FindLaw is a Thomas Reuters Company and an absolute giant in the legal community. They represent thousands of law firms, employ over 1,000 people and offer a range of marketing products.
If you are a lawyer, you have or will inevitably come across FindLaw.
I have personally spoken with dozens of law firms about FindLaw's services and their experiences with the firm.
Lawyers often ask me for my opinion on their products or share their past experiences.
Through conversations with practicing attorneys, reviewing FindLaw client websites, and speaking with FindLaw sales consultants, I have come to understand the pros and cons of their services.
In this post, I have provided a review and my personal evaluation of their SEO service.
I should probably start my post by saying that I am in no way willing to criticize Findlaw. The company was started by two lawyers in an apartment with an idea. Now they have grown into a mass media company that made over $11 billion in 2016 and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
To me, this is an incredible success story and I applaud these two entrepreneurs for their vision and achievements.
By all accounts they are a great success story and should be proud of what they have built.
Now, let's move on to my review of one of your products!
If I'm being blunt, it shouldn't rank as SEO:
Although a sales consultant referred to the product as "SEO", it is formally called "Integrated Marketing Outreach".
Here are the 14 elements of the program along with my comments.
1. Custom designed website
They are using an older tool called "editor". Below are two websites they built. Publisher is not a modern content management system. They are making a slow transition to WordPress, which is a great decision.
https://www.empleoabogadosandiego.com/
My first big problem with "custom sites" isyou are not the owner of the website. Basically, you are renting out the site each month. If you terminate the agreement, they will send you the content so that you can rebuild a website on a new CMS.
Imagine receiving an email with a Word document with the copy and a zip file with photos and videos. The new web developer has a lot of work to do.
I advise entrepreneurs never to do business under this model.
As a law firm, you want to have 100% ownership of your website and all of its assets.
My statement above should go without saying, but you'd be surprised how many companies build client websites under this model. From the point of view of service providers, it is a way of making the relationship “sticky” and making the customer think twice before switching providers.
On the client (you) side, it's terrible to be on the other side of the business. You deserve full ownership of your website. Everyone else like web developers, designers, SEO professionals and PPC professionals should be invited!
Website access
They do not allow clients or client providers to make changes to the SEO components of the content they create. This puts a lot of pressure on your team to do the SEO perfectly, as outside consultants will be restricted. Personally, I think it's too big of a risk since many of their sites are not properly optimized.
Of the three above, on a quick audit I found:
- No SSL certificate
- Wrong character count for title tags
- Incorrect character count for meta descriptions
- thin content
- bad navigation
An SEO professional or internal team member might not be able to fix some of the problems I described above.
They also do not allow FTP access to clients.
In my opinion this can be frustrating and you deserve full autonomy to make changes to all aspects of your website and you certainly should have FTP access.
I believe that all business owners should have full access to all sections of their website and should decide who to allow access to. Not the other way.
Analytical Google
I'm not sure if they use their ownAnalytical Googlecode for clients. In that case, you would lose all data after switching. The above three sites do not have the Google Analytics code installed. I think they have a proprietary tool for Web Analytics. I highly recommend the use of Google Analytics. It is the industry standard, free and downloadable. You can add other web analytics tools like Kissmetrics, Hotjar, and Optimizely. Just make sure you own the accounts and the data!
2. 10 pages of custom content
You will probably need more pages. Let's take a look at a basic sitemap for a personal injury law firm.
Main page
About us
Our team (not a page)
- lawyer profile
- lawyer profile
- lawyer profile
Practice area (not a page)
- Car accidents
- Truck Accidents
- motorcycle accidents
- dog bites
- slip and fall
- Involuntary manslaughter
- Brain injuries
- Pedestrian Accidents
Results
testimonials
Blog
Contact Us
This is a pretty standard and basic website design and it resulted in 17 pages, seven compared to the out-of-the-box package. Many companies will also add more services; an awards page, a community page, and then pages explaining their process. It's too easy to need 20 or more pages, which is double the standard offering.
3. Ability to add unlimited additional content pages
I will try to avoid being redundant. But this language highlights the fact that they own the site. Because of course you would have the right and ability to add unlimited pages to your website.
4. SEO
As you probably realized by now, SEO is a very broad term. Every SEO program is structured differently and this section requires some massive elaboration. It's local SEO,technical SEO,On-Page SEO,Off-Page SEO, content or link building? Simply saying that they will do SEO is inappropriate.
5. Responsive Design (Mobile Friendly)
We're getting to the point where we really shouldn't have to signal that a new website will be responsive. You actually have to struggle today to create a mobile-free website because of all the great and easily accessible technology out there.
We're at the point where mobile compatibility is a clear requirement, but it's really not enough. Every brand needs to review the mobile experience, document challenges, and constantly work to improve them. With over 50% of traffic coming from mobile devices, it's imperative that we all continue to improve the mobile experience for current and potential customers.
6. FindLaw.com Startup Profile ($299 Value) – Listed in 5 Related Practice Areas
That's good! I don't know if it will be a consistent traffic source, but it is a niche citation and will help withlocal positioning. They change clients, so you're constantly in a different location, but you'll have the benefit of the citation and backlink!
7. Two blogs a month on legal issues
This is definitely an old strategy due to the number of words in each post. There was a time, over a decade ago, when you could write short blogs and rank them on the web. That day came and went.
The content they are producing is 250 to 500 words. This is considered "surface content" and will not provide any benefit from an SEO perspective.
modern daycontent marketingBest practices call for blog posts of around 2,000 words. Your reduced content will not be ranked and setshort dwell timesis highbounce rates. Google is increasingly looking at user experience metrics. If you launch a link building campaign in the future, you will surely want high-quality long-form content. Great content is a contingency for successful link building. Content and links are the top 2 SEO ranking signals. Publishers want to link to great, high-quality content from subject matter experts, not content that is only a few paragraphs long.
8. Six blog posts will be promoted on Facebook
Regarding the length of the content, I have the same opinion that I gave for #7.boost content on facebook. Advertising on Facebook is a great way to reach a different audience and is much more profitable than Google. I also like how you can build audiences of people who have already engaged with your content and send new content directly to them.
I generally encourage law firms to have a budget for content production and a separate budget for content marketing.
In the case of FindLaw, I think they are sharing their content on Facebook, not sure if they are talking about paid advertising when they say "promoted".
9. Creating links and cleaning existing links
I think this is a directory/citation reference. Directory links are likely to do no harm. It may appear in some directories with low domain authority. These sites won't hurt you, but they won't help you much either.
To add links, I think it's a reference to your directory, as I know the plan includes outreach for publishers to acquire new links. “Custom Blogger Outreach”, as we call it, is an SEO discipline that stands on its own and requires a specific skill set and weekly dedication.
10. Google Maps/Google Local Optimization: go to the maps section
Most of the time, this is a one-time Google My Business optimization. In terms of ongoing maintenance, we recommend paying attention to new features added to GMB and updating your GMB "posts".
11. Review Us functionality that allows the business to get more reviews easily.
Excellent! I'm a fan of any tactic that helps acquire more reviews. I mainly advocate attracting as many 5 star reviews on Yelp and Google as possible. Potential customers sometimes bypass search engines and go straight to Yelp. If your profile has dozens of 5-star reviews, you can stand out from the competition.
During brand searches, your Google My Business page will appear as a search snippet and your reviews will be highlighted. A large number of 5-star reviews can be persuasive. At the same time, 1 star reviews will be a deterrent. Make a concerted effort to provide excellent service in order to attract as many 5-star reviews as possible. Commit to defending your online reputation by challenging and responding to negative reviews.
12. Chat functionality (optional)
I like chat products because they provide another way for the prospect to convert. If you're at work and shouldn't be looking for a lawyer, chat can be a great alternative to a phone call.
13. Access to account manager for all site related needs and to measure ROI
Not much to say here, I expect any company to provide customer support. Also, since you don't have access to all areas of their website, it is imperative that they provide support and hopefully quick response times to requested changes to the website.
14. Call tracking and advanced analytics
Call tracking can be a great way to gain greater transparency about the marketing outlets that make the phone ring. In Rocket Pilots, we put in a small piece of code that can track if the call is coming from Organic, PPC, Facebook, Remarketing, Yelp, etc.
Advanced analytics don't tell us much. For reporting and data analysis, I recommend Google Analytics, keyword tracking software, Google Search Console, and ahrefs.
15. $1,700 - $2,500 - Final prices depend on how many directories you use.
Numbers 1 (new site), 2 (10 pages of content), 3 (ability to add pages), 5 (responsive design), 10 (Google Maps optimization), and 11 (review functionality) are not ongoing services.
You want to pay for a site once and then pay as you go for material updates.
What does it mean month to month that you are paying for:
4 (SEO), 6 (FindLaw home profile), 7 (24 short blogs), 8 (Facebook shared blogs), 9 (citations), 12 (chat), 13 (customer support), and 14 (follow up). calls, I'm getting out of Analytics since GA is free).
The way I see it, the end customer basically gets blogs that aren't up to date with current best practices, a chat product (a company like Ngage charges $35 per chat), and call tracking software.CallRail, an industry leader charges $30.00 per month.
In my opinion the product is not up to date with modern best practices, it is expensive for its value and law firms should look for a better solution.
If you don't want to use content to rank and rate short posts, the plan might be a good option for you.
12 month contract
They require a term of 12 months. I don't recommend a year commitment because you're locked in for too long. It is a big financial risk if you are not happy with the trends.
I usually recommend that companies starting with a new provider do a month-to-month contract or 6 months max. The safer a digital marketing company is, the more flexible it is with the term.
As a digital marketing provider, if you really believe in your service, a monthly offer earns you business every month.
As a law firm working with a new vendor, you need to start small and ensure that the contract protects your firm and provides you with an outlet if necessary. Wait until you find a provider that you trust and is delivering results before you increase your budget!
Other FindLaw Reviews
I did a quick search for "FindLaw Reviews". I understand that they are a big company, so they are subject to bad reviews. I'm sure they have some success stories too. In their defense, people are more likely to complain and leave a review when they are dissatisfied than when they are satisfied with a service. Here are some "buyer beware" stories worth reviewing during your due diligence.
https://www.reddit.com/r/LawFirm/comments/40t624/findlaw_worth_it/
http://gyitsakalakis.com/web/findlaw-seo-web-marketing-review/
https://kevin.lexblog.com/2008/08/17/findlaw-gaming-google-and-posissably-scamming-lawyer-customers/
Summary
Today's digital marketing landscape is noisy, with dozens of companies claiming to be legal marketing "specialists" or claiming to be experts.
I know that many law firms are simply frustrated with marketing providers and have almost inevitably been burned by a firm that overpromised and underdelivered.
Part of my career began providing objective advice to entrepreneurs, executives, lawyers, and marketing professionals. Sometimes this tip doesn't align with my business acquiring a new customer, but it helps me build relationships and show that I really care about helping people cut through the noise and make smart marketing decisions.
I hope this article has made FindLaw's integrated marketing service more transparent and helps you make an informed decision moving forward.
If you have questions, don't hesitate to get in touch. If you used FindLaw, please leave a review with your comments.
And of course, if you'd like to discuss a marketing plan for your law firm, please contact me here for afree consultation.