Top 5 Ways to Generate Better Quality Web Leads for Your Law Firm

This is a guest post by Steve Ryan, founder and CEO of RyTech.

Website traffic is a good thing. Increased website traffic month over month, quarter over quarter, year over year is a great outcome. But, converting website traffic is the best indicator of success.

Do you struggle with the leads that are coming in through your website? Don't have any leads finding you online? Don't worry! There are fixes for that. With the right strategy, you can position your website to generate quality online leads and increase your return on your marketing efforts. Here are my top five:

1. Create targeted content

When sitting down to write content, it's often easy to write content that is pertinent, relevant, or what we want to write about. Rather, the content that is written for a website should be strategic. The content should be thoughtful and keyword-rich. The content should be targeted to the end user in mind. That end user is the potential lead that you are trying to convert. It is the ideal client who you want to work with, who will call you as soon as they finish reading what you have written.

For example, as a family law attorney, your website has pages upon pages of content for individuals that are really doing their homework on you and your firm before picking up the phone or setting an appointment online. As an attorney, you like to write content about legal trends, changes in the law affecting the divorce proceedings, and process options for divorce. Match your content with keywords that correlate to the potential clients intent. For example:

• Don't write about "Changes in Spousal Maintenance"
• Do write about "How Does Spousal Maintenance Impact My Divorce"

This targeted content is going to answer a question for your potential client so they see you as a resource and the right person with whom to work.

2. Pay for search advertising

You're spending a lot of money on paid search campaigns, but the quality of your leads is still not what they should be. That's a common dilemma. Your inbound marketing is getting people to your website, but not the right people. This scenario does not mean that you should scrap your PPC campaign and try something else. Rather, change the strategy to match the searchers' intent.

The amount of keywords and phrases that a business can bid on is endless and can spread a budget rather thin. It is not always prudent to bid on words with high search volume, like "Milwaukee personal injury attorney" where the competition is stiff and the budget needs to be hefty. Consider changing your strategy altogether and bid on words like "I fell in the grocery store and hurt my back what do I do" or words and phrases that are more specific, and indicate the person is looking for assistance you can help with. The search volume might be lower, but the likelihood of conversion is far greater.

3. Focus on user experience

Your website is your billboard online and needs to make the best first impression possible to potential clients. You have approximately eight seconds to capture their attention or interest before they will leave your website and move on to someone else. Half the battle is getting the right audience on your website. Do not let them leave once they arrive. Ensure that your website responds to various screen sizes. In today's mobile-first environment, it is imperative that your website, content, images, and functionality work on smartphones and tablets as seamlessly as laptops and desktops.

As you consider the user experience on your website, leverage content, buttons, images, and calls to action to encourage people to visit the pages that you want them to see. Guide visitors through your website and facilitate the experience that you want them to have.

4. Optimize calls to action

Do you ever hop on a website and quickly think to yourself, "What should I do now?" That is because that website is not drawing you in and telling you what to do, and it lacks the action that we are supposed to take. As you look at the leads you are trying to convert, how can you best capture them? Consider what action the visitor should take immediately upon landing on your website. Do you want them to:

• Take advantage of a free initial meeting?
• Download gated content like an eBook or case study?
• Read more?
• Send an email?
• Subscribe for updates?
• Call NOW?
  

Regardless of your call to action, you want to ensure that this is perfectly clear for the visitor, so they know exactly what to do, where to do it, and how to proceed. Add these calls to action at various intervals throughout the website and on the most-visited pages.

5. Analyze traffic and implement regular changes

Regularly monitor your website traffic, user behavior, and touch points in order to make informed decisions about where and how to capture leads on your website. If you are not checking the analytics on your website monthly, at minimum, you might be missing out on valuable leads.

While your contact page on your website might have a web form, physical address, phone number, directions, and social media icons, what happens when you look at the data and realize that only 100 people a month are visiting that page on your website? You quickly realize that the majority of your traffic is going to your "About" page or pages about your specific practice areas.

If you don't have any lead capture opportunities on those pages, why not? You likely did not take the time to analyze your website traffic and implement opportunities to capture potential clients where they are on your website. Consider using a live chat service or other engagement mechanism that will capture contact information from visitors on any page of your website so you can evaluate their needs and engage with them if those needs fit with your firm.