Full Service Website with On-Going SEO Service

Determining Whether You Need to Keep Paying Monthly

If you purchased a website from Lawyers.com, FindLaw or Scorpion you are certainly paying a monthly invoice, but you might not understand what you’re actually supposed to be getting. You know that your website stays up and running, but the actual benefit you receive from an SEO package can be difficult to measure. To be effective in a competitive market, an on-going plan is likely necessary. The key is understanding what you are buying and what is a reasonable expectation of what that on-going package will do for you.

If You’re Paying On-Going, It Should Be Customized

I do sell packages or solutions or bundles or predetermined levels of service. If you want on-going service to your website, we talk about how to make that as effective as possible for you given your geography, target market, what you currently have on your website and your marketing goals. Most of the time it’s some combination of some key elements:

• Content creation
• General website health
• Google Maps Placement
• Advertising on Google
• A Light Social Media Presence
  
  

I’ll break down those four categories at the end of this article.  I do not treat those elements the same for any two law firms. I will work with you to custom create a package based on your current budget and goals that addresses each element appropriately.

With customized packages it can be hard to make blanket statements about what’s good and bad; but…

The Pluses

The benefits of an on-going package SHOULD be fairly easy to see. You should not only be seeing an overall good result from your website, but you should also have at least some notion of what it is your provider is doing to grow / stabilize / protect those results.  

When you go to Google and run searches that you’re targeting, you should see one if not more than one pathway to your website.  That might include: 

• Google organic results, 
• Google map listing
• An ad targeting that keyword or phrase
• Presence in a highly ranked legal directory 
• A local service ad
• …or ideally some combination of multiple options.

The Minuses

Obviously there is a cost, in my case usually between $200 and $1,000 a month. I build websites to be successful on their own, but on-going attention for a website will produce better results. It also takes some effort from the firm in terms of contributing content in they way of target markets, messaging, a unique value proposition, and feedback on the results that the website is generating.

Elements of an On-Going Package

Content Creation & On-Going SEO

Most of my on-going plans would include new content where appropriate. If you are striving for better organic placement on Google, slowly adding original content over time is likely the best approach. On-Going SEO can mean a lot of different things, but at a minimum should include an understanding of where the site is showing up, and how the users are interacting with the site.

Updates & General Website Health

If you’re paying someone to manage your website on an on-going basis, you shouldn’t have to learn how to update the site. You also should have someone looking over your traffic from time to time to ensure that nothing strange is happening. This is really just the most basic level of service you’d expect at any price, but it’s relevant because in a lot of cases it’s the ONLY thing that FindLaw clients are receiving.

Advertising on Google

You’re heard of Google Adwords and know that it’s very competitive, and therefore very expensive. However, with the right strategy and settings you can make Google Ads work for you at just about any budget.  You can use Google ads to target groups of people through the display network, or specific words and phrases through the traditional adwords interface.

Social Media

Social media should be seen as a one-way only entrance to your website.   Most law firm websites have links out to their social media pages.  That said, I have never been able to identify a situation where you would want a potential client to leave your website to start scrolling instagram.  Twitter, Facebook Instagram and LinkedIn should all have profiles filled out.  Same with Yelp and Avvo.  

Local Service Ads

 

Contact Me to Discuss a Custom Package for Your Law Firm

If you are interested in transitioning your website away from FindLaw or a similar company and would like to hear about how I can customize an on-going package for you, email, text or call me with any questions.