Clienting #40: Ben Sessions Knows Technical SEO

Clienting: Digital Legal Marketing

Ben Sessions joins Kelly Street this week to discuss all things Technical SEO, Local SEO, and Facebook Advertising.

Ben (The Sessions Law Firm) is an Atlanta-based Criminal Defense attorney who truly enjoys learning and doing great online marketing for his law firm and sees results in clients & cases.

What is Ben doing for his marketing?

• Multiple offices; Ben has 3 offices and considers how his local search will be affected by the office location. He avoids coworking spaces for this reason but we do talk about ways to overcome this.
• Technical SEO; This is looking at the backend of your site, instead of focusing on the most beautiful website.
• Utilize link tracking, like Moz, SEMRush, Ahrefs. This will help you keep track of your links online.
• Learn SEO basics like title tags, and more. This won't take a lot of time and will help you in the long run.
• Choose your website host carefully. Ben chose a proprietary platform, which he now regrets because he feels locked in and isn't getting as much SEO benefit out of his website
• Memberships = Links. For bar associations or any other membership site, capture those links to your profile. This may be the biggest benefit to your membership.
• Pay attention to your analytics. Head over to your Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools accounts, check them regularly and earn the basics for both of these.
• Google My Business! We talk a lot about this but GMB is a great, easy, and free tool that every law firm can easily maximize.
  • Ben, when it comes to marketing changes & updates: "Do not let that uncertainty make you become stationary... you have to engage in this [marketing]."
• Referrals myth-busting! Ben supposes that referrals are not the main stream of legal clients in 2019.
• Make videos. Ben suggests starting on YouTube before posting to social media because you will most likely not get very much traffic but you will get experience. Also- don't just publish on YouTube.
  • One key takeaway here- experiment!
  • Comments are actually good for your engagement metrics, so don't be afraid of them, even the negative ones!
• Reviews- Ben doesn't pay for reviews but he does pay attention to anywhere he gets them.
  • Ben "You may not have time to pay attention to reviews now but somewhere down the line, you will need to and it might be too late."
  • Concerned about a potential client? See if they're leaving negative reviews online for other businesses and beware, especially if you are a lower volume law firm.
• Paid Social & PPC - Ben has not had great luck managing his own PPC in the past but has found great success with paid Facebook in the short while he has used this method. Ben suggests posting videos and promoting them for engagement.
• Use call tracking and UTM codes to track your marketing efforts!
• Marketing is not set it and forget it!