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Chris Dreyer

7 SEO Tips for Law Firms, Lawyers & Attorneys

Google is hands down the easiest way to drive clients to a law firm.

The problem is, every law firm knows this and invests heavily into their SEO.

This has made the legal space one of the more competitive verticals in SEO.

Hopefully, this post will save you time:

  • Learning the small tweaks you can do yourself for big ranking increases.
  • Using these as “must see” points to screen bad proposals from SEO agencies.
  • Understanding how SEO for lawyers is unique compared with other verticals.

⚠️ IMPORTANT ⚠️
If you’re an attorney, I know how busy you are – you won’t have time to read this entire article. If you find yourself in need of an impartial assessment of your firm’s SEO health, contact our expert SEO strategist today to discuss your options.


  • Google’s top spots are dominated by paid ads and local results
  • Among the 10 organic results, almost 50% of the sites are large aggregator sites like Avvo, Justia, Super Lawyers, etc
  • Only 25% of organic traffic is available to individual websites
  • The competition is huge and CPC is insanely high
  • You can’t outrank the aggregator sites so you should rank your profile on them instead
  • You can also run ads on sites like Avvo and avoid the ridiculous CPCs for legal keywords in Google

Google’s search results are changing. There’s currently 19 result types that dominate Google’s top spots.

search result type

This applies to the legal space as well. When searching for “Miami DUI attorney“, there’s a lot of noise:

  • 7 paid ads (4 on top, 3 on the bottom)
  • 3 local results (“Maps” pack)
  • 10 organic results (“blue links”)

Think about that – of the 10 organic results, half of them are aggregator sites (Avvo, Yelp, etc) – only 25% of organic results are really available.

The competition for those spots is tough – you need to be realistic about your campaign and adjust strategy accordingly.

Aside from just ranking your website, there’s other tactics that will increase your overall organic exposure.

My best piece of advice as it relates to attorney SEO is instead of fighting aggregator sites, leverage them. Avvo, Justia, Super Lawyers – they’ve done the hard work, they rank for everything.

Avvo SEO

The beauty of these sites is they have their own internal algorithms to rank profiles.

If you optimize your profile to rank in Avvo, you’re essentially ranking for your “money” keywords right off the bat.

avvo-ranking

On top of that, you can pay for ads within Avvo. These are a great way to bypass the ridiculous CPCs for legal keywords in Google, and capture that traffic through Avvo.

The point is, in competitive spaces, you have to realistic about your goals. The competition is only getting stronger, keep your mind open when it comes to capturing “organic traffic” – it doesn’t have to come from Google.

2. Select your keywords based on intent

  • Keyword mapping is the process of optimizing pages according to the keyword intent
  • The “Funnel” model gives us keywords for the Awareness, Interest and Action intents
  • The intent for the Money keyword is that someone is looking for your services
  • The intent for Discover keywords is that a user is looking for information on your services
  • The intent for Attention keywords is that the searcher is looking for information on their case
  • You should try to rank for all three types of keywords because it will triple your organic exposure and get traffic in the door much faster

I’m not going to cover how to find keywords – others have already done that (see Brian Dean’s guide).

Instead, I’m going to cover keyword mapping.

Keyword mapping is the process of optimizing pages and based on keyword intent.

We like to visualize using the “funnel” model.


“Awareness” keywords.

  • Intent: Looking for your services.
  • KW examples: Hire a Miami DUI attorney, Boston defense attorneys near me.

“Interest” keywords.

  • Intent: Looking for information on your services.
  • KW examples: Miami DUI attorney reviews, Miami DUI attorney cost,

“Action” keywords.

  • Intent: Looking for information on their case.
  • KW examples: How to fill out EB-5 Visa, DUI prison sentence length.

The main goal is to rank your “money” keywords. But … we want to dominate and rank for everything.

This strategy allows you to triple your organic exposure and get traffic in the door much faster.

To do so, you need to clearly understand how your keyword list maps to intent.

KW intent mapping

It’s a tedious process, but it helps you clearly understand how your website should be setup and the type of content to populate it with.

3. Alter your website structure to optimize for search

  • Organizing and grouping content, navigation and URL structure will help you rank well
  • If your firm specializes in only 1 type of service using an exact match domain name (EMD) is advised
  • To rank for niche searches add additional service pages
  • The more pages / content you create, the more niche traffic you can capture.
  • If you run a multiple service law firm use branded domain because using EMD will send mixed signals to Google
  • Rank for multiple offerings by adding separate pages for each additional service you offer
  • Capture additional traffic by adding sub-service pages to target long-tail searches
  • If your law firm operates from different locations instead of adding your office locations in a single page create separate pages for each location
  • Add city into the URL for each office location and rewrite its content to avoid content duplication
  • To inject the city into the URL add menu navigation for locations at the top of the main menu

It’s important for rankings and user experience to have an easy to use site.

That means grouping content, navigation and URL structure into organized buckets. Sounds easy, right?

It gets a little more complicated depending on your firm. Speaking strictly from a website perspective, there are 3 types of law firms:

  • Single service (i.e. DUI attorney)
  • Multiple services (i.e. you offer contract law, corporate law, criminal law, etc)
  • Multiple locations (i.e. you have offices in Miami, NYC, LA and London)

a. Single service law firm website

If your firm specializes in 1 type of law (DUI, criminal, etc), structure your site as follows:

Use exact match domain (EMD) for your website URL.

  • Example: www.miamiduilawyers.com
  • I generally discourage the use of EMDs because it cuts down your ability to rank for additional keywords. However, if you only perform one service, EMDs are the way to go.

Add services pages that drill down into your main niche.

  • Example: www.miamiduilawyers.com/our-services/bui, www.miamiduilawyers.com/our-services/criminal-dui, etc
  • By adding these additional services page you’re eligible to rank for niche searches. The more pages/content you create, the more niche traffic you can capture.

One service attorney

b. Multiple service law firm website

If your firm offers multiple services (i.e. criminal law, corporate law, business law and more), this is how to structure your site:

Use branded domain – NOT exact match domain (EMD).

  • Example: www.smithlaw.com
  • Using an EMD will send mixed signals to Google. For example, www.miamiduiattorney.com/our-serivces/corporate law/ crosses two service categories. It’s best to use your law firm name as the root domain

Add service pages for each offering.

  • Example: www.smithlaw.com/our-services/contract-law/
  • How can Google rank your home page for 10 different services? Creating a separate page for each service affords the ability to rank for multiple offerings

Add sub-service pages to capture additional traffic.

  • Example: www.smithlaw.com/our-services/contract-law/drafting
  • Drilling down further into your services will help to capture long tail searches

Attorney Website Setup

c. Multiple location law firm website

If your firm has multiple office locations (i.e. Miami, NYC and LA), this is how to structure your site:

Add city into URL for each office location.

  • Example: www.smithlaw.com/miami/our-services/; www.smithlaw.com/nyc/our-services/
  • Most sites with multiple locations add a page for “Locations”. In a competitive niche, this cuts off your ability to rank in multiple cities
  • To rank for local searches, it helps to have the city within the URL string. This requires you to essentially create a new site for each city (within your existing site)
  • This also will require you to rewrite content on your site to avoid duplication penalties

Include a menu navigation to switch between cities.

  • Example: (see screenshot below)
  • There needs to be a way to inject the city into the URL. Some sites do this via footer, I like to add it above the menu (see below)
  • The way this works is simple – when a user clicks on the “Boca Raton” link, the URL shifts to example.com/boca-raton. This creates the proper hierarchy for search engines to understand your site and rank for multiple locations

Multiple location websites

4. Optimize for local search as well

  • To show up in localized / maps searches, set up and verify your Google My Business listing
  • Optimize GMB listing titles that get displayed in localized results
  • To create a more click-able title name the page with your main keyword first, followed by your brand / business name
  • Write a 150 – 200 words description of your services and link directly to the services pages on your website
  • Manage your reviews, local citations and build your firm’s listing in the relevant directories

Most of “local” SEO is covered by the traditional SEO discussed throughout this guide.

However, there are a couple of additional actions you’ll need to take to make sure your site is optimized for local search as well.

Google My Business

GMB plays a HUGE role in local SEO. In fact, GMB listings are displayed either first or before organic search results:

Google Local Results Miami Attorney

Get Verified

If you haven’t already, set up and verify your Google My Business: https://www.google.com/business/.

Google will send you a post card in the mail with a verification code. Sometimes you may be able to verify by phone. Your listing may still appear in local search even though it isn’t verified but you won’t be able to fully control your listing until you verify it by pin.

Optimize Your Page

Once you get your code, log in to your Google account and enter it:

set-up-google-business-local

First, edit the title of your page:

  • Click the pencil icon next to ”Business Name”
  • Use your actual real-world business name. There is some information out there about using your main keyword first, followed by your brand/business name (for example: Miami DUI Attorney – Smith / Stewart P.A.) however if this is not how your firm is commonly represented on your site, your marketing, in the real world, etc., it’s best not to do this. Google maintains strict guidelines for representing your business online.

Edit Google Places Page

Next, we’re going to edit the description of your page:

  • Click the pencil icon next to ”Introduction”
  • Write up to 750 characters about your law firm
  • Include a description of your services

Edit Google Business Title

Reviews

Reviews not only help your website rank for local searches, but they pull through valuable stars in the SERP listing.

I’m not going to cover how to get reviews in this post however Bright Local has an excellent post on how reviews impact local rankings.

In general, attorneys should focus on the following tactics when it comes to reviews:

  • Get reviews on top platforms like Google My Business, Facebook, and Yelp.
  • Respond to all reviews that are left on your profiles.
  • Re-purpose reviews (with permission) on your website.
  • Get reviews on secondary platforms important to the legal industry like Avvo, Justia, FindLaw, etc

Local Citations / Directories

Local citations and legal directory listings are business profiles on websites like FourSquare, Yelp, Yellow Pages and Brown Book.

These citations are valuable to local SEO because they’re essentially online phone books that associate your website with a physical location.

Example of a Local Citation

There are hundreds (thousands) of potential sites to build your firm’s listings in.

It’s a mind numbing process to manually create these listings and it’s easier to outsource.

  • Target one purchase intent keyword per page in each of your sales / service pages
  • Use the selected keyword once in the URL, page title, H1 tag, 1 image title, 1 image alt tag and 2 – 3 times in the body
  • Target info intent keywords in your service pages
  • Build your blog content around info keywords
  • Create unique and useful content that searchers can’t find elsewhere
  • Your blog is your chance to prove your worth and good blog content will help you generate social signals, backlinks, and traffic

In other words, you need to create pages that are a valuable resource for your target audience. Top of the funnel content for example needs to be all-encompassing and informative. The NJ Lemon Law Firm pictured below is a great example of a page that focuses on a broad keyword phrase on a page educating consumers about consumer protection laws in New Jersey related to automobiles.

consumer protection lawyers in New Jersey

I hope you’ve stuck around to this point – your SEO success hinges on the ability to create and distribute content.

You’ve heard it before: “content is king”.

I hate it.

This buzzword has sites launching blogs with content adding no value. In fact, it’s driving potential clients away.

Allow me put it in perspective.

Let’s say you’re in the market for SEO services. You do a Google search for a couple of agencies in your area and you click on the first couple of results.

Let’s be honest, they all say the same thing. How can you tell the difference?

Every business’ website claims to be an expert. A great blog proves it.

Assigning keywords to your content

Start by heading back to your list of keywords separated by intent.

  • Use keywords tagged with “Purchase” in “Services” type pages.
  • Use keywords tagged with “Info” in “Blog” posts.

Using “Purchase” Intent Keywords

This is SEO 101 – I’m not going to spend a lot of time on it.

Keywords with purchase intent should be targeted at sales / service pages. Each page should be themed at one main keyword. Include that keyword in:

  • The URL
  • Title of the page
  • <h1> tag
  • 1 image title
  • 1 image alt tag
  • 2 – 3 times throughout the content (page should include at least 350 words of relevant content)

I’ll use the keywords from my “Miami DUI Attorney” as an example.

Main KW: Miami DUI Attorney:

  • Page URL: www.miamiduiattorney.com
  • Page Title: The #1 Miami DUI Attorney – Stewart, P.A
  • Heading 1: Drunk Driving Arrest? Hire The Top Miami DUI Attorney
  • Image Title: miami-dui-attorney-stewart-pa
  • Image Alt Tag: Miami DUI Attorney Ryan Stewart P.A.
  • Content: Write out 500 words on Miami based DUI attorney services. Include 5 – 6 high volume keyword variations as well

Repeat this on every page for every “Purchase” keyword you’re targeting.

Using “Info” Intent Keywords

99% of SEO agencies will stop at “purchase” keywords.

Thing is, you need more than words on a page to get Google’s attention. You need social shares, brand mentions and a lot of high quality links.

Why would someone share your homepage? Why would a website link to your services page about DUIs?

They wouldn’t. I know this. You know this. Google knows this.

If your website has a ton of links pointing to 1 page it looks like spam and your website is going to get bitch slapped by Google.

“Info” type content is what generates real shares and links. That’s why you need a blog.

Let’s go back to the “Info” keywords I generated earlier. Keywords like “DUI trial”, “DUI first offense” and “DUI trial questions” generate a good amount of monthly searches.

These are the keywords to build content around.

That’s the easy part. The hard part is creating content people actually care about.

People don’t care about “10 Reasons to Hire an Attorney”. Give them something they can’t find anywhere else.

You paid $300,000 for an education – show us what you learned!

  • In depth guides – “What to do When Arrrested for Your First DUI”
  • Case studies – “How to Beat Your First DUI Arrest”
  • Infographics – “Visual Guide to Getting Off Your DUI Arrest”

Don’t skimp on the details. Prove you’re an expert. Show why you’re worth $300/hour.

This content drives social shares, links and traffic. More importantly, it establishes your firm as a trusted voice and industry leader for legal advice.

  • You need different types of links to build authority in Google
  • Build social media and forum links to create a buzz around your site
  • Drive traffic to your website by searching Quora for questions related to your business and provide useful information in your answers
  • Pass link juice from your blog content to your money pages with internal linking
  • Create link-worthy content and do a link outreach
  • Search Google for resource pages and reach out for inclusion
  • Dig out which websites are linking to your competitors and find opportunities to get links from the same sites
  • Use guest posting to acquire links
  • Purchase links from news media websites by calling them instead of emailing

Links are still the #1 ranking factor. However, it’s not as easy as it used to be.

14 months ago I could rank a site with click of a button. Literally – it was that easy.

Unfortunately, those days are over. Now, you need more than a handful of links.

In competitive verticals, Google ranks sites with authority and trust. Authoritative and trustworthy sites don’t have 1 type of link pointing to 1 page.

Attorney Link Building Process

Building trust with Google is a process. Here’s how I do it:

  • Social media and forum links to blog content
  • Link outreach to blog content
  • Internal links to money pages
  • White hat link building to money pages
  • Link buying to money pages

This is a long process – it takes a lot of time, resources and effort. I promise you – if you do what I’m telling you, it will pay off.

Social media and forum links

It’s not enough to post links to owned accounts. You’ve got to build a buzz around your site.

The best way to do start is get your content in groups and forums.

The mistake most make is pushing content in front of their target audience.

No one with a DUI is going to share an infographic about a DUI. However, if the content is good enough, your peers will.

Quora

Quora is a high visibility question and answer site. I’ve driven thousands of visits in the last few months alone using it.

The key to Quora is finding threads related to the content on your blog.

Let’s say you took my advice and wrote the guide: “What to do When Arrrested for Your First DUI”.

Start by doing a Google search command: site:quora.com what to do dui

Quora DUI Search

This search brought back 6,350 results. Click through and find questions you can answer with your content.

Quora DUI Attorney

Write a response (150 – 300 words) of advice and drop a link at the end.

Rinse and repeat.

Internal linking

Linking pages internally passes link equity and ranking signals. You can use them to pass that valuable juice from your blog content to your money pages by interlinking them.

Link outreach

Link outreach is great because you can score high powerful “white hat” links for free.

Link outreach only works when you’ve got content worth linking to. You can write perfect emails but no one is going to link to your home page.

Resource pages

These are dedicated pages listing links to useful resources. To find these pages, use Google search operators:

  • legal inurl:resources
  • law inurl:resources
  • law intitle:resources
  • legal intitle:resources
  • legal “resource pages”
  • law “resource pages”

You get the point. I like to add a city into the search as well. Here’s what I found:

search-result-legal-3

Brought up this result:

search-result-legeal-4

Bingo! A perfect opportunity.

resource-page-link-building

Reach out with a nice note about your law firm and what you should be included in their list of resources.

“Borrowing” links

Well, not borrowing, stealing. I love this technique because it evens the playing field.

If you land the same links as your competitors you can neutralize their advantage. From there, all you need is a few additional links to easily push past them.

It’s extremely easy to do. In fact, you already did the leg work in your competitive analysis. Remember this?

Hunting for Links for Attorneys

  • Google your main keyword
  • Click on the first result
  • Run Majestic SEO browser plugin
  • Click through to the Majestic site
  • Click on the Backlinks tab

You’ll now see a list of the website’s linking to your competitor’s. Simply click through on to each site and look for opportunities to drop a link. These usually come in the form of:

  • Blog comments
  • Guest posting
  • Resource pages
  • Link round ups

The majority of sites will be tough to get links, but the ones you can will give you a huge boost.

Guest Posting

I don’t care what Matt Butts says – guest blogging is a great way to build quality links to your site. Use advanced Google search operators to find opportunities:

  • legal “accepting guest posts”
  • legal “write for us”
  • legal “submit guest post”
  • legal “guest post opportunities”
  • legal “guest post courtesy of”
  • legal “guest bloggers wanted”
  • legal “contributor guidelines”
  • legal “contribute to our site”
  • legal “become a guest writer”

I strongly suggest you write the content yourself – don’t outsource it. It will be a complete waste of your time. Here’s a snippet from a legal website that accepts guest posts:

Guest Blog Example

Any website worth posting on will have high standards. Read through their articles, get a feel for what they publish and replicate it.

Local press

I’ve been using this technique for a while but have yet to share it.

SEO agencies have been taking out “press releases” for clients for years.

These are merely syndicated statements on sites like PR.com that have little effect on SEO and zero effect on traffic/PR because nobody sees them. They claim that they get sent to real news sites, but never do.

I go straight to the source. Newspapers make money from 2 sources:

  • Subscriptions
  • Ads

Since more people turn to the web for their news, revenue models have shifted towards selling ad space.

I’ve landed dozens of links on MiamiHerald.com by reaching out to their advertising team. You can find contact links in the footer:

Links from Real Papers

CALL them, don’t email. Email responses generally get ignored or they tell you they don’t offer that service.

When you call them directly you can negotiate with a sales person. Simply tell them you’re with XYZ law firm looking to drum up online PR and you’re not interested in traditional media buys.

Everyone has a price – it generally ranges in the $400 – $600 range.

It’s expensive, but you get a high quality link, traffic and exposure for your firm.

7. Track results and scale efforts

  • It takes about 6 – 12 months to reach the top of Google so till that time measure your SERP visibility using tools like SEMrush
  • SERP visibility will tell you how many keywords your site is ranking for, estimated traffic and its cost
  • After a few months analyze your organic traffic using Google Analytics
  • Using Google Analytics examine where your traffic is going so you can see if it is benefitting you or not
  • Track your firm’s leads and phone calls from the organic search using Google analytics

Organic traffic is not free – there’s a considerable investment of time, resources and capital to get results.

To justify the cost, we need to understand the outputs of SEO.

  • Overall search engine visibility
  • Overall organic traffic
  • Organic traffic to “target pages”
  • Leads and phone calls from organic search

The following sub sections will outline everything you need.

See how we build custom SEO reports for our clients.

Overall search engine visibility

It takes a while for your site to reach the top of Google and start getting traffic (6 to 12 months).

In the meantime, we can measure “SERP visibility”.

SERP visibility = the total number of keywords your website is indexed for.

To check overall visibility:

  • Tool: SEMrush
  • What it tells you: How many keywords your site is ranking for over time. It also estimates traffic and the cost of that traffic (if you were to buy it through PPC ads)

serp-visibility

Analyzing Organic Traffic

After a few months, your traffic from Google should be picking up. We can easily verify this using Google Analytics:

  • Tool: Google Analytics
  • How to view the report: Audience > Overview (add Organic Segment)
  • What it tells you: How many visitors are coming to your site through search engines

organic-traffic-law-firm

Organic traffic to “target pages”

While overall organic traffic is good, we want to make sure it’s meaningful traffic. We can dig into that by segmenting organic traffic reports to look at where traffic is going.

  • Tool: Google Analytics
  • How to view the report: Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages (add Organic Segment)
  • What it tells you: The pages on your website that are receiving organic traffic. These pages should be your “target pages”, i.e. important landing pages on your site.

organic-traffoc-landing-pages

Leads and phone calls from organic

Most importantly, we want to know how SEO is impacting your top line. It’s tricky, but we can use analytics to track your firm’s leads and phone calls from organic search.

  • Tool: Google Analytics
  • How to view the report: Conversions > Goals > Overview (add Organic Segment)
  • What it tells you: The number of completed goals from organic search. This should be setup to track both form submission and phone calls.

organic-leads-tracking

Frequently Asked Questions

We get tons of questions from attorneys but these are the ones that are asked the most (in one variation or another).

Why do lawyers need SEO?

Data indicates that about one third of consumers use a search engine to find local businesses on a daily basis. Mobile device usage has more than eclipsed desktop usage for location-based searches so it’s clear that consumers are using search engines as the dominant method for finding local businesses like law firms. 

If it wasn’t obvious, law firms who want to generate leads and grow, need to have a presence in search engines. 

How long does SEO take?

It depends.

There are numerous factors that influence how long it takes for a website to rank for a given keyword phrase but they can all essentially be boiled down to the following:

  • The competitiveness (demand) for the target keyword phrase(s).
  • The degree to which a site has already been optimized.
  • The amount of money and effort allocated to an SEO campaign. 

In other words, the current condition of a site and how much is invested into it to rank impact how long it takes to achieve first position rankings. In general it can take anywhere from 4 months to more than a year to get where you want to be. 

Do I have to change my website to rank higher in search engines?

This also depends.

There are always onsite improvements and changes that need to be made but in terms of whether a site is built on a CMS or as a traditional custom site, it doesn’t really matter.  

There are clear advantages to using a CMS (content management system) including ease of use, ease of updates, the ability to add functionality with no programming knowledge, and more consistency but not having a CMS does not automatically mean a site won’t rank well.

How much do lawyers pay for SEO?

Cost can vary greatly for an SEO campaign.  What an attorney pays for their campaign can be a reflection of their current resources, the amount of money it will take to gain market share in search, the competitiveness of their keyword phrases and their niche practice areas, and (to a smaller extent), the SEO company they go with.

SEO in the legal space is competitive and there’s so sign of this changing anytime soon. If you want to rank, you’ve got to do things the right way.

If you find yourself in need of an impartial assessment of your firm’s SEO health, contact an expert SEO strategist today to discuss your options.

Law Firm PPC: 9 Strategies to Succeed in Online Legal Marketing

According to Smart Insights, 96% of legal clients seek legal advice online. SEO Tribunal also reports that, on average, 46% of ad clicks result from legal service queries on Google.

Lawyers can use pay-per-click (PPC) strategies to expand their clientele quickly while waiting for results from word-of-mouth or SEO.

I’ll walk you through PPC strategies you can use to complement your SEO marketing, get ahead of your competition, and attract more high-quality leads. 

What is PPC and Why Should Lawyers Use It?

PPC refers to pay-per-click, an internet marketing technique that requires you to pay a specific fee each time someone clicks on your advertisement. 

Simply put, PPC is a way to buy traffic to your law firm website

Here’s an example of how PPC works: Someone types “personal injury lawyer” into their search engine and (because you’ve targeted the right keywords) your ad appears at the top of the search engine results page. 

Your ad gets clicked, you pay a small fee for that click, and you (hopefully) land a new client in the exchange. 

Here’s the short version of why I think investing in PPC for your law firm might be worth it: 

  • It’s Cost-Effective. With PPC advertising, you control your budget, ad placements, and targeting. You only pay when someone clicks your ad.
  • It Drives Warm Leads. PPC allows you to reach your target audience when they’re actively searching for legal services like yours online.
  • Easy Monitoring and Improvement. You can easily monitor and tweak your PPC ad campaign to get a positive investment return.
  • Multi-Layered Targeting Options. You can target everything from your audience’s age to their location and interests. 
  • Allows for Smart Retargeting. You can monitor how your target audience reacted to your ads, see those who didn’t convert, and retarget them.
  • Increases Brand Awareness. Google says that search ads can increase brand awareness by 80%.

Difference Between Campaigns, Ad Groups, and Ads

Before we get into the nitty-gritty, let’s review some standard marketing terms: 

  • A campaign is a top-level category that allows you to choose your ad goal. 
  • An ad group is the second level that will enable you to decide what audience you want your ads to target. 
  • An ad refers to all the creative elements involved, including the ad copy, visuals, and links.

Example of an ad campaign. Source: WordStream

9 Must-Try Law Firm PPC Strategies to Succeed in Online Legal Marketing

Ready to get tactical? Here are 9 approaches to PPC that will bring you an influx of new clients: 

1. Use Market Research to Set Yourself Apart

Market research enables you to analyze your target audience’s characteristics so you can meet their specific needs. 

Here’s what you should look for:

  • Size – Quantify the number of businesses and individuals who make up your target audience.
  • Demographics – Identify your target audience’s average age, marital status, educational background, and other details.
  • Location – Determine if the location you want to target has enough potential legal clients to be worth it.
  • Income – Make sure that you are targeting an audience that can afford your services.
  • Purchasing Habits – Analyze your target audience’s purchasing behavior to predict how much they spend on legal services and how often.

Consider hiring an SEO specialist to help you analyze your market and the keywords that will win their clicks.

2. Use Geo-Targeting Correctly

Geo-targeting (location-based targeting) uses specific locations to direct your PPC ads. 

The advantage of geo-targeting is that nearly every advertising platform (Facebook, Google Ads, LinkedIn, Microsoft Ads, etc.) allows you to use the following components to identify your market’s location:  

  • IP address
  • Cell tower IDs
  • Wi-Fi
  • Bluetooth
  • Phone GPS

Google will also allow you to use location queries, relevant web content, previous locations, Google Maps, or custom search location settings when creating your PPC ad campaign. 

The geo-targeting options Google makes available include the following: 

  • Geotargeting Bundles Tab – Geo-targeting bundles can save you a lot of time because you can bundle related countries (e.g., the U.S. and Canada). This targeting strategy lacks precision, so be sure to see the countries in the bundle before selecting.
  • Geotargeting Browse Tab – The geo-targeting browsing tab allows you to choose specific states you want to add. Be sure you only add the states home to your target audience.
  • Geotargeting Search Tab – You can use this tab to target your PPC in a specific city or town.
  • Geotargeting Exclude Tab – This feature comes in handy if you already know the regions you want to exclude.
  • Custom Geo-Targeting Tab – The most important feature on Google Ads, this tab allows you to come up with custom geo-targeting locations.

Source: Disruptive Advertising

3. Target User Intent with Your Ads

Paying attention to user intentions is the key to an effective PPC strategy. 

When leveraging the keywords to target in a PPC campaign, the usual procedure is to narrow down the list as you get to understand your prospects. However, the initial list rarely determines the prospect’s intentions. 

So how do you create an ad that resonates with your prospects without knowing intent?

One way to identify intent is by using the keyword planner in AdWords. If you can identify the words users type into their search engines, it’s easy to discern intent.

Use the keywords you’ve identified to create messaging on your website that addresses your users’ intent directly. 

Your PPC ads should also match the searcher’s intent for complete effectiveness. Supplement your law firm PPC campaigns with high-quality content to build trust and loyalty with your prospective clients. 

4. Fill Your Landing Pages with Videos (& Other Visuals)

Visuals can make your prospects feel motivated, happy, and informed. They’re also capable of boosting your conversions. 

Images, videos, or even GIFs can have a significant positive impact on your conversion rates because it’s easier for viewers to interpret a visual scene than text content. 

According to Human Anatomy and Physiology 7th Edition, 67% of the audience are motivated by a verbal presentation with supplemented visuals.

There’s more to boosting your conversions than just adding a video on your law firm’s website though. You’ll need to pay attention to subtle nuances to get the best results. 

For example, natural conversational videos are more attractive than sales ones. 

A sales video focuses on making sales rather than engaging with the audience. On the other hand, a high-converting video pays attention to the audience’s needs and educates them.

5. Use Display Ads

Display ads are among the best advertising tools because they’re reasonably priced and can quickly reach your target audience. 

Still, you’ll have to navigate the competition in the PPC marketing space to tap into the utility of display ads. 

Most advertising platforms use a bidding system to display ads. Whoever is willing to pay the most for the ad space will get it. 

The good news is that you can choose how much you’ll spend on PPC advertising. Sure, you may lose some bids…but if a specific ad space is worth the investment, you can bid high. 

Plus, you still only pay whenever someone clicks on your ad. In that sense, you get what you pay for. 

Example of a display ad

6. Run A/B Tests on Your Ads

If you want to succeed with your law firm PPC advertisement, you’ll need to periodically test its effectiveness. 

A/B is a testing method that compares 2 versions of your ad to learn more about the impact of each variable. Once you have the results, you can choose the ad strategy with the best performance.

Here’s how to create an A/B test: 

  • Set Your Goals – What metrics do you want to increase? What are your success criteria? Most advertisers want to increase their advertisement’s click-through-rates and conversions.
  • Make Calculated Changes – What variable in your ad do you want to change to improve your law firm’s PPC campaign performance? You may wish to change your headline, reword your CTA, experiment with tone, or test between 2 different visuals.
  • Decide on Your Budget – Set limits around your budget so that you don’t spend more than you anticipate getting back from the results of your A/B testing. Put a cap on the amount of money you’ll spend on each version to guide the duration of your A/B test.
  • Get Your Ads Running – Deploy the 2 different ad versions almost at the same time to achieve accurate results. Pull the ads to end the test once each ad’s budget is spent.
  • Analyze Results – Use an A/B ad testing calculator to determine your conversion rates and evaluate the performance of each ad campaign. Record the features that set the best performing ad apart and the amount used to achieve your desired goals. That number will guide your budget for future PPC ad campaigns.

A/B Testing Ideas You Can Implement Right Away

The first A/B testing idea you can start implementing right now is the responsive search ads. This is a newer search ad format by Google that allows you to add a couple of descriptions and headlines to a single ad. 

Google will help you test out the different ad combinations and will favor the best performing ad.

The second A/B test is linking out to your law firm’s website. With this kind of A/B, you’ll link to 2 versions of your most relevant page containing the keywords you’re bidding on. 

Test these options side-by-side to determine which page performs better than the other. 

7. Don’t Abandon Search Engines Like Bing

Google may reign supreme among search engines, but it’s not the only place you should target your law firm’s marketing. 

An increasingly popular search engine, Bing generates up to 122 million searches daily in the U.S. In fact, according to Comscore, Bing reaches 20% of the U.S. search market, 

You can use basic SEO concepts to enhance your site’s visibility, regardless of the search engine you’re using, but there are some nuances between Google and Bing to keep in mind. 

For example, Bing pays more attention to keywords in the title, URL, and meta descriptions than Google.

In contrast, Google focuses more on off-page features and generates dynamic descriptions based on user demands by skimming through the whole page. 

To enhance your visibility on Bing, submit your website on Bing Webmasters Tools. Expand your brand’s reach by using PPC on Bing. A smaller, but perfectly viable, market is waiting to click your law firm’s ad. 

8. Write Quality Ad Content and a Strong CTA

Your ad content — including the call-to-action — is a bridge between potential clients searching for your legal services online and your landing page.

In other words, how you write your ad content and call-to-action affects how many clicks and conversions you’ll get from your law firm’s PPC ad campaign

The quality of your law firm’s PPC ad content can be the most significant difference between a successful PPC ad campaign and a failed one.

Here are the essential characteristics of high-quality ad copy: 

1. Includes the Benefit

 What’s your unique selling point? What do you offer differently from your competitors? 

Legal services are highly competitive, so clearly enumerate the unique benefits that set your law firm apart.

It’s vital to ensure that potential clients can instantly understand your services’ value and the benefit that comes with hiring your legal services.

2. Leverages the Keywords 

There are lots of both free and paid SEO keyword research tools you can use to enhance your PPC ad visibility. 

Free SEO keyword research tools are much more limited than what an SEO expert service can provide, but any keyword insight is beneficial if you’re starting from scratch.  

Once you have your keywords, ensure that the primary keyword appears close to the beginning of your ad copy. Then, you can naturally sprinkle your secondary keywords throughout the body of your ad.

3. Includes a Strong and Clear CTA

A well-crafted CTA plainly lays out your readers’ next step. It’s kind of your way to walk them through the conversion process. 

Possible CTAs answer the following questions:

  • Do you want readers to click a link to another page on your website? (ex: For more information, click this link.)
  • Can readers schedule a consultation with you to discuss your legal services? (ex: Schedule a free consultation with us today.) 
  • Is there a way for readers to connect with you online? (ex: Subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on social media to stay connected.

The most important characteristic of quality ad content is that it’s unique. Canned ad copy is obvious and uninteresting. Take time writing your ad copy so that it speaks to your ideal customer, not just customers in general.

9. Optimize Your Copy for Keywords and SEO

Optimizing your ad content with keywords is simple when you know what your prospective clients need. 

Knowing the keywords your ideal clients are typing into search engines tells you what they’re looking for. Use those keywords to naturally answer their questions.

Lots of brands unnaturally stuff keywords in their ad copy without considering how their target audience will read the content. 

Instead, you can begin with a list of keywords in mind and find spaces in your copy to insert them naturally as you write. 

For example, if you are working on personal injury marketing, then “personal injury lawsuit” is likely one of the most competitive keywords used by your target market. Use this knowledge to write ad copy that answers various questions related to that term. 

SEO vs. PPC: What’s the Difference?

Is SEO the same as PPC? Let’s distinguish the two so you can have a better understanding of these very important digital marketing strategies.

Both PPC and SEO are classified under Search Engine Marketing (SEM). The significant difference between the 2 strategies is in how much they cost to implement: 

  • PPC is a paid marketing technique to reach a specific target audience.
  • SEO is an organic marketing approach that aims at targeting and attracting your ideal clients.

SEO is a long game, and at the successful end of it, you’ll get organic traffic from the search engine. If you can land your website among the first 3 search results on the first page of Google, you may get more than 50 percent of all clicks!

PPC can generate warm leads more quickly than SEO, but it costs more to implement upfront. The most robust marketing campaigns use both SEO and PPC to attract site visitors. 

Law Firm PPC Can Bring You Leads, Conversions, and SEM Success

Developing and maintaining an excellent law firm PPC campaign can be quite a daunting task, but these 9 law firm PPC strategies will set you up to win. 

Give yourself time for trial and error, and you’ll find that using PPC for your law firm is a relatively easy way to generate website traffic, win more legal clients, and grow into a reputable legal firm.

Law Firm Marketing: The Growth Handbook for Lawyers

Lawyers often rely on word-of-mouth marketing. 

However, according to Clio, every 1 out of 3 people looking for legal service start their search online — before asking for referrals. 

You’ll need to invest in modern, measurable law firm marketing strategies if you want to see your practice grow.

I specialize in providing search engine optimization (SEO) solutions to personal injury lawyers. That means I make it easier for your next client to find you out of the millions of other search results at their fingertips online. 

Keep reading if you’re looking for lead-generating law marketing tactics. 

 

The Importance of a Law Firm Marketing Plan

The adage, “If you build it, they will come” doesn’t always work. 

If you don’t make yourself easy to find in a Google search, you starve your business of potential leads.

With that in mind, many law firms jump straight into blogging, social media marketing, or paying for an obscene amount of PPC ads. This impulsive marketing is dangerous to your budget and your brand. You can spend thousands of dollars (and hours) on marketing and still not see any results.

According to a Martindale study, 26% of lawyers don’t track their leads. That means over a quarter of your competition is investing in marketing strategies without bothering to study the results. 

Roughly 86% of lawyers neglect to gather email addresses, another tactical error that could separate you from the pack — if you know how to leverage that information strategically (Law Technology Today).    

You can ensure a positive ROI by setting a marketing budget and deploying proven law firm marketing strategies (like the ones in this guide). 

Marketing for Lawyers: Techniques that Work

People looking online for a personal injury lawyer are usually already in need of legal assistance. According to a FindLaw U.S. Consumer Needs survey, 74% of prospects who search for an attorney online end up calling an office. 

Optimize your website for search engines and become the firm prospects choose to call. 

Prospects want to see that you’re an industry authority, have experience winning cases like theirs, and work well with your clients. They also want to enjoy the experience of sifting through your website. 

Here are the best attorney marketing strategies for your law firm website:

Landing Pages

Your website’s landing page is where your site visitors “land” when they click one of your calls to action (CTAs) or ads.  

Landing pages are relatively simple assets to create, but they can produce significant results. A well-designed landing page can convert roughly 11% of visitors. 

Those conversions won’t happen by accident. You need to populate your landing page with content that motivates visitors to take action. 

What are the Elements of a High Converting Landing Page for Lawyers?

Landing pages drive conversions with minimal effort. The most effective landing pages include the following elements:

  • A clear explanation of the value you offer
  • Proof of legitimacy in the form of certifications or badges
  • Testimonials or statistics of cases won
  • Content hyper-targeted to a specific audience

It doesn’t require a massive amount of effort to include these elements, but relying on a template won’t cut it. Use A/B testing to evaluate the effectiveness of your pages. 

Create multiple versions of a landing page and assess which ones do the best. Use heat maps to discover which sections of a landing page receive the most views for the longest period and cut out the sections that have little impact. 

Where Should You Use Landing Pages?

Landing pages target a specific audience with unique needs. 48% of marketers build a new landing page for each new campaign. Linking to landing pages in your PPC ad campaigns is one of the best ways to drive traffic to these pages. It’s not the only way, though. 

Include links to your landing pages in the following locations:

  • Calls to action on Youtube videos and articles
  • Bios on social media
  • Your bylines on guest posts
  • Articles that cite you 
  • Directories

Having a landing page at all is a smart marketing move, but the best results come from the most data-driven analysis. If you target your landing pages precisely, you can increase your conversions by up to 300% (SteelHouse). 

Testimonials & Case Studies

If you’re not collecting testimonials from your clients about your services, then you’re neglecting to use some of the most powerful marketing tools at your disposal.

According to Big Commerce, using testimonials can generate up to 62% more revenue and make your website visitors 58% more likely to convert.

Think about it:

When you’re looking for a service or a product, you read the reviews. You want to know what others experienced to determine whether or not it’s legitimate and worth the investment. Prospective clients are just as curious about your law firm as they consider hiring you. 

Case studies are just as valuable because they allow you to explain a problem you solved for your client. Essentially, you’re proving your expertise in the most comprehensive and convincing way possible. 

Collect testimonials and case studies (or at least the number of cases you’ve won), then plaster them everywhere. They should appear in:

  • Landing pages
  • Your homepage 
  • Ads
  • Google searches
  • Directories

80% of consumers want brands to use storytelling in their marketing and case studies offer your firm a captivating way to take advantage of that demand. 

SEO: Search Engine Optimization

Up to 96% of prospects searching for a lawyer begin with a search engine. SEO makes your law firm’s website more discoverable to search engines and that helps clients in your area who need a lawyer find you. 

Searches for law firms are often high-intent and likely to convert. Because people in need of legal help are usually looking for a lawyer in their cities, these searches also tend to be local.

With these factors in mind, choose keywords that align with local searches for specific needs rather than generic law terms.

For example, including the keyword “personal injury lawyer in San Diego” is much more likely to match your target audience’s intent than the more generalized keyword, “personal injury lawyer.”

You can increase traffic on your law firm site by practicing the following SEO strategies: 

  • Adding relevant keywords to your metadata
  • Adding long-form content to your site 
  • Schema markup for better indexing with search engines
  • Launching a campaign to earn backlinks
  • Adding your links to resource pages
  • Make your site mobile-friendly

Mobile traffic coming from searches for local businesses could be worth fighting for. 88% of such searches call or visit the business within 24 hours.

Website

Your website should serve as the engine that drives all of your law marketing efforts.

Review pages, directories, bios, social media — all of it should direct traffic back to your landing pages and your website. Your website is the foundation of any digital marketing effort.

As your central hub, your website should include everything visitors need to determine whether or not you’re suitable for the job. 

Take a Rankings.io client, Dolman Law Group, and their website, for example:

When you first enter their site, you see a catchy headline that tells you they’ll get you significant results while also providing the personal attention that clients crave. Then it provides a clear CTA to “get your free case consultation.” 

If you continue to scroll down, they further emphasize that they get results by showing you their numbers.

The following section tells you who and where they serve. Here, Dolman Law Group incorporates geographic keywords that boost their website’s local SEO quality. 

Scroll further and you see accolades, news appearances, a description of the cases they take on, the faces of their law group, and more. 

They’re making it abundantly clear who can benefit from their service and they provide numbers and awards to back up their claims of success. 

The rest of the pages on their site give a deeper look into the firm and any additional resources that may provide value to their audience. These supporting pages may also target high-value keywords relevant to their niche and location.

Their site also includes a live chat feature, giving users direct access to live support and providing immediate answers to their pertinent questions. 

According to J.D. Power, 42% of people prefer to communicate via live chat. That makes live chat the #1 choice for online customers over email, social media, phone calls, or forums. 

Website Content & Content Marketing

Content marketing entails everything from headlines and company mottos to blogs and ebooks. 

Blogging is the most common form of content marketing, and for good reason: businesses that blog generate 67% more leads than those that don’t. It’s this fact that has pushed so many law firms to add a blog to their website. 

According to a Finances Online report, there are nearly 31.7 million bloggers in the U.S., and collectively, they post approximately 6.9 billion blog posts every day. That means the competition for your readers’ attention is fierce. 

Unless you’re writing on the topics your audience wants to read about and your articles have the answers your readers seek, you’re wasting an opportunity to convert them into leads. 

When developing a content strategy and schedule for your blog, include the right mix of content to reach your engagement, traffic, and conversion goals. In other words, you need top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, and bottom of the funnel content: 

  • Top of the funnel content. Very broad content created solely for engagement. It essentially casts a wide net with general information, and some of those readers may stick around. This content is more likely to get shares, backlinks, and engagement. 
  • Middle of the funnel content. Content meant to answer specific questions or target a particular audience. It qualifies, and it sells. Typically middle funnel content includes case studies, thought leadership pieces, and proof of expertise. 
  • Bottom of the funnel content. Companies with products more commonly use this type of content. It includes comparison or pricing articles. 

In blogging for a law firm, you typically don’t need bottom-of-the-funnel content. Comparing your law firm to another isn’t a typical search query for the industry. Your best strategy would be to create a mix of top and middle-funnel content, such as case studies, thought leadership pieces, success stories, and articles that answer general questions in your field. 

Generating Content Ideas:

It can be a challenge to consistently create compelling content if you don’t know what to write. Here are a few ways to regularly come up with ideas for content that engages your audience:

  • Interview your clients to write about their experience with you
  • Keep a list of questions clients ask and write about the most common ones
  • Speak to your clients about what concerned them the most when looking for a lawyer
  • Survey your audience on social media (if they are engaged)
  • Search Quora or Facebook groups for popular questions about hiring and working with a lawyer, as well as common legal questions in your field

Simply put, listening to your audience is the best way to ensure you’re meeting their needs. Engagement keeps them coming back for more, and with the right momentum, they’re more likely to work with you.

Directories

Lead generation can be as simple as adding your practice to law firm directories like Justia.com, FindLaw.com, and Avvo.com. 

Listing your firm with a directory is one of the easiest ways to generate leads without much effort continuously. Add the information once and it continues to work for you over time. 

Directories work because most potential clients don’t know where else to look. They can do a Google search, but they may feel lost seeing ads for legal firms and a few ranking pages. Directories make it easy to sort filter out firms that don’t apply to them or that don’t have great reviews. 

There also tends to be a greater sense of trust on review sites or directories. Anyone can build a beautiful, convincing site with their best reviews, but are those reviews legitimate? What about the views the firm doesn’t want you to see? 

Potential clients want to feel they can trust you. Hearing the good and the bad, as well as seeing these on a reputable directory that vets its listings, provides a greater sense of security in their search.

With just one listing in the right place, you could potentially bring in hundreds of leads. A FindLaw study found that 31% of the people who use search engines to find a lawyer end up using a directory. List your firm on multiple, highly relevant directories, and you might end up with a full caseload before you know it. 

HARO (Help A Reporter Out)

Help A Reporter Out (HARO) is a platform journalists and bloggers (even for company blogs) use to find reputable quotes to feature in upcoming publications across various industries. 

Experts, business owners, marketers, entrepreneurs, and even lawyers can sign up to receive daily emails with a list of questions within their industry. Browse these questions each day, answer those that relate to your business, your clients, or highlight your expertise. If the journalist decides to use your quote, they’ll reply days later to provide you with a link to the publication.

HARO is a great way to increase brand awareness across new audiences you weren’t able to reach before and highlight your expertise at the same time. It also provides a backlink to your site, which helps you rank better on Google. 

There are a few best practices to using HARO, which will help you get selected for features in publications consistently:

  • Keep your pitch short. They’re reading through a lot of them
  • Provide specific advice; nothing generic
  • Be polite, and offer them your email to reach out to if there are additional questions
  • Provide a link for them to add to the article (a landing page is your best option)

If you answer one question each morning, your chances of selection are much higher. It’s one of the best marketing ideas for law firms, as it requires very minimal output. 

Video Marketing

Youtube is the 2nd largest search engine after Google. Consequently, marketers consider video marketing to be the future of advertising because it yields even greater results than SEO. 

Adding a video to a landing page increases conversion rates by 80%. Equally impressive is what a single video can do for your website. 

Embedding just one video on your site makes it 53 times more likely that it will rank on the first page of a Google search. 

While that sounds convincing, the way you use video marketing matters. The types of videos that work the greatest for law firms are:

  • Testimonial or case study videos
  • Explainer videos that dive deeply into a topic
  • Webinars

There doesn’t seem to be too much opportunity in video marketing for legal firms, but there is a surprising amount of room for creativity in video marketing, and law firms have grown their audience to surprising numbers with video marketing across various mediums. 

Adam Oremland for Oremland Law Group stands out as a prime example of how you can use video marketing creatively for the right audience. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/CCYeiteH1s0/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Adam creates fictitious personal injury cases and tells you what kind of results you can expect if you take that case to court. He tops it off with a caption that starts, “You tell me what happened, and I’ll tell you how you can get paid.”

He is humorous and authentic, which helps him connect to his audience. 

By posting these videos to his Instagram account regularly and promoting them through Instagram stories, he’s built his audience to 168K followers. 

You can also use video marketing to highlight your company culture, provide insight into the process of a case from start to finish, or showcase thought leadership on LinkedIn. 

Social Media

Social media might seem like a straightforward medium. 

You post, then people like and comment. Right? Right. 

Except there are lots of brands posting everyday receiving little to no engagement on those posts at all. 

On the other hand, the right strategy opens up your market to the 3.5 billion people using social media around the world. 

To develop a following, increase engagement, and drive traffic and conversions, you need to follow a few best practices for your social media marketing:

  • Post information that is directly valuable to your target audience
  • Be consistent and post everyday
  • Post a variety of content, including engaging copy along with video, images, or links to resources 
  • Monitor which posts receive the most engagement and which receive none at all to improve your content schedule
  • Engage with your audience and answer every comment
  • Tailor your content to the platform

Each social media platform has a unique language and audience. 

For instance, if you’re on LinkedIn, you’re speaking to professionals. The content you’d share would be more formal and informative. 

Posts on Facebook are far less formal, and there’s a greater emphasis on audience engagement than education. 

Consistent posting and engagement can be tough to keep up, especially for busy lawyers. Take advantage of social media management tools that help to automate the process like Hootsuite and Sprout Social

Build Your Law Firm’s Marketing Strategy in 5 Steps

Consistent marketing is hard work, but the process for developing an effective marketing plan is simple:

  • Identify your target audience
  • Set a marketing budget
  • Determine marketing goals 
  • Select the best marketing strategies for your law firm  
  • Measure your ROI and track efforts to improve 

We’ll spend the rest of this article breaking down each step. 

Step 1: Identify Your Target Audience

You might think you already know your audience: “anyone who needs a personal injury lawyer” or “car accident victims.” 

That isn’t enough information to build a truly effective marketing plan on. 

You need to narrow your focus until you are left with a particular persona. To do this, ask yourself:

  • What types of jobs do most of my clients have?
  • What are their most common issues?
  • Which clients have been the easiest to work with? 
  • What neighborhoods do my clients live in? 

To determine which marketing tactics will resonate with your audience, you must discover:

  • Where your audience spends most of their time
  • What type of content do they react to the most (what content are they already consuming the most? Video? Blogs?)
  • What are their biggest pains? What are they searching for when they come to you?
  • What concerns your clients the most about working with a lawyer? 

To know your audience, you have to be aware of their needs, fears, and interests. You can then use that information to speak directly to their intent. 

Step 2: Set a Marketing Budget

Without setting a budget, you can quickly put more capital into your marketing efforts than you get out of them.  

There are two ways to set your budget:

  • Budget by strategy. Decide which marketing strategies you’d like to implement based on your audience assessment. This approach to budgeting makes more sense if you have a lot of cushion to work with. 
  • Budget by limits. Set aside a certain amount of your income for marketing, and determine which strategies will fit within that limited amount of capital. 

Your marketing expenditures could include the following:

  • Marketing tools and software
  • An external marketing agency
  • An in-house marketing team
  • Strategy-specific marketing specialists 

Setting a marketing budget is essential to meeting your ultimate goal: providing your audience with value.

Step 3: Determine Marketing Goals

Setting goals is instrumental to ensuring you’re using the right marketing strategies, in the right way, with the right content. 

In most cases, goals boil down to just two metrics: 

  • Traffic and engagement. SEO strategies are designed to increase website traffic and social media can supplement your engagement goals. 
  • Lead generation. Drive leads by prioritizing social media ads, PPC ads, and landing pages. 

Your marketing plan should aim to generate traffic and leads. The last step is determining which strategies will help you do that best. 

Step 4: Select the Best Marketing Strategies for Your Law Firm

An effective marketing plan is defined by tactics that deliver both long and short-term results, including increased website traffic, lead generation, and higher conversion rates.

To select the best marketing strategies, you’ll need to identify the following: 

  • Which mediums your target audience uses (Facebook, Twitter, trade publications, etc.)
  • How much time you have to dedicate to each task
  • What your goals are
  • Your marketing budget’s capacity 

There are hundreds of strategies to use in marketing. The above are some of the most effective for marketing a law firm. 

Implementing a combination of PPC ads, landing pages, social media marketing, and SEO is a great way to start. Over time, you’ll gain confidence in these marketing efforts, especially as you analyze their results. 

Step 5: Measure Your ROI and Track Efforts to Improve

Monitoring your results is an essential element of marketing for long-term success.

If your caseload is increasing, learn to identify the marketing strategies that work from the ones that don’t so you can bulk up the effective ones and abandon the failures. 

One way to track your marketing campaign is to use Google Analytics. Google Analytics allows you to monitor leads brought in by each social media channel and ad campaign. 

Other helpful marketing analysis tools include the following: 

  • Bitly. This link shortener also allows you to track how many clicks you get for each link and where those clicks come from. 
  • Buzzsumo. A tool that helps you identify and keep track of your content shares and engagement. You can also set alerts for mentions of your site or name in other articles. 
  • Databox. A comprehensive way to monitor data from your Google Analytics and social media accounts on a single, easy-to-read dashboard. 

No matter how you track your efforts, you must identify what works and what doesn’t so you can continue to improve and grow your clientele. 

Grow Your Law Firm with the Right Marketing Plan 

Now that you’ve got the rundown on law firm marketing, you know that your options are wide open. There are numerous practical ways to market your law firm, and the best way is the one that gets you started. 

If you want your practice to grow, you’re going to have to implement several new strategies and revamp some old ones to keep up with your competition. It’s additional work, but it pays back in dividends if you know how to make the right moves. 

We’re here to help along the way. Sign up for our newsletter below (we promise not to spam you) to get top-notch content about all things law firm marketing.

Project Management Tools: 80 SEO Agency Owners Share Their Favorites

Project management tools facilitate teamwork by organizing the tasks, tracking the time, and measuring the progress of each team member. Agencies use this software to improve workflow and communication among employees, enabling them to deliver high-quality services and/or products to their clients. These tools are particularly important if the company has employees that work remotely.

Choosing the best project management tool for your company depends on the number of employees you have, the features that you need, and if a tool is user-friendly and easy to use.

To help you determine what tool fits your needs best, we hired Minuca Elena to reach out to 80 SEO agency owners and ask them the following question:

Which project management tool does your agency use and what made it the best choice for your business?

In addition, the experts were also required to share how many employees they have. You can find the results in the table below. If you want to read about a specific tool and skip the rest of them, then just click on the tool’s name and it will take you to all the experts that recommended it.
[ninja_tables id=”24333″]
There are others mentioned by the experts, but each received only one vote:

There are also a few agency owners interviewed who don’t have one favorite tool; rather, they use a mix of two (or even three).

Below are the tools that are used in combination with other similar software and the number of times they were mentioned:

Trello (3), Slack (3), Asana (2), Teamwork (1), Meistertask (1), Paymo (1), Toggl (1).

Lastly, there were a pair of companies that use their own proprietary project management software (ProofHub and Sputnik).

Trello

Patrick Langridge – Screaming Frog

Patrick Langridge

We use a number of different project management tools to help in our work, but I think the one we couldn’t do without would be Trello.

Not only is it a great tool that lets our various teams collaborate most effectively on projects, but the amount of automation you can do with it also makes it a real time-saver. It’s our centralized point of managing all projects where we can reference documents, set deadlines and assign tasks.

As our agency has many projects running concurrently, we need a tool that manages all of the moving parts for us, to ensure we stay on top of tasks and meet deadlines.

Marie Haynes

Marie Haynes

We use a few tools when it comes to project management. We started off using Asana, but for some reason, it just didn’t click for us. So now, we use a combination of several tools.

We use WorkFlow Max for several things. It helps us track time and determine which of our projects are the most profitable. To be hones90t, though, we are still working out the multiple ways we can use this tool.

We also use Slack and Google Docs, Spreadsheets and Calendar to help us coordinate scheduling and other tasks.

Personally, I use Trello regularly to help me manage my day to day tasks. I have a list for “things to get done today” which I try to put no more than 5 items on. I have a list for “things to get done this week” and set realistic goals for myself.

David Leonhardt – SEO Writer David Leonhardt

We’ve used several project management tools at several different times, often based on the project and the clients involved. I would probably say that while we have rarely used a tool to manage most projects, the few times we have, it’s been Trello.

For the most part, all the major tools are similar, but Trello just seems to be more user-friendly, like it’s easier to set up each task and keep track of progress. As each task hits another milestone, the task moves visually across the screen, so people who don’t use it often won’t get lost.

I follow the KISS principle when it comes to tools, so the simpler it is to onboard clients or subcontractors, the better.

Brian Swanson – FlashPoint Marketing

Brian Swanson

The primary project management tool we use is Trello. Since we have professionals working from different locations, and countries in some cases, it permits users to organize workflow between staff in a systematic and orderly manner.

It’s helpful for assigning routine tasks and tracking projects across various areas and permits management to identify where any “jams” are occurring.

Finally, the staff loves the ability to slide the task status as it’s a visually appealing way to show specifics tasks have been completed.

Servando Silva – Stream SEO

Servando Silva

We use Trello to manage our website/marketing projects.

While we have tested other apps like Asana and recently an awesome app named ClickUp, we decided to go back to Trello because it’s the app we have been using for 2 years already and we like the simplicity of it.

In our case, we just need the app to manage keyword research planning, link building, and monetization. We don’t really need the app to be integrated with Gmail, Slack or calendars as many people do when working and answering directly to clients, so Trello has pretty much everything we need in a simplistic way that allows us to perform our weekly tasks in a timely manner and everybody can be in the loop checking the status of each part of the process.

However, if you have a very convoluted system that requires integration with many other platforms, synchronization with calendars, slack, skype, and all that jazz, while also managing your employees I definitely recommend you to give ClickUp a try.

I find it much more complete than the typical tools most people use. It’s just not as famous as other apps and you don’t hear much about it in general.

Andrew Scherer – Marketer’s Center

Andrew Scherer

I have done wonders with Trello and Trello Butler.

A lot of folks already know about Trello so I won’t speak too much on it, you’ll probably get quite a few answers talking about Trello, but I never hear anyone talk about the automation power behind Trello’s Butler.

Butler allows you to put together a veritable virtual assistant symphony. Automations, rules, triggers, buttons, and more can all tie in with other boards and cards. I used Trello for years before I experienced the power behind Butler and now we’re using it with a lot of success. What we previously would have to have a manager do, Butler now does automagically.

As a project management tool Trello is already a solid choice. We’re already using it not only for our marketing teams but also for our content and development teams.

But with Butler hooked up to it, it allows us to streamline a lot of our processes and keep our standard operating procedures as simple and small as we can.

Brogan Renshaw – Firewire Digital

Brogan Renshaw

At Firewire Digital we use Trello to organize and manage all of our SEO Projects. I have tried other things in the past like Excel or Google Sheets and whilst they both have their benefits, Trello is by far the best. Its simplicity is what makes it so good.

You don’t need a week-long training course to use Trello. It is one of the easiest and quickest project management tools I have used. One of the great things is how easy it is for employees to pick up.

The biggest benefit to our SEO agency is keeping on top of everyone’s task. All staff can see where someone else is up to on a specific task. The ability to quickly see the progress, what is being done, look back at completed tasks all within one program is invaluable.

Chris Makara

Chris Makara

I use a few different platforms depending on the client and type of work I am doing. However, the majority of the time I use Trello. The main reason is that most of my clients are familiar with it or already using it. Plus if others haven’t used it before, it’s pretty easy to learn.

I like it because the mobile app makes it easy to manage things on the go if I’m not in front of my computer. Not to mention the variety of power-ups you have to choose from to add additional functionality.

Dmitriy – MiroMind

Dmitriy

At Miromind, we’ve been using Trello for a couple of years now. It’s a simple yet very efficient tool for managing different tasks between employees. We can create multiple boards and manage privacy settings. We can set deadlines and notifications that help us reach our goals more efficiently.

We can assign members to different boards and tasks and use a filter that allows everyone to focus on their own tasks while still seeing the big picture.

Recently, Trello added a cool function of assigning buttons that we can customize to perform specific actions with one click, like moving the task to a different board or assigning priority.

We also used Teamwork and Jira before but decided to proceed with Trello as it satisfies our needs.

Mads Singers

Mads Singers

I run multiple businesses, but in most we use Trello – The main reason is that it’s super easy to pick up and figure out, particularly if you have boards where clients get involved.

I work with a lot of clients and reality is that most project management tools are very similar and people spent a ton of time cycling around between them.

My general recommendation to most is really just pick one and stick with it and make sure everyone in your team uses it consistently, as that is really the key behind getting the most out of any project management tool.

Tim Stoddart – Stodzy Internet Marketing

Tim Stoddart

As the owner of Stodzy Internet Marketing, I needed to find the most efficient project management tool to keep all of my clients and work in order. I found Trello to be the most beneficial as my business is remote, meaning I have employees working from out-of-state.

While using Trello, there is a dashboard where users can view their priorities, forecasted and current projects, as well as accessing content that needs to be written and leads that would be beneficial to contact.

Trello allows me to instantly share personalized boards with employees and co-workers that display exactly what work needs to be completed and in what order. My employees and I can easily view the progress on each task as well.

As an added bonus, Trello integrates all of the external apps that my business relies on, allowing me to have all of my content in one place. Trello is accessible on all platforms, so if one of my employees has a question about a client, I can easily access everything from my phone on the off-chance that I’m not in my office.

Minal Lohar – SRV media

Minal Lohar

As a marketing agency, it’s essential to organize all of our deadlines and client communication in one place. After months of trying different tools, we finally decided to give Trello a shot.
Surprisingly, it met every single need we had from a project management tool. It’s easy to set up and doesn’t require a hefty subscription fee.

The platform made keeping track of our sales lead, customer contacts, client communication, and internal communication more comfortable and faster. The fact that every team involved could access information whenever needed was an added bonus. We were able to easily customize our boards based on our specific requirements, thus making the entire process of project management more effortless.

Trello is similar to having a note pad and sticky notes, only that everything is online and easily accessible. Moreover, unlike a post-it note, Trello makes it easier to understand when we are approaching a deadline, thanks to the add due date option. Looking at a date in bright red sure does remind you of an approaching deadline!

And finally, because Trello is mobile-friendly, even those working remotely or on the way to a client meeting can immediately check the progress on their particular project!

Prafull Sharma – LeadsPanda

Prafull Sharma

At LeadsPanda, we are using Trello with great success in managing our content marketing projects and tasks. We are a remote team of 35 and growing. Trello provides our team with a simple overview of what is getting done and who is doing it.

Managers can see complete project pipeline and manage, assign, reassign, and move tasks easily. We organize our projects into boards and use cards for associated tasks. Each card has a detail description of tasks, relevant file attachments, and a checklist to be completed to ensure proper execution.

One of the biggest advantages has been the ability for new team members to quickly learn the tool and get on-boarded because it’s so easy.

Antonella Pisani – Eyeful Media

Antonella Pisani

We used tools like Trello to manage replicable projects and scheduled tasks early on but quickly outgrew its feature set.

We’re currently testing different tools including a combination of Monday and Toggl for project management and time tracking. This pairing seems to be productive for both our W2 and contract employees.

As an agency owner, this allows me to monitor our workload and ensure we are delivering on our commitments.

Eagan Heath – Get Found Madison

Eagan Heath

I own and run an SEO agency and we use Trello. We recently upgraded to premium, so that was a big decision moment.

Its main strengths have been:

Being able to easily see the status of other people’s tasks

Nice visual interface with keyboard shortcuts that can make you quick

How easy it is to duplicate our template boards and tasks, and also cross-reference our how to material.

ASANA

Marcus Miller – Bowler Hat

Marcus Miller
At Bowler Hat, we use Asana for all of our project management. Ultimately, it is just such a flexible tool and allows us to manage the majority of our workflow outside of email.

A key feature for us is project templates. We can create a template for SEO or PPC clients of different shapes and sizes and whilst no SEO project is the same, having a project starting point to adjust based on our audit findings ensures we have a clear plan from day one.

Where we have regular or repeating tasks Asana allows us to schedule tasks to automatically repeat ensuring that everybody, across all the teams, knows what they need to do.

We also use Asana for managing internal projects and the flexibility to utilize agile style boards so we can build up a backlog and work through tasks is super useful.

They just keep adding features as well – it’s almost as if they know what we want almost before we do! A new and useful feature is task dependencies – so one task that is dependant upon another.

Asana is now a fundamental part of how we manage projects and run our business at Bowler Hat.

Corey Trojanowski – Valve+Meter

Corey Trojanowski

Over a year ago, we made the shift to agile marketing. We knew we needed to work quicker and be more flexible as an agency to the changing conditions our clients face. Agile is a tactical approach to marketing where our team collectively identify high-value projects on which to focus their collective efforts.

Using week-long sprints, we self-assign projects and tasks in Asana so we know what work is expected of each of us at all times.

Asana allows us not only to track the progress of on-going projects, but it also gives us a backlog, or parking lot for future projects, so that we can keep moving forward on what’s important today and set the stage for future projects at the same time.

Our sprint weeks are cataloged in a single place, rather than living in emails or Slack channels that can be siloed from the rest of the team.

Without question, the shift to agile and using Asana as our project management tool has increased our productivity and capacity to take on additional work from our clients. We’re producing better, measurable results that directly impact our agency’s bottom line.

Joy Hawkins – Sterling Sky

Joy Hawkins

Our local SEO agency uses Asana for our project management software. We elected to use this for a couple of reasons that serve our team nicely.

Primarily, Asana is a web-based application, so our team members can access their entire workload from anywhere, including their phone via the app. That makes working and getting answers easy, particularly for a remote team with members throughout North America.

Secondly, Asana offers a lot of customization with regards to adding tags for status-updates, sharing notes and images for internal processes, stopwatch for billing, and general ease of tracking.

Finally, Asana does a great job of alerting the team when projects are coming to a head and needs attention before their scheduled deadline. We find this particularly helpful, as we’re in our growth stage and that means we’re hiring more and introducing more moving parts into our local ecosystem.

Whenever a company grows, one of the more paramount concerns should be retaining the quality of work as you achieved when you were boutique. I believe Asana has helped us with this growth by allowing us to see at that 30,000-foot perspective!

Matt Bentley – Can I Rank

Matt BentleyAt CanIRank, we recently transferred all of our project management to Asana. Asana allows us to easily track all of our client projects quickly with beautiful visualizations of tasks and their progress.

The fact that Asana automatically populates to-do lists for all of our marketers keeps our workflows agile while ensuring that everyone is able to keep track of priorities and complete work on time.

We especially love the new automation features that handle simple administrative functions that add up over time.

Instead of having many different tools to keep track of client work, communications, documentation, etc, Asana allows us to keep everything in one place.

This greatly decreases the time it takes to complete both simple and complex tasks without having to jump back and forth between platforms.

Account leads have instant oversight into the health of each account and a medium to communicate our success with clients in a way that is easy to understand.

It also allows our clients to see work as it progresses through the pipeline and increases our transparency, which is something that our clients really value

Jeff Romero – Octiv Digital

Jeff Romero

There are several project management tools on the market that can simplify the way an agency handles its business. From Trello to Hubspot, there are plenty of free and paid tools to make project management easy.

After establishing our agency, we quickly discovered we needed a shared tool to manage and communicate about projects between our team (7 people) and our clients. Knowing how non-transparent most agencies are about a client’s work, it was really important for us to find a tool that could be client-facing as well.

With a bit of research and testing, we landed on Asana. Asana is a popular project management tool and allows for collaboration among our team and the client.

Our clients ask questions on the platform where we can answer right away. Not only does it help us keep everything organized, but we’re also delivering a customer service experience our clients love.

Asana connects with our internal communication tool as well (Slack) which helps make everything seamless. We can easily see who is working on what, if they have any questions about a project and what the next deliverable is. Asana is free up to a certain number of users and if you have a small team as we do, it’s the best option.

Bernice Quek – Traffic Bees

Bernice Quek

We use the Asana tool to manage our projects.

As an SEO content marketing agency, we work with clients across different verticals. Therefore, it’s important that Asana allows us to

  • organize our tasks based on each client project
  • set the due date (and time)
  • assign to the relevant person in charge
  • explain the task in the task description
  • attach documents
  • leave comments
  • create subtasks

As most of us work remotely, we sync Asana to a time tracking tool (Harvest) to track our employees’ working hours and productivity.

Asana is great as we can turn on email notifications when there are updates for the tasks that we are following.

Aside from basic features, there’s also a calendar function to review all the deadlines at a glance. It provides a comprehensive overview of each employee’s workload and progress, which is important for a start-up when we’re assessing our capacity to (1) achieve goals for our existing clients and (2) take on more clients.

Lucy Kirkness – Pandable

Lucy Kirkness

We have tried every single task or project management system and have settled with Asana. It’s a feature-rich tool and has (almost) all of the functionality we need to run our projects. For anything more custom, it has the ability to add custom fields that we can then use to filter and specific task attributes to our needs.

As most of our work is on a retained basis, and for mid to large clients, we use a separate ‘team’ for each client. Unlike separate Trello boards, with Asana we can see cross-project reports, for example:

– all tasks due in 7 days
– all tasks marked for review

With custom fields and filtering options, the reports become extremely powerful.

Asana is also extremely intuitive and pleasing to use, letting our team spend more time on work than they are fussing around with the PM tool.

Kornel Kurtz – WebTek

Kornel Kurtz

To keep both projects AND people organized in one tool, we use Asana. The desktop website and mobile app have proven to be extremely effective (and fun) for the team here to use.

It’s kind of like one giant, shared checklist where team members can write updates, statuses, opinions, and feedback to a space where everyone involved can see it.

I personally like this tool because it also sends emails and notifications when your project is soon due, when there has been an update, or when it’s been completed. Not to mention, a fun animated graphic flies across the screen once you complete a longstanding task!

Asana is the tool that’s kept us organized for the past few years and we definitely intend on continuing to use it more in the upcoming years! And the best part is – it’s free!”

Kelsey Jones – Six Stories

Kelsey Jones

We use Asana for project management because it is the most user-intuitive and easiest to use.

I also like their Workload view to see what projects people are busy with.

Other tools I like a lot include Basecamp, ToDoist, and Notion.

Bailey Hahn – Summit Digital Marketing

Bailey Hahn

At Summit Digital Marketing, we use Asana for our project management software. We use Asana because you can easily create layouts of ongoing workflows that can be duplicated for all clients.

Also, you can track the client’s status as a whole for on-boarding and launch purposes. I personally also love the Calendar view in Asana because I can see the week’s tasks at a glance to help prepare myself and organize my time management.

In addition, there is an awesome Asana Gmail extension where you can easily add emails as TASKS to your team’s Asana and assign it to the correct person straight from your email. This feature definitely helps our team keep track of responsibilities that otherwise may get lost in an inbox.

Ali Pourvasei – LAD Solutions

Ali Pourvasei

The project management tool we use at our agency is Asana.

What makes it the best choice for us is its affordability along with ease of use.

It allows us to create goals/tasks for each team member in an organized manner with everyone’s role easily defined.

Pete McAllister – Outreach Pete

Pete McAllister

For project management we use Asana. First off, it’s cloud-based and has incredible uptime. Our team of 9 is largely remote and so a reliable service is absolutely paramount to our success.

The software is very intuitive and it is really easy to onboard new team members. Our documentation is minimal because most people log in and tend to pick things up straight away.

The allocation of tasks and different visual representation of projects works really well for us. If you present projects in a ‘Gantt chart’ style layout we can see exactly what needs to be done, by who and when.

In the link building process, we have to balance content writers, outreach experts, and 3rd party webmasters. It is a tricky process to get right but Asana has all the tools to do it as simply as possible.

Sam Bretzmann – Local SEO Machine

Sam Bretzmann

We use Asana. We’ve tried a number of different tools and for our business and workflow, Asana has always been the best.

We have found it to be very customizable able to handle, divide, and track all of our projects.

We even started a second account with it to try as a makeshift, free CRM and have been pretty pleased with our results so far.

Panos Ladas – On.Marketing

Panos Ladas

The tool that we use in ON.marketing for the last 3 years is Asana. We plan everything around our business on Asana, including annual and quarterly goals, weekly sprints and everyday tasks. It is a very convenient tool and training takes less than 2 hours and immediately after that everybody can have visibility on everything that we do and start acting.

Integration with Google Suite, Toggl & Slack are important and hitting deadlines is the most important for the success of our operations and the overall growth of our data-driven performance marketing agency.

The calendar view is essential for our resource availability and capacity planning. At most times we have more than 15 projects open and people assigned in several of them at the same time and that’s where tagging comes in very handy, probably the most important feature of the project management tool of choice.

Sharing files through Asana is so much easier than sharing them over email and the whole timeline that comes with every task gives us a very clear view of how we progress in every important project.

We did try some other tools that offer similar functionality such as Trello but the versatility that comes with Asana matches the team’s mentality and approach to business.

Franco Colomba – Sure Oak

Franco Colomba

For Sure Oak, Asana is our project management tool of choice. After trying other project management systems, we didn’t feel they met our agency’s need for efficiently managing search engine optimization programs for multiple clients. Asana has done exactly that and more.

The functionality Asana provides lets us set project dependencies and recurring tasks for ongoing programs, templates for one-time SEO plans, client milestones to hit and track the agency’s overall goals as well.

On top of the workflow benefits, Asana is also being used to streamline our internal communication, allowing one home for everything, thus improving our overall efficiency and collaboration as a team.

As SEO becomes more and more complex each day, Asana is allowing us to more efficiently manage our work for our clients and ourselves, thus increasing the capacity to take on more business.

Basecamp

Bill Sebald – Greenlane

Bill Sebald

At Greenlane, we default to Basecamp. It’s a very simple, well-priced package. It can be extended with some plugins.

For our work, while there might be a few small updates I could request specific to our workflow, it’s a simple “good for most projects” type solution.

I say Basecamp is our default tool because we often use the clients’ preferred project management tool if they wish. Trello, Asana, JIRA come to mind there. We look to fit into the workflow of our clients.

Dennis Yu – Blitzmetrics

Dennis Yu

We have been using Basecamp for project management for 12 years– from their classic version all the way to Basecamp3, the latest. We’ve used over a dozen project management tools over the years, even the latest fads, just to see what they have.

But we stick with Basecamp not because it’s the most popular project management tool or supposedly the easiest. Here are the factors that you might not be considering, which we learned from much pain:

The product handles core project management beautifully– other tools are mainly around noisy chat, which is hard to create accountability when you have more than a dozen projects, junior team members, and people all over the world. Our engineers like more sophisticated tools, but to small business clients, Basecamp is easy to use.

Time tracking is key– whether or not you are paying people by the hour or charging by the hour, you want to see accountability for your people. We take it a step further by integrating TimeCamp.

The pricing model doesn’t gouge you– I started as one person years ago using basecamp and now we have hundreds of people in our system.

If this were a per seat per month arrangement, we’d be paying $10/month x 200 people, which would be steep. Right now, we pay only $100/month for Basecamp3, which is super cheap– shhh, don’t tell them.

Support is excellent– 37 Signals, the company that makes Basecamp, responds within a couple of hours to any questions we have. And they are super knowledgeable, pull in others for help, and are thoughtful. They’ve implemented a few feature requests we’ve made, too.

Their APIs are robust– if you have a large team, you’ll want to programmatically pull task and labor data into your own systems for more detailed P&L reporting.

One downside is that they charge for storage above certain limits– and it’s expensive. So we get around that by using Google Drive and dropbox links when we’re sharing big files.

Kristopher Jones – LSEO.com

Kristopher Jones

We’ve used Asana for the last two years, but most recently we’ve begun the switch to Basecamp.

What we loved about Asana – integration with Slack, very easy to create new projects, assign owner(s) and manage amongst separate teams.

Things we didn’t like – gets expensive once you get above 20 employees or so.

What we love about Basecamp – very easy to organize separate projects and ends up saving a lot of time versus Asana. Basecamp is also generally less expensive.

David Krauter – Websites That Sell

David Krauter

We’ve tried several project management tools over time, with the flexibility required for our agency and how we do things basecamp became an obvious choice and we’ve been using this platform for over 7+ years now.

The features that made basecamp our go-to tool are the ability to template our campaigns with the ability to customize depending on client needs. The task assignment, team management & tracking of complete work makes this tool invaluable to both scaling & delivering our services.

In the end, however, the fact Basecamp does what the creators say it does, without bugs, without outages, makes it our tool of choice for the last 7+ years.

Harris Brown – HFB Advertising

Harris Brown

We use Basecamp for project management.

It is very easy to use and reliable. The user interface is simple to understand and learn.

Like the features it has to share files for projects, create teams and messaging that we do for brainstorming discussions and project revisions.

Best of all it has a lot of well-known choices for third-party apps to choose from that makes it even better.

Jordan Brannon – Coalition Technologies

Jordan Brannon

Coalition selected Basecamp over 6 years ago and we’ve stuck with it as we’ve grown in employee and client counts. We’ve reviewed our usage of it 3 times in that time period, and each time we find that it provides an exceptional value for how complete an offering it is.

The primary sticking points for us have been its unrivaled pricing for unlimited employees and projects, the frequency with which Basecamp is updated with new features, and the stability of the platform. I can’t recall a single instance of downtime in the past 24 months.

It’s allowed us to scale without having dramatic increases in our costs (which is a key to scaling) and continues to evolve to meet the growing demands of our clients and our teams.

Mandy McEwen – Mod Girl Marketing

Mandy McEwen

At Mod Girl, we use the project management platform Basecamp. We like that it integrates with our other tools like our time tracking tool, Hubstaff.

Plus it allows us to create an unlimited number of projects exactly how we want with an unlimited number of team members. We can also add clients to the projects and only show them specific tasks while hiding all of our internal tasks and communication.

It really helps our internal team stay on task and meet our project deadlines.

Adam Colbert – Rocket 31

Adam Colbert

I’ve tried a ton of project management tools, even some specifically for SEO agencies. After trying a bunch of different tools (Asana, Trello, and others), I found that Basecamp was most beneficial and suited our team well.

With Basecamp, you can add clients to projects easily and only share certain things with them. Also, you can connect with Google Apps or upload files directly in the platform.

The ability to segment client projects and provide access to my team and the client’s team has been a huge time saver. Basecamp also serves as a communication hub for our clients and it allows our project managers to easily address their concerns or questions quickly.

The only drawback is that I haven’t found many other agencies that use Basecamp, so when we’re doing white label campaigns it can be a challenge to integrate our partner’s client. But other than that, Basecamp has been a lifesaver.

Austin Cline – Asun Digital

Austin Cline

We use Basecamp for all of our project management. It made the most sense for us because of its simplicity and integrations. Our business model is generally built on retainers and most of our clients have the same service. This makes up setting up and manging clients easy with Basecamp.

Our clients can also have a view of their projects in Basecamp, which was one feature we really liked.

We previously tested Hubspot, Teamwork, and Salesforce. Basecamp was the most well-rounded project management tool as an SEO agency.

Tim Berry – Reputation Local

Tim Berry

We use Basecamp for our project management. We’ve tried most of the popular ones over the years, however, we kept returning to Basecamp. There are several reasons we like it.

First, we appreciate the wisdom and experience of the developers. Our philosophy of keeping things simple matches theirs, as well as how they simplified project management with Basecamp. They have the standard bells and whistles, without all the complicated stuff that people rarely use (or rarely use correctly).

We have a small team of less than a dozen employees, all remote. It is easy to train new employees due to its simplicity.

We are able to communicate well, manage project files, chat, and maintain schedules through the tool. It allows templates, so we can maintain consistency in our processes.

It allows us to work with clients in the system, but limiting their access to only the things we need them to see.

We also use GSuite Drive for file storage and Basecamp integrates perfectly with that. We can efficiently reply to tasks directly from our emails without having to enter the software, or we can access the software on all devices.

We love it and run our entire business from it. Let me know if you have further questions.

Slack

Sam Soh

Sam Soh

The project management tool that we use is Slack. Here’s why it’s the best choice:

1. It’s free.

2. We have various clients so slack enables us to create different channels for different clients so that it’s easier to track progress.

3. We are able to upload high-quality photos and files without compromising on quality.

4. It is easier to keep track of information on slack as compared to other communication platforms such as Email/Whatsapp. The interface of the site makes it easier to navigate and search for specific keywords.

5. You can pin a message to the top of the channel to remind the team of urgent/important ideas.

6. It’s a good place to brainstorm for ideas with a highly collaborative environment where members can easily share their ideas and thoughts.

Sameer Somal – Blue Ocean Global Technology

Sameer Somal

The management tool our company utilizes is Slack. We use it because e-mails can be tedious and each person responds to e-mails at their own pace. As such, unnecessary delays result and the process of exchanging them can be a bottleneck.

The Slack app is available for both desktop computers and mobile devices, which also offers employees the option of working remotely. Communication takes place without any delays and a clear chat format is convenient. Response times are much faster and we have seen a significant increase in productivity after adoption.

Slack provides the independence to create various channels for different projects. As such, varying priorities and workflow can be managed at once.

Also, one can personalize their notifications and the push notification feature helps keep everyone updated. With slack, you can make phone calls and integrate with other productivity apps such as Google Drive. This affords team members easy access to all their important messages and information.

Quentin Aisbett – OnQ Marketing

Quentin Aisbett

For the past few years, we’ve used Asana for web development and strategy development projects, while using Trello for ongoing search and content projects.

However, more recently we’ve moved some from Trello to Asana and the remainder to Slack. Asana is a great fit for us. Just when we find limitations they release product updates and keep us engaged and satisfied. And we’re only using the free plan!

Whilst we used Slack initially for internal communication only, we began testing it with client communication and it eventually evolved into a project management tool for us too.

Unlike the bigger project management tools, which takes clients some getting used to, Slack is so intuitive and they love it straight away.

Patrick Garde – ExaWeb Corporation

Patrick Garde

We use Slack to communicate with our team as well as with our clients. We create separate channels per department to make sure the right people get the right message instantly.

Also, one of the things I’ve learned when I started working was to keep a To Do list. There are some people who enjoys seeing ticking off tasks on their list. With Slack, you can also set your To Do list with the help of Slack’s bot called Slackbot.

Further, we use reminders via Slack. By typing /remind in a channel, Slackbot will remind you on your preferred day and time.

Luckily, you can try Slack for free. If you like how it can help you with your project management, you can upgrade to unlock more features. Slack’s pricing depends on the number of users on your team and it starts at $6.67 per month, per user.

Since we are just a small team (10+), Slack has proven to be a go-to project management tool for us. We can just simply create a channel whether internal or external, and we’re able to communicate seamlessly with our team members or clients.

Slack helps us save time as we no longer have to sit in long meetings or get confused with plenty of email threads.

Kat Solukova – Engine Scout

Kat Solukova

We use Slack for all of our projects and client management needs. The reason we chose Slack is that we can create channels for each client but more importantly, it allows our team to collaborate, help each other and keep our client projects on track.

For example, at the beginning of each month, our client managers create a set of goals and corresponding tasks that are posted in each dedicated client Slack channel. That way we’re able to easily monitor every client project and make sure monthly goals are achieved and the work gets done.

Slack is also great for team learning and managing popular documents within our business, for example, we store lots of learning references for new employees, past presentation slides our most common standard operating procedure (SOP’s) documents.

Slack also has a super useful search box functionality – I literally use this feature every day to find anything important I need to follow up on, either for a client or an internal business matter.

Slack is especially useful when on the go, for example, I can see what’s happening on our company Slack channels from my mobile phone and contribute instantly to team discussions while out of the office.

Some of our employees also work flexibly where they can choose to work from home, allowing our team to stay connected via Slack. A bonus is we don’t really send emails to each other anymore! Slack does it all

Monday

James Reynolds – SEO Sherpa

James Reynolds

We recently transitioned to Monday from a combination of Trello and Google Sheets.

Here are some of the reasons we chose Monday.com

– It allows you to quickly zoom in and zoom out to view the agency from different vantage points. With Monday.com you can easily see tasks assigned at full-agency, client, pod or individual level and via multiple views like calendar, timeline, and kanban.

This was ideal for us as we execute using monthly sprints (using the Scrum methodology) but still require the ability to plan long term with standard timelines.

– It has an in-built time tracking function for easy monitoring of resource utilization. Proper tracking of utilization and time spent on each client is essential if you want to grow a profitable agency.

– Shareable links that can be provided to clients for a high-level view of project status. This was important to us as we (a) didn’t want to force our clients to login to a tool or (b) share internal team dialogue concerning the execution of tasks.

This feature has reduced communication as the client now has a place to go to to get a status on jobs (and doesn’t need to come to us to ask).

– It has a great user experience. Other tools have most of the functions we wanted but were damn hard to use and looked ugly. Our team love using Monday.com, which was essential for us to ensure adoption.

– It has many automation and dependency functions. This has helped us to improve our efficiency and freed time for team members to work on real SEO as opposed to project management.

Tom McSherry – Premium SEO NZ

Tom McSherry

We use monday.com for our project management. I like to be able to see the big picture of everything we have going on at once, while also being able to get very granular on each part of the whole.

Monday is useful for doing both. It also allows for a great degree of autonomy and self-management for each team member. It’s quite automation friendly and allows for a lot of management to be built into day to day processes.

We are still quite small (4 employees, including the founder/owner) and going through the process of standardizing a lot of our services.

Monday has been helpful for creating checklists and keeping track of which stage each client is at on their package. It stops things from slipping through the cracks.

It also has a timeline/calendar feature which makes it easier to see visually who is working on what at any given time, and where bottlenecks may be coming up in the future. The task templates also make it easier to set up new projects without having to reinvent the wheel.

Floyd Buenavente – SEOPhilippines

Floyd Buenavente

I prefer the tool monday.com, it is very flexible and has a lot of integrations (like slack) which is very accessible especially when you’re on the go.

So far this is the best and very user-friendly project management tool that I use.

Patrick Leonard – Brighter Digital

Patrick Leonard

We aren’t a huge company but trying to keep all of our workflows organized with Google docs and spreadsheets started to get really messy. Those tools didn’t allow us to create recurring weekly or monthly tasks that everyone could visualize and check off when completed.

For example, did we review Google My Business for client x this week? Adding checklists for projects like a new website launch is another example of how the software helped organize our efforts.

We decided to go with Monday.com because it accomplishes all of those tasks and allows me to assign projects/tasks to only the people involved.

From the dashboard, I get a high-level view of everything our agency is working on and what the progress is.

From there I can intervene or follow-up where necessary. Safe to say – we’re not going back to just using Google Docs.

Zoho

Jon Tromans

Jon Tromans

Which project management tool does your agency use and what made it the best choice for your business?
Can I name two?

The first is called Zoho Projects and it’s ‘proper’ Project Management Software that includes everything you need to run a large project.

You can plug employees, freelancers, stakeholders and anyone else into the system and the fine-grained permissions define what they can see.

Its task management is excellent and comes complete with milestones, bug reporting, and timesheet recording. Access your documents on your cloud drives, chat in private forums, create manuals and knowledge bases and much more.

This is big, hefty project management software and it’s great for collaboration within big teams.

The second is for much smaller projects and it’s called Todoist, you may have heard of it.
It’s really just a task management application but with a bunch of advanced features including multiple project areas, labels, file uploads and more.

Todoist is perfect for small fixed teams who want a simple interface to outline projects and see what needs doing instantly.

Its search functionality is excellent and I’m a big fan of adding tasks via natural language…. ‘Run Google Analytics report every Friday at 10am”.

You can collaborate via comments and assign tasks to others and have tasks on pretty much any device you want.
Have a play with the free trials and see if they work for you.

Bobby Reed – Capitol Tech Solutions

Bobby Reed

For Project Management, we use Zoho One. It provides us with the suite of products we need to effectively run our business. Each SEO sprint takes two months, and we use the project template at the beginning of each month to set up the template.

Many of the high-level SEO tasks are the same, and by using the template we can create the project and assign the tasks quickly to the team members. The first task is the keyword and competitor research. Once that task is closed, it automatically passes the task to the next team member for the content to be created.

In addition to each individual task, it also aggregates the tasks, so management can quickly see the status of the overall project, and make sure we are meeting our commitment to our clients.

When tasks don’t hit delivery dates, the color code stands out and we know we are starting to fall behind in the commitment to the client.

We have been using it over a year now, and while it isn’t perfect, it fits the vast majority of our teams needs.

Lakeer Kukadia – Radon Media

Lakeer Kukadia

As the owner of an SEO agency, I have always preferred Zoho Projects as my project management tool. A great thing about this tool is that it is more of a collaborative tool rather than a project management tool.

Zoho project allowed us to create a structured work process, track project status, timelines and manage work assignments. Most of my projects involve multiple activities running simultaneously and Zoho provides a central platform to view all the activities and its completion status.

SEO projects generally involve many complex activities at the same time and time management was critical. The excellent API’s gave us the opportunity to have a flexible workflow. We can switch between multiple projects and update the other team members accordingly.

It has a very user-friendly interface and no restrictions on the number of projects you could create.

As someone who has handled many projects prior to the implementation of Zoho, I can see how this tool had a significant impact on my agency’s efficiency. The recurring task feature authorizes you to set a frequent task to recur after a certain period of time.

Earlier, the client handling and reporting part were too cumbersome, but now the communication happens without any resistance.

It allows you to create workflow templates for your process-driven activities and save time by automatically assigning the tasks based on the criteria defined in the rules.

Zoho Project is useful for medium and small scale businesses who look for comprehensive project management tools.

Robert Taylor – Advantix Digital

Robert Taylor

Keeping track of SEO activities within our team can be a challenge so we needed something that would allow users to manage client projects, the ability for users to assign tasks, ability to look into task statuses and get updates, and track hours worked on tasks to help with SEO team allocation and client billing..
After weighing several platforms and their options and features, we went with Zoho as it was easy to roll out and is scalable with additional functionality. Our usage utilizes two main aspects – Zoho CRM and Zoho Projects.
Some of the main features we utilize include:
Zoho CRM
Account Management:
  • Housing all client information and the ability to create projects
  • Project creation and organization for different teams (ie website, SEO, creative, etc.)
Zoho Projects
Task Tracking:
  • Assigning tasks to analysts from other departments and Account Managers
  • Updating status and progress to allow visibility and responsibility
  • Custom view creation for a holistic view of statuses
    • Leaders have various views, including – all due this week, all overdue, all in client review, etc.
Time Tracking:
  • Allocated vs actual hours entered for a project to ensure we are billing correctly
  • Transparency into tasks that are taking significantly more/less time than anticipated
  • Full project and user reports to see total hours worked internally to aid with hiring more team member

Teamwork

Tim Cameron-Kitchen – Exposure Ninja

Tim Cameron-Kitchen

As a remote agency, project management tools are doubly important to us. We opted for Teamwork as it helps us to manage a boatload of marketing work from afar and create different workspaces for subteams.

However, we also are coming to recognize the disadvantages of Teamwork – like its rigidity when it comes to setting tasks. In digital marketing, these tasks change often due to the fast-pace of the industry and we also adapt projects to individual client needs.

At Exposure Ninja, we have around 100 contracted staff and freelancers working on different projects.

Teamwork – alongside other tools we use such as Hubstaff and Slack – allow us to track a person’s productivity and progress, so despite its limitations, it still proves to be a useful tool to provide a quick at-a-glance overview of how the team is performing.

Jessica Herbine – Trinity Insight

Jessica Herbine
At Trinity, our team swears by Teamwork for two reasons: Organization and transparency. Teamwork’s project management software is comprehensive yet intuitive and perfectly suited for tracking SEO tasks and strategies.

Teamwork acts as a central hub for our team – both for client-facing activity, as well as internal efforts. The functionality of the individualized tasks and task lists allows for staff to coordinate and keep track of to-do’s; and the messaging platform makes it easy to store files, private and public messages.

On the flip side, Teamwork offers for our SEO clients full transparency into what we’re working on, access to all past files and messages, and visibility into billed hours. But the best part?

Everything is accessible via email, so that clients rarely, if ever, need to log in or learn how to navigate their dashboards.

With an emphasis on task management, Teamwork is an ideal platform for tracking short-term tactics and longer-term SEO projects, such as content strategies and migrations. We’d be flying by the seat of our pants without it.

GitScrum

Sean Si – SEO Hacker

Sean Si

To answer your question, we’re currently using GitScrum as our primary project management tool. This is because GitScrum has been a pivotal tool for our operations. It’s a simple, straightforward, and cost-efficient project management tool that has just enough flexibility for our team to customize the tool to fit our Agile methodology.

Overall, Gitscrum has improved our teamwork, efficiency, and has lifted off a significant amount of work from our shoulders. This is because Gitscrum has created a centralized network of accountability that allows us to track and manage both people and projects simultaneously.

The results are especially felt through the accomplishing of multiple tasks from our almost 50 man team.

Oz Chowdhury – Powerphrase

Oz Chowdhury

Our company uses Gitscrum for project management. Gitscrum is relatively new compared to other tools out on the market.

It’s an alternative to Trello. It does basic project management things. It’s great for marketing and development teams who run agile/scrum methods. You can use Kanban boards, time tracking, user stories, sprints, calendar, and discussions.

We use the tool in the most basic way but you can use it for more complex projects that you’re working on. The tool gives a fair amount of team members and clientele projects as well as storage. I like how solid the UI/UX is.

Also, the cartoons they have as their logo and images are fun to look at. Most project management tools are business/professional looking but this has more of a friendly personal touch with their cartoons.

I like how you can see the progress of your work that’s being done and see how much others have contributed towards the project. Depending on the use case, you can set it up where you can monitor each task and time it takes the person to get in done.

I like how organized the tool is. I also like that you certain clients can view their own project, as well as some team members, can only have access to the projects they’re working on.

Gitscrum has a bit way to go but it’s great if you’re an SEO agency.

ClickUp

Matthew Tomkin – Tao Digital

Matthew Tomkin

We use the ClickUp project management tool. It’s great, has every feature we need. We were using a number of different tools all joined together before we found Click Up. An example being a separate time tracking tool, a messaging tool, a time allocation tool, etc. but Clickup has it all in one.

It also has a really good Chrome plugin that helps you manage all projects and tasks with relative ease and just click a button to start and stop tracking time on a task.

The main features that attracted us to use it were the process management and time management elements. It always seemed a bit of a ballache trying to get the team to track time before we used this.

We are now looking to automate adding certain tasks when we bring on new clients too. It has full Zapier integration so we can trigger tasks to fire based on loads of different triggers.

The templates that come with the product have also helped us start using it more efficiently from the start.

James Roberts – Sonder Digital Marketing

James Roberts

As a digital marketing agency that has both long, detailed web design projects and monthly or ongoing SEO and content campaigns, we’ve found ClickUp works best for us.

You can create templates for projects and select the end deadline, which subsequently puts deadlines on each task within the project. If one task is extended it extends the rest of the timelines.

We set up weekly and monthly recurring tasks in ClickUp for the content and SEO team. This way they can always clearly see in their inboxes when they need to do what for each client.

From a director’s perspective, it’s really easy to look over projects, see who’s on what, where they’re up to, as well as when you can expect them to finish.

Hive

Jonas Sickler – Terakeet

Jonas Sickler

We recently began using Hive as our primary project management tool. As an enterprise SEO company with more than 200 employees and a global client base, we needed an incredibly robust solution that goes beyond simple organization.

A single project can have many layers of dependencies and collaborators that impact client deliverables. Hive allows us to track very complex projects across multiple functional areas with a customizable workflow.

It also enables us to more accurately predict and assign resources through time tracking and Salesforce integration. To make things even easier, you can view project timelines in multiple formats, including gantt, calendar, table, and kanban.

It also improves communication. Anyone familiar with SEO knows that project communications are rarely confined to one platform. Hive is great at centralizing communications because it integrates with Gmail and Slack, enabling team members to quickly pull in important threads from other channels.

10,000ft

Ross Hudgens – Siege Media

Ross Hudgens

We use 10,000ft for project management and utilization, in addition to Basecamp. We started using 10kft because it adds additional utilization information which is helpful for us to make hiring decisions at Siege.

We used Basecamp only until we were about 75 people, but realized it was no longer good enough for our needs as we scaled.

Miro

Dimitar Karamarinov – onLoad Agency

Dimitar Karamarinov

When it comes down to project management, there are literally hundreds of tools out there but the one I personally love the most is Miro.

This handy tool allows teams to simultaneously collaborate in building the creative part of projects such as content architecture, brainstorming, design, and improvement of entire processes as they unfold. I love that the tool allows us to both do creative sprints and handle project management itself.

You can hyperlink to documents, articles, videos, etc. The app offers a huge range of visual modules you can easily adapt to whatever you need.

You can have mind maps, note boards, images of mockups to comment, idea buckets, flow charts and more! It’s an intuitive and out of the ordinary type of project management tool that’s constantly evolving.

Jira

Jeff Moriarty – JMoriartyMarketing

Jeff Moriarty

Our company is a smaller agency, but we have used Jira for about two years now. The initial reason for moving to Jira was the cost. Starting out it was just $10 per month.

Now as our team has grown, so has the cost, but with all the options it offers for not only our developers but our entire marketing team, it’s well worth it.

We are able to stay on track with client’s projects, and can easily loop in our clients. No longer do we send emails to clients that can get lost. This allows us to keep track of everything from projects to communications all in one tool.

Accelo

Randy Mitchelson – iPartnerMedia

Randy Mitchelson

Accelo is the project management software used at iPartnerMedia. It was selected after approximately 100 man hours of evaluating and testing various solutions. Accelo does a good job helping our marketing agency setup and manage retainers for clients and manage the budget of time they have available.

In addition, Accelo allows us to manage website design and development projects down to the minute and helps us ensure projects are on-time and on-budget.

If needed, we can produce an audit trail of work performed for a client in a moment’s notice. Our website management team also uses Accelo to manage the multitude of tickets that are received from clients needing changes to their websites.

Although Accelo includes a basic CRM component, this is perhaps the component that could use the most enhancing. We receive regular updates from the Accelo team about their ongoing development to enhance their platform. It is encouraging to see their commitment to investing in their product.

Plutio

Niles Koenigsberg – FiG Advertising

Niles Koenigsberg

At our SEO agency in Denver, we utilize a project management tool called Plutio. With so many different tools out there, we gravitated towards Plutio for a number of reasons.

We began using Plutio initially because it simplified the delegation of individual tasks. The system allows us to easily divide up the responsibilities of a given client to the entirety of our marketing team. With Plutio, we can create tasks to complete and then delegate those tasks to individual staff members.

These delegated tasks then pop up in the private task lists for each staff member with assigned due dates and any additional sub-tasks. These delegation abilities helps us stay on top of our assignments and keep every marketer on our team busy.

We also greatly value the time-tracking capabilities of the application. Like many other advertising and marketing agencies, we bill our clients by the hour. In the past, we had estimated occasionally on how long certain tasks took.

Plutio allows us to track exactly how much time our team members are actually spending on given tasks. This time-tracking ability helps ensure that we’re billing our clients accurately and fairly, passing on greater value to our clients.
As a small advertising agency, our team members are constantly in and out of the office, heading to meetings, networking events, and more. Since so many of us are always on-the-go, it can become difficult to stay on top of our tasks and project deliverables.

Thankfully, Plutio has a downloadable app that is accessible across all mobile devices. This way, we can create and assign new tasks as they come up at meetings right from our phones.

The app makes it far easier to stay on top of everything when our marketers are zipping around downtown Denver.

Microsoft Project

Raymond Lowe – WL Media HK

Raymond Lowe

Project Management is more a state of mind or attitude to life rather than a tool, but tools help with implementation. We use project management for every project, whether it is SEO or a full Digital Brand Audit. Which tools we use depend on the complexity of the task involved, but for most, we use one market-leading product.

Microsoft Project is the tool of choice at WL Media HK because it covers every phase and aspect of the project management process from brainstorming to timesheets, with a familiar user interface and great support for office-based as well as remote workers.

I was first introduced to project management in the 1980s when I did technical support for Interior Design and Project Management companies. When coordinating dozens of contractors on a project to get a new restaurant or shopping mall to open on time, a good set of tools was essential. Being late was not an option, so the right tools were essential.

Enter Microsoft Project.

Installing Microsoft Project for DOS In those days meant a dozen floppy disks inserted one at a time into a stand-alone “IBM AT” computer. That was my first introduction to using PM tools, and I never looked back. Later I used it extensively while managing PC and IT infrastructure projects from the petrochemical company Shell to the pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co.

When I moved to Internet Marketing consulting, it was only natural that this powerful tool which I knew so well would again become a fundamental of the way I planned and managed SEO and web dev projects.

Although some see it as over-kill, the advantages of using Microsoft Project are many. It can be used as anything from a simple Gantt chart drafting tool through to a real team-management and resource allocation behemoth.

The ability to integrate with the rest of the Microsoft suite, particularly Outlook and Exchange server for task assignment and updating, as well as the integration with a macro language makes it a very scalable tool.

I will start by blocking out a project in a flowchart-like “network diagram” view. This time-independent view lets me focus on the *what* need doing. Flipping the view to the timeline-centric Gannt view starts to show how the project duration will result.

Flipping again to a spreadsheet-like resources view allows me to add more details such as resource utilization. Automated “leveling” then creates a proposed schedule.

Although the automated leveling isn’t always ideal, it provides a good starting point, and when you do manual adjustments, it is easy to see if they create any conflicts.

Importing a real-world calendar with non-working days, holidays and the like creates a more realistic result. MS Project allows me to assign different calendars to different resources which is great for working with outsourced workers who may be in a different country with different non-working days.

When past the planning stage and into the actual implementation, the management, of the project, there are many facilities within Project to help you. Tasks can be allocated with emails going out to those without the Project software, and tasks can be marked completed by email. For costing and payment support the system allows for timesheets that give you an overview of who spent how much time on what by who.

Like a lot of mature Microsoft products, it isn’t so much what it is capable of as what the user is capable of using that tool.

Microsoft now offers MS Project as a subscription product with a monthly fee, which also provides a purely online interface without the need for the (admittedly hefty) desktop client. That allows me to use the full PC client to create and manage projects, while others on the team use the online interface to view and update tasks for which they are responsible.

The learning curve for this serious piece of software is steep, but much of it involves learning PM concepts and modes of thinking, which are a great and potential life-long benefit even if you switch technology at some point.

Ignitur

Steve Wiideman

Steve Wiideman

Wiideman recently moved from Monday (formerly DaPulse) to Ignitur. While we really love the drag and drop capabilities of Monday and mobile-friendly user interface, we ultimately chose Ignitur for its integration with several marketing tools.

This integration allows our clients to not only see a list of what was completed the previous week in their weekly report, but also a mashup of various analytics from Moz, AHREFS, Google Analytics, Search Console, social networks, and paid search.

Sometimes it’s difficult to trade aesthetics for functionality, but we’re happy with the decision we’ve made.

Bitrix24

Pierre de Braux – Spiralytics

Pierre de Braux

We’ve actually shuffled through a number of project management tools over the years. What’s most important to us is that we’re able to customize the tool to our internal processes, not the other way around. Of course, the cost is always a factor as well as how efficient and friendly the UI is.

We started off with Asana, which was great, but a little pricey.

We then moved on to Trello, but that wasn’t really flexible enough for all our teams (there’s a lot of variety when it comes to our internal processes).

Next was ActiveCollab, which had a really nice UI but the tracking and reporting were pretty restricted, which made it a bit difficult to work with.

Now we’re on Bitrix24. They have an incredible amount of features and a great open API, which makes for really easy uploading and reporting. But now that we’ve been using it for over a year, the pile-up of task data has really slowed the program down, making it less workable.

That said, we’re almost done developing the beta of our own proprietary project management tool.
It’s fast, heavily-customizable, and easily integrated with most other APIs. So naturally, we’re pretty excited about it.

Freedcamp

Kevin Pike – Rank Fuse

Kevin Pike

My eight-person SEO agency uses Freedcamp as our project management software. Aside from being free, it was a great choice for us because it is intuitive with assigning different team members individual subtasks within a larger project.

For example, an SEO scope that requires technical on-page changes, content development, and keyword research can be sent to individuals at each sub-task level of the larger project. For repeat tasks we can even duplicate projects, saving hours having to make new templates and workflows from scratch.

From a manager’s standpoint, the task board view is great for identifying issues that are slowing down project completion. We also love the 3rd party integrations with Google Drive and the mobile app as well. The document storage for collaboration and looking back at past work is also a time saver vs. searching through old emails.

Vartika Kashyap – Proof Hub

Vartika Kashyap

We use ProofHub as our project management tool. It is our own tool and a prominent one among project management solutions.

We are a team of about 45 people which includes designers, developers, testers and content team. ProofHub acts as a single source of truth for the entire workforce. Its simple interface and an exhaustive list of features help teams collaborate and communicate effortlessly.

ProofHub helps managers plan, schedule and allocate tasks using Kanban boards at one central location for everyone to see and get clarity on roles and duties. This way, we do not have to fall into the chaos of email threads. Team members get clear visibility on who is doing what and what is the current status of any task.

While features like Discussions, chat, and Announcements make idea exchange and team communication effortless, the ability to attach files and proof them there only, makes collaborating super easy.

ProofHub increases our efficiency as we can spot potential bottlenecks in our workflow through a timeline view on Gantt charts and make adjustments to meet deadlines on time.

Andy Crestodina – Orbit Media

Andy Crestodina

It’s called Sputnik. It’s homegrown. You’ve never heard of it.

When we started (2001) there wasn’t anything that had the features we needed, so we built our own. And it evolved as we did and today, it does everything we need.

It doesn’t just track time and tasks, it manages capacity and utilization. It reports hosting costs and margins. It shows profitability per project by phase. It manages billing and projects revenue.

The downside: as other tools caught up, we embraced some of them. We use Zoho as our CRM and Kayako for support management. Sputnik does not integrate well with these. So there’s some duplicate work. But we’re sticking with this stack for now.

Ryan Stewart – Webris

Ryan Stewart

We chose to build our own tool in the Google Suite. We tried everything…Asana, Basecamp, Trello, Workday…None of them worked out for us. All of those tools are built for general project management, not for agencies.

We chose to build a custom system within Google Sheets because we could get it to map to the nuances of SEO agency day to day. We were able to automate so many pain in the ass workflows and create an open system that fit our exact needs.

You can read more about our project management strategy on our site and check out the project management tool here.

Andrew Holland – Zoogly

Andrew Holland

When it comes to project tools I have tried the lot.

Often a client will add you to theirs and this can be problematic because with any tool you have a learning curve and this eats into your time.

It’s a hidden cost because time matters.

The same goes for internal agency tools.

Managing a project on a tool is great in theory, but it can become a burden on staff.

I operate in a quite old fashioned way.

Firstly I have 2 large boards that have the clients listed on them and the one task that needs to be done.

That is my approach to everything these days after reading the book titled The One Thing.

I aim for my agency and staff to tackle one task at a time and that task is the thing that will bring the desired results faster.

It is this single focus that means I generate maximum efficiency.

The staff doesn’t get to see a huge list of tasks. They just have one to concentrate on and when that is done they get another.

You might be wondering how I manage to handle multiple clients and tasks?

Well, pretty simple.

Each client gets a detailed proposal that has listed the deliverables for each month.

This is my go-to road map because I create them with Better Proposals they exist online and I can refer to them whenever I need to.

Each week I create a list of tasks (on good old fashioned paper) and that list goes on the board.

When one task is done it gets replaced with the next.

It might be an old fashioned method of doing things, but it keeps things streamlined and efficient.

No one likes a big list of to do’s. By having one high leverage item at a time to complete projects get moving really quickly.

And I developed this approach after using countless online tools.

Sometimes going back to basics works.

Christina Nicholson – Media Maven

Christina Nicholson

We keep track of everything in Google Drive. Each client has their own folder and in that folder is information about the client, images we may need when we pitch the media for editorial coverage, and the most important is a tracking document.

This tracking document is where my team and I keep the notes of our weekly activity. We take these notes and turn them into a weekly update that gets sent to the client every Friday.

In addition, this is also where we keep track of our success and earned media coverage. It’s nice having everything in one spot, it’s easy to share, and we can access it anywhere at any time.

A Mix Of Tools

Mike Podolsky – Wiser Brand

Mike Podolsky

As managing several teams with completely different workflow is pretty much a given when it comes to outsourcing agencies like ours, SEO, design and development teams need to work efficiently not only within their departments but also interacting and switching to joint tasks.

Though several years of experience, our PM team and I have come to a decision that we’d continue using two tools, depending on the client: Teamwork and Jira.

Teamwork is a straightforward platform that allows for convenient and transparent team monitoring, checking the task statuses, budget and time limit tracking. Board view, Gant chart, billable и unbillable logs, comments with an option to tag users are all incredibly useful in facilitating effective communication between employees and departments.

Integration with Google Docs and cloud storage allows to keep track of big volumes of information and content, and the tools for sending and managing invoices and monitoring finances are also available.

This way, Teamwork covers all aspects of project management without creating new difficulties for the employees, PMs, and clients.

Jira is somewhat more complicated to get the hang of at first, but it’s a personal favorite of mine when it comes to how abundant the toolset and customizability is.

Board view, burnup and burndown charts, file attachments, tagged comments, and versatile task distribution allow you to make informed estimates and keep track of every specialist on a larger scale.

Besides Google Docs and cloud storage, you also get Confluence for effective file and document usage.

One of the absolute best features of Jira is the integration with Slack, which shows you status updates, comments and management system mentions directly in the main communication channels, saving you tons of time. All of the above make Jira the best project management tool for SEO teams to me.

Jose Gomez – Evinex

Jose Gomez

These days, using a PM tool is crucial for any company. It significantly helps to organize not only the team but also individual tasks. No matter how big or small your company is.

Similarly, it has countless benefits, whatever the number of team members. Not to mention the fact that it can be used if your team works remotely.

Not surprisingly, we use several tools in our agency. I will focus on the most useful ones for our everyday work: Meistertask and Slack.

Meistertask allows users to manage and organize their own tasks. It helps project managers better organize their teams.

In fact, all team members can see where they are as regards the project. There are lots of features you can benefit from. But, we mainly use it for daily task assignments, task and time tracking, deadlines, and so on. Indeed, each project has its own Kanban board.

So, it enables project managers to track a project’s progress in real-time. Besides, it is flawlessly integrated with Google Drive and Slack, which we use on a daily basis too.

Moreover, Slack is the channel we use to organize our work. That’s to say; it is a chat room we use to communicate with each other. So, we are all connected when working. We either use it for group discussions, send private messages, share files, etc.

It can be used instead of email as it works as a notifications hub for Google Drive, Google Calendar, Meistertask, and much more. On top of that, it can also be used for real-time meetings.

To conclude, any company can take advantage of using any of these two PM tools. They help us do our jobs better. We improved our organization since we make use of them. And, our coordination and team communications have no doubt improved.

We are a digital marketing agency that focuses on SEO and advertising. Our company has currently around ten employees, and we usually work on teams of 3-4 members, in most cases working on remote.

Gabriel Sim – Undrcut

Gabriel Sim

When it comes to project management tools, we pick the ones that enable seamless communication and can be integrated with Google Drive and other tools.

First of all, we use Asana as it has an easy-to-use interface and is free. It allows us to delegate work efficiently and assign deadlines, especially when we are managing our freelance employees as we can create new and specific projects for them to gain access to and work on.

The entire interface is neat and presentable, thus allowing us to convey the information that we need for each assignment and set deadlines that we can check anytime and anywhere.

Moreover, with the app version, we can adjust project details on the go and this ensures efficiency on our part in answering queries and solving any problems that arise even when we are out of the office.

As such, Asana greatly increases the team’s productivity and makes communication among team members easier through the comments function and the project assignment function so that everyone is clear about the tasks that they need to accomplish.

Secondly, we use Slack as well. With SEO, time is of the essence when it comes to communicating with our employees and clients. Slack allows us to create numerous threads that we can use to cater to our different clients. Employees can be added to the respective threads pertaining to their assignments and it provides a more targeted approach to work delegation.

Moreover, with the Slackbot, daily reminders and lists can be made to allow for more efficient work experience. There is also the internal messaging function which greatly aids us in sending urgent messages to each other, all without leaving our desks; this can range from images, documents, and information that we need for clients.

Phil Mackie – TopSailDigital

Phil Mackie

It’s been a few years of team growth and as a result of our growth, we’ve had to implement a project management tool to keep us on track.

Here’s our project management workflow:

· Google Drive – We keep project documents and files stored securely here and I will assign my team members to certain DriveFolders when the Project begins

· Trello – Trello is great for individual projects and you really can stuff a lot of cards within each column. Also, video instructions, work documents, and other helpful links are easy to embed into the Trello cards

· Paymo – in order to keep track of how long projects are taking my team members, we have implemented time-tracking measures using Paymo. I like it, as the Manager, even if my employees had to be cajoled to use it all the time at first.

Sean Dudayev – Frootful Marketing

Sean Dudayev

Within our team, we are using Trello to keep track of what everyone is working on to grow the agency. We use Trello as an internal progress project management tool. Everyone has their own board and tasks within that board for what they are responsible for.

As well as a motherboard to help track everyone’s goals. It’s very easy to use and we started using it initially because we were a small team and it was by far the most valuable from a cost to benefit perspective.

On the client-side, we use Asana to make sure all the work for our clients is getting done. We chose Asana because it was the one tool everyone was familiar with when we were making the shift away from using Trello for client-side work.

This made it a no brainer because adaptability would be quick amongst all team members with minimal training required. It also is one of the few intuitive project management tools out there.

To track our client’s performance, we use SEMRush. It is an all-in-one tool that provides progress markers that both our team and the clients need to see.

We are able to pull reports and show them the improvements being made as well as where they currently stand. It makes it easy for us to translate our efforts into our clientele.

Jason Myers – The Content Factory

Jason Myers

Since The Content Factory is 100% remote worker staffed with eight employees spread across multiple countries and time zones, having seamless project management tools are essential for our firm’s success.

Three of the tools that we use the most are Slack, Toggl and Trello.

Slack provides our digital office the virtual environment that we need to keep our teams in constant communication throughout the day.

With separate channels for each client that we represent as well as channels for various departments (PR, SEO, Social Media) we can meet and work together throughout the day and have access to files and information in an environment that’s more personal and easier to access than email alone.

Toggl is the tool that keeps our virtual office on task and allows the accounting to see weekly reports of how much time is being spent per client and per task.

Trello is where we keep track of every project across all teams so that everyone on our staff knows where the project is at, at any given time.

Also, Trello keeps the management transparent and visually shows how close we are to hitting deadlines as well as who is responsible for each facet of a project so everyone can take responsibility for their role in the overall finished product, be it a report or a writing job.

We like that Trello integrates with Slack so updates can be seen within the respective channels without actually having to leave our virtual office.

Pearl Lemon

Pearl Lemon

Whatsapp has been a lifesaver within our tool stack at Pearl Lemon.

As a fully remote company, communication is paramount when trying to discuss tasks and do team updates. Whatsapp has solved the need for communication to be fast, efficient, and available to all of the Pearl Lemon team members.

The ability for photo sharing, link sharing, and most importantly voice notes makes communication a breeze with our globally spread team. In addition to this, the ability to exchange voice notes is a huge time saver by minimizing the time that would be spent typing out messages, and listening to messages can be done when there is no time to read something written out.

Whatsapp’s availability on both Android and Apple products, as well as, in a browser makes it easily accessible to anyone.


Thank you so much to all the experts that shared with us their favorite project management tools! If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends and family on social media.

How Much are Attorney Websites? 2021 Law Firm Website Costs

How Much are Attorney Websites 2021 Law Firm Website Costs. Your website will make a first impression law firm on visitors who discover your law firm on search engines, social media networks, and local review directories. The adage, “You get what you pay for.” can be true when it comes to web design in some, but not all cases. In this post, we’ll analyze several answers to the question, “How much are attorney websites?” to determine the best approach for your law firm’s budget and online marketing strategy.

Multiple Approaches to Law Firm Website Design

The first step to determining the cost of an attorney website is to decide who will create and maintain the website. This person would be responsible for:

  • Choosing and registering the domain name.
  • Choosing the website platform and hosting.
  • Setting up the website software, users, and general settings.
  • Finding and customizing a design/template.
  • Installing plugins, analytics, and other tracking code.
  • Monitoring for security, hacking, and other intrusion attempts.
  • Maintaining software, plugin, and design updates.

What if you are a solo practice or small law firm that doesn’t have time to deal with the technical ins and outs of website maintenance? There are several other options that can suit your needs as well.

What You Need in Your Law Firm Website

Ultimately, the cost of your attorney website comes down to getting essential information about your law firm on the internet. At the bare minimum, your law firm needs the following pages to have a solid website:

  • A home page.
  • An about page for your law firm.
  • An about page for each of your attorneys.
  • A services page for all of your legal services.
  • A detailed page for each of your legal services.
  • A page for each of your offices.
  • A contact us page.

To price out your website with certain services, you will need an accurate count of the number of pages you will need, the total number of attorneys, and the total number of offices.

Approach #1: How much are attorney websites if my law firm can do it ourselves/DIY without hiring someone new?

Let’s say you or someone in your law firm has the time to create and maintain your attorney website. Here’s the total cost you would be looking at for your law firm’s website.

How Much Are Attorney Websites - Domain Names
One source for domain names for your new attorney websites
  • Domain names start at $11.99 per year for a .com on GoDaddy.
  • The top content management system (CMS) is WordPress according to W3Techs and BuiltWith. It would allow your law firm to collect leads, publish blog content, run live chat, and much more.
  • Top web hosting companies recommended for WordPress include Bluehost, starting at $2.95 per month, Dreamhost, starting at $3.95 per month, and SiteGround, starting at $5.95 per month.
  • Themes/designs for attorney websites cost $3 – $99 on Themeforest.
    Vaultpress backups and security protection start at $3 per month.

This is going to be the least expensive approach to attorney website startup and maintenance. It is also going to be the most labor-intensive if you are not a fan of online technology.

Approach #2: How much are attorney websites if my law firm does it ourselves/DIY with a new hire?

In this approach, let’s say you decide you want to create a custom attorney website for your law firm. In addition, you want someone who is available in-house for continued maintenance and updates.

How Much Are Attorney Websites - Web Designer Salary
The average annual salary for a web designer

Here are some ideas of how much you would pay per year to keep your website maintained with an in-house hire.

  • Website designers/developers have an average base pay of $52,691 per year.
  • Digital marketing specialists have an average base pay of $57,152 per year.
  • Lead generation specialists have an average base pay of $54,181 per year.

It’s important to decide whether you want a designer/developer, marketing, or lead generation specialist as your full-time in-house hire. Which one is going to give your law firm the most ROI each year? You’re less likely to need someone to re-design your website each year. You’re more likely to need someone to market it and drive leads throughout the year.

Approach #3: How much are attorney websites if we outsource designers and developers?

What if you don’t mind maintaining your law firm’s website, but you don’t know how to get it up and running? In most cases, you can outsource the initial work of creating your website to a freelance designer or developer.

How Much Are Attorney Websites - Contractors
Web designers available for one-time projects on Fiverr

The cost of this approach can vary, based on the large number of places you can source freelance website designers and developers.

  • You can find freelancers on Fiverr who will offer to build a website for your law firm starting at $75 per project.
  • You can find freelancers on Upwork who will design responsive websites for your law firm starting at $50 per hour.
  • You can find the top 3% of freelance designers and developers on Toptal for your law firm’s website. This would be for large law firm websites that need custom development and functionality.

Approach #4: How much are attorney websites if we use managed hosting?

Another approach to the cost of your law firm’s website: what if you are happy with creating it, but don’t have the time to maintain it? That’s where managed hosting comes in.

How Much Are Attorney Websites - Managed Hosting
Example of managed hosting features from Bluehost

If you choose WordPress for your attorney website’s platform, you can choose a managed WordPress hosting plan where the hosting company handles the technical details. These include:

  • WordPress software installation when you sign up for your hosting account.
  • WordPress software, theme, and plugin updates.
  • Security, hacking, and malware scanning.
  • DDOS attack and intrusion prevention.
  • Daily backups and restoration when needed.
  • Faster speeds and more reliable servers.

The same hosting companies recommended by WordPress that we mentioned earlier also offer managed hosting options. Bluehost starts at $29.99 per month, Dreamhost starts at $16.95 per month, and SiteGround starts at $5.95 per month. All allow you to start up your law firm’s website on WordPress with less technical headaches.

Approach #5: How much are attorney websites if we use a legal website design service?

There are several platforms that offer turnkey attorney websites packages. These monthly services typically include:

  • Your law firm’s new website including custom design, content, and setup.
  • Web hosting, security, backups, and other maintenance provided by the service you choose
  • Advanced search and social media optimization features.
  • New content for your law firm’s blog, ghostwritten and published under the name of your law firm.
  • The opportunity to generate leads from the traffic the platform already attracts from organic and paid search marketing.

According to the pricing calculator on Lawlytics, we found out a website packages for a 2 – 5 attorney law firm in Illinois with one office would be $195 per month with a one-time $495 setup fee.

While there is no pricing on the Avvo Websites page currently, previously it was listed as $99 per month with a 12-month commitment. Some articles currently list it as $200 per month.

How Much Are Attorney Websites - Service
Old pricing from the Avvo website

FindLaw by Thomson Reuters also doesn’t list pricing for lawyer websites. Articles from outside reviewers have listed their service as starting at $250 per month.

Summarizing the Key Differences in Attorney Website Costs

So what are the key differences in how much attorney websites cost? Here is a quick summary of the cost of the above approaches.

  • The first approach – DIY with current staff – is going to be the lowest cost up front and long term.
  • The second approach – DIY with one new hire – is going to be the most expensive cost upfront and long term.
  • The third approach – outsource creation and DIY maintenance – is going to be a higher cost upfront and lower cost long term.
  • The fourth approach – DIY creation and managed WordPress hosting – is going to be lower cost upfront and average cost long term.
  • The fifth approach – a legal website design service – is going to be a higher cost upfront and long term.

The main difference between choosing your own web hosting for your law firm’s website and using a lawyer website design service? The latter is likely to charge you for the size of your law firm – especially the number of attorneys and offices you have, as these mean more pages and locations to manage.

A web hosting service is only going to care about the amount of traffic your website receives. Unless your law firm generates a huge volume of traffic, you won’t pay as much for managed WordPress hosting as you would for monthly legal website design service fees.

Best of all, the amount you would save by choosing a less expensive platform and web hosting solution could go towards a more effective marketing strategy and marketing services. Those would be more likely to produce a positive ROI on a monthly basis.

Which approach should you take with your law firm’s website design? Continue the discussion the comments below.