How to Attract the Right Clients to Your Attorney Website

Your attorney website is the cornerstone of your marketing efforts. In the digital age, it’s like a business card, billboard, and a storefront all rolled into one—it tells visitors who you are, what you do, why they should choose your firm, and how they can engage your services. For many prospective clients, your website is likely to be their first contact with your firm. 

A bad website can discourage visitors from contacting your firm. But even the best, most modern attorney website won’t convert visitors into clients if they’re not the right visitors. So, who are the right visitors for your website? And how can you make sure they see it? We’ve got four simple steps for you to follow to attract the right traffic to your website. 

Step 1. Identify the Ideal Client You Want Your Site to Attract

The first step in attracting qualified leads to your website is knowing who your target audience is. Who is your ideal client? Surprisingly, some attorneys struggle to answer this question. Some say that they will work with anyone. 

But taking the time to imagine your ideal client helps you craft a message that will resonate with the people you most want to work with—and whom you are best equipped to help. 

Some questions to consider: 

• What are the characteristics of clients I have most enjoyed working with in the past? What legal needs did they have in common? What was satisfying about working with them?
• What legal issues am I most passionate about, and best at solving?
• Are there particular industries or demographics with which I enjoy working?
• Does my practice tend to attract clients in a certain demographic?
• What are my clients worried about? What’s at stake for them, both on the surface and at a deeper level?
• Where do my clients live?
• How educated are my clients? Are they sophisticated consumers of legal services, or might this be their first time needing a lawyer?

If you spend some time sitting with these questions, themes are likely to emerge. You may picture a past client who embodies the type of client you would like to attract. Or you may begin to put together a set of traits that describe your ideal client. 

For example, a recent TMF client who is an estate planning attorney described his ideal clients as “married couples over 50, college-educated, business owners, with an estate worth $10-20 million.” That doesn’t mean he won’t work with clients who don’t check all of those boxes. But, as with playing darts, it’s a lot easier to land close to the bullseye when you have something at which to aim. 

Step 2. Refine Your Content and Messaging for Your Ideal Client

If you’re out on the ocean fishing, the bigger and wider your net, the more fish you are likely to catch. It seems logical that the wider the net your website casts, the more clients it will bring in. 

Unfortunately, what works for scooping up fish often doesn’t translate well to scooping up clients. It’s natural to not want to exclude any potential leads. But by casting too wide a net, you necessarily dilute your message, which means it may not reach or resonate with the clients you most want to attract.

We’re not going to lie: narrowing the focus of your marketing can be scary, especially if you feel like you don’t have enough business right now. You might, in fact, get fewer visitors to your website. But those you do attract will be more likely to spend more time there, and be more likely to become clients, because they were looking for a law firm like yours. 

Step 3. Implement a SEO Strategy to Help Your Target Clients Find You 

You’ve clarified what kinds of clients you want to work with. You’ve decided to target those clients in your marketing. How can you make sure those clients actually find your website? Make sure your search engine optimization (SEO) is firing on all cylinders.

Target the Right Keywords

If your prospective clients are searching for a law firm online, put yourself in their shoes. What words would you type into a search engine if you were looking for, say, a divorce lawyer or someone to prepare your will? 

Don’t overlook long-tailed keywords, especially those with localized terms. These more-specific search terms often have a lower search volume, but higher conversion rates. For example, terms like “child custody” tend to have a high search volume.  “Child custody lawyer for special needs” or “Child custody lawyer Greensboro” don’t have as many people searching, so it’s easier to rank for these terms. Also, searchers using these terms may be closer to making the decision to hire an attorney than those using broader terms.

Paige Silver, TMF’s Director of Marketing, observes, “Using keyword research tools like SEMrush or Moz can offer data on how often a phrase is searched for, as well as how difficult it is to search for that term. That can help you identify keywords to target that will give you the best chance to drive users to your website.”

Work on Local SEO

Some lawyers aren’t limited by geography, but most are trying to attract clients local to them. If you want clients in your geographic area to find you, you need to set up and optimize your Google Business Profile (GBP). Paige Silver points out, “A well-optimized GBP is critical for getting searchers in your area to see you. It helps your business appear in the “local pack” and Google Maps placements, making it easier for potential clients to find you and contact you from the search results page.

Make sure your name, address, and phone number (NAP) are consistent across online directories. Inconsistent listings confuses search engines (and potential clients) and damages your local pack and Google maps rankings.

Improve Technical SEO

Don’t forget to optimize title tags, meta descriptions, and alt image descriptions with the keywords you are targeting for each page. Use internal linking to help both human users and search engine crawlers navigate your site. If you can, get backlinks from high-authority websites in your field; they’ll help establish your site as one to be trusted.

Step 4. Give the People What They Want

You’ve identified and focused on your target audience, and polished your SEO to make sure your website pages rank for the search terms your target clients are using. Now it’s time to seal the deal. What will clients find when they see the link to your website in search results and click on it?

If the answer isn’t “high-quality, client-focused content,” all the work you’ve done in the previous steps may be wasted. Yes, your pages should target the keywords you’ve identified, but those keywords also need to fit in the context of information that your target readers want. Remember that, in most practice areas, you’re not writing for other lawyers; you’re writing for laypeople who want answers they can understand. Don’t use “legalese” or complicated language. 

Keeping your content fresh and updated is important to search engines, and regularly publishing a blog is a great way to do that. More importantly, blog posts are a great way to answer the questions prospective clients want to ask, like: “Can I deduct alimony payments on my taxes?” “Should I have a will or a trust?” “Will I get fired if I have a DUI?” Answering these questions builds trust and reassures potential clients you can help them. 

Of course, they can’t be reassured until they get to your site and read your content. But the good news is that search engines like the same kind of helpful content that people do. So if you’re answering the anticipated questions of your ideal client on your website, search engines are more likely to help them find it. 

How The Modern Firm Helps Attorneys with Client Acquisition

If you’ve made your way through this blog post and thought, “That’s great, but I don’t have time to do all that stuff,” we’ve got you. Attracting qualified leads to your website does take work, but you don’t have to do it alone.  The Modern Firm offers a range of services to help you attract the right traffic to your website. Depending on your needs.

It’s never too late to start attracting qualified leads to your website—and it’s never too early, either. For clients who work with us to create their websites, we start with a branding process that, among other things, identifies a firm’s key strengths and ideal clients. Many website clients opt for TMF’s Kickstart optimization process, which optimizes each page of their planned website content from jump. 

To learn more about how to attract the right clients to your website, or the tools we use to help you do so, just get in touch.