Latest / Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast, Helping you create a profitable, sustainable law firm you love / 220: Lindsey Busfield | Optimize Your Law Firm with SEO and Content Marketing
Transcript
- 0:00Lindsey: Google is not only looking for content, but they're also looking for credibility. And when you have another website that is related in some sort of subject matter to whatever it is that your law firm is providing as a service, You get more credibility if that secondary website links to your website saying, hey, they know what they're talking about.
- 0:23Intro: Welcome to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast. What if you could hang out with successful women lawyers, ask them about growing their firms, managing resources like time, team, and systems, mastering money issues, and more? Then take an insight or two to help you build a wealth generating law firm. Each week, your host, Devina Frederick, takes an in-depth look at how to think like a CEO, attract clients who you love to serve and will pay you on time, and create a profitable, sustainable firm you love. Devina is founder and CEO of Wealthy Woman Lawyer, and her goal is to give you the information you need to scale your law firm business from 6 to 7 figures in gross annual revenue so you can fully fund and still have time to enjoy the lifestyle of your dreams.
- 1:10Now here's Devina.
- 1:14Davina: Hi, this is Devina. And before we jump into today's show, I'd like first to introduce you to some of our sponsors. When prospective clients are looking for an attorney, they usually turn to Google first. Optimize My Firm helps law firms grow their practices and attract more right fit clients through on page and back end search engine optimization. Optimize My Firm can help your firm rank higher on Google so that clients can find you before they find your competition.
- 1:45They serve personal injury, family law, workers' comp, immigration, and other types of law firms. Optimize My Firm does SEO the right way, delivering meaningful results with geographic exclusivity and no contracts. Contact them today at optimizemyfirm.com or click the link in the show notes. In the next ten years, 90% of legal services will be delivered online. Gavel is the software lawyers are using to streamline internal document automation and build online legal products like landlord legal or hello divorce.
- 2:24With gavel, you can easily build client intake that generates document sets through powerful logic based document automation. Gavel, formerly known as document can be used internally or you can make it client facing. It also integrates with nearly everything. Clio even rated Gavel their best integration tool. Visit www.gavel.io and mention the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast for a free fourteen day trial, or just click on the link in the show notes.
- 2:56Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast. I'm your host, Davina Fredrick, and my guest today is Lindsey Busfield. Lindsey is the Vice President and Director of Operations for Optimize Your Firm, a business that specializes in SEO and content marketing for law firms. She's also a PMP certified project manager and SEO expert with a background in legal marketing. She closely monitors each client's portfolio and develops strategies based on current SEO trends.
- 3:28Lindsey develops and executes the content management, backlink and client data reporting initiatives. Additionally, she hosts a personal injury marketing minute podcast where she quickly covers the hot topics in the legal marketing world for personal injury law firms. In her spare time, she loves inventing board games, playing pickleball, and talking about pasture raised chickens. So Lindsey, do you have pasture raised chickens?
- 3:54Lindsey: I wish that I still did, but my family had them for years and years and years and actually started one of the nation's first pasture raised egg companies. Oh, wow. Grew that from a backyard flock into one of the largest pasture raised egg companies in the nation now.
- 4:12Davina: Oh, wow. That's incredible. But you're now out of the chicken egg business.
- 4:15Lindsey: I am out of the chicken business. I am not working with Amish farmers anymore, but you find something universally human about every person that you work with and every industry that you work with. So I feel like there's something that I got from the Amish chicken farmer experience that I can now translate into working doing SEO for law firms.
- 4:34Davina: That's wonderful. I know a lot of people would love to have chickens. I would love to have chickens if I lived in a place where I could have them. But unfortunately, now I don't. So let's switch the subject and talk about SEO, search engine optimization, and content marketing for law firms.
- 4:50How long has Optimize Your Firm been in business?
- 4:55Lindsey: Optimize My Firm has been around for almost fifteen years now. So we started with just a couple of clients in the personal injury world and have grown it from, and we actually still have our first clients that ever signed on and grew it from just a couple of clients into a much larger operation. Now we still keep it relatively small, but so that we can focus our attention on each one and really advocate for the success and growth for, for each client that we bring on. But we've been at it for fifteen years, which is about when, you know, the starts of SEO started happening. And so the very tech savvy, marketing savvy lawyers got into realizing that SEO was going to be foundationally important for them as they grew their firms, then it's picked up steam since then.
- 5:46Davina: What I thought was interesting is you guys have your own team. Oftentimes you see when you're looking at hiring people to help you optimize your website and get it more shown in search engines a lot easier, which is what we're talking about here. You see that they have copywriter or a content creator and a web designer sort of other people that they work with. You guys all have that on the same team I noticed. Tell me kind of what the thinking and the strategy was behind that for you.
- 6:16Lindsey: You're absolutely right. A lot of times SEO agencies will either outsource their content writing team or their web development team. But it's very important for us to have this in house. And we do have a handful of writers who are dedicated to each client. They know the ins and outs of each client's nuances and their voice and their marketing needs and what their priorities are So we are really able to have a tighter control on that rather than having a 100 writers who are writing for all of our different clients.
- 6:49It's really a much more personal authentic approach and while you know writing content for Google is one thing that's really important, it's also really important as these law firms are trying to connect with prospective clients. So having that authenticity and the consistency in the brand voice as you're developing the content is really important and you can only really achieve that if you have your own in house team of writers. And the same is true for web development. We have some web development specialists who are on our team and exclusively working for our clients. And we have our team lead.
- 7:28I was just talking to him earlier today and he is absolutely brilliant when it comes to creating websites. He is the best in the industry that I have ever worked with both in terms of the design elements but also the psychology behind building websites. So he knows exactly what a client is looking for, where they're going to look for it and how the pieces fit together so that when a client lands on a lawyer's page, they're going to click the buttons and they're going to reach out and having him really dedicated to our clients' accounts is just a blessing for everybody.
- 8:03Davina: Yeah. Yeah. So let's break down for people listening who might, I know that my women law firm owner clients, women law firm owners I'm in conversation with sometimes get confused about all of these acronyms that are so familiar to people in the online marketing world, like SEO and PPC and backlinks and content marketing can be a lot of different things. So why don't we break it down in terms of how you guys work with people so people understand exactly what search optimization is and what elements go into search optimization?
- 8:37Lindsey: Sure. So, yeah, I mean, are so many acronyms out there. You're absolutely right. And unfortunately, even if I were to break down the acronym SEO into search engine optimization, it doesn't really lend a whole lot of clarity to it beyond that. And foundationally, when you're talking about SEO, it's all about Google and people look at other search engines like Yahoo and Bing, really it's about Google because Google has set the algorithm for how websites show up.
- 9:03So what we're talking about with SEO is how people are searching for a law firm using Google because everybody's going to Google first whether you're looking for a personal injury attorney or a divorce attorney or any attorney that is working with individuals. There are some different ways that people go about getting clients in the corporate world that's more referrals based but when we're talking about law firms that work with individuals, they are tending to go to Google first. And when somebody is looking at Google, there's only 10 law firms that have organic real estate on that first page and each of the subsequent pages. So SEO is all about how do you get on that first page. That way when somebody is looking for a personal injury attorney near me or divorce attorney near me, your law firm's website is showing up so that they can actually find you before they find your competition.
- 10:00And that's it. That's all that SEO is about.
- 10:03Davina: All right. So let's take a little deeper in that because there are a lot of big law firms out there spending a lot of money claiming that real estate on the first page. So I do think that smaller firms have to get more creative about that because you can't just meet ad budgets. Some of these larger firms, for instance, LegalZoom actually sets kind of the pricing standard by far for all law firms. And so when you're bidding on advertising, that's kind of who you're going up against and depending on your area.
- 10:35There are different elements to Google, Google being the largest search engine page ranking site in the world. And there are the sponsored ads where we're actually advertising. There's the organic listing, there's showing up on the maps, and then there's Google Local or Google My Business or whatever it's called now. And then some people say use Google Express to do their ads. So let's talk about each of those and kind of explain to people what the differences are in those so they can understand when you're looking to optimize what some of the things, some of the tools that you're taking advantage of that Google provides.
- 11:11Lindsey: Absolutely. That's a great question. There are so many different features that are going on with Google right now. The first thing that you will always see are the sponsored ads and that is PPC or pay per click advertising there. And that's what you're talking about with those bidding wars going on where you have LegalZoom and you have a lot of like the really big law firms out there who have millions of dollars to spend every month on those PPC campaigns.
- 11:38So those are, you know, the top ads, it's going to be the first listing that you see. Fortunately a lot of users understand that as they're looking at Google when it says sponsored right there, they know somebody paid to get there and most of the time people just scroll right past that. And when it comes to law firms, something that you will usually see next is what's called LSAs, which are local service ads and they are similar to the PPC ads or the sponsored listings but they have a picture of the lawyer, they have their star rating and they have a see more button that has their phone number and with these ads rather than paying every time somebody clicks on them, it's a pay per call campaign and we recommend this for a lot of the law firms that we work with because it has a much better conversion rate. It's putting the prospective client directly in touch with the lawyer, but it also has its glitches. It's not showing up consistently for law firms across the board.
- 12:40There's a lot of spam going on with LSA accounts. So we have a lot of people approaching us asking questions about how to fix their LSAs or how to get them to run. And it's kind of a nightmare situation right now if it doesn't work. But when it does work, it's a really really great conversion tool. And then the next piece of the Google landscape is the local pack and that's what you see with the map listing and that is really prime real estate.
- 13:05If somebody is looking for a lawyer that's a divorce lawyer or a personal injury lawyer or any other type of service providing lawyer, they wanna show up on that map because usually that is the listing that somebody will click on. And that will also have your star ratings, your reviews. And when we talk about getting reviews, that's where you want to be focusing on them is where it's going to get the most attention for you. But there are only three spaces on there generally speaking for lawyers to show up. So it's kind of a complex game to try to get onto that local map.
- 13:40And that is something that SEO helps with. And it's part of the strategy that we use blended with the content approach that will help get your law firms pages to rank higher and get you to show up more in that local area, in that local pack. And showing up in the local pack is mostly based off of where your office is located. So if I am sitting here in Cary, North Carolina and I search for a divorce attorney near me, it's not going to be showing me somebody that's out in Raleigh. It's going to be showing me lawyers who are in close proximity to my location.
- 14:17So that's another piece that plays in with your SEO is where your office is physically located and that all works together in your SEO strategy. And then below that you have the organic listings and that is going to be the actual meat of your website. Your website pages are going to show up there. A lot of times it's going to be the homepage. If somebody is looking for your law firm by name, it is oftentimes a subpage if somebody is looking for a specific type of service or they have a question about an incident that they were involved with.
- 14:53We see a lot of, with divorce attorneys, people asking questions of who has to leave the house in XYZ situation and you want to have content on your website that pertains to those questions. And that way the prospective client is getting the information that they need but they are also seeing you as a source who actually knows what you're talking about because you have that information readily available. You know what you're talking about in terms of the law but you're also understanding your prospective client's needs. So we recommend developing a lot of content based around what people are searching for. That way those individual pages will be popping up as prospective clients are searching for related queries.
- 15:34And then at the bottom of the page, you tend to get more sponsored pay per click ads.
- 15:39Davina: Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about what you actually do with a website to help optimize that website for search. So we talk about content, we talk about backlinks, submitting to directories. So go through kind of each each sort of element of that and sort of explain what that is.
- 15:59Lindsey: Sure. Your SEO strategy really falls into two primary categories. One is developing content and we touched on it just a bit here, but you want to have a content strategy that is comprehensive for the offerings that you provide and have individual pages broken down for each of the services that you're providing and the different questions that people might be asking pertaining to those services. You want to have a lot of information available. That way people can come to you as a credible source but Google will also have an understanding of who you are based on the content that's on your website.
- 16:37So the more content that you have to present to Google saying here is where my expertise is, obviously lawyers can't say expertise, but here is where my knowledge wheelhouse is, Here are the different services that I provide. This is all related to the business that I have. Google will be better able to understand what your website is about and where to rank it based on what questions people are asking. So we build out a comprehensive content strategy all focused around your firm, the types of cases that you wanna bring on and the types of questions that those prospective clients are asking on Google. So that is one piece of your SEO plan.
- 17:20The other piece is backlinks and backlinks is something that people it's kinda tough to wrap your head around. But in a nutshell, Google is not only looking for content, but they're also looking for credibility. And when you have another website that is related in some sort of subject matter to whatever it is that your law firm is providing as a service, You get more credibility if that secondary website links to your website saying, hey, they know what they're talking about. An example of this would be if you have a statistic study on your website where you are talking about pedestrian accidents in XYZ city. You have the data on your website, your law firm's website and here is what we would like to see to improve safety measures.
- 18:09And then there's another website that is all about runner safety and they link back to your statistics. It gives your website more credibility because somebody else has mentioned you and says, yes. This is a source who knows what they're talking about and it's related to this topic. And the more credible the secondary website is, the more backlink juice and more power and more credibility flows along to your website. So it's kind of a weird relationship but these backlink relationships are really important to establish.
- 18:44That way Google knows that your website is more credible than another similar website out there Especially in these saturated markets where you have a lot of law firms that are trying to get the same cases even if they have identical content, if one website is more credible than another they're going to get better positioning on Google. When you put those two pieces together, that becomes I would say 80% of your SEO strategy. The other 20% goes into making sure that your website meets all Google's core things, core vitals that they're looking at in terms of website health, making sure that your website is mobile friendly so you can look at it on desktop and it still shows up really well on a mobile device, that it loads quickly and like a lot of these kind of techie issues that are going on behind the scenes to make sure that it's a healthy website.
- 19:35Davina: Right, right, right. And in this day and age, you would think every site would be mobile friendly or responsive because like 80% of the people are looking at websites, anything on the internet on their phone. So that's a really important piece. But for a lot of law firms, that's something they're still not getting right maybe because they haven't updated their site in a very long time or something. The content marketing strategy, let's talk about some of the ways that people can create content because I think the content piece of it is not a set it and forget it kind of thing.
- 20:06If you're doing beautiful content on there, it's there and I don't ever have anything new. It just stays that way for three to five years. That's going to be a very different ranked site than a site that is constantly weekly, daily, even monthly being updated with new content, right?
- 20:23Lindsey: Absolutely. Google wants to make sure that your content is reliable and that it is constantly Yeah, it's current. And every time that you make tweaks on your website, it needs to be resubmitted to Google so that way Google can recognize that there is fresh content here and then re index it accordingly. So we are constantly adding content to our client sites and we have ongoing relationships which is why we still have our first client is because it's a constant game of trying to get more content on there that is still fresh and relevant and reflects not only, you know, changes in laws but changes in what people are actually looking for and changes in search trends. And Google is updating their algorithms pretty consistently So we wanna make sure that all of the content that we're creating and have created still falls in line with Google's best practices.
- 21:20Davina: Right. So at one point when people thought of content, they thought of blogging And that still plays a big role for a lot of people, writing FAQs or blogs or something like that. So that when a client is searching, they're likely to come up with something that matches whatever they're searching for in an answer. We're now seeing a lot more video and podcasts though. Tell me what you're seeing in terms of current trends for content.
- 21:48Lindsey: You're absolutely right. The blogging used to be the hot thing to do where people would put on FAQ pages. But now there are better ways to integrate those FAQ questions into the actual pages of content that are on the site as well as different schema markups that Google will recognize. And when you're looking at the Google search result page, if you're on the first page of Google, if your site is ranking on the first page, there are different codes that you can put on the back end of it to actually show up some FAQs under your primary listing and take up some more real estate. So there's kind of some fun things that you can do with that that navigates the FAQ blogging away from that and integrates it a little bit more strategically.
- 22:32In terms of blogging right now, the standard thing to do is to cover auto accidents in your area. It gives a little bit of relevant content to your site. It's a way that you can update things, you know, daily or weekly and have fresh content that's on your site. But whether or not that helps is to speculation. Having video content is huge and it is so important right now.
- 22:56YouTube actually is the second largest search engine on the internet and there is an infinite amount of content that is on there and just keeps getting added to there. But it is a great way to connect with people that are more of the younger generation that are turning more towards videos than towards reading traditional websites. It's a great way to get more of those FAQ style questions out there and especially if you have a lawyer at your firm who's charismatic and can get in front of the camera and feels comfortable talking then that can be leveraged as a very real asset. But you want to make sure that as you're creating video content that is interesting and that the lawyer who is presenting the information or your spokesperson who's presenting the information is very comfortable on camera. We've seen a few lawyers out there who are just kind of very rigid and they are only talking about the law that is you know x y z p d q and it's boring.
- 24:00Oh, it's painful to watch. So if you are going to invest in video blogging or putting YouTubes up or YouTube shorts or going on TikTok or any of the other video platforms that are out there. Have somebody who's charismatic and fun and is enjoying it. Do a little bit of research beforehand on what people specifically in your area or geographic market are looking for. Identify some problems that they might be having concerning the services that you provide and offer some support.
- 24:32Be a little proactive and if for whatever reason there's a pothole problem on Main Street and you're a personal injury lawyer, go take a video and say, there are some real issues out here and maybe use that as a platform to get other people engaged as opposed to just giving them one dimensional content.
- 24:52Davina: It's very common for lawyers to, when they start doing content to get into lawyer mode. And so in lawyer mode in the courtroom, we have to be very precise. We have to talk about the rules and the exception to the rules exception to the exceptions and all of that. But when it comes to creating marketing content, which is what you're doing when you're a blogging or when you're video blogging or you're doing podcasts, you really have to tap into that more human side and the relational side with people and talk because you're having a conversation with lay people who may need your services or potential referrals, even other lawyers, unless we're taking a CLE, we don't really want that. Even if we're taking a CLE, we don't really want that.
- 25:38So it's definitely something to think about in terms of who the best person is or the best people are to represent your firm if you're doing videos. And if you don't like it, they'll do it. I mean, one of the things that is wonderful about podcasts is you can have great conversations with people and you don't have to use the video. I started using the video a couple of years ago because I like having the extra content and being able to do things with it. But when I first started my podcast, Wealthy Woman Lawyer about four years ago, we just did voice audio only.
- 26:09And it was great because you didn't have to worry about whether you had makeup or your hair done or wearing the right outfit or what things look like behind you or anything like that. You could just show up and have a conversation with somebody. That was a lot of fun. Now, as I grew, I wanted to get more and more use out of the content I was creating. So we started capturing things on video as well.
- 26:29And we use that in a lot of ways on social and YouTube and that kind of thing. So there's a lot of ways that you could do it and it doesn't have to be stuffy or like a lecture, right? So is there anything else that we need to know in terms of optimizing our website so that it ranks higher in the search engines?
- 26:50Lindsey: Well, you wanna make sure that you are leveraging everything that Google is offering to you, especially when it comes to those free things that you can do on your own when it's not competing with the giant law firms on PPC or trying to finagle LSAs. There are a lot of things that you can do. One thing that you need to be doing is getting reviews. This is fundamentally important and absolutely one of the hardest things that lawyers struggle with on a regular basis is how to get more reviews. Because even if you get into that local pack with the first three things on the map, if you don't have reviews, nobody's going to call you because your competitors are going to have them.
- 27:34So integrate a process into your working relationship with your clients to get reviews. One of the best examples of this that I have seen was with a personal injury lawyer. When the client goes into their office to go pick up the check, the lawyer says, hey, congratulations, really excited that we're, you know, we've got to the end of this. By the way, would love it if you were to leave me a review. Here's the QR code.
- 27:58If you could scan that and leave a review, that'd be awesome. I'm going to go pick up your check. And he goes to the back room ten minutes so the client has a little bit of time to fill that out. They get a little bored. They put in a five star review.
- 28:10They're about to get their check. They're really happy. And then he comes back and brings the check. So that way every time he closes out a relationship, he is getting that review and he has that system set up and in place. And that way he's not having to chase them down with emails after the fact.
- 28:27Well, could you leave us a review? Could you leave us a review? That is so impersonal and frustrating and I hate it when people do that. So if you can actually build that into your process in an organic way, that is something that will boost your reviews and the more reviews you have, the better your LSAs will do and the more likely you are to get into that local pack with the three listings. The other thing you can do is start generating content.
- 28:54I obviously recommend working with an SEO agency. There are some things that Google is looking for specifically as they look at that content but even if you're not in a position to hire out, you can start creating more content for your own website. Anything that you're putting on there is helpful and the way to start doing that is looking at the services that you provide. And if you're a divorce attorney, don't just have a one page section on your website about divorce. Have it broken out into senior divorce or complex divorce or have a page that's dedicated to alimony.
- 29:32Have a page that's dedicated to support resources as somebody's navigating a divorce. There's a lot of content that you can add to your website just by thinking through the different types of challenges that your clients are facing as they are going through whatever life hurdle it is that has connected them to you. Write about it. Write talk to your clients about it. Ask them about their struggles are.
- 29:54Ask them what they're looking for in Google and develop a list of content that you can write about and create a pretty decent sized page for. And then the other piece that Google gives you is your Google business profile. Make sure that that is all filled out and fully accurate and your reviews again are going to help in there. Put on pictures, put on posts, put on your services, make sure your hours are up to date, have consistency in where your address and phone number are both on your Google business profile and on your website. Have that consistent across the board.
- 30:31And if you put all of those factors together, you're going to be in a much better position to rank highly on Google.
- 30:37Davina: Good, good. One of the issues that I've seen come up as more and more law firms are going remote, It came about during the pandemic and then a lot of people have discovered that, hey, this works and I wanna stay this way, especially smaller firms is the challenge of an address. So could you talk about that a little bit?
- 30:58Lindsey: That is a huge challenge especially when you're looking at your Google business profile position because Google in order to have a Google business profile, they wanna verify the address that you have so that they can show your location and especially if you're trying to get into that local pack where people are searching for XYZ attorney near me, it's really difficult to pinpoint where that near me location is if you don't have a public address. So that is a struggle that is honestly a really big challenge to overcome. So if you can get a location, do. It is going to help you in the long run even if it is just a $250 a month location where you can put your name on the door, that will help you so much. You don't actually have to function out of that address, but you need to have an address set up so that Google can pinpoint where you are and connect
- 31:55Davina: you to market. It's even become an issue with like people used to use a local UPS store and they would have address that you could and Google is really cracking down on that and it's no longer so you you almost have to have a physical location, especially if you wanna show up on a map, right? Yes. And some of that came about because during the pandemic, I know some of the large businesses, large law firms in particular, open a lot of virtual locations in a lot of states and kind of ruined it for everybody. They did.
- 32:28Yeah, you really that is definitely something to pay attention to. All right. So any last gold nuggets for us if we are looking to really optimize our website so people can find us more easily on Google? Any last thoughts for that?
- 32:46Lindsey: Make content. Make content. Again, think about your relationships with your clients. Think about what a prospective client would be searching for on Google when they are trying to find somebody who offers your services. So you really have to think with your target market in mind.
- 33:02Start with them. Don't start with your own lawyer brain. Try to get out of how a lawyer would be trying to find you and really put yourself in the mindset of your target market and then create content. When you're creating content, make it comprehensive. A lot of people ask us, well what's the target word count that I should have for an article?
- 33:22Don't worry about target word counts. Cover the topic. Write everything you know about this topic and put it on that page and then organize it in a way that each of the headings is going to give Google an idea about what each section is about. So cover the topic really comprehensively. Don't worry about your word count.
- 33:44Don't even worry about keywords because if you are really covering everything very thoroughly, the keywords are gonna naturally fall into place And if you use natural language, that's the same language people are using on Google. So it's going to organically line up. Don't overthink it. Just write. Make content, make videos, and take up some of the digital real estate that people can use to identify you and work with you.
- 34:14Davina: And just because your designer tells you that you're messing up the look of the design and they only need 300 words, doesn't mean that you should only need 300 words. We need more than that because Google is looking for a value, high value content. So a lot of little tips and tricks. I know there's a lot more that you guys know and share with your clients, but I appreciate you really giving us some insight into things that people can do. And obviously, I invite them and encourage them to reach out to you.
- 34:43And why don't you tell us where they can get in touch with you and learn more about Optimize?
- 34:50Lindsey: Sure. You can get in touch with us at optimizemyfirm.com. We also have a link to our podcast on there. So feel free to take a listen for more tips and tricks and insights in the legal marketing world. And you can email me at lindseyoptimizemyfirm dot com.
- 35:07Davina: Wonderful, Lindsey. Thank you so much for being here. I really enjoyed it and I hope you have too. I know our listeners have probably gotten a lot of value out of this, so thank you.
- 35:14Lindsey: Thank you very much.
- 35:16Intro: If you're ready to create more of what you truly desire in your business and your life, then you'll want to visit us at wealthywomanlawyer.com to learn more about how we help our clients create wealth generating law firms with ease.