What Drives Us
What drives us is priority, passion and pride. These are our core beliefs.
A little backstory.
I’ve been entrenched in the SEO for lawyers game for a decade and I’ve gone at it hard, non-stop. I hesitate to use the term “law firm SEO expert” towards myself, but I’ll just say, I can hold my own. I started as the founding employee at one of the largest law firm SEO agencies in the world, which afforded me the invaluable opportunity of witnessing many valuable lessons.
As time went on, I observed changes that concerned me as I moseyed about to other large legal marketing agencies.
So let’s cut to the chase: The bigger the agency, the less priority the smaller accounts get.
This isn’t to say the agency owners don’t care about smaller firms — some do! — it’s just a matter of business economics. Say you have $3,500 per month to invest in SEO and the lawyer SEO agency feels your firm is a good fit and takes you on. Well, no matter the intention, where do you think you’re going to fit in? You deserve to be a priority.
All of this is counting on your account manager actually being capable. An unspoken sin is to discuss the competency of SEO operators in our space. Truthfully, the skillset among my fellow colleagues is, on average, quite poor. I cannot fault the agencies for their lackluster performance, either. Accountability lies with self. I’ve spend thousands of hours studying, tens of thousands dollars invested in my continued education, and sacrificed relationships and a social life, all in the name of achieving “expert” level status. I think the average employee just isn’t willing to make that type of commitment and it shows.
In 2023 and beyond, SEO will become so complex, optimizing law firms is no longer a soft skill; SEO will morph into engineering. Without passion to drive them, many SEO operators may find themselves washed out.
Next up, let’s take a gander at finances.
One would think the bigger the agency, the more they can invest into marketing. Not always true. The problem is you, as the principle attorney of a law firm, just don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes.
Consultants have less clients, often with higher retainers and operate with better margins. Better margins give the consultants more flexibility with your budget. My comments aren’t to insinuate some agencies do not care or wouldn’t spend more if they could; some may just be in a tight spot and are doing the best they can with what they have.
Finally, simply caring goes a long way. As a consultant, we need to be there for our clients, taking pride in deliverables, caring about our work down to the pixel, and not overloading ourselves with 10 troublesome clients so everyone can get the necessary attention they deserve. Additionally, we must invest in ourselves constantly with CE and executing rigorous testing to stay on the cutting edge for our law firm clients.
At the end of the day, for us in the business, SEO is an arms race for not only results but for your business as well.
Agency vs consultant: who are you going to choose?