SEO for Personal Injury Firms and Attorneys

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is something that encompasses a lot of different avenues of internet marketing. Attorneys in today’s competitive online marketing landscape realize SEO is a necessity, but there are a lot of misconceptions around it including:

• It doesn’t take a lot of effort.
• It just involves plugging the right keywords.
• If you plug the right keywords, you should have close to a 100% chance of ranking.
• That if SEO for personal injury is done right, you should be ranking overnight.

At OppGen, we hear a lot of misconceptions as expectations from personal injury law clients Many of which have these unrealistic expectations because of other digital marketing agencies that overpromise and under-deliver.

Today, we’ll be discussing why SEO is critical for personal injury attorneys, and practical SEO expectations you should have when working on SEO yourself, or with an agency. Feel free to continue that discussion by scheduling a free strategy session with OppGen Marketing.

SEO for Personal Injury: Why it Matters

When personal injury clients are looking for an attorney, they start their search online. The majority of the time, they kick-off their search on Google and other search engines.

There are a few primary reasons SEO matters:

• When search users and potential clients run searches like “personal injury attorney near me,” SEO is the work that goes into getting you in front of those searches.
• This helps you increase your firm’s visibility and credibility with your target audience and Google.
• Which results in driving more traffic, leads, and new clients to your website.
• It helps lawyers connect with more potential clients.

Why Do Personal Injury Lawyers Need SEO?

SEO is paramount for personal injury lawyers because it helps them get discovered by potential clients.

“But I’m already using PPC ads to get in front of my audience on Google!”

What Works Better for Personal Injury Lawyers: SEO or PPC?

As you may already know, personal injury law has some of the most expensive average cost per click for PPC ads.

For that reason, we highly recommend our PI clients and other injury law firms use integrated marketing strategies that incorporate collaborative efforts from PPC, SEO, social media and more. We also highly recommend implementing a mixed-media approach, such as blog content, email campaigns, social posts, images, video, and even infographics.

Investing in Google PPC and other forms of paid search is an effective way to generate leads and new clients. However, ad costs and click inflation has skyrocketed over the last 10 years. Every year, injury attorneys are paying substantially higher cost-per-click rates.

Benefits: SEO vs. PPC

Other digital marketing efforts like SEO, content marketing, social marketing, and social advertising help your firm get visibility with your target audience through other valuable marketing channels. SEO particularly can help greatly offset the rising costs of search advertising.

How so?

When you stop investing in paid ads, your ads stop running, and your paid leads dry up. SEO takes a consistent investment, time, research, and work to earn your spot on the first page of search engines. But when you earn that, SEO offers unique benefits that PPC doesn’t:

• More traffic to your website: You’ll get way more clicks from a high ranking, page one organic link than you will for a paid ad.
• When your website ranks organically, you don’t pay for clicks to your website. As marketers, we often refer to this as ‘earned traffic’ vs. ‘paid traffic.’
• More traffic means greater potential for more leads and new clients.
• Over time, SEO can produce lower marketing costs, better results, and greater ROI.
• If you ever have to pull the plug on your ad spend, your organic rankings and SEO will continue to produce traffic, leads, and new business.
• Some studies have shown that anywhere from 94% to 99% of total clicks on search engines go to organic links. That leaves 1%-6% for paid ads.

All to say, you’re missing out on lower costs, better ROI, more visibility, more traffic, and more leads for your injury firm.

Better Together: SEO and PPC

The truth is that SEO and PPC produce the best possible results when you use them in an integrated marketing approach:

• You can use SEO to put your firm on page one for the same keywords you run ads for.
• This gives you double the visibility in the limited link real estate on page one, increasing the probability that a search user will click on your ad or organic listing, vs. a competitor.
• Lower PPC costs when search users click your organic link vs. your ad.
• More branding, awareness, visibility, and traffic in showing up for keywords that you target with PPC and SEO.

In essence, PPC and SEO maximize your total search and keyword visibility, help manage PPC costs, and drive more clicks, traffic, and leads to your firm’s website.

If someone in your area is injured in a car accident, uses a search engine to find an attorney, and your firm doesn’t show up in their search results, you could be missing out on a lot of new business.

How Long Does It Take for My Personal Injury Law Firm to Rank Higher on Google Seach Results?

Paid advertising on Google and other search engines is pay-to-play and instantaneous. As soon as you set up a payment method, set up your ads, and get your campaign approved, your ads will start running at the top of a search engine results page (SERP)

SEO has a lot of variables that can affect your results and the rate of progress. This can include:

• Your current organic ranking and SEO standings
• Your website’s domain authority
• The technical performance of your website
• How long your website/URL has been live
• Competition for injury-related keywords in your local market
• Your reputation on Google, Yelp, Findlaw, Avvo, and other key directories

Because there are so many more variables at play, it can take longer before you start seeing improvements in ranking, traffic, conversions, etc.

It can take anywhere from weeks, a few months, to over a year to start seeing results from an SEO strategy, depending on the above and below variables.

Why Am I Not Seeing Any Improvements in Traffic After Optimizing My Keywords?

Choosing the right keywords and writing great content are major SEO factors, but there’s also a lot more involved.

There are three to four central areas that OppGen takes into consideration when creating an SEO plan for your law firm:

Technical SEO

Technical SEO focuses on the technical aspects of your website: your site’s speed, whether or not it functions well on mobile devices, and your site’s design and navigation.

A site that is easy for anyone to access regardless of their device and loads quickly is a site that Google will be more likely to rank higher on SERPs.

Local SEO

For local businesses, local SEO is a must. When someone searches for “personal injury law firm near me,” search engines use that person’s location to show them results closest to them. For that reason, it’s critical for your law firm to show up in the local results.

Local SEO is a matter of targeting the right local keywords (state, city, county that you serve) but also that your injury firm is listed in relevant online directories that showcase your business name, address, phone number, etc.

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO involves:

• Selecting keywords and phrases your target audience is searching for; and
• Creating relevant website content that your target audience finds valuable, interesting, and informative.

We are far past the days of keyword stuffing pages. In fact, keyword and content stuffing can oftentimes backfire and tank your rankings.

Today’s search engines can read much more like us, so you need to make sure your content is digestible and not loaded with jargon.

With on-page SEO, you need to know how difficult a keyword is to rank for, and what you need to do to increase your probability of raking for it. Some keywords are more competitive. Others get a ton of searches while others are rarely searched.

It helps to have an SEO expert like those at OppGen to guide you through what keywords are likely to be effective for your law firm. Click here to get in touch with our SEO experts.

Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO is everything off of your website that contributes to your SEO and search engine standings.

This can be done through:

• Social media sharing
• Getting more glowing five-star reviews on key directories
• Link building
• Guest posting
• Interviews in local news outlets online

The more links that point back to your website, especially when these other sites are credible resources that rank well, too, the better. This tells search engines that your law firm is a reputable resource.

When Can I Stop Optimizing My Personal Injury Law Firm’s Website?

While you can stop optimizing your PI law firm’s site for SEO at any point, that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to do so.

SEO is a process that is always evolving and changing. If you want to keep bringing in more clients through organic searches, you need to keep creating content, monitoring traffic and keywords, and paying attention to any changes to Google’s algorithm.

Though Google doesn’t make these changes public — except for larger algorithm updates — there are experts who pay close attention to the company’s announcements and policy changes that could have an effect on SERP rankings.

Choosing the Right Agency: SEO for Personal Injury Firms and Attorneys

When choosing a company to handle your SEO needs, there are several factors that you should consider.

Experience with Law Firms

First and foremost, it is important to find a company that has experience and a positive track record working with law firms. Personal injury is a hyper-competitive SEO space, and you need an experienced legal marketing agency like our SEO and content team at OppGen to create and execute an effective strategy for your firm. Contact us today to start developing an effective SEO strategy for your personal injury law firm.

A History of High-Quality Work & Case Studies

In addition to looking for an experienced agency, you should also ask for case studies or examples of their past work. This will help you to get an idea of the results that they have been able to achieve for other clients. If you have any questions about any of OppGen’s case studies, feel free to contact us.

A Knowledgable Team

Finally, be sure to ask about the team that will be working on your SEO campaign. It is important to find a company with a team of experienced and knowledgeable professionals.

Contact OppGen, a Digital Marketing Firm for Lawyers, for More Information

Hopefully you now have a better idea of what SEO is, what goes into a good SEO strategy, how it can help your personal injury law firm bring in more leads, and how long it takes to start working.

But if you still have questions about SEO for personal injury law, contact OppGen today for more information. Alternatively, you can fill out our free digital audit form for your personal injury law firm’s website, and we’ll give you feedback on how your website can be better optimized for search engines.