This week, I was thrilled to see my client get a huge boost in website traffic. The client is a divorce lawyer in a large city in Arizona. If you know anything about search engine optimization (SEO), it is not easy to rank a website and get more traffic when the competition is so high.
Yet I was able to move the needle from about 150 visitors per week to nearly 600 within six months.
I will explain how I did this next, but be rest assured, this is not about using some scheme or viral news piece where the visitors go away. They are here to stay.
How we increased visibility for this attorney
The old expression “content is king” is still alive and kicking. But today it is further refined by the concept of topical authority.
Simply defined, topical authority is just assembling all of the relevant information about a topic and making sure it is included on your website.
For this attorney, I researched his primary practice areas, created a topical map, and prepared some new content that thoroughly covered the subject.
When a new page of content is written, it starts with a detailed strategy document that presents all of the key points that should be included.
In this case, I discovered some searches that were not adequately served with the results Google was displaying. The pages we prepared supplied just the right mix of ideas. So Google rewarded the site with #1 rankings for many search terms. In fact, some on a state level!
In addition to writing up some new pages, I also analyzed existing website content to see if there was a way to get them to rank higher. By tweaking a few words along with some formatting, I was able to win featured snippets on Google that attracted even more visitors.
Featured snippets is a section that appears above the initial search results and typically provides an answer to the user’s question.
Isn’t this what SEO is all about?
When I reviewed Google Analytics today, this client had 4 pages ranking higher than the home page.
Did the traffic boost generate more calls for the lawyer?
The whole point of getting more visitors to your website is to get more leads and eventually more clients.
In this case, there has not been a noticeable increase in the number of calls generated from the Google Business Profile or the attorney website.
This may be because a big chunk of traffic was from a nearby city, and those folks are looking for information but not interested in hiring out of town lawyers. However, there was still some huge value from this surge.
First, the average time on page for this law firm’s website went up by 67% during this time. Thanks to some pages where readers stuck around for more than 6 minutes!
Clearly visitors are heavily interested in these topics and they wanted to read the entire page. Google likes this!
Secondly, the number of pages per visit more than doubled. So instead of reading the page and bouncing off to another site to gather more information, visitors were satisfied that their questions were answered and kept reading to explore other topics.
Finally, because this site shows topical authority and satisfies the searchers intent, Google has rewarded the whole site by significantly increasing the rankings in their search results for many of the diovrce and family law pages!
There is clearly more work to be done here to get that phone ringing off the hook, but this was a huge leap in the right direction.
Am I worried that clicks to this law firm website are starting to plateau?
I don’t expect the increase in website users to continue at this blistering pace. So at some point the number of people searching for this topic on our Arizona law firm’s website will level off.
That is okay. In fact, it is wonderful!
The new objective is to discover what those visitors want next. Once we know what the next step is in their journey we can write about these topics.
For example, someone considering divorce may be concerned about their personal finances. Will they have to find a new place to live?; What happens to their 401(k) they socked away for the past 10 years?
A section of a topical map for a divorce attorney may look like this:
The idea is to build deep pages that fully cover the topic so that we answer all of the visitors’ questions. This keeps them on the site longer and builds brand awareness.
Plus, Google wants to serve its users with the best results. When it recognizes behavior where searchers stay on a website, that site gets rewarded with better positioning.
NJ Digital marketing service helps firms attract more clients
If you would like help advancing your business to get more leads from the Internet, contact our NJ digital marketing service for a consultation.
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