For Law Firm Web Success, Quality Is More Important Than Quantity
We have all become sensitized to the uninterrupted buzz alerting us to yet another shift in the search engine algorithms. We may pay attention and invest time to understand how these adjustments influence the prospective law firm client’s search experience and how we can work to deliver our marketing messages more effectively. But we also may have a ho-hum feeling about the daily tinkering of Google. Much like an elf’s hammer in Santa’s workshop – tink, tink, tink, tink – goes Google’s hammer all day long.
This pattern of the change continuum is migrating to the lawyer’s social media realm as well. How many updates can Facebook make to the interface in a week? How many times will consumers’ alarm bells go off about privacy? How many social media IPOs can make the headlines? And, more importantly, how many social media icons in an e-mail signature are too many???
Notice that these questions are all quantitative in nature – “how many?” That’s because we have been conditioned to obsess about size, including the size of our online social media profiles. More friends are better, right? The more followers, the more popular we are. More pluses (+’s), more likes, more, more, more. …
But as we all work to craft our marketing milestones for 2012, let’s remember: It isn’t all about size.
Resolve to:
- Improve the Quality of Existing Website Content.While ongoing content development is an important initiative for your law firm website(s), it’s just as critical to review the quality of your existing content. Look for opportunities to enhance the quality of aging or stale content.
- Use Quality Photographs on your Website. You have heard that you can hear a smile through the phone. Well, what does your potential client see in the photographs used on your law firm’s website? “Think about the care you take in decorating your law firm’s office. Photos of you and your staff are an important part of introducing your law firm to website visitors.” – Law Firm Website Conversions – Would You Spend $500 For A 10% Increase? Photos Can Make That Happen
- Well-Defined Targeting = Quality Inquiries. Looking to boost the quality of your leads? Revisit the defined targeting and performance analytics of your Web marketing campaign. Which of your webpages have the best conversion rate? In which cities? From which online referral sources? What search keywords deliver the most qualified visitors? Answering these basic questions will identify areas for enhanced targeting and lead directly to a series of Web marketing strategies that will yield higher-quality inquiries.
- Boost the Quality of your Web Marketing Reporting. Some law firms will have trouble answering the above questions. If you are among them, make a New Year’s resolution to improve your analytics. A multitude of tools are available and can be easily configured for your website(s) to provide Click-Tracking/Heat-Maps (where your visitors are clicking on your website) and call tracking [Call Tracking for Law Firms: The Value of Tracking Your Leads from the Web]. Google Analytics can also provide insight on the performance of your search keywords, content and referral sources. (Related: Our Wealth of Data Brings You A Return On Your Law Firm’s Web Investment.)
- Provide a Quality Experience for Mobile Users. “One in five Americans use their mobile device to surf the Net daily. Overall, mobile Internet usage is up 17 percent since last year. Even so, 27 percent of respondents say websites that don’t display properly on their mobile screens discourage them from staying on the site or coming back later on their mobile device.” – Is Your Law Firm Mobile Yet?
- Enhance the Quality of Your Online Interactions. Think about the multitude of channels through which your law firm interacts with potential law firm clients: reviews posted on your Google Places Profile; Facebook / social media posts; online chat services. All of these provide excellent opportunities to improve the quality of these interactions. Are you simply posting to Facebook for the sake of posting? Or are you doing something more interesting and relevant? You painstakingly consider the script for your phone service and intake, but how about your online chat transcript or response to website form submissions?
Did you know that sometimes a non-optimized website can outrank a site that has done SEO? According to Google’s Matt Cutts, some sites that have poor or no SEO and limited content – but have merit and are good resources – sometimes outrank sites that have good SEO. The ideal situation is to have websites that have high quality, relevant content and are good resources as well as strong SEO that follows Google’s guidelines.
Google has long favored quality over quantity. With graceful brilliance, the Google system is all about analyzing the overwhelming quantity of information in our world, bringing order to the chaos for the sole purpose of identifying the quality bits. Whether that is through an insatiable desire to perfect the relevance of organic search or to find the true thought-centers in social media – another win, btw, for geeks over jocks! – stay focused on quality and let Google’s brain sort out the quantity.
To learn more or to speak to one of our law firm marketing consultants, please contact us at (800) 872-6590 or marketing@consultwebs.com.
