Despite all of the different ways that a lawyer can communicate with the public, lawyer websites continue to play an important role.
Both as a means for distributing information, as well as, marketing, websites should be at or near the core of your web presence.
But just as other forms of communication, lawyer websites must comply with ethical obligations. They should not include false or misleading information. They should not operate to create unreasonable expectations.
Here are some things to think about when launching a website or blog for your law firm.
Before you get to choosing a domain or a content management system, you need to think about what your website will communicate.
Perhaps one of the most important things for your website to communicate to visitors is what you do.
You might think that the answer to this question is obvious. You're a lawyer. But what does that really communicate to people? That you went to law school? That you're innately adept at arguing?
When you communicate what it is that you do, you need to communicate it from the perspective of the people who might hire you. In other words:
How do your current clients, as well as, the potential clients you want, describe what it is that you do?
Sure, they might start out by saying, "My lawyer...." But they'll likely talk more specifically about what their lawyer does for them.
This should be the first question that your website answers. And it should be clear and consistent on every page of your website.
Perhaps equally important as communicating what you do, you must communicate why someone should hire you. And, "I fight hard, am passionate and have experience," isn't going to cut it.
Again, think about the answer to this question from the perspective of you clients. Why do your clients hire you? Here's an idea: ask them.
Ask them why they hired you in the first place. Ask them what aspects of your service they appreciate most. It's likely other will appreciate those things too. Communicate those things on your website.
And it's even better if it comes from them.
These are just a couple of the basics.
Ultimately, your website should be evaluated by its ability to achieve the goals for which it was created.
If the primary purpose of your website is to provide general information about you and your services, then it should be evaluated by the people who are looking for general information about you.
If the primary purpose of your website is to provide a portal for client communication, then it should be evaluated by your clients.
If the primary purpose of your website is to generate potential client inquiries, then you need systems for measuring, monitoring and evaluating the quantity and quality of new clients that are generated through it.
What's the primary purpose of your website? How are you communicating the value of your services? How are you listening to feedback?
Over the years, law firm prospects have sent us reports from just about all of our competitors. Unfortunately, even today, some law firm marketing agencies still mislead their clients via "reporting." One particularly egregious example comes in the form of ranking reports. Which prompted this LinkedIn post. To my surprise, I received a lot of […]
John Wanamaker supposedly said "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." In an an effort to figure out "what half is working," attribution was born. Coupled with a transition from traditional, offline ads to digital media, attribution became the holy grail for analyzing advertising spends. But […]
I recently asked ChatGPT, "What are some of the top personal injury law firms in Chicago?? Actually, first I ask "who are some of the top personal injury lawyers in Chicago?" ChatGPT couldn't handle that one, so I modified the prompt. ChatGPT listed five very well-known firms downtown. Can you guess the other four? That's […]
If you're like me, you have some degree of AI, ChatGBT, Bard, exhaustion. Now don't get me wrong, this is stuff is remarkable and is changing, well, a lot. But before you hook up the ChatGPT API to your WordPress API and crank out 10,000 pages, here are a few things to think about. Let's […]
If you know me, you know my opinions about links and SEO advice from Google. If you don't, here's the TL;DR: Meh, links! Meaning, all things being equal, links still remain a competitive difference maker for ranking. Take Google's SEO advice with several grains of salt. Google has no economic incentive to help your site […]
The best marketing advice I can give you is to be authentic. Of course, you don't find that very helpful in terms of meeting your growth goals. So, you might decide to game the system. As I'm writing this, one of the more popular ways to gain the system is to pay for engagement. This […]
The following post was written by ChatGPT. ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, is a state-of-the-art language model that can generate human-like text based on a given prompt or context. This technology has the potential to revolutionize the way that businesses, including law firms, market themselves to potential clients. One way that a law firm could use […]
How long does SEO take? When can I expect to see results? What results should I expect to see? These are all reasonable questions that we field from lawyers every day. And, like many legal answers, the answer is: It depends. Yes, I know that's not the answer you wanted. But it's the most honest […]
And how much time should they spend doing it? I recently had the privilege of chatting with Tyson, Jim, and Conrad for an upcoming episode of The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. If you're not familiar with The Maximum Lawyer community, you should definitely check it out. Jim asked a really great question about who should do […]
great