Whether you are part of a big law firm or work on your own, everyone needs clients. And boy are we willing to pay for them, aren’t we? Looking into it, DUI attorneys pay 200 to 300 dollars per click on the Google ad platform.

That is quite substantial. But in this profession, you also make a lot of money. Still, are ads the best way to go? We don’t think so, because organic rankings in Google are the #1 aspect of your web presence that can make you a star in your area and turn a one-man army into a big law firm that everybody knows.

At this point, it is safe to say that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is one of the main pillars of a successful local business. This holds also true if businesses are in multiple cities or even cover the whole country.

Imagine if your law firm ranked well in your city for the type of keyword your ideal client searches for in Google. Every click to your website would be free and you would get many more visitors to your website than you ever could with ads. By ranking on Google, a local business can grow safely and often rapidly to an impressive size.

You can verify this fact immediately! Just search for different types of services in your city, like “roofing orlando” or something like that. Scroll past the ads and look at the businesses that rank at the top (including the ones in the Google Maps section). You probably know the big businesses in your own city, so it should be easy for you to see that the big guys are usually the ones ranking in the top 3, right? Guess what, they aren’t ranking there because they are big, but they got big because they are ranking and get all those free customers.

Advantages

Websites with a good organic search engine ranking can pull in large numbers of visitors for a comparatively small price. Advertising in any form, whether it’s in Google, radio, magazine, and whatnot, is always more expensive. These top positions are difficult to reach due to their value and corresponding competition, but once you reach such a position, it can often be defended well. SEO is generally the most lucrative marketing related investments in the long run.

Drawbacks

There are no guarantees for good rankings, SEO investments therefore always represent a certain risk. However, that is true for all marketing efforts. In the same way, no one can guarantee that a radio ad leads to any clients. Competition can be extremely stiff for particularly competitive search terms with large monthly search volumes and a high presumed willingness to buy. Large companies invest a lot of time and effort to place themselves at the top of the search results with Google. But if you work with one an excellent SEO company, they can usually beat your competition and get you to a double-digit ROI. Note that grand master SEOs are rare. Most agencies are not that good.

Another factor is that it is rarely sufficient to turn only one screw; good rankings are usually the result of the optimization of several factors over a longer period of time. The requirements for your own SEO activity increase proportionally with the monthly search volume of the selected keywords. Niche keywords and longer phrase combinations are therefore a popular means to get some fast rankings.

Good to know

The distinction between the terms “site” (the totality of the pages of a website) and “page” (individual pages of a website) is very important. Contrary to what is often assumed, only individual web pages compete for placement on a specific search term, not entire web sites. A single web page can also be optimized for multiple keywords, but the more specific the keyword field, the higher the chances of success.