Most lawyers should not be creating their own websites. Excepting simple static pages, law firm websites are really too complicated.
Law firms with any hope of making their website a true marketing tool should leave it up to the search engine optimization experts.
My law partner and I learned this lesson the hard way.
We heard about WordPress from a friend and decided one night that we could not only change our Kansas City personal injury attorney website, but also revolutionize internet marketing for lawyers.
Well, several weeks of tinkering later, including many late nights, and through a handful of plug-and-play prepaid themes, our website was just okay.
More importantly, it was nowhere near the first page of Google for relevant searches. There were some searches for which our website would not be visible at all.
Feeling defeated, we left the website in that state for months.
Finding the Best Local SEO Companies
We eventually evaluated a number of SEO marketing firms.
Some were outrageously expensive.
Others were sleazy and aggressive.
All promised the same grail of our website landing at the top of Google, but how was I supposed to know who was best for the job without spending a ton of money and time?
After all, SEO development doesn’t happen overnight and Google reportedly changes the rules on a periodic basis.
And anyone can put up a pretty website – aesthetics, sadly, has little to do with SEO.
We could have turned to the more established local SEO marketing firms on the theory that experience indicates quality.
There had to be a reason all of those law firms were paying those rates, we figured.
As lawyers, however, we know that having tons of clients may present conflicts of interest and the SEO world does not appear different in this regard.
Naturally, SEO clients in the same field and targeting the same audience will compete against each other for that coveted top listing on google.
To quote some 1980’s science fiction cinema, “There can be only one.”
Would the SEO marketing firm focus greater effort on the client that pays more than others?
SEO Due Diligence
Enter Phil Singleton and Kansas City Website Design.
Phil came highly recommended by some close friends. They could not say enough about him and his services. Neither can we.
Phil met with us on a number occasions and endured countless questions before beginning his work on our website.
He explained there was good way and a bad way to optimize a website, and he was only interested in the former.
Since then, which was approximately three months ago, the look of our website has not changed very much.
According to Phil, his concern is the substance underneath the form – as well as extending our online presence through organizations such as the Kansas City BBB.
A cursory look in the WordPress dashboard shows that he completely gutted the website.
It is still completely Greek to us– “guest-blogging,” “domain factors,” “backlink quality,” etc. –so we could not begin to understand what he did.
What we do know is that our website is now ranking at least on the second and third pages, if not on the first page on Google for our relevant searches, and appears to improve each week.
We hope to continue this progress and get greater website visibility for practice level search terms such as “Kansas City truck accident lawyers” and “employment discrimination attorneys” etc.
Now there may be a day when our competitors realize how good Phil is and we run into the conflict we described earlier.
That would be bittersweet, as we have come to rely on Phil for a very integral part of our business.
Until then, we are more than satisfied to leave the SEO marketing to Kansas City Web Design so we can do our job as lawyers.
By Jose Bautista, Bautista Leroy LLC
