3 reasons your firm needs a legal SEO and advertising manager

You know your law firm needs a website. And you know that people need to be able to find it if you ever want more clients. Unfortunately, though, you might not know how to accomplish that — but a legal SEO expert sure does.

If you've never heard of legal SEO — or search engine optimization — it is the process in which you make improvements to your firm's website in order to increase its visibility to search engines like Google and Bing. It can include updating your site's written content, building links, optimizing metadata, and so much more. But if done correctly, potential clients are more likely to find you and not your competitor down the street when they search online for legal help.

Can you do SEO work yourself? Well, you can try, but that doesn't mean you will be successful. After all, law firm SEO can be very complex. Indeed, there are many reasons why you may want to consider hiring a law firm SEO manager.

1. You went to law school, not 'legal SEO school'

Okay, so there's no such thing as “legal SEO school," per se, but you get the point. You spent years going to school to be an attorney, not a web developer or SEO expert.

Sure, you can waste countless hours learning about the most up-to-date SEO strategies and techniques, but why? A legal SEO manager already knows what your site needs to stand out online, so let them do it. After all, you have far better things to do with your time — like practicing the law and building your firm.

2. Legal SEO is constantly changing

When people need help or have a legal question, they typically turn to the internet for help — and if your site is optimized using effective SEO techniques, potential clients are more likely to find you.

But, SEO is always evolving. Even if you already know what currently works, it may soon change. For example, search engines are constantly tweaking their algorithms — so many of the legal SEO techniques that work today may not work in the future.

Fortunately, though, you don't have to stay current on SEO industry trends if you hire a good legal SEO expert to handle your site. Not only can they modify your site to stay up to date with ever-changing SEO techniques, but they can also take advantage of industry trends before others may even catch on — keeping you two steps ahead of your competition.

3. You have clients who need you — and you only have so much time

Like most attorneys, your day is already full of countless priorities all vying for your attention. The list of things you may need to do is seemingly endless, including client meetings, court hearings, settlement conferences, and everything in between. And that doesn't even include the time you must spend on legal research and document drafting.

Balancing all of this work is already an enormous task. So, you need to ask yourself, do you really have the time to complete your website's unending SEO work on top of everything else? And before you answer, consider everything that needs to be done, including:

• On-site SEO work associated with content, keywords, title tags, headings, meta descriptions, URL structure, alt text, page speed, and much more
• Off-site SEO work, including social media and backlinks
• Local SEO work so you can optimize your site for your specific area

Even if you already know everything there is to know about the SEO work mentioned above, you would still need to dedicate a lot of time to actually completing this never-ending SEO work for your site. Wouldn't you rather use that time working on your clients' cases?

The reality is that you only have so much time in the day, and your clients will be a lot happier if you dedicate your time to working for them and leave the SEO to someone else. And even if you prefer to do some of the work yourself, a legal SEO and advertising manager from FindLaw can provide you with essential guidance and maybe even a few law firm SEO tips.