Foreword to Content Marketing and SEO for Law Firms

note: book is coming out on January 1, 2020.

Marketing for law firms has undergone radical changes because of the internet, and it’s not always easy to know what is effective and what is a waste of time.

Most attorneys have a sense that blogs and various forms of digital marketing can help position them as experts and get them more leads, but they are not always clear on exactly how to implement and use these tactics consistently.

Marketing law firms is one of the most competitive niches to do marketing in, which only complicates matters because your efforts must be precise.

When I was working at The National Law Review as the lead publications manager, I was entrenched in terms I never thought would matter to me in law school: metadata, search engine optimization, content marketing, conversion, data analytics, and more. The National Law Review publishes hundreds of legal news articles per month and cares deeply about the success of each one of them.

Before things started to crystallize for me, I met John McDougall of McDougall Interactive at a Legal Marketing Association conference in Boston, where I experienced at least half a dozen SEO-related revelations during his talk. From then on, John and his team were integral in my continued learning and understanding of content marketing and SEO. I learned an incredible amount about the inner workings of things like podcasting and running webinars from McDougall Interactive.

If you ask several attorneys if they know what a podcast is, most will say yes. Yet when it comes time to produce one, most will have no idea about the finer details of successful podcasting, such as how to come up with the topics, the mechanics involved in audio engineering, and the value of the content and words surrounding the audio itself.

Likewise, most will have watched and listened to a webinar, but few will have the right strategy and checklist of steps to create one of their own that helps with sales and marketing for their law firm.

Content marketing and search engine optimization work more effectively when these nuanced principles are applied toward raising a law firm’s profile and successfully attracting prospective clients. These fine details are what distinguish the savvy legal marketers from the average, and the renowned attorneys from the simply known.

Having been on the front lines of content marketing and producing massive volumes of content, it was a delight to have someone to turn to for the technical side of things like solving Google penalties, which requires a level of detail many writers and attorneys would not care to dig into deeply.

I’ve seen firsthand how John McDougall and his team think, both about creative content and the technical aspects of implementing it; they think in a way that leads to significant and trackable new business.

Perhaps you wonder whether this book will go too far into the weeds or if it is worth investing your time to read it. Let me tell you that the time you will save by having the right information to avoid making mistakes will easily make it worth reading.

This book was created with great care and thoughtfulness. Knowing that attorneys may not read all of it, the critical sections for “C-Suite” and high-level attorneys are marked with a gavel icon. The rest of the material can be shared with your marketing staff or read later, if you are intrigued.

Launching or promoting a website that looks nice and has an in-depth blog can quickly turn into a disaster without the right technical details and strategy behind it.

If you want to understand how to develop content that is seen at the very top of the search engine results and gets people engaged on social media, then get this book for yourself, your marketing staff, and the top attorney(s) at your firm.

Carpe Diem!
Former Lead Publications Manager, The National Law Review
Staff Attorney at DePaul University College of Law

Why and How to Read This Book

If you have ever had any anxiety over your website and digital marketing, you are not alone.

This book will help you understand why legal marketing is so hard and how to beat the competition.

You will learn about using search engine optimization (SEO) and high-quality content marketing, both in terms of strategy and execution. Which level of detail you read and which you hand off to your marketing team is up to you.

Partner and C-Level “must reads” are designated with the gavel symbol. If you miss those, you might go down a long and dusty road and get lost.

We will lay out a roadmap that has a lot of details and may seem overwhelming, but it is truly what it takes to make digital marketing effective.

Once you have the roadmap and get a team to help you with it, you will start seeing results and get excited to hit the gas pedal!