The SEO firm Condor Marketing just released the results of a study they conducted. The study aimed at comparing the SEO results of the top 5 legal marketing companies: FindLaw, Justia, Scorpion, Lawyers.com and iLawyermarketing. The fact that iLawyermarketing were even considered was amazing given our size compared to the other firms on the list. Our company has only around 150 SEO clients – while some of these competitors have thousands. The study looked at rankings for the term “Geo + Personal Injury Lawyer” and the average Domain Authority and Page authority rank (a key predictor in ranking success) in the top 19 competitive metros in the United States. One of the key findings of the study was this:
- iLawyerMarketing, based on this sample size of 19 cities and 864 web site results, is without question the best Legal SEO company out of all the major lawyer marketing companies, in terms of results. Justia is pretty good. Findlaw, Lawyers.com, and to a slightly lesser degree, Scorpion Web Design are all lacking in results based on the data from this study.”
This finding is even more impressive when you consider we have numerous sites in the studied cities that do not do SEO with us. www.hilljustice.com (Philadelphia), www.alderlaw.com (Los Angeles) and www.sloverlaw.net (Atlanta) all built a site with us but do not do ongoing SEO. if you took those results out they would fare even better. Additionally, there are firms that do SEO with us for other cities, that may come up in the studied city based on their ranking. For example, our Long Island client (www.lilawyer.com) comes up for New York City Personal Injury Lawyer on the 4th page – even though the client is not doing SEO for NYC and has no expectation of ranking there. Under the Condor analysis, I would assume that would hurt our overall ranking (We have no SEO clients in NYC). Finally, our small sample size hurts us in that we numerous clients in the studied cities that just started SEO within the past 5 months – Despite this, we still came out well ahead of the competitors.
iLawyermarketing has a strict SEO exclusivity model, never working with more than 3 SEO clients in a given metro. That said, of the cities mentioned in the study, there are 9 cities which we don’t have any SEO clients. Here are the cites studied and the number of SEO clients we have in each city.
New York City – No SEO Client
Miami – No SEO Clients
Seattle – No SEO clients
San Antonio – No SEO clients
St. Louis – No SEO clients
Atlanta – No SEO clients
San Jose – No SEO clients
Orlando – No SEO clients
Los Angeles – 3 SEO clients (1 new domain)
Chicago – 1 SEO client (Newer domain)
Brooklyn – 1 SEO client
Philadelphia – 1 SEO Client (Started SEO in December)
San Diego – 3 SEO Clients (1 Started 6 months ago)
Dallas – 2 SEO clients
Houston – 3 SEO clients (1 started in Febrauary)
Denver – 1 SEO clients
Phoenix – 3 clients (2 clients started within last 6 months)
San Jose – No SEO clients
Orange County – 2 SEO clients
The author of the Study ends his analysis with a wonderful compliment for iLawyermarketing:
“While I can’t overemphasize sample size enough here, these rankings the data shows, in my personal opinion, are an accurate reflection of what I see as I do SEO for attorneys day after day. I have a great deal of respect for the work that iLawyerMarketing does and if you think I’m saying as any sort of benefit to myself, just know that I don’t know anyone there and I’ve never even had a conversation with anyone affiliated with iLawyerMarketing in any way. Put simply my company is competitors with them. But being that over half of the attorneys I speak to complain about getting screwed over by their SEO company, I have to give credit where credit is due and iLawyerMarketing does it right.”
Why so many SEO openings if ilawyermarketing is indeed the best SEO company in the legal field? Well for one, unlike most of the others on the list, we don’t have a quota driven sales force. This is a big deal in that the two sales consultants we have – Derek Sanders and myself, are never desperate to close a deal to satisfy an arbitrary sales figure. Many companies like my old company FindLaw, have a commission structure that rewards sales versus retention. This can create a culture where a salesperson will say anything to get a deal. At ilawyermarketing, we have a month to month model where we are only paid if you continue as a client. This is intentional as our owner, Mike Perez, wants the right type of client versus a large number of clients.
Our SEO pricing reflects the challenge of doing the right type of SEO and getting results. Doing good SEO today is an expensive proposition, particularly for a competitive metro. For every new client our SEO price is determined by Mike Perez himself, based on how much time will it take to get and sustain great rankings. We never negotiate from that price once its been determined nor do we have a less expensive “starter SEO kit”. Finally because of our month to month model, we are adamant on having a great design that will convert. Thus we typically require a new client to invest in a new website as well. I talk to scores of attorneys each month that find us on Google (We are in the top 3 for most lawyer marketing searches) or are referred to us. For the great majority of them – we are too expensive and I end up referring them out to companies willing to work with smaller marketing budgets.
It would be easy to leverage our ranking success to sell a ton of websites and SEO packages, but getting too many clients comes at a cost. This is no different than the challenge faced by most of the trial lawyers we represent. Any good trial lawyer will tell you that they would rather take on fewer quality cases than lots of smaller cases. Quality SEO works the same way. Most of our SEO consultants are only working with ten or less clients. Just compare that with Justia (2nd in the study) who has over 20 personal injury clients in Atlanta alone. It is impossible to get great rankings for every client when you are working with that many clients. Nor would we expect an “advertising mill” law firm to get better results than a real trial law firm that goes to court.
Getting top rankings in the competitive legal field, as the study shows, takes a lot of work. Building domain authority requires great SEO knowledge and the ability to execute for every single client. Its nice to see others in the industry acknowledge that ability.