Nat Sauteed
With the prevalence of online marketing, the need for SEO has become more vital than ever! However, the legal industry continues to face problems as there aren’t many who could truly be considered as lawyer SEO experts. One firm, Monopolists, stands out and has even managed to take the top ranking in their field. As law firms continue to face problems with their SEO providers, ‘Monopolists’ is getting results.
Today, we’re going to go over a few factors to help you decide whether your current SEO provider is treating your business with the care it deserves. This may also help you make a decision on whether you should consider changing your provider to someone who has proven results. Most agencies will promise you the world, but deliver very little while cashing your cheques in the process.
Price Factor
First and foremost, you need to realize that SEO experts will never come cheap. In fact, if anyone is offering you SEO services for “economical” rates, then it’s probably a sham and you’ll end up with a “consultant” who only makes your website look pretty and then hands you everything to take care of.
SEO is detailed work and requires diligence and care to be effective. More often than not, a true SEO expert’s rates will reflect this level of hard work. So don’t expect a cheap bill for the services and if you’re already paying someone “economical” rates then you might want to reconsider your arrangement and asses what your consultant is actually doing for you. If you’re paying a lot less but still aren’t getting your money’s worth, then what’s the point?
Scope of Services
You need to be aware of exactly what you’re getting. SEO is not simply just website design, as it involves a variety of components and fine-tuning. You need someone who can write relevant content, is aware of different SEO components and keeps himself aware of developments in the field, and is able to assess issues and errors in the site’s SEO metrics and tweak them.
Getting someone to design your site and putting in the right tags and using the right keywords doesn’t come close to giving you the number 1 rating. You need to build in other factors such as backlinks and location based SEO.
Tracking
You’ll also have to constantly monitor the performance of your site’s SEO framework and make adjustments according to the performance. Setting it up once and not paying further attention will not allow you to compete in the market.
For example, once you’ve made adjustments to your SEO, and you notice your firm is getting contacted by around 10 to 20 more people than average, then that means the SEO has kicked in. However, several weeks later, the number of callers may go back down and then disappear altogether. This is because the mechanics of your SEO could have changed or a competitor could have implemented changes which outrank your SEO specifications.
Tracking allows you to measure the performance of your SEO specifications based on different targets and criteria and assess how you can improve on them.
You Don’t Get the Right Information
SEO is a technical field, and as such, those who are not familiar with it will obviously not be conversant with the specifics of the process. If your service provider is simply sending you reports and making comments on them without providing any explanation, then he’s not doing a good job. Your consultant should be keeping you aware of every element which affects your business and explains the mechanics involved.
It helps if you, as a business owner, were to familiarize yourself with different terms and components of the SEO process so as to ensure that your consultants are not taking advantage of you.
Lack of Strategy
Just like marketing, SEO involves building a strategy on how best to get the “message” (which is your law firm) across to relevant users in the most effective way possible. Content is key to SEO, and without a proper content strategy, your SEO efforts will most likely be wasted. Like a marketing firm will build a mock-up for a billboard, your SEO consultant should also have a “mock-up” for content.
The vital factor is to ensure that your content is original and is not duplicated from another site (even if you happen to be the author). Keyword placement is also important and using the right amount of relevant keywords and phrases will make all the difference. Care should be taken to not overload your content with keywords as that would be just as harmful as not having any at all.
You should also have a strategy in place for link building. However, for law firms, this practice can be tricky and a true expert should be consulted before implementing anything of the sort.
Assessing Engagement Metrics
Your consultant should also be keeping an eye on the user-friendliness of the site. This has a big impact on engagement metrics that measure the ways users interact with a site based on numerous algorithms and combinations. The more user-friendly your site is, the better the engagement metrics, which in turn leads to a better SEO ranking.
One factor in engagement metrics is the page loading time. If your pages load late, then users are bound to get frustrated and switch over to your competitor’s site. Google detects this activity and registers it which reflects negatively on your site’s SEO rating. There are numerous other factors that a true SEO consultant will be able to consider better.
Conclusion
If you are satisfied with your SEO service provider based on the above criteria, then that’s great for you. However, if any one of the above is lacking, then its time for you to reconsider your own approach and hire a consultant who can do the job for you. It may cost a lot, but in the long run, hiring a genuine law firm SEO expert will most definitely benefit you and your business immensely.
