A Guide to Building a Strong Digital Presence for Legal Firms

How to Build a Strong Digital Presence for Legal Firms

Whether seeking answers to a legal question or researching lawyers in their area, potential clients will likely start any legal firm search with a simple search engine query. If you want your law firm to be one of the first suggested options, you must optimize your website for search engines.

Building a digital identity for your law firm makes it simple for existing clients and potential leads to connect with you when they require legal resources. It begins by creating a powerful, easily searchable domain name. But that’s just the start! Read on to discover how including different digital assets on your site can cultivate a strong foundation for your marketing strategy.

Select a compelling domain name

Although a domain name only consists of a few simple words, it’s one of the pillars of your digital strategy. As a law firm, you want a unique domain name that establishes you as a leader in the industry while differentiating you from competitors. At the same time, a quality domain name should incorporate common industry keywords to help your site rank high in search engine results. 

To balance these two competing priorities, consider using a descriptive domain. Because these domains use keyword-based extensions (rather than traditional extensions like .COM or .NET), they allow you to include valuable industry keywords on either side of the dot, maximizing the space you have to summarize your business identity in your domain name. 

For example, a law firm may consider any of these descriptive domain extensions:

• .ASSOCIATES
• .ATTORNEY
• .LAW
• .LAWYER
• .LEGAL

When paired with keywords before the dot, these extensions can create a strong digital identity and drive potential clients to your website with domain names like divorce.lawyer or defense.attorney. 

These extensions also allow you to feature your firm’s name within your web address while incorporating industry keywords to signal your site as a legal resource. So, rather than operate as BanksandSmith.com, you could operate as BanksandSmith.Associates. This domain name helps establish your firm’s identity and service offerings before clients visit your site.

Build your website taxonomy

Choosing a compelling and searchable domain name is a top way to help clients find your website. But don’t stop there – you can use several additional ways to optimize your website for search. In particular, your website taxonomy—the structure you use to organize your digital content—is critical in helping users find and navigate your site. 

To make it easy for search engine crawlers to index your content for search, consider: 

• Strategically grouping your sub-pages 
• Add thoughtful tags and descriptions to your content 

These tactics also help your clients manually find content on your page—and if customers can quickly explore different legal topics on your site, they may be more likely to stay engaged with your content.

Optimize your website

Each aspect of your website can influence a potential client’s first impression of you and your services. You can position your law firm as a trusted and helpful legal resource by crafting a professional, easily searchable, and user-friendly website. Wix website builder is a great tool to help you do this. Wix offers over 500 professionally-designed templates that can be customized to your legal firms unique needs. This can allow you to get your website up and running in minutes, all while creating a strong user experience.

To that end, when creating or updating your website, be strategic about how the various elements of your site will work together. Thinking about your website holistically will give visitors a convenient and engaging experience. Wix design templates and editing tools ensure you can provide easy navigation to visitors. 

From big-picture elements like your domain name to details like your website copy, each aspect of your site should contribute to the user experience and enhance your overall digital marketing strategy.

Create thoughtful digital content

Incorporate content creation into your digital marketing strategy to help establish your authority in the legal field and simultaneously make your website easier to find. For instance, by posting articles on topics relevant to your target audience (and enhancing them with SEO keywords), you can demonstrate your legal expertise, educate your potential clients, and help your website rank higher in search engine results. 

But how do you know which keywords will be most effective in driving traffic to your site?

Conducting basic keyword research can help you learn what your clients are searching for so that you can build a thoughtful content strategy that’s curated to your specific niche. As you expand your digital resources to cover different keywords, you can gain a competitive advantage over other firms, both in terms of search ranking and the general value you offer your clients. 

Provide social proof

Online reviews are important in helping potential clients determine which firms to trust with their high-stakes legal situations. By incorporating testimonials and reviews into your site, you provide valuable social proof that demonstrates the effectiveness of your services.

To that end, consider prominently featuring customer reviews on your website to show prospective clients that you can provide them with the results they’re seeking. Ultimately, reviews can: 

• Bolster your reputation
• Emphasize your professionalism
• Show that your services are backed by a community of satisfied, loyal clients

Next, incorporate email marketing

Your digital presence doesn’t just consist of your public website and social pages—it also extends to your private communications with potential clients. 

Email marketing is a tried-and-true tactic for generating leads, boosting conversions, and retaining existing customers. By implementing a thoughtful email marketing strategy into your business model, you can build positive connections with potential customers, expand upon the content you share on your site, and further strengthen your digital identity. Consider a professional email hosting service to optimize your email strategy with a simple, powerful, and professional business email account. 

Grow your email list

Although the quality of your email content is critical for gaining and retaining customers, email marketing is often a numbers game—you want to cast a wide net to capture as much potential interest as possible. To that end, consider growing your email list by featuring multiple opportunities on your website for customers to sign up for your email communications. You might do this by: 

• Adding forms to your website where customers can sign up to receive e-books or other long-form resources via email

• Incorporating newsletter subscription options to different sections of your website 

Once you have a healthy-sized email list, begin grouping prospects into different categories. If you are a corporate attorney focused on different industries, consider segmenting your email list by industry in order to speak to each segment using accepted terminology and addressing the issues they care about most. Categorizing allows you to engage different types of clients with welcome emails, follow-ups on e-book downloads, webinar invitations, or thought-leadership content—all without overwhelming or alienating the rest of your audience. 

Some popular marketing tools to help streamline your email campaigns include: 

• Mailchimp 
• ActiveCampaign
• MailerLite

These tools can help to optimize your email marketing strategy to grow your audience list, fill your marketing funnel, and drive additional revenue. 

Personalize your messages.

Personalizing your email content is a great way to strengthen your client relationships, which is especially critical when you’re handling their legal business. Addressing recipients by name or adding a personalized lead-in highlights the relevance of your messages, ultimately increasing your open rate. 

Even if you’re already sending targeted emails based on client interests and previous engagements, using automated email personalization tools to incorporate a few personal details gives you an additional way to engage your audience and build trust.

Demonstrate your value

Every email you send contributes to your firm’s reputation. To that end, if you want your email marketing to support and strengthen your online presence, offer your recipients high-value content. 

You don’t simply want to remind your clients of your existence—you want to give them a reason to trust you with their legal concerns. While listicles and coupons may work for other businesses, law firms should focus on email content that reinforces their expertise and builds stronger client relationships, such as:

• Thought leadership articles
• Details about events or webinars important critical industry topics
• Information on new initiatives or contributions to the community
• Case studies
• FAQs or Q&As with attorneys

By considering how each topic provides value to the recipient, you can create engaging, educational content that keeps your customers interested in future emails, encouraging them to click each time they see your business name in their inbox.

Finally, manage your online assets

Once you have an online presence, you need to maintain your digital assets actively. By leveraging the business tools in the Google Workspace suite, you can conveniently manage your email, appointments, and digital content all on one platform:

• Gmail Business Accounts – If you’re just starting, consider linking your domain name to a Google business email. This tactic allows you to have a professional email address while enjoying the convenience and user-friendly setup of a standard Gmail account. 

• Drive – Google Drive and Google Docs provide workspaces to easily manage, edit, and store your digital content before it goes live on your website.

• Calendar – Keep track of consultation sign-ups, webinars, and more by sending Google Calendar invites. There are several third-party tools you can use to integrate your calendar into your website and provide convenient appointment booking for your clients. 

Create a strong and compelling digital identity with Name.com

By taking an active role in creating your online presence with Name.com, you can build agile digital assets that grow alongside your firm. In particular, Name.com’s domain name search tool allows you to find a descriptive domain that strengthens your digital identity, improves your search engine ranking, and establishes your authority in the legal field. 

With a Name.com account, you can also effortlessly connect your domain name and website builder to your Google productivity tools and other business platforms. And if you want to scale your digital presence, you can easily incorporate add-ons or integrate advanced Workspace features. 

Take the first step with Name.com to begin building your digital foundation for your legal firm 

today. 

Sources:
Ariyh. The effect of [first name] in email subject lines. https://tips.ariyh.com/p/email-name-personalization