What Matters More—Your Website or Attorney Profile?

Stephanie Lica
Thu, 12 Sep 2024 20:56:21 +0000
Law Firm Websites, legal profiles, legal websites

From your attorney profile to the firm website to managing social media, it’s easy to feel stretched thin by the digital marketing demands of today’s legal industry. In an effort to streamline marketing campaigns (and save precious time), some attorneys prefer to focus primarily on just one aspect of their online presence—overlooking how to leverage the entirety of their online reputation.

Some attorneys may opt to use their legal profile as a substitute for a full-fledged website. The lure of this approach is clear: attorneys assume that a single, easy-to-develop legal profile page can produce the same brand awareness and SEO benefits of a full website. Unfortunately, this strategy is only half the solution.

Do you feel torn between the demands of creating an attorney profile and a law firm website? There are only so many hours in a day, so we’ve captured the following considerations to keep in mind as you shape your digital marketing strategy:

Building Your Brand

While your attorney profile can make you easy to find and give potential clients a sense of your background and skills, your website allows you to go into greater detail and provide further insight into what makes your law firm unique.

In addition to featuring specific pages about various practice areas, your site can provide sections dedicated to your philosophy and mission. Blog content also provides an excellent opportunity to highlight your brand and become a thought-leader for your specific practice area. Through this content and its general tone, you’ll convey the qualities that make your firm compelling for potential clients, hit SEO keywords, and let folks get to know who you are as a business.

Credibility & Reputation

These days, potential clients expect any reputable practice to have a dedicated website, to the point that any practice lacking a strong digital presence feels suspicious. This reality was evident as early as the American Bar Association’s 2019 Legal Technology Survey Report, in which 86 percent of respondents reported that they maintain dedicated pages for their law firms. Post-pandemic, this rings even more true.

If you are a representing attorney for a firm and you haven’t created a website yet, know that the lack of one creates a real barrier for solo practices (who are already facing an uphill battle in competing against larger firms).

A high-quality website can transform a seemingly invisible solo practice into an authoritative resource, granting it the credibility that an attorney profile might not achieve on its own. Law firms should possess a clear identity—and this must go beyond simple CVs for your attorneys. An effective website establishes the identity of your law firm as a whole, not just that of individual attorneys and staff.

Attracting Leads with SEO

Attorney profile pages may be capable of attracting leads via search engines but this isn’t their only purpose. Rather, profiles on sites like Avvo or Lawyers.com form a vital part of a vast search network.

Prospective clients browse these networks with the intention of finding trusted attorneys. From there, they can learn more by following links to law firm websites.

Dedicated law firm websites strive to capture traffic not only from directory listing and profile sites, but also from organic searches performed on Google or Bing. Not accounting for these types of leads could cause you to miss out on valuable clients.

In order to rank well for key terms and be discoverable to a wider audience, it’s important to have a website optimized for search with plenty of valuable, informative content. The sheer volume of content needed makes law firm websites far more effective at ranking for important terms.

Calls to Action

Calls to action are most effective when included on web pages optimized for specific purposes. Like the page itself, the CTA can be designed to reflect the type of content that is most likely to spur leads to set up consultations or otherwise take action.

Targeted CTAs are more likely to convert, but these aren’t practical for attorney profile pages which need to appeal to a wide variety of visitors. Law firm websites can easily tailor CTAs to specific case types and segment their content to appeal to specific audiences. Targeted readers find these types of CTAs compelling and are likely to convert, but these measures are typically only used on your firm’s website.

The Right Tool for the Right Job

Your attorney profile serves many important functions, but it can’t be the only digital marketing tool you use to reach more prospective clients. While your legal profile offers a valuable overview, you’ll need content with more authority and deeper information about yourself and your practice to attract a sufficient volume of new leads—and to convince those leads to become clients. Basically, you need both.

As you move forward with creating your digital marketing strategy, resist the urge to force a single attorney profile to do the work of an entire website. Yes, this page is crucial, but it should complement—not replace—your law firm’s website.

Need help getting started with a website? Martindale-Avvo offers two solutions, crafted by legal professionals for legal professionals: WebVantage and WebVantage Plus. These solutions are built with unrivaled connectivity, scalability, and optimized performance. Check out their pages linked above, and get in touch with a Legal Marketing Expert today to walk through your options.