How much should a new law firm spend on SEO?

There are so many reasons why a new law firm should invest in SEO. Digital marketing is the new way to aggressively and seriously market a new service or product. Thanks to SEO, a law firm website will rank higher on search engine result pages (SERPs) and get the attention of clients looking for the exact services it offers.

There are hundreds of digital marketing agencies that cater to law firms’ SEO. It is ideal for a law firm to seek services from an SEO marketing agency specialized in marketing content for law firms. You are highly advised to avoid unreasonably cheap services as these will only disappoint you or use black hat methods that will ruin your authority over your competitors.

If you are a law firm trying to figure out the amount to spend on SEO services, the following are factors you should consider:

Size of the Firm and Scope of Work

As a new law firm, you can expect to pay a lower amount compared to a massive firm incorporating both local and international keywords in varying categories. Again, if you are a new firm offering criminal law services in one city, you will pay less compared to a larger firm practicing personal injury, bankruptcy, and family law in multiple cities.

The Area of Practice

If you specialize in an area of law that is more competitive, you will be dealing with a whole lot more competition, which means that you will have to pay more. Your specialization will also play a factor in the kind of keywords to use. A keyword is a measure of how competitive a certain service is.

For instance, the keyword ‘Criminal and DUI’ has higher organic competitiveness compared to ‘Patent and IP’ or ‘Wills and Estates.’ The more organic competitiveness the keywords associated with your area of expertise, the more you can expect to pay, with personal injury law firms paying more and will and estate lawyers paying less. According to one personal injury law firm, the Crockett Law Group, the competitiveness is only continuing to go up each day.

The Size of Your Target Market

The size of your target market will contribute proportionately to the final price you will pay for search engine optimization. The bigger the city you are in or the popular your services, the more the competition you will face in SEO. If you can rank on the first page of Google thanks to a highly valued keyword, you can expect a great rise in business.

However, due to the cutthroat competition, you will have to invest continually in expert SEO services to maintain that position before your competitors knock you off and you lose your exposure.

Law Firm Location

Your location has a major part to play in SEO thanks to position zero which refers to the first three options Google provides to users based on proximity to their locations. SEO professionals like Gladiator Law Marketing will recommend that you register a location that is close to the city or at least a virtual office less than one hour away from the target city. If you choose not to register a virtual office, you may have to pay more to get the results that local SEO offers.

The Level of Engagement Your Firm Has With the Outside World

Lawyers typically prefer to work on law matters and cases, and rarely engage with the external world on social media like businesses in other industries do. SEO often relies on sponsorships, events, and other forms of engagement that often lack in the field of law, making white-hat SEO techniques that much harder.

Ways in which you can facilitate SEO for your law firm website include participating in local events that generate buzz online, doing interviews, writing blog posts and opinion pieces on authoritative publications, and sponsoring local events. Without these activities, there is barely anything for users to find online regarding your firm, which makes optimization tougher and thus more expensive.

Your SEO Objectives

Some law firms want to sign up 10 more clients per month, others fifty more, while others want to dominate their market. Your goals should dictate how much you are willing to spend or how much your budget can allow. Ranking highly and building website authority over your competitors’ becomes tougher with time, and the more clients you want, the more you will have to pay.

What Can I Expect To Pay For In An SEO Service Package?

• Local SEO: Local SEO is all the techniques that will help clients within your locality that are looking for you to find you. It includes Google My Business and Bing Listings, NAP (Name, Address and Phone Number) optimization, local directory listings on Yelp, and Yellow Pages, among others.
• Search keywords: these are the phrases that clients looking for you will type into their browsers.
• Daily, weekly, and monthly reporting
• Technical SEO: Optimizing your website for search engines using techniques like HTML best practices, speed and performance, and site backend auditing
• On-page SEO: optimizing the content of your website to help it rank higher on search engine results using keywords, meta-tags, images, and others.
• Off-page SEO: methods like blogging and link-building that help build your popularity outside the scope of your website

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