The Whitespark Local Pulse

The Whitespark Local Pulse for 07/13/2021

Here are today's local search posts. Woo!

The Whitespark Local Pulse

Never Miss a Local Search Post

By Josh Brown on Jul 12, 2021 05:24 am

3 Astonishing Traits of Personal Injury Websites That Transform Them Into Lead Generating Machines STOP:  Got a Hot Pocket in your mouth and about to make a mad dash to the local courthouse? ↓ Click here ↓ to be shuttled to our exclusive list of the top, most kick-ass personal injury websites ever to shade a pixel! What is a Personal Injury Lawyer Website? Before we begin, we must identify what a personal injury lawyer website is.  A personal injury lawyer site is a digital asset operated by a law firm, promoted for the purpose of informing visitors about its services and converting those visitors into nurtured leads.  The best personal injury websites accomplish the task of educating their visitors and acquiring their business more efficiently than competing websites. Was the above paragraph written for Googlebot?  Yassss, of course, it was!  What do you think we do here at Juris Digital? 😇 OK, for those of you who walk vertically and have a genuine interest in this stuff, don’t worry:  we’ll keep it real for ya from here on out.  In fact, we’ll even break down that sacred 4th wall and expose some industry secrets about how you too can make your personal injury law firm website the best it can be! Website Core Values Core values.  Listen, guys, we’ve analyzed thousands of PI sites over the years.  Even though that intro paragraph was written for Google to get our page to rank, what we said holds true.  An injury site for lawyers must adhere to these principles to be graded among the best: Answer the query (keyword) each page is optimized for from an SEO perspective Sufficiently inform the visitor  Capture the visitors information for lead follow-up That’s it. Performance First You may be scratching that overly-intelligent head, wondering, “Well, hells bells, what about how the website looks?” First things first.   And, the first thing is performance.  It doesn’t matter how attractive that late model Mercedes Benz S550 AMG is if the carburetor is on its last leg.  By contrast, a personal injury design ripping and roaring with images drenched in high resolution will bring your load times to a screeching halt. Your organic rankings may wind up doing a stretch on Google’s page 2 with the rest of the repeat offenders. 3 Distinct Traits of Successful Personal Injury Site Designs The fact is in 2021, building out the best personal injury websites is just like doing personal injury SEO:  it’s sometimes what you don’t see that moves the needle.  Here we will delve into three crucial components necessary to build the proper foundation required for success.  If you’ve ever wondered why you haven’t been able to “get it right,” maybe this list will give you an alleyoop. #1.  An Exceptional Technical Foundation This is an extension of what our core values are:  leveraging enhanced performance.  It all comes down to speed, amigo.  There are two fundamentals to satisfy:  Google and your visitors. Mobile visitors should now make up the majority of your traffic, so improving their experience with blazing fast load times would be appreciated. Got a law firm website that loads wicked fast?  Google will reward you. Strap on your kicks.  Here’s how you level up in the speed department. Get an insanely good website host.  Clean code is cool, but you need a sturdy ship to carry your precious cargo.  We’ve seen multi-million dollar, multi-location firms hosted on budget shared hosting.  #MindBlown  Think of it this way.  Your website hosting is your “building” that houses your offices on the internet.  Downtimes, backups being lost (or not at all), hackers, slow load times, bad neighborhoods–the list goes on.  The following is our recommended list of web hosts for law firms.  Choose wisely. I feel the need, the need for Page Speed.  We obsess over page speed here at Juris Digital.  There are a bevy of reasons for this.  Optimal keyword rankings, superior conversions rates, and better user experience.  Improving your website’s speed is one of the most sound investments your firm can make, hands down.  Page speed is not for the faint at heart as far as developers go.  Ergo, optimizing for page speed separates the men from the boys in the law firm website design industry.  Wanna test your site’s page speed?  Click here to test your firm’s site on Google — it’s free! Own WordPress.  What’s not to say about WordPress?  Nearly half a billion sites use this free Content Management System.  At Juris Digital, we use it on all our personal injury clients.  Also, make sure you own your instance of WordPress, so if you leave your agency for whatever reason, you can take your assets with you (4th wall: down). Do SEO.  Law firm search engine optimization (SEO) does more than just rank stuff super high in Google.  SEO makes sure documents are accessible and indexable by search engines.  If Googlebot and other spiders aren’t able to crawl around your site at night, it’ll be no wonder why you don’t have any traffic.  The cool part about WordPress is it’s well-suited for optimization.  Heaps of plugins and an interface that’s a perfect fit for an SEO pro. #2. Unlearn Your Biases & Prioritize Your Users If there’s one thing I know from working with hundreds of lawyers it’s that lawyers know everything.   Even web design. OK, OK.  You guys do know a lot.  I’ll give you that.  But, you probably know as much about web design as I do. I can say this with 100% confidence:  what works on TV and billboards doesn’t always translate to Google search.  Television, billboards, Facebook Ads, and the like are forms of “interruption marketing”.  Google is different.  Users are actively seeking your services.  Depending on the keyword, they may badly need your help. Flashy law firm designs with over-the-top, engorging themes are often associated with personal injury lawyers, but that’s not what we prescribe at Juris Digital.  Rather, we stress simplicity.  Elegance.  Taste.  These elements aren’t a...

Level Up Your Local SEO Skills for Free!

Here's what you can expect at #WLSS:

  • 30+ talks from the industry’s best and brightest, plus 3 panels.

  • Unique content, fascinating research, and actionable strategies.

  • Topic coverage on all the major areas in local SEO Website, Content, Link Building, CRO, Citations, Digital PR, and more) plus Google My Business tips and advice.

10 More Local Search Posts You May Have Missed