local.
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Most law firms have active websites, but not many of them are good. This gives you a fantastic opportunity to improve your website and stand out from the crowd. After all, a professional website can create the much-needed positive impression, strengthen credibility, and generate new business for you.
In this post, I’m going to share 10 ideas to make your law firm website better today.
Let’s get started…
1. Use Images of Attorneys and Your Office
A professional law firm website needs to build trust, authenticity, and credibility. And nothing does that better than images of your own office and attorneys.
Here is an example.
You can always use stock images on your website, but that’s not recommended. It looks generic, and stock images can never reflect the personality and values of your business — which are important factors.
Pro Tip: Use PhotoFeeler to get unbiased feedback on your photos and control the impression it sends to your potential clients.
2. Start Publishing Blog Posts Regularly
Blogging plays a significant role in lead generation — especially for law firms. According to studies, marketers who blogs generate 67% more leads than those who don’t. Also, businesses with over 200 blog posts generate 5x more leads than those with 10 or fewer.
So, as you can see, blogging is a great long-term investment.
Furthermore, your entire content marketing efforts will be based on your business blog. Let’s discuss it more.
3. Target the “Right” Audience
Here is another tip about blogging.
When you are creating content, it is important to identify the type of audience you are targeting. You are not creating content for other lawyers. It’s a rookie mistake that actually a lot of law firms make.
You should be creating content for your potential customers. Other lawyers are not your potential clients in many cases and there are better ways to create relationships with lawyers in person compared to blogs.
So choose your topics wisely.
4. Local Area Keyword Targeting
Okay, this is the last tip on blogging and content marketing. I promise.
When you are creating content for your law firm website, make sure that you are targeting the right keywords.
One tip is to target keywords for all the local places where you provide services. For instance, if you are a lawyer in Chicago, you probably work with people in the entire metro and should be targeting multiple local areas, e.g., Cicero estate planning, Evanston elder law, Oak Park, Skokie, etc.
Create content to publish on your website with these areas as primary keywords. Optimizing these location keywords will help you get more search engine traffic and potential leads from those geographical regions. This will also expand your website dramatically.
You can use the Google Keyword Planner to find all the relevant keywords and keyword phrases.
5. Responsive Mobile-Friendly Design
Mobile searches have become an important component of online marketing. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, it can have several negative impacts on your online business.
First of all, nearly 50% of the website traffic comes from mobile devices. If your website isn’t compatible, you are simply going to lose all that traffic. Secondly, search engines prefer mobile-friendly websites.
In April 2015, Google announced their mobile-friendly search engine algorithm update. According to this update, if you are website isn’t mobile-friendly, Google may not rank it higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Following that, Bing has also announced their own mobile-friendly algorithm.
6. Building an Email List
An email list of targeted subscribers and potential leads is, by far, the most valuable asset of your online business. It’s important that you start building an email list right from the start.
Why is an email list so important for a law firm website?
It’s simple.
Approximately only 4% website visitors are ready to buy right away when they visit your website. The rest of the 96% need to be properly nurtured. And there is no better way to nurture potential leads than email marketing.
Moreover, when you stay in touch with your email subscribers and send them useful information, they are more likely to hire your services and trust your recommendations.
7. The Psychology of Color
Sometimes, just choosing the right color for your website can make a huge difference. It’s important because each color sends a different message and that can change the perception of your website visitors.
For instance, blue is a color that builds trust, credibility, order, loyalty, and authenticity. This is the reason so many financial institutions and banks use blue.
You can leverage this information and use this to your own advantage and ensure the color choices of your firm are in line with the messaging you want to send.
8. Focus on Reputation
Your website can create a great first impression that you need so much.
For instance, take a look at the following image.
The website specifically focuses on building the good reputation. It shows achievements, highlights different accomplishments, and has a great tagline to go with it.
You should also use testimonials of satisfied customers to complement other elements on your website. A great tool to help generate feedback from customers is GetFiveStars where you can manage reviews, ask for testimonials, and address issues before they become reputation problems.
9. Stand Out with Video Marketing
Video marketing can have great rewards if done properly.
The idea is to rise above your competitors by having engaging videos on your law firm website.
You can create testimonials videos, educational videos, or promotional videos. And when all else fails, you can just be “memorable”.
10. Contact Information
One of the major reasons why people visit your law firm website is to find your contact information. It is, therefore, your job to make it as easy for them as possible.
Don’t forget to mention the physical address of your firm, your local phone numbers, an active email address, and a map. It is important that the contact information — Business name, address, and phone number are consistent everywhere on the web.
Also, depending on your website design, it is a good idea to display the contact information on every webpage. You can easily achieve that by displaying the contact information in the header or the footer of your website.
It can also be a good idea to clarify that an email or contact form submission does not initiate an attorney-client relationship — as shown in the following image.
Final Words
It is important to understand that your law firm website is a crucial component. Without it, you won’t be able to manage content marketing. 81% people search online before buying, and that makes it imperative that you have a great law firm website in place. And you can use these 10 ideas to make your law firm website better today.
Mike Ramsey, President of NiftyLaw
Mike is one of our sponsors for the February Tri-Annual Practice Enhancement Retreat…. and he's also a guest speaker! Join the conversation during his focus session on the Thursday, 2/25 Marketing Track at 8AM : "I'd Like to Hire You, But I Can't Find You" and learn all things local search to dominate online in your area!
If you're not a Lawyers With Purpose member and want to know more about our Cloud Based Workflow System, join our webinar on Thursday, February 26th at 2EST – Click here to register for our Live Law Firm CRM Workflow System Demo for estate planning and elder law attorneys.
Roslyn Drotar – Lawyers With Purpose, Online Marketing Strategist
