1. Are you located near me?
2. Do you handle cases like mine?
3. Can you resolve my legal issue?

You want to ensure that your law firm website speaks to each of these questions clearly and succinctly. Here’s how to make that happen.

Local SEO & Client Conversion

67% of smartphone users want ads customized via city and ZIP code, and 61% want ads customized to their immediate surroundings.

What this statistic tells us is that localization matters to consumers. This is especially true in the legal field, as prospective clients want to work with an attorney that located near their homes or offices. They will purposely search for a lawyer in their area (e.g., “Minneapolis family law attorney).

This means your website must clearly state where you are located and what geographic areas you serve. For instance, if you work out of Maple Grove, but service clients throughout the west metro, then say as much.

You also need to make sure that prospects can find you even if they don’t know you exist yet. Here are three important items that help boost your local SEO rankings on search engine result pages:

• Google reviews: According to Google, 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as they trust in-person recommendations. The more reviews you have on your Google page, then, the better off you are.
• NAP consistency: NAP stands for Name, Address and Phone number. To do well with local search, you need to make sure that your NAP information is consistent across all your online materials, from your website and social media profiles to your directory listings.
• Link building: Nothing tells Google that you are as good as you say you are better than links going back to your site from trustworthy resources.

Practice Area Descriptions

Dedicate pages on your website to the specific types of cases you handle or want to handle. Dig deeper than saying “family law” or “criminal defense” by breaking each general practice area down to specific cases, such as “divorce” or “drunk driving.” Failure to list the types of cases you want could mean failure to convert a prospective into a paying client.

Another great way to show prospective clients the types of claims you handle is to have a representative cases page and/or testimonials page on your website. A great way to handle these pages is to categorize your cases and testimonials by type of claim.

Client and Case Management

Prospective clients like to get to know who you are as a practitioner before they pick up the phone or step into your office. It is necessary, then, to spend a little bit of time describing how it is you do what you do. For instance, consider addressing these questions:

• How do you interact with your clients?
• What steps do you take to help them?
• What do you mean when you define “customer service”?
• What do you do to walk your clients through the legal process?
• How do you alleviate their concerns along the way?

The more you can give your prospective clients a preview of who you are and what your firm is like, the more likely they are to feel a connection with you before you speak with them.

Sound Like a Lot of Work?

That’s because it is. Marketing yourself clearly on your website takes time and focused effort. If you do not have the time to do this well, consider working with a Minneapolis website design and SEO company who can help you get to where you want to be online.

Source: Search Engine Land, 6 Local SEO Stats Every Online Marketer Needs To Know

The post Does Your Law Firm Website Answer These 3 Pressing Questions? appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

You have a law firm website that you’re proud of—the design is fresh and responsive, and the copy is current and compelling. But no one is finding your site. With little traffic comes minimal leads.

One way to turn this around is to add a blog to your law firm website. If you have heard this before, but have not yet committed to blogging, perhaps these statistics will convince you otherwise:

• Companies who blog receive 97% more links to their website.
• Publishing between 21-51 blog posts to your website will increase traffic by up to 30%. Surpass 54 posts, and your traffic increases by over 75%.
• Small businesses that blog get 126% more lead growth than small businesses that do not blog.

Along with increased traffic and leads, blogging helps build trust in your brand. In fact, according to Hubspot, “blogs have been rated as the 5^th most trusted source for accurate online information.” The result: 81% of U.S. online consumers trust information and advice from blogs. And 60% of customers say they feel more positive about a company after reading custom content on the company’s site.

3 Tips for Building an Effective Blog

The persuasive statistics cited above should lead you to one conclusion: it is time to get started on your law firm blog. Before you dive in, take into account these tips that will help bring your blogs increased engagement in the form of traffic to your website and social shares across Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social media channels:

• Write longer posts. The average word count of top-ranking content in Google is between 1,140-1,285 words.
• Add images. Building images into a blog post will have it gain 94% more views than posts without images.
• Focus on your client. Write about items that matter to your prospective clients. If it matters to them, they will share it with others: 94% of people who share posts do so because they think it might be helpful to others.

Get More Leads Than Your Competition. Start Blogging Today.

The only thing blogging requires of you is your time. But if you schedule your time accordingly, you will be able to maintain a consistent publication of posts that will have readers coming back for more.

If you do not have time, then consider working with a digital marketing company that can host your blog and produce content on your behalf. Contact our company to learn more.

Sources: Ad Pushup, 10 Blogging Statistics You Probably Didn’t Know But Should; Writtent, Top Blogging Statistics: 45 Reasons to Blog; Hubspot, 6 Stats You Should Know About Business Blogging in 2015; Forbes, 35 Content Marketing Statistics You Need To Know In 2016; Business2Community, Small Business Blogging Statistics For The Skeptics [Infographic]

The post 10 Statistics That Prove it’s Time to Add a Blog to Your Law Firm Website appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

But, as a lawyer, you have spent your whole education and career writing. You figure you can write your own legal website content. Right? Wrong. Here are three simple reasons why you should hire a professional copywriter to craft compelling content for your website.

Reason #1: Web-Based Writing Is Not the Same as Legal Writing.

Writing content for the Internet is not the same as writing a legal brief or demand letter. They are similar, however, in that they each have technical aspects that you must follow to get it right. But you did not go to school to write for search engines. Nor did you likely take many marketing courses, if any, as you prepared for legal practice.

Hiring a professional website writer can help bridge the gap between you and your audience that exist on the Web. Such a writer understands search engine optimization (SEO), so writing for search bots comes naturally. That same writer also knows how to break through legal jargon to communicate your services clearly to a prospective client.

Reason #2: Your Content Will Be Done On-Time.

If you are like most attorneys, your law firm marketing efforts often fall last on your to-do list. You may have the best of intentions, promising your web developer that you will deliver content for your site by a certain date so you can hit that “go live” date you are so anxious for. And then your due date comes and goes. And you get wrapped up in casework and trial dates. And all of a sudden, your “go live” date gets pushed out further and further, and you find yourself paying for hosting services for a site that is still under development.

By hiring a writer, you avoid the stress that comes with having the task hanging over your head. Your full website project stays on track, as your writer will deliver copy to you on time and help keep you on task for delivering edits and approving copy. From there, your writer can work with your developer to make the content development process move as smoothly as possible. That way, your site goes live when you want it to, and you get the most bang for your hosting services buck.

Reason #3: You Have Better Things to Do With Your Time.

Tied directly in with reason two is the fact that your time is precious. What you do with it matters. You need to focus on tasks that help your clients and bring you fulfillment, not to mention earning income to support you and your family.

Writing content for your website takes time if you do it right. The average website marketing writer spends at least one hour per page of copy, and that is coming from someone who does this on a daily basis. A basic five-page website could take you 10-12 hours to write. Just think of what you can accomplish, work, personal or otherwise, with that time.

What Are You Waiting For?

Whether you just starting out on a new website project or you are in the middle of one that you thought you could or should handle on your own, there is no better time than now to hire a professional writer to help. Let the professional writer focus on what she does best so you can focus on what you do best: providing legal services to those who need them.

The post It’s Time to Hire a Professional to Write Your Law Firm Website Content appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.