Do Bankruptcy Attorneys Need Digital Marketing?
Absolutely. Nowadays, digital marketing is the biggest game in town for lawyers. But marketing for bankruptcy attorneys is far different than for other businesses.
Specific Challenges
Like family law attorneys or personal injury attorneys, bankruptcy attorneys have people experiencing tough times as their target audience. They are also more likely to have clients that have little experience with legal process. What experiences they do have may be quite negative.
Business bankruptcy lawyers may have more legally experienced clients, but ones that are still stressed, scared, and perhaps a bit ashamed by their situation.
It’s a tricky target audience to market to – one who needs your services as a bankruptcy attorney but is probably unhappy that they do. SEO professionals can help you develop a marketing strategy that provides information and reassurance for potential clients.
Another major challenge is that, hopefully, you won’t have many repeat customers. Bankruptcy attorneys have to consistently generate quality leads and paying clients if they want to keep the doors open.
Specific Opportunities
Bankruptcy attorneys also have some great opportunities. Because they are many clients’ first real experience with the legal system, they have an opportunity to make a long-lasting impression.
Of course, these clients are unlikely to need you again. But they will tell friends and family members about their experience, which is great for long-term brand building as a bankruptcy attorney. Happy clients also leave positive reviews.
Building up a brand is the work of months and years, not weeks. And it’s something that quality search engine optimization can help you do, too.
Ready to see how SEO campaigns can help your bankruptcy law practice? Get in touch now.
How Does SEO Marketing Work for Bankruptcy Law Firms?
What Is SEO?
SEO, or search engine optimization, refers to techniques to help push a website up in search engines’ organic results (the ones that aren’t ads).
Google, the biggest search engine, is notoriously opaque about its ranking algorithms. They share broadly what they look for – good user experience, secure sites, and trustworthy content.
SEOs use their observations, experiments, and even reading Google’s patent filings to fill in the details. It’s a research-heavy field with a lot of developments – Google rolls out multiple changes to its algorithm every year.
SEO isn’t the same as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising or PPC marketing. However, SEO and PPC campaigns can work well together.
Reach Your Target Audience
Reaching your audience is important in all SEO, but particularly so for bankruptcy lawyers. There are plenty of people out there that need your legal services, but how can they find you?
Keyword research is the term for finding out what your potential clients are searching for. This gives you a sense of the relevant keywords that you can optimize your website for.
It’s possible to optimize for dozens of keywords. This is especially true for lawyers who may serve a large geographic area.
Searchers may be typing in “bankruptcy attorney” and then the name of their town. You want your website to be optimized for all of those separate keywords. One classic way of doing this is to have landing pages for the various communities you serve.
Establish a Reputation and a Brand
Your brand as a bankruptcy attorney has become more and more important for your SEO. Google relies on signals from social media, as well as links from other sites back to yours, to determine if your site is relevant.
Good SEO creates a virtuous circle. Your site is pushed up the rankings on search engines, so more people see it and talk about it. Then, that chatter from past clients and others in the legal industry pushes you further up the rankings.
SEO Challenges
YMYL
YMYL means “Your Money or Your Life,” and it also refers to a Google algorithm update from 2018 aimed at penalizing sites with mis- and disinformation.
Long story short, pages that deal with information about someone’s health, legal situation, or pocketbook have a higher bar to clear. Your bankruptcy law firm website is under additional scrutiny from Google, so misinformation can cause costly mistakes.
EEAT
EEAT, or “Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness,” is a rubric Google wants all pages to meet, with it being vital for pages falling under YMYL.
Let’s look at how this applies to bankruptcy attorney marketing:
- Experience – Stick to your firm’s law specialties and don’t delve into other practice areas. If you’re not a bankruptcy law expert on a topic, save it for someone else.
- Expertise – All content should be read and signed off on by a bankruptcy lawyer. When reading an article, it should be easy to see the name of the lawyer signing off, along with their credentials.
- Authoritativeness – Other authorities in the industry (blogs, firms in other practice areas, etc.) should link back to your page.
- Trustworthiness – Have correct content. You may want to include a date on every article you publish and set a schedule to have a bankruptcy attorney re-read already published articles and make necessary changes.
Local SEO
Digital marketing for bankruptcy requires a hefty dose of local SEO. These are techniques designed to boost your SEO in a small geographical area.
Google My Business is one tool you can use. It allows you to add photos and contact details and also gives you access to basic SEO tools to track clicks and see how you stack up against local competitors.
Google My Business is a great starting point for understanding a little more about your digital marketing strategy. However, it doesn’t have many tools for complex keyword research. It also doesn’t track local or statewide search trends.
Developing a landing page for each community you serve is another technique.
Effective digital marketing strategies start with the best tools and the best professionals. Start with SEOButler today.
Engagement
In Google Analytics, another free SEO tool that’s worth playing around with, you can see a metric called “engagement.”
A customer counts as engaged if they’ve read two or more pages, spent 10+ seconds on your site, or converted. Conversion, for law firms, typically means filling out your info form or giving you a call.
Visits to a bankruptcy website landing page probably won’t lead to a conversion right away. Potential clients will want to do their own research and compare bankruptcy law firms before making the plunge.
Social Media Platforms
Social media is how most people, young and old, communicate these days. That means your law firm needs a presence there. Social media chatter isn’t a direct signal for Google’s algorithm, but it can boost your SEO.
Now, this doesn’t mean you have to rush to set up a TikTok account. But you should consider how people communicate these days.
Working with an internet marketing firm can help you develop a social media strategy that makes sense for you. Get in touch today!
Backlinks
Backlinks, or sites that link back to one of your pages, are vital for good SEO. This is challenging for any business, but it can be especially tricky for bankruptcy services.
This is because a law firm is under greater EEAT scrutiny. The sites that link back to you really need to be high-quality and trustworthy, or your Google search results will suffer.
Niche edits are one way around this. A niche edit is basically an after-the-fact backlink – you look for sites that already mention you or talk about bankruptcy laws and services more generally. Then, you request that they include a link to your bankruptcy law firm website.
This is a smart strategy for a law firm since you get to vet a site’s quality before you solicit a link.
Not all internet marketing agencies specialize in niche edits, but SEOButler does. Contact us for more information on how niche edits can improve your search engine results!
Not Finding the Right Agency
Sure, every business can have issues finding the right search engine marketing partners. But bankruptcy lawyers have more challenges than most.
Google holds your factual accuracy and trustworthiness to a higher standard. Potential clients expect more from your writing – they want it to be correct, but they’ll be turned off by complicated or condescending writing.
If your law firm specializes in businesses, that’s another challenge. Not all digital marketing agencies know how to do B2B marketing effectively.
You need a marketing strategy that focuses on well-written content and local SEO. SEOButler focuses on content marketing that gets results!
What Should My Bankruptcy Firm Website Look Like?
User Experience and On-Page SEO
Google places a high premium on user experience (UX). Maximizing UX is the domain of on-page SEO.
What ticks you off about bad websites?
Slow load time, confusing menus, and difficult-to-navigate pages are probably things you notice. And your potential clients don’t like them any more than you do.
Mobile Browsing
The small screen of a smartphone isn’t the ideal way to read legal texts, but it is where many potential clients look for a bankruptcy attorney.
A lot of features that make mobile browsing easier, like lazy loading, responsive design, and click-to-call functionality, aren’t all that hard to do. But a skilled SEO company can make it even easier.
Consistent Branding
Everything is a brand these days, and your bankruptcy law firm needs to be one, too. Your fonts and color scheme should be consistent throughout your website, and they should match any offline marketing materials you have, too.
Technical SEO and Site Security
As a bankruptcy attorney, you need to present a professional and trustworthy face to your bankruptcy clients. If your site is hacked, that’s a true blow to your reputation.
All the pages on your site should be HTTPS, not HTTP. This will help to protect your clients and let Google know that your site is safe.
Quality Content
Free Bankruptcy Resources
One type of content you can provide to your prospective clients is free bankruptcy resources. You may already have some of these articles on your own page, and you’ve probably seen them on another law firm’s site.
These are simply articles that provide basic legal information about aspects of bankruptcy law. Some potential topics are:
- The basics of the bankruptcy chapters your law firm handles – for instance, chapters 7, 11, or 13
- What someone can expect from the bankruptcy process – what a typical timeframe is, what typical time demands are, etc.
- What a bankruptcy trustee is
Free resources can become “evergreen content.” This is the term SEOs use for content with a long shelf life. Of course, bankruptcy law does change, but not at the speed of, say, fashion and beauty trends.
Evergreen content tends to increase your SEO performance over time. The longer it’s up, the more people see it and link back to it.
Need a digital marketing firm that can help you develop an evergreen content strategy? Talk to SEOButler!
Multimedia Content
Back in the day, browsing the web meant reading wordy articles and blog posts. That time has passed; audio and video content is only going to grow in importance when it comes to digital marketing for bankruptcy.
If you have any previous podcast, radio, or local TV appearances, post a link to the content or ask if you can host a copy yourself.
Updated Blog
Bankruptcy law changes slowly, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a frequently updated blog.
Consider taking a look at how bankruptcy law intersects with things currently in the news. For instance:
- A business bankruptcy firm can discuss how PPP loans are affected by Chapter 11
- Are bankruptcy filings up, down, flat? Talk about trends you see as a bankruptcy attorney
- The intersection of bankruptcy and student loans.
You can also use your blog to introduce your lawyers and their bona fides to prospective clients or talk about success stories with your bankruptcy clients. A great digital marketing firm can help you brainstorm ideas that make sense.
Ongoing Site Support
Bankruptcy law firm marketing isn’t done once the content goes up. Even the best articles need ongoing maintenance to help them reach their full SEO potential.
SEOButler can help you put together an ongoing monthly package for your bankruptcy law firm. Get in touch to discuss your options!
Social Signals
When Google determines how trustworthy and influential your site is, one of the rubrics it uses is posts on social media platforms.
SEO marketing firms can help you seed these posts with a service called social signals. These posts are dribbled out over several days or weeks and can lead to a definite boost in organic traffic to your site.
Backlinks and Niche Edits
One buy of backlinks will boost your site, no doubt. But backlinks really shine when they’re part of a consistent strategy.
With niche edits, it’s important to stay vigilant for opportunities. Local directories give you an opportunity for backlinks, but new ones pop up all the time. A digital marketing firm can keep an eye out so you don’t have to.
Personal Bankruptcy Attorneys
Personal bankruptcy attorney marketing can require a bit of a softer touch. Many individuals filing for personal bankruptcy have limited experience with the legal system, and many are filing as a result of divorce or a health crisis.
Many bankruptcy lawyers struggle with the right tone for their bankruptcy lawyer website – no-nonsense and informative on the one hand and compassionate and empathetic on the other.
Like any other service, individual consumers rely heavily on reviews to make their choice. Reviews can offer pertinent information and connect your past clients with your future clients.
Google My Business gives you tools to help manage your customer reviews, but a marketing firm has even more resources to help you stay on top of any inaccurate or malicious ones.
A personal bankruptcy law firm can also benefit from targeted Google ads and PPC campaigns. Individuals may take several weeks or months before they decide to call a law firm – the more they see your law firm’s name, the more likely they are to contact you.
Corporate Bankruptcy Attorneys
Business owners and corporate managers aren’t strangers to legal services, and they may be more informed about the bankruptcy process. Still, marketing can present a challenge to the law firm.
Decision makers at businesses may want a law firm that presents itself a bit more traditionally. As a firm, you should also be more focused on gaining qualified leads than on casting a wide net.
When you conduct keyword research, focus on so-called long-tail keywords. These are longer and highly specific phrases like “employee health insurance after bankruptcies.” Business decision-makers are more likely to know what their specific concerns are when they seek out the best bankruptcy lawyers.
Why Go With SEOButler?
Experience with Legal Marketing
Since our very first days, SEOButler has worked with law firms to develop effective marketing efforts. We understand the special challenges a law firm can face, and we can show you how we’ve handled them in the past.
Whether you help individual or business clients, we can help you reach your ideal clients with strategies that will boost your position in search results.
Content-Based Strategy
All our writers are native English speakers, many with college and advanced degrees. We know how to explain technical topics clearly and simply to your ideal clients.
Other SEO firms use some shady tricks – we keep it clean. We know effective bankruptcy lawyer marketing requires great writing.
Holistic SEO Marketing
SEOButler doesn’t stop with the content, though. We can also provide you with backlinks, social signals, and postings in local directories.
An effective marketing strategy requires multiple components, and we can help you take care of them all.
Contact Us Today!
Ready to boost your bankruptcy law firm up the state and local search results? Good news – we’re ready to help you get started.
Contact SEOButler today!