In the past few weeks I have been taking a comprehensive look at the legal websites in the Chicago metro area, particularly in the area of family law. I ran the Average Rank Consistency Score or (ARC) on thousands of family law websites in the Chicagoland area. The ARC is a rankings snapshot of how a site ranks for 8 competitive keywords in family law. Here is how it works. I track the Google results for the following family law keywords: GEO + Divorce Attorney, GEO + Family Law Attorney, GEO + Divorce lawyer, GEO + Child Custody Lawyer, GEO + Child Support Lawyer, GEO + Divorce Modification Lawyer, GEO + Spousal Support Lawyer, GEO + Annulment Lawyer.
Here is an ARC I just ran for the Law Offices of Jonathan Merel in Chicago:
Taking these results I then convert them to an ARC score. I do this by assigning a “result page” for each ranking. In the above example the site ranks #23 for Chicago Divorce Lawyer which is on the 3rd page of Google results – thus he would score a “3” for that particular search. For Child Support he would score a “4” and so on. If a site does not show up in the top 10 pages of Google results, as is the case above for “Chicago Divorce Modifications”, you would score an 11 in the model. Finally a ranking that is in the top 3 of the first page, like “Chicago Annulment Lawyer” above, will score a 0.30 and a site that ranks #4 or #5 will get a 0.50. So after converting the actual rankings to these “Page Result Scores”, the software then calculates a weighted average (more competitive keywords like family law and divorce are weighted more) of these scores. The result is the Average Rank Consistency or ARC Score. In the above example the ARC score is 3.30. This roughly translates to a site that is on the 3rd page for these 8 competitive keywords.
I created the ARC in 2016 for Personal Injury sites. Back then I would perform the searches manually. Today we have created software to calculate the ARC instantly for criminal law, family law and personal injury. Since 2016 I have run over 5,000 ARC scores in Illinois alone. So besides being able to run a current ARC result for your law firm, chances are good that you will be able to compare your score with previous results. You can see some of the more recent family law ARC numbers for Cook County, Dupage & Kane County, and Lake County.
Why the ARC is Important
Ranking in Google is difficult. You either rank or you do not. While the ARC is certainly not perfect, the essential idea is that if you rank for these 8 important keywords, your site is strong and will likely rank for most family law terms. I developed the ARC in response to the deluge of unethical salespeople that litter my field. I wanted to develop an objective metric that can be used to compare site performance across similar markets. In doing this for 15+ years I found that the majority of salespeople/SEO companies would sell off of outliers. Most companies might have a showcase client that might rank for a certain keyword or two. What they wont show you are the scores of other clients they have that are nowhere to be found. With the ARC, I can often show you the ARC score for every site a particular company has built in similar markets/practice areas. Before starting with a particular web company, wouldn’t an attorney want to know how all their sites rank in similar markets? Or if you are evaluating two website companies wouldn’t you like to see a head to head comparison – showing the ARC scores for every market where the two companies both have a client? I can do this.
Who do I include.
For me, intention matters. I will only run an ARC score for a site if there is clear intention to rank in a given area. Thus, to be included for a certain area, a site needs to have a page that incorporates that geography/practice area either in a title tag or H1 tag. For example, here are the ARC scores for Nicholas Richardson, a family lawyer in the Chicago suburbs. This particular company has numerous geo focused pages:
Chicago Area Family Law ARC Analysis.
The clear market leader in the Chicago area, with 73 websites that market Family law, is OVC Online Marketing. OVC was started by Greg Wildman, a former FindLaw sales Rep, in 2008. They build nice semi-custom websites. I say semi-custom, because like Scorpion they use a mix of design elements on all of their sites. For example you can look at any internal page of an OVC site and the side bar navigation layout will be the same on every site. I am not surprised by the success of OVC. I knew Greg when I was at FindLaw. Greg was consistently one of the top salespeople in the company and built strong customer relationships with his outstanding customer service. OVC is particularly strong in Kane and DuPage Counties where their dominance borders on the ridiculous. For example in DuPage County there are 33 OVC sites that market family law. You can see the ARC scores for all of their sites and many other family law sites in Dupage County and Kane County here.
Now they have gotten some tremendous results for many firms in the suburbs. Long time clients of theirs like Anderson & Associates or MKFM have enjoyed a dominant presence in several important suburbs. But one has to wonder how they are able to manage performance expectations working with so many direct competitors.
FindLaw has 72 websites that market family law in the Chicago metro. This is a far cry from their heyday in 2004-2010 when they had well over 300 family law clients in the Chicago area. The drop off in clients is mostly due to them losing fantastic sales consultants like Greg Wildman and Susan Richards. When they left so did most of the FindLaw clients. FindLaw generally does not market to multiple geographies. Their best performer in the region is Thomas Gurewitz who has a perfect ARC (0.30) in Waukegan and does very well in Lake County. In fact FindLaw does very well in Lake County, with a number of top ARC scores in the region which you can view here. Back in 2014 I wrote a review for FindLaw that I think largely holds up today.
Scorpion is very underrepresented in Chicago for family law, at least by Scorpion standards. Scorpion has just 7 family law sites in the Chicago area, and 12 in the State of Illinois. Compare that to 126 family law sites that Scorpion has in California alone. While they have just 7 sites, those sites market 47 different locations – thanks in large part to the ambition of Jonathan Merel, whose site markets to 32 locations. (Best result is Lake Zurich ARC of 1.27)
Forward Lawyer Marketing is a local legal SEO company in Chicago. They have 15 legal clients that market family law in the Chicago metro area. Their best result is Gordon & Perlut who has an a so-so ARC of 3.48, but has a dominant ARC in Evanston (0.98) and Skokie (0.35).
NUVEW: Nuvew is a local legal website company in NW Indiana who has just 7 sites that market family law in the Chicago area, but deserve special consideration given they did build the top Chicago family law site, at least in terms of ARC — www.aramilaw.com with a perfect score of 0.30. This, however, is where context matters. His personal injury site, also built by NUVEW was launched in early 2018 and has an ARC of 10.92. In fact two other Chicago PI sites they built also have ARC scores North of 10.00. Judging from these and other scores from around the country, it is clear that this Chicago family law result is a rather extreme outlier in terms of ranking.
ilawyermarketing as an Option?
I represent iLawyermarketing. In the 7+ years I have been with iLawyermarketing we have never had a family law client in the Chicago market. Using the ARC, I can objectively show you there is no better legal SEO company in the country. We only have around 20 family law clients, but almost all have the TOP ARC score in their respective markets: Los Angeles , San Francisco, Orange County, Boston, San Diego, etc…
Now for a long time, ilawyermarketing was out of reach cost wise for most family law attorneys in the suburbs. This was because we only built expensive custom sites like www.sflg.com or www.plogsteinlaw.com (just launched) and the fact that our SEO pricing was purely performance based, what we felt it would take to achieve first page rankings in a Tier 1 market. That has changed, as we recently unveiled both a website and SEO package meant for success in suburban markets. The new site package is called our Premium Quick launch which you can check out here. While not a custom site, these designs are beautiful / are far better looking than most of the custom sites from our competitors. The package includes the content and SEO elements necessary to build a successful web presence in areas like Kane or DuPage County. I know this because you can see how the prevailing companies in those areas struggle in larger more competitive markets like Chicago personal injury whereas we succeed. In the last 18 months we started working with 2 personal injury firms in Chicago. Both started with ARCs of over 6.00. Now they are #4 and #7 in ARC for Chicago and rising. Our personal injury client in Central Illinois has achieved similar success. Here are the Chicago personal injury ARC scores from my company compared to the marketing firms that dominate the Chicagoland family law market (OVC, FindLaw, Scorpion, Nuvew, Forward Lawyer Marketing)
If you are a family law firm in the Chicago area wanting to improve your web presence I can help. Even if we can’t help you I can help you find someone that can, as I track the rankings and design of over 100,000 legal websites from around the country. You can call me at 480-889-4216 or email at alex@ilawyermarketing.com