Chances are you’re too busy practicing law to have time left over to devote to an SEO campaign. Even if you’re familiar with SEO best practices, it can still be a full-time job. After contacting an SEO agency specializing in attorney websites, they have successfully developed and executed a campaign for your website, and everything is now up and running.
Now, you want to know if the money spent on professional SEO services is actually worth the expense and investment that you’ve made. Thankfully, ensuring your attorney SEO campaign is paying off is a lot easier than trying to create the advertising strategy.
Don’t Set Unrealistic Expectations
Okay, the SEO agency has let you know their work is done. The agency has optimized your website, taken care of any glitches, and even finished the local SEO aspect of the project.
After waiting a day or so, you’re probably anxiously waiting to see noticeable results. You know, things like an uptick in traffic to your site and an above-average number of potential clients filing your daily calendar.
While these are common expectations, take a deep breath. You want to think of SEO as a long game and not one that produces instant results. An effective SEO strategy takes time to start producing results. You also want to remember that the campaign’s performance can vary from month to month.
For example, one month your website may be flooded with traffic and four weeks later site visitors have slowed to a crawl. This is normal and not a reason to presume the SEO strategy isn’t effective.
Patience is key when you’re evaluating an SEO strategy, along with setting realistic expectations. Yes, you should see more website traffic but it’s probably not going to remain at consistently high levels every month.
On average, you should expect an average SEO campaign to take around 3 to 6 months to start showing results. For significant results, it can take a year or even longer.
Monitoring the Campaign’s Performance
Even though SEO is a long-term marketing strategy, you can still monitor its performance. In other words, you don’t need to sit back for a year hoping to get great results.
Check Your Organic Traffic
So, what is organic traffic? This term refers to the visitors to your site from unpaid websites. In other words, these are the visitors that locate your website using search engines like Google. They enter a query into the online search bar, a list of websites matching their entry pops up, and they click on a link.
When you see an increase in organic search traffic, it’s a pretty good indication your SEO strategy is paying off. Try to compare organic traffic results over at least three months.
If you can stay patient a little longer, try to wait six months to a year. You’ll get a better indication of how the SEO strategy is paying off. Compare these results to last year’s, and you should see an increase in organic traffic.
Look at Your Conversion Rate
Chances are your law firm’s website has an online form for visitors to fill out. This can be either a static field or a pop-up window. A potential client fills out the form, submits it, and waits for you to respond. This is an effective way of attracting new clients but first, you need to get them to land on your webpage.
If your organic traffic numbers are going up, so should your conversion rates. The two metrics tend to go hand-in-hand. Even if your inbox is overflowing with filled-out forms, it’s still a good idea to check this metric.
How you check these metrics is basically the same process you use to monitor organic traffic. Compare your conversion rates since the SEO strategy went into effect to the previous year’s numbers. You should notice an increase. If your conversion rates are still low, your SEO strategy may need a little tweaking.
Backlinks
You really don’t have a lot of control over backlinks. These occur when other websites link to yours. If you have an extensive professional network, you may be able to leverage it to score some backlinks.
Backlinks typically occur when another website views yours as an authority. Both websites score points with search engines, meaning everyone can rank a little higher. The higher your website ranks, the further up it appears on the search engine’s results page. Ideally, you want your website to be at least in the top ten. Hopefully, your SEO campaign will move your site into the top three search engine results.
Even though you really can’t control who decides to link to your website, you can check to see if these backlinks are from authoritative sites. If your SEO strategy is paying off, the majority of backlinks are considered authoritative.
Track Your Keywords
Keywords can be a little tricky. These are words search engines look for as they’re ranking websites. You don’t want to stuff your website with keywords.
The search engines will penalize your site for keyword stuffing. You also don’t want to use too few keywords. Maintaining the right balance is tough and this is a reason why many attorneys turn to an SEO agency. The keywords must also be relevant and you want to use ones that rank high on search engine results.
Since you’re using an SEO agency, they’re responsible for finding and inserting relevant keywords. However, this doesn’t mean you don’t want to keep track of this metric. You don’t need to be an SEO expert to monitor your website’s keyword performance. Google Search Console is a great tool you can use to track this and other metrics.
Get the Most Out of Your SEO Campaign
An SEO campaign is an effective way to boost brand recognition and ultimately drive clients to your law firm. However, it’s also something you probably don’t want to tackle by yourself.
An SEO agency for attorneys can help you create and implement an effective strategy. However, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t monitor its results.
Remember to be patient since some SEO strategies can take a while to produce results. If you’re still not seeing noticeable results after a year, talk to the agency and retweak the campaign to ensure it aligns with your goals and market dynamics.
Published by HOLR Magazine.