Do Your Clients Search Like That?

Lawyers have it in their heads (or were more likely told by their legal seo marketers) that they need to rank #1 for terms like, "chicago personal injury lawyer", "los angeles criminal defense attorney", "boston bankruptcy law firm", etc, etc.

And for high-volume consumer firms, these keywords might make sense. After all, at least one way that people use search engines are like traditional business directories. That's how we've been trained by yellow pages advertisers for years.

But people use the internet for a variety of different information consumption tasks.

And so, before you make considerable investments into ranking #1 for one of these competitive keywords, you really ought to ask yourself whether your clients, and potential clients, "search like that"?

If they do, great. Track your rankings, traffic, inquiries, and new clients from search.

But if they don't, and you're paying to rank for these types of terms, you probably need to re-think your strategy.

SEO for attorneys is quite different from SEO for other businesses. Even from other professional services businesses like doctors and accountants.

This is even more true for law firms that handle complex legal matters related to business.

How likely are your sophisticated business clients likely to type in "business lawyer" into Google and hire the first firm that appears?

The answer is not very.

But what they might do is research a legal issue that they might be facing. They might be looking for a specific industry site that has information or news about their business.

And the question becomes, "what can you do to get in front of them where they're looking online?"

But before you get to figuring out how to get in front of them, you obviously need to know where they're looking.

And how do you do that? Ask them.

Talk to your current clients about what they do and where they go online.

What searches do they perform? Who do they read online? What sites do they have bookmarked? What rss feeds are they subscribed to?

There's a lot to be learned about how your clients use search engines and the internet by listening to them.

It isn't until you get a pretty good idea about where they're going, that you can have any clue about how to get yourself there.