Getting More Cases During the Holiday Weekends
Happy holidays from TriLux Digital. As part of my next blog series, I will tie together some of the tips from previous blogs and explain how to increase caseload during the end-of-year holidays.
Experienced attorneys know there are a number of different legal practice areas where cases pick up before, during or after certain holiday weekends. We are quickly approaching some of the most lucrative weeks for personal injury and impaired driving attorneys. For instance, federal traffic data suggests Thanksgiving and New Year’s Weekend typically see a large uptick in auto accidents.
If you are an attorney in either practice area, chances are you have competitors who will increase their ads, content and social media efforts during these times. Below, I give some advice on how you can improve content marketing and keyword targeting to compete with these firms during the holidays.
Know Your Competition
Competitor research is one of the most important tasks for a successful digital marketing campaign. You need to have some idea of what your local and regional competitors are doing to obtain cases. It is possible that some of that data can be pulled from analytics tools like SemRush (SEMRush, whatever you want to call it) or Ahrefs.
You should focus on paid ads, social media and SEO. What are your competitors doing to succeed? Are they posting YouTube videos and paid ads across multiple platforms? You need to find out what they are doing, otherwise, they will take your potential clients. In addition, it does not always make sense to attempt to compete with much larger, more experienced firms. Try to find a competitor you have a chance against and one-up their attempts to obtain new clients.
You can plug domain information into these tools to obtain information on keyword rankings and popular pages. In addition, if you have the correct subscription to these services, you can pull historical ad data estimates as well as keyword efficiency statistics. Both can be helpful to figure out what your competition has done in the past to pick up more clients during holiday weekends. You can see me using some of these techniques on the YouTube channel for TriLux Digital.
You might notice you have a competitor who records and posts videos to platforms like TikTok or YouTube around this time of year. TikTok and YouTube are great places for attorneys to share videos that can help with visibility across a broad spectrum – more on this concept later.
However, I will provide at least a cautionary warning that using TikTok to post videos could potentially cause problems for law firms in the future. This is due to potential legislation.
Know Which Search Terms to Use
Content is always going to be important, whether AI generated or otherwise. Whatever your strategy may be, always, always, always focus on user experience. Specifically, you want to capture user search intent. If someone is punching a question into Google, you want your page to answer that question perfectly. To do this, you need to have a data-driven approach to content creation. You will need to perform research. Winging it won’t be enough.
Part of the content creation process involves selecting prompts and keywords as part of your overall content strategy. For example, a personal injury attorney may want to target prompts involving common car accident injuries, whereas a DWI attorney would focus on terms associated with DWI charges.
To obtain keyword data, chances are you will need to do some custom searches from your area. It is not advisable to solely rely on SEO analytics tools like SemRush. Check the Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) as well. Try and perform a search with an Incognito window and never use a VPN while conducting the search in your area. You want to make sure your results are not skewed due to Google thinking you are searching from another location. In addition, you could also use a separate browser that does not have prior search data saved.
One of the easiest ways to obtain keyword data is to look at search results (including Google Business Profile). Look for consistency. What keywords are at the top of the organic search results? Are these same competitors appearing in the top results if you perform new Incognito searches around the city? Are the keywords these competitors are using also showing up in analytics software? If you answered “yes” to all of these questions, then you may have just uncovered helpful data.
Pay attention to keywords that generate a lot of organic and paid traffic as well as high-volume keywords for your practice areas that appear within analytics software platforms.
You should also check top results to see what competitors are doing to capture search intent. In some cases, you may notice non-branded keywords are bringing in a significant percentage of traffic for a competitor. These keywords are not always high-volume.
You must keep in mind there are numerous reasons why another law firm is outranking your firm. Google Reviews, domain age, quantity and quality of content, backlinks, mentions elsewhere online and technical SEO efforts can make or break rankings as well. It is not just about keywords and content, although both are very important. You need to look at the SERPs as a bigger picture of what is going on within the legal industry. Try to focus on what the top law firms could be doing to give the best user experience possible for ad and site visitors.
Do Not Ignore Google Analytics or Search Console
Google Analytics and Search Console can provide very helpful data if your firm has existing and effective holiday content on its website. For example, if you had a blog or event from two years ago that brought in new business, you need to get elbow-deep in the data and find out why the campaigns were successful.
Search Console provides enormously helpful organic traffic data and pulls it directly from your website, if you are using it. If you are not using it, then you should fix this issue as soon as possible. It would be like attempting to fly a modern airplane without your radar and navigational equipment turned on. You wouldn’t do it unless you had a death wish.
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) can provide helpful insights on engagement, which is very useful for determining how you pulled in website, certain Google ad and app viewers previously. Engagement and content quality share a direct relationship because good content can signifty to Google that your firm provides excellent user experience. The technical aspects of a site can also affect data generated by GA4. Additionally, Google Analytics can provide you with historical data on ad campaigns.
If you relied heavily on Google Ads of any type in the past, you should take a look at historical data from prior holiday seasons. Consider going through the dashboards of each platform to obtain this data.
Know How to Use the Data for New Content
Once you have an idea of what your competition is doing to obtain new clients, especially around a specific time of the year, you must know how to execute a strategy using the data you collected.
If you create a video blog, make sure it appears on your website, YouTube, Google Business Profile (if applicable, as there are strict requirements) and social media accounts for maximum visibility. In the event your content is seen as high-quality, you are sending various signals to search engines that you are an expert on your legal practice areas. An example of a prompt can be “what is a felony DWI”. Another, more focused option could be “what is a felony DWI in Texas”. You are looking for prompts that you know are likely to be successful, and creating your own spin on the subject material.
Another tactic that can help, especially for newer attorneys, is to look for prompts other nearby attorneys have not covered yet. If you come across a prompt or blog idea with decent volume, and none of your competition has covered it, give the topic a shot and see how it performs. I can help with this and have had great success with this strategy in the past.
You can also incorporate keywords and prompts into your paid ads strategy. In fact, it is a necessity to properly arrange the ad copy in a way that is enticing.
Local Service Ads are another great example of using practice area keywords to obtain visibility. With Local Service Ads (LSAs), you can target potential clients and sometimes appear at the top of Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). You can also target by practice area and zip code! So, if you are a Texas DWI attorney and you already have a content and social media strategy picked out for the holidays, do not forget to utilize Local Service Ads to obtain the maximum amount of SERP real estate. Consider targeting zip codes with your desired clientele.
Making Lawyers the Big Bucks Since 2014
Trilux Digital is operated by Dale Wooddy. Co-owner Dale Wooddy has 9 years of experience with legal marketing and over 10 with marketing in general. Follow our blog to learn how to make money as an existing or new attorney. You can schedule a free consultation on the website. Please be patient with the contact form.
This blog covers a very extensive topic. If you have any questions, keep your eyes peeled for more video blogs that go into more detail on each topic.
