providers before deciding whether to buy a service, meaning that firms must also uphold their social strategies to add legitimacy and authority to their online persona. All in all, it is a tall order for firms who want to remain competitive in the online arena. However, beyond looking at SEO and social media as two tools with two separate strategies, developing and executing a single high-quality and integrated content strategy across both channels will help to propel your performance in both areas – whilst also simplifying your marketing approach! 3) Nurturing Online Relationships When considering SEO, it is also important to factor in ‘link-building’. This refers to the process of generating links from other sites towards your own site through articles, features and directories. The emphasis here should be on links from high-quality, trusted sites. Links are essentially like citing case law in an article or submissions. They indicate to Google (the SEO equivalent of an editor or judge) that the source cited is a legitimate, trusted source. The more links to your firm’s trusted website that you build, the more Google’s algorithm regards you as an authority within your industry. This eventually results in a top-page ranking on Google’s search results when prospects are looking for your services. 4) Answering the Right Questions So, we understand that content is paramount, that employees should be sharing it, and that inbound links will help ensure that your content is ranking for relevant search terms. What next? All of these activities are only worthwhile if the content you are producing is relevant to your target client. Having worked with legal organisations for several years, one of the common mistakes we find with content strategies is an over-emphasis on producing content that is overly technical for a lay user (such as a company director or non-legal professional). Whilst it is important to produce content that also attracts other legal professionals to your site, and positions you as an expert within the relevant commercial area, a large proportion of content should be geared towards answering a lay prospect’s questions, educating them and – in doing so – gaining their trust. Tools such as Google Search Console, Google Trends and AnswerThePublic can all be used to develop an extensive list of common search terms and queries which you can then utilise to develop informative articles. Such resources should be reviewed, updated and expanded regularly, including by adding internal links to related content on your site that explores other niche topics in more depth. Legal firms should not pass up on the opportunity to gain media attention and further build brand authority through reactive marketing techniques. 5) Seize the Moment Whilst most of your website traffic and leads will come from searches or recommendations from current or former clients, legal firms should not pass up on the opportunity to gain media attention and further build brand authority through reactive marketing techniques. Social listening tools such as BuzzSumo can be used to track and monitor trending events or news around specific topics or keywords, which will then send you real-time notifications as and when such developments occur. For example, such tools will notify you about new releases and announcements from any court, publicly listed entity or regulator (such as the Financial Conduct Authority or the Takeover Panel). Firms can strategically piggyback on the general interest and hype around such events through techniques such as ‘newsjacking’ – which simply refers to the process of adding professional opinions or insights into trending news pieces. This can be executed through social posts (including any trending hashtags) 34 LAWYERMONTHLYOCTOBER 2022
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