Real Estate Development: How the Landscape of SEO Has Changed

Law firms, especially big law firms, tend to rely on SEO to market their practices online.  The age-old question is: how do I get to Page One on Google?  The new problem is that Page One of Google is changing.

Leveraging search results has always been more of an art than a science; and, the picture is shifting again.  Google’s algorithms and search results pages get tweaked from time to time, and it pays to monitor trends, which develop over time.  One current trend is the increasing exposure of paid advertising on the sought-after first page of Google search results.  Looking at a first page result now versus those same results, even as compared to a few years ago, yields a significant difference.  There are more paid advertising results (generally PPC) at the top of the page than ever before, and the prominence of those ads has been amplified.  Furthermore, map results are displayed directly below paid advertising, in a more prominent way than those results have previously been arrayed.  This magnifies the importance of local search.  Below all of that: you get to the traditionally-engineered SEO results.

What does that mean for your business?  Well, it means that straight SEO manipulation is less valuable than it once was; and, it means that law firms can and should start shifting a percentage of that budget to paid advertising and local search options (law firm search was already highly localized anyway).  In an omnichannel marketing environment, in which law firms live, it makes sense to  diversify.  And, in some cases, that means reallocating resources based on trends.

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If your SEO campaigns are running you, give us a call.

The Wyoming State Bar offers free law practice management consulting services through Red Cave Law Firm Consulting.

To request a consult, visit the Wyoming State Bar’s law practice management page, and start running your law firm like a business.

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