We just got off the phone with a client. We were looking at his call logs, and it was phone call after phone call after phone call, and all of them were only one minute long. What that means is that every single time, his calls were going to voicemail.

The Problem With Voicemail

Sure enough, we looked at the times, and they were when either the office was at lunch or after 5:00 PM when their office was closed. He pays us a lot of money on marketing and spends a lot of money on advertising. In an effort to help, we told him to get an answering service because people do not leave voice messages.

People Want Help Now

Picture this: Let’s say your toilet is overflowing and you call a plumber. Are you going to leave a message or are you going to hang up and dial the next plumber?

Odds are you’re going to hang up and dial the next plumber. That’s how people are when they’re searching for a lawyer. If they need an attorney and they know who you are, then they’re more likely to leave a voicemail.

Remember Where Your Potential Clients Come From

However, most of the time, the clients that we’re dealing with come to us through pay per click, search engine optimization, social media, etc. People are not willing to leave a message. They are just going to hang up and call your competitor. Once that happens, they are gone.

What You Need To Do

You need to either make sure your phones are staffed 24 hours a day, or you need to hire an answering service. We have two that we recommend. I do not have any affiliation with either of them, but one is Voice Nation, and the other is Answer First. We’ve worked with both of them with our clients, and they have both done a good job.

It always amazes me when a lawyer spent so much money, this client spends $2,500 a month with us every single month, and he lets calls go to voicemail.

What One Missed Call Could Be Worth

One of those missed calls could have paid for our entire marketing campaign, and he’s just letting it go to voicemail. An answering service is not expensive. It’s only a few hundred dollars a month. That pales in comparison to what you are losing, and it also pales in comparison to what you’re typically spending on marketing.

I just wanted to share this quick little PSA. I talk to lawyers all the time where this is an issue, and it doesn’t have to be. It’s a really simple problem to solve. All you have to do is call Voice Nation, Answer First, or another service. Just make sure that your calls do not go to voicemail.

In this post, I want to show you something that you can check on your own website to make sure that your search engine optimization is at least going in the right direction. It’s a problem that I see over and over again.

It’s essentially SEO 101. I try not to get too technical with search engine optimization because I know it’s going to be over most people’s heads, but there are some very basic SEO tactics that you should know.

Some Basic SEO Principles

These are the first things that I learned when I started doing SEO many years ago. It still is applicable today, but so many companies and websites don’t have the basics correct. I want to show this to you, just so you can spot check your own website.

If these elements aren’t done correctly, then it’s probably why you’re not ranking. Or perhaps you don’t have these elements handled correctly, and you have an SEO company. If so, then you really need to start thinking about whether this is the right SEO company for you because this is very basic stuff.

The 3 Key Elements

In SEO, there are three elements that are the most important on any website or any page of a website. Now, every single page on the website is going to have these three elements. This is where your main keywords should appear. There is some variation in terms of how frequently they should appear, and I’ll get into that in a few minutes. I just want to show you what they are.

The Page Title

The first thing is going to be your page title. Now, the page title is what appears right at the top. Now, if I hover over it, you will see that it says Baltimore DUI + DWI Defense Lawyer – Rice Law Firm. Now, I’m not going to get into a strategy in terms of how you should actually word this, but you do want to make sure that you have at least your main keyword in there.

This law firm, they’re in Baltimore, Maryland, and they have Baltimore DUI, DWI defense lawyers. They’ve got DUI, DWI lawyers which is good. They also have Rice Law Firm.

A lot of times, I see lawyers that will have their brand name there. If they have Rice Lawyers and nothing else, then that’s not an effective thing. The page title is arguably the most important place to have your main keyword, and it should be first. It shouldn’t be Rice Lawyers.

By the way, I don’t know who this guy is. I just picked his website at random. Actually, he was ranked number one when I searched organically for Baltimore DUI lawyers. So, good work to whoever is doing his website. Anyway, you want to make sure that you got the keyword first. He’s got Baltimore DUI and DWI defense lawyers.

I probably wouldn’t do it that way, but you can see that sometimes it works. As long as you got the main idea there: Baltimore DUI, DWI defense lawyers. It’s working for him.

The Page URL

The second most important element is going to be your page URL. Now, take a look at this. He’s got Baltimore DUI attorney in his page URL.

Let’s see, he does criminal defense. Google has said that they think the closer to the root domain your keyword is, the better. If I was doing this website, I would probably get rid of criminal defense, and I would probably have the URL look like that: RiceLawMD.com/Baltimore-DUI-Attorney.

But, he does have Baltimore DUI Defense Lawyer up top here as the page title, and Baltimore DUI Attorney here as the URL. This is probably the second most important place to have a keyword. Again, we want a keyword. If you notice, he’s got an attorney in one place, and he’s got a lawyer in the other. Actually, he’s got lawyers, plural, there.

H1 Header

Now about the third most important place to have a keyword, and actually, it’s kind of a toss-up between the URL and this next one that we’re going to talk about. Which one is two, and which one is three? Honestly, they’re both important. The third is going to be your H1 header. Now, an H1 header is not as obvious as your page title or your URL.

NOTE: You may want to watch the video to follow along.

An H1 header is actually what’s known as the page tab. Often, the H1 header is going to be down here. However, this H1 header happens to be right here. The way that I know that is because I have a tool on my computer that tells me that. It’s called Open SEO Stats which is a free plugin for Chrome.

I go here, and I click page info, and you could see right here, H1 is Baltimore DUI Defense Lawyer. You can also see the page title and URL. If you want to look at this in one piece, you can do that. You can see right here, the URL is Baltimore DUI Attorney, the title is Baltimore DUI DWI Defense Lawyers, and the H1 header is Baltimore DUI Defense Lawyer.

Should You Use Variations?

Now, if you notice, he’s got an attorney, lawyers, and lawyer. So, he’s got a nice variation of a lawyer, lawyers, attorney, and law firm all that type of stuff. That’s a good thing. You don’t want to do the same thing every time. You don’t want to have Baltimore DUI Lawyer, Baltimore DUI Lawyer, Baltimore DUI Lawyer. You want to switch it up a little bit.

If you don’t have this plugin, you can click on what you think is the H1 header and right click on it, hit specs, and then on the side, you’re just going to see it’s highlighted, and it says H1 Class. That means it’s the H1 header. That’s a little more technical.

There are a couple of variations to this rule. Now, I do things a little differently. I typically try to make the H1 header a little bit more conversational. You don’t have to, but that’s what I try to do. I try to do something like Baltimore DUI Defense Lawyer Fighting for the Accused since 1984.

How Optimized Should You Make Your Website?

Some people might say this is over-optimized and it typically depends on the search and competition. Sometimes, you may have a two-thirds rule. This is something that we do quite often where we’ll have the page title with the keyword, and then either the URL or the H1 header has your main keyword in it, but not both. So, you have two out of three.

What We Do For Our Clients

Now, as I said, this guy is number one, and he’s got three out of three. So, it’s not an absolute rule. Typically, what you want to do is search for your main keyword. If you’re trying to rank for Baltimore DUI Lawyer, we look at what the other pages on the first page of Google are doing, and then we pretty much kind of follow that.

I thought this was important because I looked at so many websites for lawyers that say they have a marketing company or they have a search engine optimization company and this basic principle is not even taken care of.

We’ve had new clients come to us, and their websites are not optimized, even like this. Even after paying SEO companies for years and years, and then all we do is make a couple of tweaks to their page title, their H1, maybe change the URL if necessary. They get an instant ranking to boost and typically get cases out of it.

It’s crazy that this basic thing is ignored so often. If you pay attention to this, if you want to check your own website, there are also some other variations where you can try to work in Google my business categories. Those are more advanced, and we’re not even really doing it that much anymore except for special circumstances.

If you have any questions about your own website or if you think something looks a little weird, just shoot me a message or leave me a comment. I’ll take a look at it, and we’ll see if I can figure out what’s going on for you.

Does a law firm really need SEO services? I think it depends on a lot of different things. It particularly depends on what else you’re doing.

If you spend $1 million a month on television, then probably not. If you’re really big on social media or if you do a ton of stuff on pay per click, then you probably don’t,

I think it depends on your circumstances. If you can make search engine optimization work, it is a very affordable way you could get cases. Now, one caveat for search engine optimization for SEO is that often you will get a lot of tire kickers.

SEO Means Competing With Google

It doesn’t mean it’s bad. We have clients that have gotten cases worth millions and millions of dollars from search engine optimization. I’m not knocking it, but the thing that you always have to remember with search engine optimization is that you’re always competing against Google.

You’re competing against the thing that you’re trying to game. That is difficult, and Google is getting better at paid ads and they’re adding more and more paid ads everywhere. Still, it’s good to invest in search engine optimization and a lot of my clients do really well with it.

What Else Are You Doing?

But, do you really need search engine optimization? It really just depends on what else you’re doing. If you’re really good at social media, if you’re always out there providing all kinds of value, maybe you don’t need search engine optimization.

If you have a superb PPC campaign, maybe you don’t need a search engine optimization. It kind of all depends on what you’re doing. I think it’s always good to do it.
But it’s kind of funny because I own an SEO company and we don’t do SEO. SEO is not part of my marketing strategy for myself because I do social media.

What I Am Doing

I provide a ton of content and I’ve just chosen to focus on that because it’s something that can’t go away. I’ve got my email list. I have a big Facebook group. If Facebook shuts down tomorrow, I still have my email list and I can say, hey guys, follow me on Instagram. I own my list.

Different Kinds Of Traffic

There’s something else when you get a little deeper into marketing. There’s the difference between traffic you don’t control, the traffic you control, and traffic you own. The goal is always to turn all traffic into traffic that you own.

Search engine optimization is an example of traffic that you kind of control because what you’re doing is, you’re manipulating Google to show you at the top so that when someone searched for Chicago bankruptcy attorney, they end up on your website, provided that’s your practice area.

The Google Rollercoaster

The problem is that Google can take that away at any time, and it happens all the time. I call it the Google rollercoaster because, at one moment, you’re doing great, and then an update hits.

It happened in August. We had so many websites that were doing great. And then, in August, the Google metric update hit, and we lost a lot of traffic. It took three months and a lot of work, and now they’re doing great again.

I’m sure at some point we’re going to have to fix things again for them. It’s the Google rollercoaster because Google, at the end of the day, can shut you down. If they decided tomorrow, they don’t like you, you’re toast. And we do a lot of work too.

Let’s say they change their algorithm. For example, we may have put a lot of time and money into building backlinks, and that’s what our rankings are based on. And then, one day, they switch it over to user signals as the main ranking factor.

The Goal: Traffic You Own

You don’t really own the traffic. The goal is to always take the traffic that you control, like search engine optimization or pay per click, and turn it into traffic that you own. What that means is trying to get the email addresses and building up an email list that you can then provide value to.

What You Should Do

To answer your question, do you need SEO? It depends. If you’re not doing anything else, then yes, you probably do need it, but there are a lot of other things. SEO is not the end all and be all of the marketing, but it is a good thing and it’s a cheap thing if you can make it work.

Lawyers! Answer Your Phone!

There’s a concept that I have never talked about with this group, either in my YouTube channel or on my Facebook group or anywhere else. That concept is the fear of loss.

Fear Of Loss, The Most Powerful Motivator

Now, what do I mean by that? Let’s say you’re trying to get somebody to hire you and you’re thinking, “Okay, what am I going to say?” or “What kind of motivating factors are going to get somebody to make a decision today?”

The single greatest motivator for people is the fear of loss, i.e., avoiding loss. In fact, fear of loss outweighs the desire to gain things.

How To Use This To Getting Clients

If you’re a DUI attorney, people are probably afraid of losing their job, losing their license, losing their freedom, or losing their reputation. All these are different things that they’re afraid of.

If you can talk about how you’re going to prevent them from losing their job, losing their reputation, losing their freedom, and losing their driver’s license, you’ll have a much better chance of getting them to hire you.

What About For Other Practice Areas?

If you’re a family law attorney, instead of talking about how much child support you’re going to get them, talk about how you’re going to avoid having them lose time with their kids.

If you’re a bankruptcy attorney, talk about how you’re going to help them avoid losing their house.

If you’re an estate planning attorney, talk about how you’re going to help them avoid losing 35%  or 45% of the entire estate to estate taxes when someone passes away.

If you can focus on how you’re going to help people avoid losing things, the things that are most important to them, you’re going to get a lot more people to sign up with you.

Always keep this in mind with your marketing and when you’re doing consultations: Fear of loss always outweighs the desire for gain.

What is the nicest way to request that someone write a review for your services on Yelp? Yelp is a tricky one because Yelp doesn’t technically want you to ask for reviews.

In fact, Yelp is really annoying, to be honest. I’m sure anyone that has a law firm has probably had a review or two filtered by Yelp, which is a really, really annoying when it happens.

Yelp Filters Reviews

For anyone that doesn’t know, Yelp doesn’t want you to ask for reviews. So, you have to be really careful because it’s already a pain in the neck to get people to leave you reviews. If four or five clients leave you reviews all at once, they all get filtered.

It’s super frustrating. We had a client one time, a personal injury attorney who never listened to any advice that we ever gave them. Except for one day, when we told him that Yelp reviews are important.

What they decided to do was to go out and have 15 clients go out and leave reviews on Yelp, all on the same day. Every single one of them got filtered.

You can imagine they were pretty frustrated, but you have to look at it from Yelp’s perspective. It’s so easy for them to realize what’s going on here.

If you have a Yelp profile for five years and it gets no activity or engagement whatsoever, and then, all of a sudden, it gets 15 reviews in one day, it’s not hard to figure out that you’re asking for reviews.

How To Deal With Review Filtering

What I always tell clients is that anyone who’s not tech savvy or anyone that doesn’t specify that they’re a Yelp user, you can even ask them if they’re a Yelp user, just send them to Google. That’s because it’s very difficult to get reviews filtered on Google. It’s more difficult to get a review to stick on Yelp.

If someone is willing to leave you a review on Yelp, first of all, start by asking them if they’re a Yelp user. You know, when you ask people to leave you reviews, which you should be asking everyone that you’re getting results for.

How To Make Yelp Reviews Stick

An aged Yelp account, meaning the account’s been around for a while, is important. If they’ve already left other people reviews, it will increase the likelihood that your reviews will stick.

If you come across somebody that has got an account like this, you want to treat them very special and you want to do whatever you can to get them to leave that review. The problem is that leaving a review is a pain in the neck and it’s a lot of steps. The second they’re inconvenienced at all, they’re going to just not leave you a review.

How To Get People To Actually Leave Reviews

I always take the what’s in it for my approach, from the client’s standpoint. I always recommend thanking them with a gift card or something like that. Not for leaving a five-star review, but just for taking the time to leave a review in general.

The Theory About Not Telling People About Your Goals

I have a theory about this. There was a Ted Talk not too long ago about how you should not tell people your goals. For example, if you want to quit smoking or if you want to quit drinking or if you want to lose weight, whatever it is, you shouldn’t tell anybody your goal.

That’s because when you tell somebody your goal, you get the endorphin rush in your brain. You get that satisfaction as if you’ve already completed the goal and then you’re less likely to actually complete the goal.

I think it’s the same thing with reviews. If you’re a lawyer and you get a client some great results, and ask them, “Hey, will you leave me a review?” And they say, “Yeah, I’ll go on Google. I’ll leave you a really good review.” I think at that point like there’s really nothing else in it for them.

They already got the satisfaction of saying, yes, I’m going to leave this guy a review. So they already feel good and after that, there’s no incentive to follow up. I think that happens quite a bit. So, you have to remember what’s in it for me.

What I Did

Here’s my solution: when you find that person that has the Yelp account, ask them if they wouldn’t mind taking the time. And then offer a gift card or whatever it is, just for taking the time to leave the review because I really appreciate it.

That’s the easiest and most effective way to do it. We’ve had clients getting 50 reviews, not on Yelp, but we’ve had clients get like 50 reviews in a weekend just because they offered gift cards to their clients.