This case study will detail the techniques used to increase website traffic and leads enabling a bankruptcy law firm to bring in more than $1 million per year in revenue.
I just finished a call with a bankruptcy lawyer who is nothing short of thrilled with the results from his website.
How could he not be when website traffic is at the highest it has ever been.
Things were a little edgy for a while during the height of the COVID pandemic where the government was giving out lots of money and few people were going into bankruptcy. But we kept plugging along with a process that works. When the free money ended, my bankruptcy law client was able to help people the old fashioned way.
In fact, his legal practice not only recovered, it has flourished to the highest level in many years.
How did I do that? By creating amazing content. Below I will explain step by step the process used to research ideas, create a strategy and write content for a bankruptcy attorney that attracts nearly 700 website visitors, and 220+ leads per month.
How does SEO work for lawyers
Let me start by saying I have been optimizing this bankruptcy law firm’s website to appear high in search engine results for many years. We built a website, completed regular audits, managed various listings and have a Google ads campaign.
The reason for the new spike in traffic is not from some new idea I implemented but quality SEO that has been going on for a while.
One of the things I enjoy about doing SEO work for lawyers is that when a client is willing to listen and invest in their business they can easily reap the rewards. The truth is most lawyers won’t do this and that is why it can be easy to beat the competition.
Topical relevance helps build authority
Google values websites that are authoritative. Businesses that are active, responsive and providing great information get rewarded with more visits.
This requires an ongoing program of creating quality content that potential clients read and respond to. That could mean a comment, a review or following a call to action like clicking a call button from a mobile phone.
So how do you choose the topic for content pages? For our bankruptcy client we started with the basics. Pages were created for:
- About bankruptcy
- Chapter 7
- Chapter 13
Then I dive a bit deeper into the topics such as:
- Stopping creditor harassment
- Stopping wage garnishment
- Life after bankruptcy
You want to make sure that all the primary questions are answered from topical pages on the website. These should be organized in a logical manner.
Next, drill down into each of those subjects to create blog posts that add more detail or provide examples. Here is how that is done.
Choosing topics for law firm blog posts
How did we get the topics used for the bankruptcy lawyer’s blog posts? I like to say this is part science and part art.
You may be an attorney who knows all about bankruptcy and has a good grasp of what clients are asking. But that may not be exactly what they are searching for.
So start by taking each topic and typing that into Google to see what other topics come up. From the result below we see people are interested in
- The difference between Chapter 7 and Chapter 13
- Chapter 7 bankruptcy income limits
- Getting discharged from Chapter 7
- What is Chapter 7
Then, look at the People Also Ask section of the results for some more ideas. As you click each question, other questions are added to the list.
This information is found on your competitors websites so you want to be sure to have it too. So add any relevant topics to your list.
Another source of content ideas I like to use is Semrush. It is a paid tool, but well worth it. You can enter your competitor website to find their top ranking pages. The reports give you a decent estimate of the volume of searches for each term.
Once you have exhausted all those methods, head over to lawyers.com “Ask a Lawyer” to view real questions asked online to attorneys. These are often questions that potential clients did not get a satisfactory answer to from their search. Or the topic is a bit obscure and may not be covered on other websites.
You will want to keep going until you have an exhaustive list of topics. For my client, I found some interesting ideas to write about such as:
- Converting Chapter 13 to Chapter 7
- What happens at a Chapter 7 creditors meeting
- Myths about bankruptcy
- Using bankruptcy to fight eviction
Our list goes on and on and on. What happens next though is the secret sauce to getting visitors.
Refine topics to your local area
Some bankruptcy law is defined on a state level. So the law may differ from state to state.
Bankruptcy laws in New Jersey may be different than those in neighboring Pennsylvania.
Typically when you search for a generic topic such as eviction or Chapter 7 bankruptcy, you will get results from huge legal blogs such as Nolo.com, AllLaw.com and FindLaw.com to name a few.
Even if you write a killer post it will be hard to beat those heavily branded legal portals.
However what you can do to generate loads of visitors to your website is to include a local modifier. By simply adding the state or city to the post title, you are refining the topic to be about your specific area, even if there are only slight differences.
In the example below, when I search for my topic on eviction, Google is actually completing the sentence for me by adding various states. That is because other people have searched for this exact question using those state names!
Now all you have to do is write a better article than the first few results and you will get visitors galore.
As an added benefit to this trick, your law firm becomes more authoritative locally. That’s right. When you add more and more local information not found elsewhere, it will help your site show up more for other local searches.
Most of the attorneys I work with want business from a much larger area. They have an office in a small town and want to lure traffic from a larger neighboring city. Well this is one way to do that.
You should only add a location to the post title when the topic may actually be different for that location. Otherwise it may be misleading. Also, there is no need to try to add various city names if that is not where your office is located. It defeats the point.
Fully optimizing your web pages to rank high
There are several places where you will want to include this location modifier to get your pages to rank optimally.
URL – Keep the URL as concise as possible while adding the location where it makes sense. Often this is at the end (ie. /bankruptcy-to fight-eviction-nj/).
<title> tag – Mix it up a bit but be sure to include the location (ie. Stop Eviction in New Jersey With Bankruptcy)
Headers – You can include the main location in the <H1> main header. But sometimes you may want to include the city name in <H2> headers. (ie. The <H1> may be “How to use bankruptcy to stop eviction in New Jersey”. An <H2> may be “Trenton attorney helps financially challenged residents stay in their homes”.)
Within Text – Throughout the text you want to make sure to use the state and / or city name when there are distinctions from federal law.
All of these little tweaks will help your article rank well, but the content is what really needs to be great in order to bring in lots of visitors. Here is how to write great law firm blog posts.
Writing killer blog posts for a law firm
Now that you have a huge localized list of topics for your bankruptcy lawyer website, it’s time to prepare content that outranks your competition.
What do the top few results have on their page
Start by doing some research to find out what the top few search results are including on their pages. Copy the primary headers from those pages. Then compare to see what all of the top pages have in common.
That is the information you have to have on your page
Create a comprehensive resource
But don’t stop there. Dive a bit deeper into the topic. What information did your competitor leave out? How can you add more value to the reader?
To do this, make sure you fully answer the reader’s question and any related questions they may have on the topic. What is the intent of their search? Are they seeking information? Or are they ready to hire a lawyer and want someone who understands their issue.
For my bankruptcy lawyer, I created a page on eviction that included the following sections:
Will bankruptcy stop eviction?
Filing bankruptcy after a court eviction order
Filing bankruptcy before a court eviction order
Late rent payments
No lease violations
Now I could have answered this question in one simple paragraph. Instead, I added some different scenarios that may occur.
When writing your content, you have no idea what situation your potential client has. So by creating a comprehensive article you are more likely to show up in the search results when someone is looking for that.
In my case, the well-written page is the second most popular page on the website!
How to increase leads to a law firm
Once you have written your page, it is time to go back and edit it so it attracts visitors and converts them into leads.
The most important thing to do is make sure you satisfy the intent of the reader. If the search is “will I lose my house in bankruptcy” you answer, “no, here is how you can keep it”. Then dive into the details.
You must include a Call to Action throughout the page. This may be a clickable phone number or link to your contact page. Chat is also very good to have.
Another important part of writing content for a law firm website is to link to other pages on your website. Make the link text enticing so a reader wants to go there next.
When linking to a page on bankruptcy exemptions, you could use the following text:
- Exemptions
- Things you can keep in bankruptcy
One is clearly more clickable than the other. See the difference?
Finally, at the end of your page or post, introduce the next topic so your visitor keeps reading. You want readers to be aware that you have all the answers.
Add a section with a heading such as “What to read next” or “Related posts” with links to other information you have on the topic. This takes a bit of time but will help keep your content working.
Make sure your reader has no reason to go elsewhere. You want them to have found what they are seeking.
Do leads from content convert to cases?
For my bankruptcy attorney, the month of March had the highest traffic ever, but April tailed off a bit. One less day, Easter holiday, Spring break… who knows why.
Fortunately my client is also running a paid ads campaign. I don’t do PPC ads but my co-worker does. He used internal blog posts and topic pages as the targets for his ads instead of custom landing pages.
The results were astounding.
But what was really impressive is when we looked at the conversion rates of the page topics used.
This section of his reports shows searchers are much more likely to click on a link when the topic is answering their exact question.
And when you have amassed nearly 700 organic visitors per month where you have answered all their questions it results in more cases. Lots of them.
Our client reported that he reached 40 cases per month. With an average bankruptcy case worth about $2,500 that equates to $100,000 per month (or $1.2 million in revenue per year).
So clearly having a great digital marketing strategy works!
Marketing strategy for small law firms
When you begin a content marketing strategy for a law firm, some pages will bring in tons of visits and others just won’t work.
It may not get the results you desire because the topic is too competitive or maybe there just are not that many people searching for the subject as you might think.
There are millions of scholarly articles and legal briefs on the internet. However they rarely show up in results when someone searches. Why? Because they are not properly optimized for search engines. Let’s face it. Nobody wants to read blocks of dry, boring text. They want quick, reliable answers to questions.
If you follow the strategy I have outlined above and continuously build content, it will reap rewards.
Premier legal marketing consulting
This article mainly focuses on the science part of content marketing. It involves researching, writing, testing and updating until you get the desired results.
Anyone can follow this process. But it does take most people a lot of time and practice to get good at it. That’s why I think part of the process is artistic.
If your time would be better served answering your phone, and resolving client financial issues, contact legal marketing expert, Don Romanek for a consultation.
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