Should You Pay to Learn SEO to Enhance Your Law Firm’s Website?

A popular saying in business goes that you have to spend money to make money. Lawyers, of all people, know this. Graduating from law school with tens of thousands of dollars of debt is the rule rather than the exception.  One of the most memorable moments in the documentary Gideon’s Army is when Brandy Alexander, a public defender, fills her car at the gas station and is left with twenty dollars in her bank account to last the rest of the month.  

Lawyers in all practice areas have to choose carefully how much money to allocate for marketing and how to spend their marketing budget. Being a competent lawyer is the best marketing tool for your law firm, followed by having an informative, user-friendly website.  Search engine optimization (SEO) is certainly an important element of a good website, but should you pay for SEO or do it yourself? If you choose to do your own SEO, should you pay for an SEO training course?

Yes, Anyone Can Do SEO

Learning to build a search engine-friendly website is a much simpler process than, say, learning enough about the law to enter the legal profession.  If you decide to build your own website, it is a good idea to read a few articles about the principles of SEO. Of course, if you know enough about web design to feel comfortable designing the web site that will represent your law firm, then you already know enough about SEO to avoid SEO mistakes so egregious that they would cost you web traffic.

SEO should not  necessarily be your highest priority for your law firm’s site.  A law firm is not e-commerce. Lawyers help businesses comply with regulations, plaintiffs recover damages, and defendants in criminal cases establish reasonable doubt; you as a lawyer have many more important things to do than simply vying for clicks.  Most lawyers choose to hire a web design company or marketing firm to design the law firm’s website; SEO can be a part of this choice.

Beware of SEO Scams

Everything you really need to learn about SEO you can learn without paying for it.  If you are building and maintaining your own website, you might choose to pay for analytics services that help you monitor your site’s search engine rankings, but that is not the same as paying for SEO training courses.  Expensive courses that promise to teach you online marketing skills to vanquish your competitors are almost certainly scams, and the more they cost, the shadier they are.

Get Legal Blog Writing Help

Hiring a marketing firm to design your law firm’s website and create content for it is a wise choice.  Choosing Law Blog Writers is even better, since it works exclusively with law firms, and its writers and web designers have a background in legal studies.  Even if you decide to design your own website, you can count on Law Blog Writers to deliver valuable content to update it regularly.

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