How Law Firms Can Help Their Digital Marketing Agency

Here at GAVL we often get asked by our clients how they can help us along the way to being more successful. This article highlights a handful of my typical responses.

When you hire an agency like GAVL, we genuinely want to be an extension of your firm. We also understand that you pay your agency for services and sometimes just don’t want to think about these things, and that’s fine—we can still be successful. At GAVL, we work hard. We just ask that you think about these things so we can all be successful together, faster.

Help Build Backlinks

A backlink is when another website places a hyperlink in a piece of content on their website that’s directed to your website. For example, this is a hyperlink.

I can’t emphasize enough how important these are to the ranking potential of your website.

There are several factors at play to determine how many of them you need to rank on page one. In general, you need more than your competitors in whatever geographic area you’re trying to rank page one for. The quality and relevancy of the linking website also matters, but at the end of the day if it’s a real website that is earning traffic from Google, it’s a worthwhile link. The link just might not have a major impact by itself, but compounded with others it will.

Even if you’re working with a law firm SEO agency, you should always be thinking about how you can earn backlinks to your website. If you’ve hired the right agency, they are building links for you (feel free to reach out to us and we can check using one of our tools). But that shouldn’t stop you from wanting to hit your goals faster, right?

Here are some ideas to help you:

• Look for sponsorship opportunities in your community. I’m sure you get solicited from the local little league teams, fundraising events, golf outings, or non-profit organizations. Check to see if they have a website. If they do, then go for it and ask for a backlink.
• Anytime you get asked by a media outlet to provide a quote for an article, ask them to provide a backlink in the article.
• Are you a member of an organization that has a website that allows its members to share articles? Take them up on it and include a backlink.
• Do you know local business owners that you’ve provided free legal advice to? See if they have a website and ask for a backlink.
• Basically, anytime you interact with someone who has a website, offer to provide them with a unique piece of content for their audience and clientele that has a legal spin.

Pro tip: GAVL owns a sister website called Lawyer Minds where part of the website revolves around written interviews with lawyers (among podcasts and written informational articles). We’re always looking for more. Reach out, get interviewed, and earn a backlink.

If you’re curious to see what websites are linking to you, reach out and we’d be happy to provide you a list at no cost.

Share What’s Happening at the Law Firm

The biggest pet peeve of our social media manager is when one of our clients does something memorable and doesn’t share it with us. Does this sound like you?

Whenever you attend a CLE (attending or presenting), achieve a law firm milestone, win a case, celebrate someone in the firm for whatever reason (newborn baby, birthday, you name it), share that information with your agency.

Snap a picture and send an email, it’s as easy as that. Feed the machine with memorable moments and followers will be engaged with more than sharing a blog post. I’m not saying to stop sharing blog posts, keep doing that, but add memorable moments to improve the overall presence.

Share Your Firm’s Content

When you hire an agency, they are likely creating a regular stream of great content for your website and social media platforms. It’s important for you to be your biggest advocate. Hit the share button on your personal account. You don’t have to share everything but be concise about it and share something at least once a week.

Think about the people in your personal network that you engage with on a regular basis. They are your friends, family, and business colleagues. They want to support you. Give them the opportunity. Share your stuff. They are way more likely to see a post coming directly from you (that’s still shared from the firm page so it’s crosslinked) than they would be to see something posted directly to your social media law firm page.

Be Responsive to Agency Requests

This is a big one. You’re hiring an agency to help your law firm grow and be more successful. You need to be responsive.

Look I get it, you have endless depositions, mediations, trial prep, trial itself, managing your firm, etc….It’s a lot. That’s also why you hire an agency to work with. To free up some of your time and remove the need to understand everything there is about website design, website management, writing great content, running your social media channels, working on SEO, you get the picture.

If you can get back to your agency’s request in a timely fashion, it’s going to help the success of your firm and your agency.

Also, the same thing goes for your agency. They need to be responsive as well.

Get Reviews

Reviews are so important. They are not only a necessity if you want to rank on Google maps for the queries that help find your law firm, but they also show you’re an expert and can be trusted by new and existing clients alike.

Earning positive reviews can be a daunting task, but if you set up a policy and procedure it’s not too bad.

Here are a few ideas that you can run with:

• Add a QR code to your business card and marketing collateral that goes directly to your Google Business Profile.
• Always ask clients for a review after a successful outcome of their case and you feel strongly that they were satisfied.
• If you do a new client intake and don’t sign the client but still offered valuable advice and they seemed genuinely appreciative of it, then ask them for a review.
• There are several tools out there you can also use that can send clients a text or email to solicit a review. Or send them manually.

Pro tip: At GAVL we offer our clients a white glove service for review solicitations. You simply send us the person’s full name, email, and/or cell phone number. We handle the rest, branded as your firm.

Here is exactly how you can create a link to your Google Business Profile Review form:

• Go to your Google Business Profile via Google search.
• Click on the “Ask for reviews” button.
• Copy the review link that Google provides.
• Send it!

Generate Ideas

Your agency should be constantly doing research to come up with future content suggestions. Every piece of content you publish on your website should be thoughtful and have a purpose. Don’t just throw up blog posts about anything and everything.

You can help your law firm tremendously by sharing new and interesting concepts that you hear about through your busy life. Perhaps you’re at a conference and hear about a new defective product. Perhaps you had a client discuss a way of being injured you’ve never heard of or thought of before.

The possibilities are endless. If you hear something interesting, share it with your agency.

We Agencies Appreciate You

Let me finish by saying that I have been working with law firms in the digital marketing space for nearly a decade and I absolutely love it. Building an agency in the legal industry has been more rewarding than I could have ever imagined. Without lawyers like you, we don’t exist. I wrote this article not as a critic, but as a believer that working together as a team is the best path forward for both of us.

Let’s succeed together.

If you have any questions about anything I’ve covered here or would like me or someone on my team to explore another topic of request, please reach out!