I don’t like writing articles that upset people. As an accountant, I don’t like seeing firms spend money on something that just CAN’T work for all of them (and in practice doesn’t) when there are more effective and cheaper methods to accomplish the same end – getting people to pick up the phone to you with a view to instructing you.
In 2015, I wrote an article called Why Your SEO (Probably) Won’t Work. It is even truer now than it was then and since then law firms will have wasted millions on ineffective SEO campaigns. This item can only sketch round the issues discussed somewhat more fully there.
Let’s do some simple maths. There are 10 ‘page one’ slots on Google. If just 10% of the (approx.10,000) law firms in the UK are using SEO on the same sorts of search terms you are, then you have a 1 in 100 chance of a top 10 result.
If you are on page 1, and are found by SEO, you’ll be below the Adwords users. Adwords are ads based on search terms. Google make 90% of their income from advertising – mainly Adwords. If your SEO works better than their adwords, they’ll make less money – and they aren’t about to let that happen….and they control the (secret) algorithms they use to guide searches.
If you are on page 1 of Google (When I do talks every firm in the room believes they are) will you be seen? I just did a simple family law search based on Guildford. I have a huge screen. The top 7 results are all paid search, not SEO. Because I have a huge screen I can show 20 more ‘page 1’ results (the usual is half that), so if you are there, you have a 1 in 27 chance of being the firm I click on and if I choose 4, that’s 1 in 6 that you even get looked at.
I’ll let you do your own sums. The point I am making is that in a market full of smoke and mirrors, hundreds of firms believe they are doing great things because of search and it simply cannot be true for all of them.
And in any event, whether you get the call or not depends on how ‘engaging’ your website is compared with the others viewed…and that’s another story altogether.
Joe Reevy is the MD of the firm that runs www.words4business.com and www.legalrss.co.uk, the product designer of www.crosselerator.com and edits the monthly law management and marketing e-newsletter. He can be reached at 01392 423607 or joe@words4business.com.