Long Tail Searches, Important to a Law Firm’s Online Strategy
When a law firm or solo practitioner starts to formulate or revamp a web marketing strategy, an often overlooked aspect of search engine marketing is a term “long tail searches”. What long tail searches are, why they are important, and how to capture these searches will be discussed in a moment.
First, there are a few distinct ways in order for an attorney or law firm website be found on the internet.
1. A visitor searches for an attorney or law fim ‘ s name in a search engine such as Google, Yahoo!, or Bing. This is important, as many of these visitors may have been referred to your practice by word of mouth. As simple as it may sound, make sure that both the firm and the lawyers’ names are on many of the website’s webpages.
2. A internet surfer can find a lawyer ‘ s website by typing in key word phrases or terms into search engines that law firms wish to rank high in the results, thereby resulting in visits. For instance “Baltimore Personal Injury Lawyer”; Although these terms can be valuable in obtaining prospective clients, many firms spend too much time, effort, and money for these competitive terms. If there are 100 attorney websites in a particular city all crafting their sites for the key term “Phoenix DWI Lawyer”, it is very tough to rise up in the search engine results.
3. Legal and business directories are also pathways for a isitor to be directed to a law firm ‘ s website. Depending on the cost, these directories maybe worth investigating. If a firm or attorney does opt for a paid listing, make sure that there is an ability to track the amount of visitors from that directory. Without proper tracking, a lawyer could be wasting money on a directory listing
4. A internet user could click on a firm ‘ s pay per click advertising by Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. Pay per click can be a great compliment to any practice ‘ s internet marketing strategy. As stated under directory listing, a firm should track and analyze the effectiveness of pay per click advertising.
5. Long Tail Searches: Long tail searches are search phrases that visitors use, once or twice. That ‘ s right, a search phrase that may never be repeated. These type of searches are impossible to anticipate and even if they were, it would not be worth spending time and effort to secure them. An example of a long term Search could be “I ‘ m coughing a lot, could this be because I worked on pipes while at Sparrow ‘ s Point in Baltimore ?” Notice there are no key words such as “asbestos” or “Mesothelioma”. Long tail searches are often can be a large percentage of all web visitors going to a firm’s website.
How does a law firm website show up on the top pages of Google, Bing, Yahoo! and other search engines for these types of searches? Three words: Content, Content, and Content. As there is no possibility to anticipate these type of searches a lawyer must add much relevant content to a specific practice area. This goes beyond just a quick practice overview on an About Us page. Here are some suggestions to capture long tail searches:
a. Create an Blog for the practice or for individual attorneys. Blogs for lawyers (also knows as Blawgs) are great vehicles to publish content to the internet in a less formal tone than website content or a legal article. Most lawyers find it fairly easy to create blog posts on a regular basis. Commenting on new laws, statutes, new items, etc. are great catalysts for blog posts. As the language of a blog is oftentimes more informal than a website, this helps capture the average lay person ‘ s lexicon when they enter long tail searches.
b. Make sure you firm ‘ s website has plenty of relevant and fresh content. Make sure that you have relevant practice descriptions, attorney profiles, case profiles, legal articles, practice centers, etc., that all contain information on what your firm does. The more content the firm ‘ s website has, the more likely the website will rank high for a long tail search. Refresh and add to the firm ‘ s content. If a new lawyer joins the firm, create an extended bio page, for instance.
c. Any profile listings on directory sites should be extensive as possible with unique content (not copied and pasted from the firm ‘ s website or from another directory listing). Oftentimes, a lawyer ‘ s directory listing my rank higher on the search engines than the firm ‘ s website for long term searches. If the directory asks for an attorney extended bio, be as descriptive as possible. Why not take advantage of your free or for fee directory listing?
These are just a few ways to help law firms and individual attorneys capture the little considered long tail searches. Remember content is key to rank highly in the search engines for these types of searches.
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