It seems every reward worth achieving is disguised as hard work, and content marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) for lawyers is no exception. In fact, content marketing and SEO actually is hard work, but let’s examine the benefits.

Here’s why content marketing and SEO for lawyers can pay dividends for the marketing-savvy attorney:

• Connects you with your prospects in an ethical and dignified way because you’re not hawking your legal services (think “pull” vs. “push” marketing)
• Demonstrates your legal expertise through educational content, which results in prospects getting to know, like and trust you.
• Return on investment increases exponentially with time, unlike radio or TV ads
• Systematic way to passively generate new leads for attorneys 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
• Arguably the fastest and least expensive way to get clients as an attorney

Content marketing and SEO for lawyers is tedious and time consuming, though, which is why it’s accurately disguised as hard work. Many people underestimate the amount of time necessary to build a successful content marketing campaign for attorneys, and their poor rankings and low traffic usually reflect it. To get it right, you must put in the time — or hire an SEO and content marketing expert who specializes in attorney marketing.

Here are just a few of the regular tasks you should perform if you choose to handle your own attorney SEO:

• Keyword research – Keywords matter, so take time to research the best keywords for your campaign, review their effectiveness, and make changes as needed.
• On-page optimization – Search engines are constantly adjusting what matters when it comes to search rankings. Be sure you’re “up to speed” on the changes and always using “white hat” SEO tactics for lawyers.
• Link building – It matters to Google that other sites view your site as worth linking to. It’s also important to build relevant links to pages within your own attorney website.
• Content creation – “Content is king” applies now more than ever. Fresh, regular content establishes you as an authority, and the search engines will reward you for it.
• Landing pages – Attorney landing pages that have a clear and compelling “call to action” are great not only for SEO, but for attorney lead generation as well.
• Analytics – You should always be tracking, measuring and improving the performance of your attorney website over time.

SEO for Lawyers: Tricks & Shortcuts

Guess what — there are none! The top strategy is to write as much quality content as you can. In yesterday’s world, we wrote for the search engine “spiders” and packed keywords into our articles. Forget about it.

The attorney websites that are consistently showing up at the top of today’s search engine rankings are pumping out a lot of content that is 1) written for the consumer, and is 2) actually showing up in search results and being read by the consumer.

The attorneys in the fight for positioning on Google are those who create interesting content on a regular basis. Sure, it’s hard. And sure, it’s not sexy. Google is not into sexy; it’s  into rewarding highly quality content created for PEOPLE, not machines. Nobody said SEO for lawyers was easy, but I think we can all agree it’s worth the effort.

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