Our Proven Law Firm Marketing Process

A breakdown of our 15-step client on-boarding process as well as ongoing services to be included in your attorney marketing program.

shows covers of three ebooks

how to dominate your niche

Download My Free E-books

What's better than one? How about 3?!

as seen on

Below is a step-by-step description of the onboarding process you can expect when you become a monthly retainer client with Trial Law Digital.

Our Proven Law Firm Marketing Process

Step #1 — Client Questionnaire

We believe in transparency, and in the spirit of that, filling out the Client Questionnaire will be the most painful part of your experience when you work with us. But we have to get information from you to effectively market your business online. Our questionnaire is designed to get all the information we could possibly need to manage your online properties. This is a critical step in our process and is important that all the questions are answered thoroughly and accurately. Basically, we need this information to do everything — do build the SEO/PPC campaign, map out new content, optimize existing content, build links and citations, etc.

Step #2 — Audit / Competition Analysis

The second step in our process is an analysis of your current website and review of your content. We will also complete an SEO audit to determine where you are currently and what corrective action may be necessary. Then we look at your competition and what strategies they are using from an on-page SEO perspective. We will schedule a call highlighting the key points of the audit so you can understand our plan. We will also provide you with a few options for our services and cover what is included with each.

Step #3 — Keyword Research / Topic Brainstorm

During this phase, we use leading keyword research tools like SEMRush to discern what keywords are driving traffic to your website and competitor sites. Once I have taken all of this into account, we can use our tool to research some additional ideas within that topic with SEMRush’s keyword magic tool. Putting in keywords and topics will actually give us some content suggestions. Once the research has been done, it’s time to narrow it down so that each topic is associated with about 7-10 target keywords. It is a good rule of thumb to choose keywords with higher search volume, that you are already ranking well for, and that are going to be attainable. We now have topics that we are going to base your content around, as well as the keywords we want to optimize the website around.

  • What are prospective clients looking for?
  • What is your law firm’s unique service proposition (USP)?
  • What topics/practice areas do you want to write about?
  • What topics do you currently write about?

Step #4 — Google Adwords Campaign

Like wine and brie, SEO and PPC pair well together. Because we’ve had such great success with this in the legal marketing space, we work on them concurrently. PPC has the advantage of instant analytics – we can test your ads often, quickly shifting strategy and budget toward the ads and keywords that are converting into leads. Using the latest tools such as Google Analytics and Adwords Conversion Tracking, we can provide real-time analytical insight to maximize your marketing investment. We can also use these high-converting keywords in the SEO campaign.

  • Write winning ads
  • Organize your account for maximum relevance and manageability
  • Select keywords and know which keyword “matching options” are best for your business
  • Filter out untargeted traffic that can cost you money
  • Use the Google Adwords ranking formula or “Quality Score”
  • Leverage Remarketing to maximize the life of your clicks
  • Make the most of location-based targeting

Step #5 — On-page Optimization

It all starts with the design and programming of your custom WordPress website. Your website is the hub of all your digital marketing and helps with conversion from offline advertising. For that reason we want to make sure we have that right from the start. Whether you have a nice professionally designed website, a DIY website, or no website at all we are going to analyze what you have and make improvements that optimize your website for converting visitors into customers. Your on-page SEO is the foundation of all your other SEO efforts. Do it right, and your page will have the strength to become a skyscraper. Do it wrong, and all your other SEO techniques combined will never get that page off the ground. Here, we start by optimizing the following elements of your website:

  • Page/Meta Titles
  • Meta Descriptions
  • Heading Tags (h1 – h6)
  • Image ALT Text
  • Content Length
  • Anchor Text
  • Permalink / URL Structure
  • Schema/Structured Data

Step #6 — Online Reporting Portal

At this point, we will provide you with a private link to access your reports and campaign deliverables. This is a unique reporting portal to house your Trial Law Digital campaign reports and deliverables. Your proprietary data is secure and protected on a dedicated server in a Google cloud-hosted environment.

Step #7 — Citation Audit

Don’t nap on your NAP. The consistency in the appearance of your law firm’s name, address, and phone number (NAP) matters to the overall strength and efficacy of your website’s authority in local search marketing. Perhaps you already know that a whole lot of inconsistent/duplicate citations can cause serious problems and delays when it comes to ranking in local search results. This is a necessary service developed for any kind of law firm that has been in business more than five years and has moved more than one time since address changes can wreak havoc with your citation health. Our cleanup campaigns are a multi-step process that normally take around 12 weeks to fully complete. We will leave no stone unturned. We work to kill duplicate citations and enforce your firm’s standardized NAP across all incorrect sites referencing your firm.

Step #8 — Link Building

We start by pulling links from your top 5 competitors to first find the ‘low-hanging fruit.’ These are links and citations that are easily obtained — often these end up being citations from online business directories or local websites. In many cases, the free YEXT Power Listings® Network syndication package you receive as part of your Google My Business Optimization service will help to squash these inconsistencies. Using the findings from our Competitive Citation Audit, we will then begin to build Hyper-Local Citations. These are handmade, custom local business citations catered directly for your law firm’s niche and city. Next, we build out branded links on Authority Properties, focusing on a handful of must-have citations and big data aggregators, perfect for new sites or businesses who haven’t built enough citations yet.

Step #9 — Content Strategy

The typical law firm website we see from potential clients is thin content sites. Most are only between 5 and 10 pages including the homepage, about page, practice areas, contact page, perhaps a few more practice area pages, and a blog that’s not updated regularly . This is not enough to rise about your competition and to be visible on a wide range of search queries — what’s known as the “long-tail” of searches. So we take a different approach by building out separate, hyper-specific landing pages for all of your practice areas. This is necessary for the Google AdWords campaign in terms of landing visitors on the most relevant page to their query, but more importantly, it impacts local organic search by properly siloing your content. If you have more than one office location, a local landing page will also be built out with locally relevant content (and a map embed with local driving directions) to further help build local signals. We also include blog posts (written by actual lawyers) for ongoing content creation. Our typical law firm website is between 20 and 30 pages (not counting any blog content). Note that we hand-pick experienced law bloggers to execute the content. We use the information you provided in your Client Questionnaire about your practice areas, guarantee, and firm differentiators to craft your website content. Because we only work with law firms we know your business well and have proven on-page content formats that not only create a great user experience but are also search engine-friendly and keyword-optimized.

Step #10 — Google My Business Optimization

Google My Business is incredibly important for local SEO. Without it you won’t be appearing on any local map listings in the SERPs which Google displays for the vast majority of local queries. During this stage of the campaign, we use your Google My Business log-in to connect you to our GMB Dashboard. Take advantage of any opportunity you have to increase your chances of being found in search results. One easy way to get found is by optimizing photos with keywords and geo-tagged location data before uploading them to your Google My Business (GMB) listings. Our GMB Dashboard features the first ever geo-tagging photo optimization and publishing tool that allows you to add metadata and EXIF data to photos as well as schedule photos to multiple GMB locations. For Google My Business Optimization Service customers, a YEXT Power Listings® Network subscription is included – a value worth $76/month per location.

Step #11 — Reputation Monitoring / Review System

One of the key things you can do to create trust on and off of your website is to have a strong review profile. Every website we manage comes powered with BirdEye, a review management platform that allows you to monitor reviews, embed them on your website so you have a constant feed of recent reviews from across the web, syndicate 4 and 5 star reviews to your social profiles, and have an automated process for requesting reviews and feedback.

Step #12 — Lead Tracking Tool (live Chat / Call Tracking / Form Integration)

Trial Law Digital has a custom lead portal where your web traffic and conversion data is under one roof so you can easily see what’s working. Better still, it integrates with Google Analytics, Google AdWords, and Google Search Console, giving you true insight into our online marketing efforts. It can even tell us which things are driving those captures — Paid/Organic Search, social media, referrals from other websites, or Direct traffic. Regardless of your practice area specialty, every law firm’s website needs live chat. When your business model depends on your ability to communicate with clients and earn their trust in real time, live chat gives you the chance to do this while they’re already thinking about you.

Step #13 — Website Launch

Once everything above is done we will launch your new website and set up the accounts need.
We will also create and submit a sitemap, request Google to crawl and index your website via Google Search Console.
This process typically take about 4 weeks but could go as many as 6 weeks depending on the scope of your project.

Step #14 — Configure WordPress Plug-ins

Having more than 10 years of experience with WordPress, we know our way around some of the best premium (read: paid) plug-ins to make it function well, such as image compression and caching plug-ins for Google Page Speed testing.
Your site will include premium (paid subscription for the following):

  • SEO
  • Schema
  • Caching
  • Image Compression
  • Web SPAM
  • Form Submissions

Step #15 — Issue Press Release

We will write your press release and your new site will be published on 130+ websites. Your press release is distributed to online sites of newspapers, television, and radio stations around the U.S. You’re also going to get published on popular blogs, RSS feeds, news aggregators, and news search engines.
When you distribute a press release, you’ll receive links from many high-authority news sites all over the web. These links are natural signals to the search engines that your content is popular.
Here are some of the websites where your release will appear:

‍what Digital Marketing Services Are Bundled?

  • Custom WordPress Website
  • Live Chat
  • Call Tracking
  • Form Tracking
  • Leads Tracking Tool
  • Website Optimization
  • Schema Implementation
  • Google My Business Optimization
  • YEXT Power Listings® Network
  • WPENGINE Hosting
  • Premium SEO Plugins
  • Caching/Image Compression Premium WordPress Plug-ins
  • CDN (Content Delivery Network)
  • Press Release Writing & Distribution

What Services Recur Monthly?

  • Citation Development — We proactively claim your local directory listings on Google My Business, Bing Places, Local.com, Apple Maps Connect, Mapquest, Brownbook, Yelp, and more than 300 other local citation directories across the web. Each month we continually build citations on niche-specific directories such as Attorney Pages, Legal Web Finder, Lawyer Central, Lawyer Profiles, Avvo, Justia, and many more. We build out your listings including uploading photos, videos, services, etc. and optimizing them for top placement.
  • Data Aggregator Submission — Having incorrect business data online can harm your business rankings. We will submit your business information to the four main data aggregators (Factual, Neustar Localeze, Infogroup, and Acxiom). Together, these data providers are referenced by hundreds of online listing directories, search engines, local search platforms and applications, and navigational solutions.
  • Link Building — We will implement a proactive strategy to obtain inbound links by creating and distributing quality content (articles, blog posts, videos, etc.) on your behalf. We will also do competitive link acquisition from your top 10 competing law firms. This is one of the most important and technical activities influencing search engine optimization / placement. We use all “white hat” seo tactics to keep your website and business safe from penalties from search engines. With every order we push your live links through our indexing process to make sure Google “counts” the new links. There is no extra charge for this.
  • Publish Content Regularly — We consistently create content for your business to improve search rankings and provide geographical relevant content for your website visitors. We also create content to be used in the link acquisition process.
  • Review Request System — Each month we will assist you in scheduling review requests using the reputation management software provided with your website.
  • Social Media Marketing — Our attorney marketing program includes occasional social media postings and Facebook Ads management.
  • Pay Per Click Management — Our law firm marketing program also includes pay-per-click (PPC) management which includes ad creation, monitoring, improvements and retargeting services each month.

shows covers of three ebooks

the ebook 3-pack

dominate maps, organic seo & facebook ads