How a Law Firm Received 348 Phone Calls in a Month (691% Increase)
Having spent many years across multiple agencies working on Personal Injury campaign strategy, I learned that PI case types can be highly profitable for law firms. Lawyers want those higher potential profits.
PI keywords are also some of the most competitive and challenging local terms that you can come up against as a local SEO. Combine that competition level with the potential payout and will compensate you generously for providing these cases.
We’ve ranked hundreds of law firms for their respective keywords, and it is always satisfying to crush these campaigns. If we can crush competitive campaigns, in high comp markets, we can rank your business!
In this article, my goal is not to introduce a magic bean tactic; quite the opposite. I want to reinforce that we ought to strive toward a consistent approach that generates optimal outputs.
Here are some campaign details:
Mid Size City | Car Accident Lawyer | Mid/High Competition
Below we have a year-over-year comparison of listing engagements. We achieved remarkable results across the board…
- 348 calls in 1 month – 691% increase
- 446 website visits in 30 days – 431% increase
When comparing 5 months of data, we still saw strong growth in listing visibility, impressions, phone calls, and site visits.
We started this campaign with zeroes across the board. This business was nowhere to be found in maps.
106 Days Later, here are the local rankings our campaign achieved.
Just a hair over three months, we brought the SOLV (share of local voice) to 85%, which is metric that measures how often a listing appears in the Map Pack per scan radius. The greater the SoLV, the greater the local search visibility.
This location still ranks well and has weathered the tumultuous storms Google has thrown at it this past year.
We are still kicking after a name change, a small bump in SoLV, and many more number-one rankings.
The SEO Strategy
Sometimes, SEOs overlook the “small” foundational things that can pack a big punch. I want to cover some things many people breeze over and bring to light implementations specific to this campaign that you can swipe for your projects. By building a strong foundation, we were able to dominate the map pack – you can too.
The Typical SEO Stuff
Deep diving into and explaining things like complete A-Z link building, on-page, etc., if done right, commands large pieces of content. We will not do them justice here, but we will break down our new and improved on-page and link-building in future posts.
Geo and Niche networks, essential business citations and secondary citations, and tactics like this have been beaten to death. While not exciting, they have their place in a campaign. So I want to tip my hat to the use of them in this post, but focus a bit more on less talked about aspects you should be incorporating into your campaigns.
Authority Building
I wanted to split this section from links because even though we are “technically” building links, these links focus purely on building authority and establishing the business as the most prominent option for our desired local queries.
Grabbing your Bing, Apple Maps, Yelp, etc., is a non-negotiable. But also consider impactful opportunities like Waze, Monster, Eventbrite, Crunchbase, etc. These can be easily achieved with a domain email and all these profiles have one thing in common: they are on platforms that real businesses are on.
Furthermore, one of my favorite link types for local businesses is niche citations. Compiling a niche link list for each campaign is an essential starting point. You should not go without these links, they’re critical to campaign success, especially in more competitive niches.
To maximize impact, optimize the profiles well. For the best citation, take it a step further and amplify as needed for more competitive metros and niches.
Be sure to keep track of the links built during the campaign. You can use these to build a citation library for use in future campaigns in the same niche. You’ll be surprised how quickly you’ll amass niche resources.
Link Building
This campaign can be broken into three focuses from a linking perspective. The first, which we will spend little time on today, is a robust body of unstructured citations, localized parasites, and niche content networks we built atop different 2.0s like Google sites, WordPress, etc.
I want to focus on a few of the other impactful things we did that often get overlooked, especially when people look to outsourcing firms where everything is overly productized.
What we do at Web20 Ranker, and have been working hard on improving, is the custom outreach we perform for local and national campaigns. In this case, we pulled backlinks from the competitors and dumped them in a sheet.
From here, we parsed through this list, removed some junk links, and then bucket the sites by typing into the worksheet to keep everything organized. This makes it easy to divide the workload among our team.
Most of your competitors are not reverse engineering better-ranking websites and doing proper outreach to reduce their link deficiencies, not in the local SEO arena. So this type building step can give your campaigns a leg up…
My SEO friends, please do not negate paid citations. We pull those into a dedicated tab in the link building workbook. This is far from a new or imaginative strategy, but we see so few agencies taking advantage of their power. Don’t forget the basics.
If you dig deeper into some hyper-local authority sites, the transformation even a single link can have on a campaign is immense. One of the biggest movers regarding local links for this old case study we did was a $600 local chamber link. Everyone was taken aback by the cost of a single link in the local space, but we engaged, and rankings skyrocketed even further after that article was published.
That isn’t a rarity or one-off experience. We repeated it for highly competitive local SERPs in monster metros and saw similar results.
Press Releases
Press releases are a familiar concept in the SEO space. I have seen their effectiveness fluctuate over the years, but with a quality release and some of the bells and whistles you can implement (embedded media, do-follow link, etc.), they have been testing through the roof in terms of impact for the past few years.
We ran a Premium Local Press Release and a Do Follow Press Release with Map Embeds during this specific campaign. Our expansion of the press service continues to test very well regarding influencing ranks and brand prominence indicators. Check out one of our recent Mad Scientist SEO PR test results for more information.
Again, we are not dealing with a new and innovative strategy but a tried and true methodology that has worked well for years and continues to drive results.
Exact SEO Campaign for Results Rapid
My goal was to give a little bit of context and reasoning to the “why” behind-the-line items in some of our packages. Implement these items into your workflows and make them your own. Do some SEO testing and follow along as we do ours.
Now you know we don’t gate keep our secrets to success. So without further adieu, here are the services ordered to bring success to this client.
Phase 1 Local SEO Strategy, Local and Niche Signals, and Brand Foundation:
Content Creation
(10) Write GBP Posts for Phase 2
Write Custom GBP Description for Phase 2
Write GBP Site Content for Phase 2
Website Local Optimization
Location Page Optimization
Local and Niche Signals
Google Profile Photo Review
Custom Signals
Niche Citations or Level 1 Custom Signals
PDF, E-Doc, and Image Sites
Local Article Submissions
Press Release
Premium Local Press Release
PBN W Map Embeds
(10) PBN Map Embeds w NAP Mentions
Tiered Links for (10) PBN Map Embeds
Mini Networks
(10) Create and Optimize Geo-Network
Brand Foundation (Data Aggregator)
Submit to Data Aggregators (45 to 60 days for reports)
Social Essential/Fortress/Ultimate/Power Up
(25) Create and Optimize Social Essentials Accounts
25) Create and Optimize Social Fortress Accounts
(50) Create and Optimize Social Ultimate Accounts
Phase 2 GBP Listing Optimization, Niche Signals, and Brand Boost
Content Creation
(10) Write GBP Posts for Phase 3
GBP Listing Optimization
GBP Listing Optimization
GBP Description Posting
(10) Optimize GBP Services
GBP Site Optimization
(10) Schedule and Publish GBP Photos and Posts
(5) GBP Q&A’sQ&A’s
(5) GBP Review Responses
Local and Niche Signals
Level 1 Custom Signals
PDF, E-Doc, and Image Sites
Local Article Submissions
Mini Network
(10) Create and Optimize Niche Network
Brand Boost
2X (40) Brand Authority Links
(66) Essential Business Citations with GPS Listings
(50) Secondary Citation Creation
Custom List
Yelp Optimization (Domain Email Required to Claim) Crunchbase Optimization (Domain Email Required to Claim)
Bing Places – Claim and Set-Up
Waze Business Submission
Proven Expert Company Profile Submission
Monster Profile – Claim and Optimize
Manta Profile Submission and Optimization
Phase 3 Local Maps Boost and Custom Signals
GBP Listing Optimization
(10) Schedule and Publish GBP Photos and Posts
(5) GBP Q&A’sQ&A’s
(5) GBP Review Responses
Local and Niche Custom Signals
Level 1 Custom Signals
PDF, E-Doc, and Image Sites
Local Article Submissions
Local Maps Boost
DR30+ Branded Guest Post with Map Embed
Additional Custom Signals and Custom List:
Level 1 Custom Signals
(3) Top Ranking Listing Service
Press Release
Do-Follow News Release w Map Embed
PBN W Map Embeds
(10) PBN Map Embeds w NAP Mentions
Tiered Links for (10) PBN Map Embeds
If this looks like a lot of work…it is. Let us handle the campaign for you! Just choose your competition level and we’ll take it from there.
Not sure what level or add-ons you need? Get specific recommendations for a campaign,. All you have to do is fill out this form, and we will perform an audit and a roadmap for rankings. If you have any questions about this specific article or SEO in general, get in touch. I love geeking out about this stuff.