How Much Should Your Competitors Influence Your Law Firm Marketing Strategy?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an ongoing effort to make your website display above other websites on search engine results pages.  This means that, as in other aspects of business, you are in direct competition with other businesses in your area for the attention and patronage of customers in your city that provide similar services to yours.  Meanwhile, content marketing, of which SEO is one aspect, requires your company to build and express a unique brand identity.  Therefore, how much effort should you devote to researching the marketing strategies of other law firms in your area?  You should certainly consider what your competitors are doing, but rather than obsessing over everything they do and trying to anticipate their next move and beat them to it, just focus on producing valuable legal marketing content for your target audience.

When to Borrow a Page From a Competitor’s Playbook

Analytics can only take you so far when you are developing a marketing strategy.  It doesn’t hurt to find out the most popular keywords in your practice area and try to rank for the keywords on which your competitors outrank you.  You should only try to rank for keywords that are relevant to your practice area.  If you only take family law cases, then there is no point in trying to rank for “Greenville premises liability lawyer” just because another law firm in your area ranks highly for it.

Instead, when evaluating your competitor’s marketing efforts, think like a human being instead of like a search engine.  Look at how easy it is to navigate your competitor’s website, how quickly the site loads, and how readable the layout is.  In other words, your competitor’s website might be the motivation you need to invest in a user experience makeover for your own site.

Doppelganger Blues

How many children’s movies seek to convey the message that, instead of spending all your efforts on trying to impress other people, you should just be yourself, and be the best you that you can be.  This advice is worthwhile when it comes to law firm marketing content.  Focus on the kinds of cases that you can best represent, and communicate this message to the public truthfully and understandably.

The most important thing that should dictate your content strategy is the kinds of legal services you provide.  Are most of your clients seeking collaborative divorce?  Are they fathers who seek to increase their parenting time or lower their child support payments?  Are they debt-ridden Millennials in search of prenuptial agreements?  Write for them and not for another audience that you imagine will bring you more money.  Don’t lose your identity in pursuit of accolades from Google.

Be Strategic and Authentic in Your Content Marketing

Write content that provides value for your own client base, or better yet, have the legal blog content writers at Law Blog Writers, LLC write it, and Google will take notice and reward you for your efforts.