How to Create a Law Firm Content Marketing Strategy

Content is king, and nothing has changed in that respect.

Producing content to rise up Google’s rankings and provide valuable information to your target audience is as old as the Internet itself. Today, 73% of B2B marketers and 70% of B2C have a content marketing strategy, and for a good reason. It works.

Content marketing is a core pillar of successful SEO, and the legal industry is no exception. But, like any form of marketing, you need a strategy, so here’s what you need to know about building one for your law firm.

What is content marketing for law firms?

As an art form, content marketing is a broad topic. Beginners often get confused about what it means and why they’re doing it. This is because content marketing as a concept can apply to various types of initiatives.

All forms of content have one goal: to share valuable content.

This is something that applies to every industry. In one study, 67% of marketers reported that content marketing won them new leads. From the perspective of the legal trade, content marketing can involve sharing content like:

Blogs
Q&As
Case studies
Video interviews

The point is not what type of content you have, but what type resonates with your audience. Getting this right opens up a whole new world of possibilities, with 96% of decision-makers saying that content marketing has been effective for their brands.

Should law firms invest in content marketing?

If you value gaining new clients via the online realm, content marketing is essential to getting seen. Your website might act as your virtual business card, but valuable digital assets offer a chance for prospective clients to engage with your brand.

Content marketing is a powerful channel for growing your practice when done correctly. Some of the reasons to invest in content marketing include:

Content marketing is crucial to bolstering a Law Firm’s SEO.
Strong content drives your social media presence.
Nailing your strategy can help expand your audience.
Content alone can nurture leads without picking up the phone.

Ultimately, the legal industry can benefit from content marketing as much as any other niche in the overarching economy. Today, 77% of lawyers use social media as a tool, so it’s a natural next step to add content marketing.

Does content marketing actually work for the legal industry?

Think that content marketing doesn’t work for legal practices? Think again.

If you have an audience that asks questions, you have a place for content marketing in your overall marketing strategy. The reality is that content marketing generates three times more leads than traditional marketing whilst costing 62% less.

It makes sense economically, and the results speak for themselves. If you’re still unsure whether it works for local solicitors, remember that SEO is universally important. Without content, you stand little chance of seeing any SEO progress.

What should a content strategy for a law firm include?

Writing a blog or shooting a video and tossing it onto your website isn’t enough to see results. Unlike Rome, building it and expecting people to come isn’t a viable strategy. Competition is too fierce, and without direction, there are no guarantees you’re even giving your audience what they want.

So, consider your strategy before thinking about what you want to create. Here’s what you should do before launching your content marketing drive:

Keyword Research – Keyword research tells you what people are searching for and what your audience is searching for. If people in Manchester are searching for a “judicial separation solicitor”, then it tells you this is a good subject to focus on, and for your area.

Competitor Research – Examine your leading competitors. What are they writing about? Which keywords are they using? How are they structuring their content? If it’s working for them, there’s a good chance it will also work for you, but you have to do it better.

Budget – Time is money. Whether you outsource or not, every piece of content takes time away from other parts of your business. Defining a content marketing budget early will help you to keep all your ducks in a row.

Content Type – Every type of content comes with its own pros and cons. Podcasts can be great for brand-building, but they also take massive amounts of time to produce and promote. Most law firms will start with basic blogs before investing in other content types.

Alignment – How will your content align with your brand? Consider matters like tone of voice, style and whether your content accurately depicts what you do.

Content Funnel – Building a content funnel is essential for turning casual readers into clients. Divide your content funnel into top, mid and bottom so that you can measure how effective your content is at converting.

These strategic aspects spell the beginning of a flourishing content marketing campaign. Every law firm will still have to endure a period of experimentation in the beginning, but once you hit on something good, you’ll be surprised at how effective content marketing can be.

Book a Meeting Contact Us

What type of content should law firms create?

Countless types of content exist. Maybe you’ve dreamed of having the number one legal podcast in the UK. Perhaps you’re looking at becoming a YouTube sensation. Regardless of how you approach content marketing, the only thing that matters is whether that content directly or indirectly results in more business.

So, what type of content is likely to work for your law firm?

Blogs are the core pieces of content available. They’re highly effective at delivering valuable information to your audience. Ultimately, a legal blog should educate the reader.

Service pages are often used as landing pages in the legal industry. They tell your audience what you can do for them. They’re a place to provide a solution to a problem someone has, via your services.

Don’t tell people how great you are. Show them. If you were involved in a landmark case that hit the headlines, make a big deal out of it. Writing about your big wins demonstrates to potential clients that you’re a heavy-hitter they can rely on to help them deal with their legal troubles.

Graphic of a woman pointing to a Youtube video

The law is complicated. That’s why explainer videos are so effective in the legal industry. Breaking down complex legal concepts isn’t just educational. It’s also an opportunity for you to introduce your staff and promote your brand.

Graphic of a man pointing to a phone screen

Social media is also a type of content marketing. Due to the casual nature of these platforms, it’s a chance to make your team friendlier and more approachable.

Note that these five options are all great starting points if you’re taking your first steps into content marketing. Try not to do too much at once. A little done well will accomplish far more than casting a wide net.

Best practices for law firms creating content

There’s a misconception that answering the big questions is enough to make your content marketing successful. Whether you like it or not, law firms creating content must always have SEO in mind.

Here are some of the best practices all law firms should follow when generating content.

Answer questions in your content

Only 8% of search queries are questions, but even if you enter a few random words, Google will respond with question snippets. It underlines the importance of answering questions, so the easiest way to do this is by doing just that.

Sometimes, a big question may require an entire blog all to itself. On other occasions, an easy way to answer questions is to append an FAQ section to a piece of content.

Regardless, every piece of content should answer a question your audience has.

Featured snippet optimisation

Featured snippets are your shortcut to the top of Google. These are the answer boxes you see when performing certain types of searches. Approximately 30.9% of featured snippets rank in position one, and 8.6% of clicks go to these snippets.

Let’s get one thing clear. There’s no way to game the featured snippets system. Google decides as to who gets the snippet. You can reduce the time it takes by hitting niche questions your competitors aren’t answering, but higher-quality content always wins the race.

Some tips include:

Phrasing a question as “What is”.
Answer a question in two to three sentences.
Use well-structured headings.
Bolding the main section of your answer.

Create a content hub

Content hubs are a curated collection of content on a specific subject. It houses all types of content and divides it into a single subject.

The value of creating separate content hubs around your specialist areas is increasing engagement. They act as series that guide your reader through several types of content.

Keeping them on your pages longer and upping your click-through rates signals to Google that you offer great content. It’s also a chance to position your legal brand as an industry authority.

Prove your EEAT

Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, or EEAT, is Google’s way of fighting against low-quality content, especially AI-generated. You need to figure out how you’ll hit these four points within your content.

Here’s how to do it:

Experience – This is proof that you’re not just rewriting someone else’s content. So, in the case of a lawyer, pairing a case study with an article on that case from a local newspaper would hit this point. An author profile including your credentials, whether you wrote or proofread the article, can also help with proving experience.

Expertise – Who are you? Using your leading legal superstar as the author would also hit this point because Google will scour the web for information on that person. If they’ve won industry awards, it automatically contributes to the “Expertise” rating.

Authoritativeness – This is all about who you are but with a twist. Google will also examine your entire website to see if that authority extends throughout. Content hubs help to build up your topical authority.

Trustworthiness – A combination of the previous three. You can’t aim for this one, but consistently producing high-quality content will contribute.

SEO optimisation for all content

Hitting all of Google’s best practices for content should be considered a bare minimum for all types of content.

For example, you should include headings, neatly divided sub-sections and meta descriptions for every page. Any good SEO consultant will ensure these basic SEO components are present throughout your website.

Updating and refreshing content

Evergreen content, or content that’s as relevant today as it was five years ago, creates a flywheel that keeps people coming to your website. Many brands have less than ten pieces of content that consistently attract new business for years.

However, the legal industry is especially vulnerable to disruption because of changes in the law. You may have written a lengthy guide on data privacy laws, but one change could make all that outdated. Google also takes note of that.

Regularly updating your primary content whenever there are changes can ensure they remain high-performing pieces. This doesn’t just mean changing the information but also updating your keywords and other SEO components.

Obviously, it isn’t practical to keep doing this with all of your content, but it must be mandatory with your best-performing pages.

Let Tao Digital handle your content marketing

Content marketing is one of the key pillars of quality SEO. You handle the expertise and let us handle the content optimisation, distribution and technical SEO tweaks. With an expert SEO consultant by your side, you can ensure that every piece of content is primed for success.

To learn more about what digital marketing can do for your Law Firm, reach out to us and let’s talk today.

How SEO and PPC Work Together for Law Firms

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising are like fishing nets, capturing potential clients as they browse the internet, pulling them towards your firm with enticing bait (keywords) and reeling them in with strategic targeting and optimisation.

SEO is like a trawl net, casting a wide radius to catch a large audience. PPC is like a gill net, used to target specific species, targeting specific audience segments for immediate results. With the right combination of SEO and PPC techniques, your firm can have a steady stream of potential clients hooked and ready to convert into loyal clients.

Want to know how SEO and PPC work together for the legal sector? Let’s dive in.

What is SEO for Law Firms?

Law firm SEO involves enhancing a law firm’s website and digital visibility to achieve a higher position in search engine results.

This consists of implementing technical, creative and analytical strategies to improve website content and site structure, acquiring reputable backlinks and targeting appropriate keywords related to your firm’s areas of expertise.

An optimised law website ranks higher on search engines like Google, allowing potential clients to find and contact your firm, ultimately leading to increased leads, conversions and revenue.

What is PPC for Law Firms?

PPC for law firms is a form of online advertising where you pay each time a potential client clicks on your ad. You’ll find PPC on search engine results pages (at the top), social media platforms and other websites.

With PPC, you target specific keywords and demographics but only pay for the clicks they receive. The ad’s quality and relevance, keyword popularity and your budget determine the cost of each click.

Why SEO and PPC is important for Law Firms

SEO is takes time to produce results with ongoing efforts needed to improve rankings. PPC provides immediate results but costs more money up front – once you stop paying, your website traffic dwindles.

SEO and PPC should be used together because when a law firm ranks highly organically and has paid ads at the top of the page, it is more likely to be seen by potential clients.

For example, a law firm specialising in divorce law can use SEO to optimise its website for keywords like “divorce solicitor” and “child custody lawyer.” It can also use PPC to target ads to reach people who have searched for these keywords on Google.

Speak to us about a SEO and PPC plans today – Let’s get more leads! Contact Us

How SEO strategies work for Law Firms

By consistently implementing these strategies, your law firm can increase its online presence and attract potential clients who are actively searching for your legal expertise:

Keyword Research: The first step in SEO is identifying relevant keywords and phrases that potential clients use to search for legal services. These keywords should be strategically incorporated into your website content, meta descriptions and image tags to improve your site’s relevance and visibility.
Content Creation: You can create blog posts, articles and other forms of content with specific keywords and structures whilst demonstrating your expertise in your practice area. You can also optimise for local search, so when a potential client types in “Child law Solicitor in Manchester,” for example, your family law website will pop up (for what area/s you operate in).
Local SEO: If you want to boost your online presence in location-based searches further, consider implementing local SEO techniques like enhancing your Google Business Profile, creating content specific to your area and gaining mentions on relevant local websites.
Mobile Optimization: Your law firm’s website should be optimised for mobile devices. This includes having a responsive design, fast loading times and mobile-friendly content. Why? Over 50% of web traffic comes from mobiles!
Link Building: When other websites link to yours, it shows that you are a trusted and authoritative source of information. This establishes credibility in your industry and boosts SERP rankings.

How PPC strategies work for Law Firms

PPC (Pay-Per-Click) strategies utilise targeted advertisements on search engines like Google and Bing, and social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn.

These advertisements are based on relevant keywords and phrases specific to your law firm and its services. When someone searches for a related keyword or phrase, your firm’s ad appears at the top of the search results, labelled as “sponsored content” or “ad.”

You’re charged a certain amount each time someone clicks on the ad, hence the name “pay-per-click.” PPC strategies also allow you to target specific locations, demographics and behaviours, ensuring your ads reach their desired audience.

Such a targeted approach attracts potential clients actively searching for legal services who are more likely to be interested in your specific practice areas.

Another advantage of PPC is the ability to track and analyse ad performance. These metrics help you decide which keywords and demographics drive the most traffic and conversions, allowing them to refine your strategy for maximum impact.

Can you use PPC and SEO together?

Yes, PPC and SEO can be used together as part of a comprehensive digital marketing strategy. These two separate tactics complete each other, ultimately driving more quality traffic and conversions to your website.

By targeting the same keywords through PPC and SEO, your business increases its chances of appearing in top positions on SERPs, augmenting clicks and conversions.

PPC and SEO data also inform each other’s strategies. For example, PPC data on keyword performance, ad headlines and other factors can help guide SEO efforts. In contrast, SEO data on keyword rankings and website traffic can inform PPC targeting and optimisation.

Does SEO or PPC have a greater ROI for Law Firms?

Generally, SEO has a higher ROI for law firms than PPC because it’s a long-term investment that generates organic traffic to your website for years to come. Once your website is out there, it is discoverable time and again.

On the other hand, PPC is expensive, especially if you’re targeting competitive keywords, and it only lasts as long as you can afford it. However, PPC is a good tactic to attract specific clients immediately.

Truthfully, it’s a bit of a trick question as you should use both unless budget is an issue, in which case you’ll want to weigh the pros and cons.

SEO Pros

Long-term investment: Once you start ranking for relevant keywords, you’ll continue getting traffic to your website for years, even if you stop investing in SEO.
Builds brand awareness and authority: When your website ranks well in search results, it shows potential clients that you’re a trusted expert.

SEO Cons

Takes time: Ranking for competitive keywords can take months or even years.
Complex and time-consuming: You’ll need to invest time and resources into creating high-quality content, optimising your website for search engines and building backlinks.

PPC Pros

Generates quick results: You can immediately start seeing results from your PPC campaigns.
Highly targeted: You can target your ads to specific audiences and keywords, which means you’re more likely to reach people interested in your services.

PPC Cons

PPC is expensive: The cost of PPC ads can vary depending on the competitiveness of the keywords you’re targeting – sometimes, it can cost hundreds per click.
Campaigns must be managed and optimised regularly: You need to monitor your spending and results and adjust your campaigns as needed.

How do you know whether your law firm should invest in SEO and/or PPC?

As a rule of thumb, you should invest in SEO first because its impact lasts longer, and then PPC. However, there are a few circumstantial considerations:

Your budget: SEO and PPC can be expensive, but SEO is typically a long-term investment. PPC can generate results more quickly, but you will need to continue to spend money on ads to maintain your visibility.
Goals: Do you want to increase brand awareness and generate more leads over time (SEO), or do you need immediate results (PPC)?
Competition: If several competitors already have an established online presence, it will take more time to gain traction with SEO alone. In this case, a PPC campaign momentarily levels the playing field.

Let Tao Digital take care of your SEO and PPC

Like expert fishermen skilfully select the perfect net to catch their target, our team is skilled at utilising SEO and PPC to attract potential clients to your firm. We have a case study, featured on the huge SEO platform Moz, about how we increased a Law Firm’s leads by 174%!

Don’t delay – reach out to us now and let us help you bring online success to your law firm.

Our Guide to PPC for Law Firms

PPC can be an extremely effective way for law firms to increase the number of leads they’re getting; but, how can law firms create a successful PPC campaign that delivers the desired results without breaking the bank?

What is PPC for law firms?

Pay-per-click, or PPC, is an online paid advertising model in which businesses pay a set amount of money each time a visitor clicks on their adverts. When undertaken correctly, PPC can help law firms achieve high quality leads.

PPC for law firms involves using platforms like Google and social media to drive targeted traffic to law firms’ websites or specific landing pages.

Should a law firm invest in SEO or PPC?

Both SEO and PPC are great marketing tactics for law firms, and it is a good idea to consider both. They both have a few things in common that can support each other for a successful marketing campaign, which is why many law firms will invest in each one.

Investing your time into SEO will inevitably help your PPC efforts. SEO is one of the best ways to get your law firm in front of the most relevant customers in your area. Since SEO helps to build credibility, users are more likely to click on your adverts since they know and recognise your brand.

Types of PPC strategies for law firms

There are several types of PPC strategies that law firms can utilise in order to achieve their goals.

Paid search marketing

Paid search marketing is one of the most common types of PPC advertising. Search engines such as Google and Bing will show your ads to users who search for specific keywords.

You can set up your campaigns by writing your ad copy, choosing relevant keywords with high search volumes and choosing, or creating, suitable landing pages on your site.

Display advertising

Display adverts are banners, images or text ads that appear on different websites and are selected to target a particular audience. These ads will link directly to your website and will take users to specific landing pages.

They generally have a lower click-through rate than search ads, but they can be useful for building brand awareness.

Social media advertising

Social media platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram, have high numbers of users who could be potential customers. PPC advertising on these platforms can help to achieve higher click-through rates to your website compared to other types of advertising.

Social media campaigns can help to increase awareness of your products or services, as well as being used to target specific demographics and their interests.

Retargeting advertising

Retargeting uses cookies on a user’s browser to show them specific ads based on their previous online search habits. For example, if a user searches for family lawyers, they could see display ads for family lawyers in their local area.

Retargeting can be included in:

Display advertising campaigns
Search advertising campaigns
Social media campaigns
Email marketing campaigns

How much should law firms spend on PPC?

Always a difficult one to answer. The industry is so varied, you may represent a very small niche legal offering such as ‘CCJ Removal services’ or ‘commercial auction conveyancing’. The PPC budgets will look a lot more appetising for these services than if you’re offering ‘residential conveyancing services’.

The key thing when planning budgets for PPC is not to pull it out of the air.

A lot of companies talk to us about managing their PPC campaigns and just suggest a budget of £1,000 per month, but this is just guesswork; or, even worse, all they can afford.

Let’s take the keyword “commercial property solicitor” as an example. Google ads keyword tool suggests that in the month of October 2023, there will be 7,000 searches, to get the best cost per lead you really need to have 100% coverage when people enter it into the search box.

To do this and be absolute top (number one in the search) all the time, Google says you need a budget of £6,100 per month. Now, this is the maximum you might spend, but it’s so important to think about the leads you might miss out on if you aren’t showing every time someone searches.

You could have run out of budget by 10AM, but the good leads might be the people searching at 2PM.

The best way to evaluate this is to start with a bigger budget and then reduce it based on the data you gain.

If you get better leads at 3PM, each day you can always increase the bid at that time of day and reduce it at other times.

There are a lot of factors that come into play when you are working out the ROI on a PPC campaign, not least the conversion rate of your landing page. If you convert 20% of those visitors into leads, you’ll be inundated with work, but if it’s a really bad landing page, you might get 1.5% and you’ll not have much work, but you’ll be draining your marketing budget very quickly too.

Speak to us about a PPC campaign today – Let’s get more leads! Contact Us

Target audience reached

PPC campaigns allow you to precisely target your desired audience based on things such as location, demographics and search intent.

Granular targeting ensures your ads are shown to potential clients who are most likely to engage with your services. This results in higher quality leads and increased conversion rates compared to other channels.

Measurable results and ROI

A major benefit of PPC is that it is measurable. Analytical and tracking tools that are built into platforms mean you can get detailed reports that outline the performance of your campaign.

This usually includes metrics such as conversion rates, CTR and CPI. From this data, you can then continuously optimise your campaigns for maximum ROI.

Immediate results

As soon as your PPC campaign is launched, your ads can appear at the top of the search engine result pages. This will help your law firm to attract the attention of potential clients and push you higher in the rankings than your competitors.

This instant visibility can be particularly beneficial in highly competitive niche legal sectors which are vital to gain the edge over competitors.

Flexibility and scalability

With PPC, law firms can easily adjust their ad spend amount, pause underperforming campaigns or scale up successful campaigns. This flexibility allows law firms to optimise their marketing efforts and distribute their budget more effectively.

How to set up a PPC campaign for a law firm

It’s important as a law firm that you set up an effective PPC campaign, otherwise you may be wasting your time and money. Listed below are the steps you should take to set up a successful PPC campaign.

Set goals

The very first step you should take is setting yourself goals for your PPC campaign. Think about what you want to achieve from it, who your target audience is, where you’re going to place your ads and so on.

Some of the key parameters you should decide on before creating your campaign include:

Target audience
Ad placement (search engines, websites or social media)
Desired outcomes (brand awareness, sales, lead generation or traffic)
KPIS (conversion rates, signups and revenue generated)
Types of campaigns (display ads, social media ads or product listings)
What location do you want to target
What devices do you want to target (mobile, laptops, tablets)

Research and select the right keywords

It is vital that you choose the right keywords that are relevant to your niche and industry, otherwise, even if you do get a lot of clicks through from the advert, they are not likely to purchase from you.

You can carry out keyword research by using tools such as Ahrefs to find out which keywords that are relevant to your niche have a high search volume. You should be choosing highly relevant, low-cost and long-tail keywords in order to get the best results.

Create a campaign that resonates with your audience

Once you have set your goals and done the research, you can now move onto creating your ad campaign. There are a few major elements that you need to optimise: these are the ad copy, a CTA and the graphics.

For the ad copy, you will need to write persuasive and informative copy that will provide the user with information on what you offer and will therefore ensure that they want to click on your ad. Look at the specific keywords that you have found and create copy that is tailored to those words or query. The targeted copy should align with people’s pain points and entice them to click your ad.

Make sure the CTA is short and in line with your goals. For example, if you want more leads, then you should tailor your CTA to prompt people to get in touch or sign-up.

Each platform has its own specifications of the character limit for the ad copy, so always check with the platform you want to use before you start writing your copy.

Optimise PPC landing pages

Before you publish your ad campaign, you may want to create a landing page where people will be sent if they click on your ad. The landing page should be relevant to your ad, targeted and provide a seamless experience for the user.

Landing pages are important because they directly influence how users convert into paying customers. For example, if your landing page is not neatly presented and looks disorganised, people will click out from your website as they will likely be confused and won’t know how to navigate the page.

To create a landing page that will increase conversions, you should have:

A big headline containing the same information as your PPC ad
A clean and simple page design
Clear, actionable CTAs
Cohesive copy to match your ad
Show what is being offered in the ad
A/B testing you landing page to see what graphics, page layout, copy and CTAs work best

Review and test your PPC campaign

Just like with any other marketing campaign, PPC campaigns are not a one and done process. You will need to regularly review your campaign to check whether it is doing well or not and solve any problems. This will help you to optimise your ad campaign and get the desired results from it.

Here’s what you should do to review and optimise your PPC campaign:

Link your Google ads to Google Analytics to track the amount of traffic generated, the sales, lead generations, signups and so on.
If you have website ads, ask the host for the analytics data.
Check the reports to see if the data matches your goals for the campaign. For example, are you getting the number of email signups you expected?
If you’re not getting your desired results, you need to change up your keywords, modify the copy and so on.
If some keywords are underperforming, you can just completely remove them.

You should keep reviewing and testing your PPC ads until it produces the results you’re looking for.

How can law firms track the success of a PPC campaign?

As we’ve mentioned, PPC is measurable. Regularly tracking and analysing your PPC campaigns performance is essential for identifying areas which could be improved, as well as successful areas.

Law firms can track the success of their campaigns by looking at key performance metrics, such as click-through rates. These metrics can give valuable insights into the effectiveness of their campaigns and therefore make data backed decisions to amend or alter areas to improve results.

Law firms can also benefit from the help of tools such as Google Analytics to get a deeper understanding of their target audiences behaviour and their campaign performance.

When will you see results from a law firm PPC campaign?

Although PPC campaigns can show somewhat immediate results, as in a few days, they usually require around 2-3 months to work. Those initial months can be viewed as a trial period for your ad campaign, providing you with helpful data that you can use to improve the campaign.

You can use this data to improve your keywords, bids, audience targeting and much more. Law firms can also benefit from A/B testing, which may take some time to get decent comparable results. From here, you can then see which campaign has worked better and move forward with it.

PPC mistakes that the legal industry make

PPC may seem quite straightforward, but there are some things in which law firms may do incorrectly. This can lead to wasted time and money which could be avoided.

Not setting up remarketing

Remarketing, also known as retargeting, lets you show your PPC ads to users who have previously shown some initial interest in your services by visiting your website.

Users will often leave websites without converting, so remarketing works as a simple way to remind them to take the next step on your site.

Running campaigns for too long

It’s much easier to generate meaningful traffic to your site if you have a lot of short term, smaller advertising campaigns. Make sure you refresh your campaign every once in a while to achieve the best results that also align with your goals.

Using too many keywords in an ad

It may sound like a good idea to put as many keywords in your ads as possible, but it can do more harm than good. Using too many keywords can actually lower or diminish the relevancy of your ad.

To avoid this, use a small number of keywords, making sure that they are all relevant to your law firm’s message.

Keeping under-performing keywords

You should constantly be checking and reviewing your keywords to determine which ones perform the best and which ones don’t. Make sure your keywords are directly linked to your firm’s practices and landing page messages.

Ignoring the appearance

People are going to be most attracted to the visual elements of your campaign, rather than just the copy. This is why it is so important to have graphics that are equally as appealing as your message.

You want your ads to stand out to potential customers, and choosing relevant images, colours, graphics and fonts to your firm is the best way to achieve this.

Driving users to the irrelevant landing pages

Always make sure your landing pages are correctly optimised for conversions. An appropriately optimised landing page is one that provides users with what they’re looking for when they click on your targeted ads. It should be useful, full of original content and have clear CTAs.

For example, if your law firm has different locations across the country, make sure users are sent to the correct landing page relevant to their location.

Law firm PPC with Tao Digital

Interested in kickstarting a PPC campaign for your law firm? Have a chat with our team of experts to understand what could work for you. We’ll always run through your goals, expectations and current standing in order to offer the best solution, whether or not this is PPC.

Beginner’s Guide to Email Marketing

Email marketing is great for anyone looking to expand their reach to customers and prospects alike.

It has become progressively more difficult over the years as spam filters get wise to marketing emails, but done right it can be a highly effective marketing tool.

In this guide we will discuss some of the basics to help you start moving your email marketing in the right direction and turn it into a profitable channel for your business.

Email Marketing: How and When

When you send your emails, the timing is so important. Get this wrong and you could see no interaction at all or mass unsubscribe from your hard-earned lists.

Bear in mind though, most email platforms like Active Campaign will bill you by the number of email addresses you have in your platform.

Sometimes it might be better to let some go who are never going to interact. They’re costing you money, lowering your open rates and potentially hiking up your spam rates too.

Best day or time of the week for email marketing

If you run a bar or restaurant, you’ll likely see better returns from your email on a Thursday or Friday as people get in the mood for the weekend.

A B2B company would normally find a Tuesday works great, but it’s well worth testing this as you never know. The different industry quirks can mean better open rates on other days.

Within eCommerce, the best day will always be pay day, which is normally the last Friday of the month in the UK.

How often to send emails

This always depends on the industry you are in and what the subscribers on your list are happy with.

It is so important to test these factors to make sure you aren’t losing subscribers due to not being active enough. On the flip side, being too active can annoy people with too much communication and lead to unsubscribers too.

That being said, we always recommend starting off with either monthly or fortnightly emails before starting to increase the velocity of your sends. This is purely down to making sure your subscribers don’t suddenly feel overwhelmed with the number of emails you send and head for the hills, in this instance hit the unsubscribe button or even worse, “mark as spam”.

Through trial and error you’ll be sure to find the sweet spot for the frequency of emails. You can even set up automations to create weekly/bi weekly emails. We do this within ClickUp – you can read about it here.

Best image size for email marketing

The answer to this is an SEO’s favourite saying – “It Depends”.

According to Campaign Monitor, they use an email header image of 960px wide. This is due to the vast number of email clients there are in the world to open emails along with the fact most email clients are now fully responsive. Their email builder supports images of up to 20MB in size.

Active Campaign recommends you keep your image between 400 and 650 pixels wide. This completely depends on the layout you choose, however – some may be square images, some much wider. The maximum file size they recommend is 5mb.

Again, with Klaviyo, the image specifications depend on the design you choose. Like Active Campaign, the maximum file size they recommend is 5mb, however they recommend using less than 1mb where possible to avoid slow loading time.

Mailchimp recommends an even smaller guide of 1mb for all images.

What is a Good CTR for Email Marketing?

Again, this depends on your industry. Overall, a click through rate of around 2-5% is considered to be good. Mailchimp has a great table of average open rate and click through rate by industry, you can check it out here.

Click through rate can be improved in various ways, for example:

Making buttons or call to actions (CTAs) obvious
Improving your design, making it easy to show what you want readers to do or where you want to draw their attention to
Use powerful phrases in your CTAs, for example ‘save, start, now, join, win, exclusive’.

Best Practices for Email Marketing

In order to be successful, it’s essential to follow best practices. Here are some tips:

Ensure your list is opt-in: This is one of the most important rules of email marketing. If you don’t have permission from your subscribers, you could be facing spam complaints, unsubscribes, and even legal battles. Always make sure people have the option to subscribe to your list and that they are aware of what they’re signing up for.

Send relevant content: Don’t send your subscribers information that isn’t relevant to them. If they opt-in to your email list, they want to hear from you. Send them information that will interest them and help them in their everyday lives.

Personalise your copy: Personalise your copy with the subscriber’s name or other personal details. This makes them feel like you’re talking directly to them, increasing the chances that they’ll read your emails and take action.

Keep your messages short: Most people are busy and don’t have time to read long emails. Keep your email messages short, concise and to the point so they can be easily read and understood.

Use a clear subject line: Your subscribers should be able to quickly understand what the email is about by reading the subject line. Make sure it accurately reflects the email’s content so that subscribers don’t get confused or decide not to open it.

Test different types of copy: Not all copy works for everyone. Try different types of email copy to see what works best for your subscribers. This could include videos, images, articles, or even infographics.

Use A/B testing: A/B testing is a great way to see which email copy and subject lines are most effective with your audience. Test different versions of each to see which gets the best results.

Optimise your emails for mobile devices: More than half of all emails are now opened on mobile devices, so ensure your emails are optimised for these devices. Use a responsive design or ensure your text is easily read on a small screen.

Track your results: It’s important to track the results of your email marketing campaigns so you can see what’s working and what isn’t. Use analytics tools to track things like open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates.

Use a reputable email service provider: Using a reputable email service provider will help ensure that your emails reach their destination and that they look great no matter what device they’re viewed on.

Use images sparingly: Too many images can slow down the loading time of your email and may cause spam filters to block the email.

Ensure your links work properly: Broken links can be frustrating for customers and may cause them to unsubscribe from your list.

Test your email before sending it: It’s always a good idea to test your email on different browsers and devices before sending it out to ensure that it looks correct and functions appropriately.

Use a responsive design template: A responsive design template will automatically adjust the size of your email to fit the device it’s being viewed on, ensuring a good user experience regardless of the device someone uses.

Segment your list: Segmenting your list allows you to send targeted content to specific groups of customers, increasing the likelihood that they will open and read your emails.

Email Marketing Tick list

Subject Line Tips

Subject lines are arguably one of the most important factors in email marketing. While it may only seem like a small part of your message, they are the very first impression you have on your recipients. This is why it is so important to craft a subject line which is compelling enough to get people to click through.

Here are some tips for successful subject lines:

Learn by example. Seeing clever word plays or emojis is one of the best ways to get you thinking about how you could alter your subject line to be more compelling. Sign up to the newsletters of competitors in your industry and see what tactics they are using.

Keep it short and sweet. Email subject lines can be cut off if they’re too long, especially on mobile devices. Try to make your subject line 50 characters or less to ensure people scanning your email read the entire message.

Avoid ‘no-reply’ send names. Thanks to the amount of spam people get these days, many people will ignore or delete email with an address like ‘noreply@company.com’. It makes the email less personable and prevents people from adding the email to their address book.

Don’t make false promises. Your subject line is used to make promises to your reader about what your message will be. Make sure you are making a good commitment, and try not to get your email opened by false promises. This may bother your audience and they’ll lose trust in your subject lines.

Don’t shy away from humour. Most people love a good pun, and it’s a great way to spice up your recipients emails. Don’t go overboard, but think of small ways you can incorporate humour into your subject lines.

UK Email Marketing Law

When you send emails for marketing purposes, you must be compliant with UK email marketing laws outlined in the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR).

These rules outline specific things you must include in your marketing emails, such as disclosing your identity and providing a valid email address to all recipients.

The PECR also covers:

Use of cookies or similar tracking technologies
Any form of electronic communication made for marketing, including text messages and emails
To make sure the communication service providers are secure, including customer privacy-directory listings, location-based data and other identifiers.

Under the General Data Protection Rule (GDPR), recipients can prevent companies from accessing their personal data, which is any information related to an identifiable person.

The seven principles of the GDPR include: fairness; lawfulness and transparency; purpose limitation;data minimisation; accuracy; integrity and confidentiality; and storage limitation.

Under the GDPR, an individual’s consent is considered as a critical aspect. The consent can either be expressed or implied freely by the individual.

Here are some tips to make sure your emails align with the UK laws:

Identify your emails as an advert. This can be as simple as having a clear subject line indicating the purpose of your email, such as phrases like “discounts this week”.

Make sure you have permission from your recipients.

Include your business details such as a postal address.

Give importance to the unsubscribe requests. The opt-out process should be made as uncomplicated as possible and done within 10 business days.

Pros and Cons of Email Marketing

As with all methods of marketing, there are positives and negatives to both.

Pros:

Lead generation: Emails are an incredibly powerful form of lead generation and can lead to sales.

Segmentation: You can segment, tag or create lists for the exact kind of audiences you want depending on their interests. This is especially useful for eCommerce businesses who may offer products for a variety of different audiences, e.g. a footwear business that sells mens, womens and kids shoes. By segmenting them, you can avoid sending irrelevant emails to your main list and avoid unsubscribers.

Advertising directly to your audience: Other forms of advertising, such as social media, may not get directly in front of those who like or follow you due to the different algorithms on each platform, however with emails you are directly in their inbox.

Opting in: These people have opted in and WANT to hear from you. This is much different to other forms of advertising, such as paid socials, where you may not always be relevant to the audience.

Access to valuable analytics: There are so many analytics you can access that can give in-depth insights into your audience, such as the best times to send emails, which subject lines are working best, where your subscribers come from, how many times links are clicked in the emails and by who, how many sales have been made, etc.

Can be easy to build a list with competitions: There are a few incredibly easy ways to build your email marketing list. One way that has worked really well for our clients is via holding competitions where entrants enter their emails to enter. Through just a few social media posts for our client, Hirst Footwear, we generated over 700 email subscribers – you can read the case study here.

Cons:

Can be costly for small businesses: Startups and SMEs may find that some email marketing platforms are out of their budget until they have the financial backing and resources to see a return on investment.

Can take time to understand platforms and segmentation: If you’re a newbie to email marketing, it can take some time to get your head around using different platforms. If you get stuck and your email provider’s guides aren’t much help, some email providers can take up to a week to respond to an issue.

Can get caught in spam: If you suddenly receive a lot of spam complaints, some email providers can automatically filter you into your subscriber’s spam folders, rendering your efforts ineffective.

Design issues: Some email marketing platforms have an easier design interface than others. There can be limitations on some platforms, e.g. not being able to change the colour of buttons or images not aligning without having to edit code.

Can take a while to find a balance between sales and messaging: It’s important to find that ‘Goldilocks Spot’ of your messaging – not too many pushy sales emails and not too many blogs/advice. Striking the balance will depend on your industry and how your subscribers respond, which can be determined by your CTR.

Summary

The more hands on you get with your email marketing, the more efficient you’ll become. Although it may feel overwhelming at first, following the steps above will help your campaigns achieve success.

The more you learn what resonates with your audience, the more you can scale your marketing goals and deliver meaningful messages that will drive results.

Four Proven Tips to Optimise Images for your Website

Undoubtedly, images offer tremendous benefits. A great user experience, high engagement, and brand exposure are a few of them. That is why almost every content creator tries to incorporate them into content strategies.

Though they transform a text-heavy write-up into a visually appealing piece, they require search engine optimisation.

Inability to optimise images can have a poor impact on SEO. Since image searching is in full bloom, competitors are working hard to bring their sites to the top. Therefore, image optimisation needs no compromise.

But before discussing the tips and tricks, let’s try to understand what is image optimisation:

What is Image Optimisation?

Optimising images refers to delivering the best quality with minimum image size. To achieve this goal, we change various elements like image title, file format, dimensions, etc.

When the image size is small, it brings less burden to the site, enabling it to load fast. A fast-loading website provides a great user experience and increases conversions. Besides this, well-optimised images are easier to crawl and help in boosting the SEO rank.

Thus, to boost the business in the digital landscape, every marketer should learn about image optimisation. This article will share some valuable tactics to help you out.

Never Forget to Add Context to the Images

SEO experts always try their best to let search engines understand their images. Thankfully, adding context to the images is not difficult. Here are a few useful ways:

Use Titles and Captions

Since the attention span of visitors is low, adding titles increases the probability of converting them. In some browsers, titles appear when the visitor hovers over the image. It should be short and specific.

For instance, if you use an image of a Palm Tree, a good title is “Palm Tree,” whereas just “Tree” can refer to a broad category.

Likewise, captions appear below or above an image. They are the short description of the image. You can use keywords at the start of the caption but try to make them brief and catchy.

For example, “best sites for stock images” is a good caption. But “cheap and reliable websites to get high-quality stock photos” look unnecessarily lengthy.

Alt Text

It is the text that appears in place of an image when the internet is working slowly. Thus, users get to know which image will appear. Likewise, as the name suggests, it is an alternative to an image and appears in front of people using screen readers.

For creating a compelling alt text, incorporate keywords smartly. If you stuff multiple keywords, it will sound spammy, and search engines won’t understand the context of the image.

For example, a “Chocolate walnut brownie topped with white chocolate glaze” is a good alt text that makes sense. However, brownie glazed white walnut chocolate is inappropriate.

Structured Data

Structured data is a pre-defined format through which we tell Google about the page contents. It provides rich results for the images, which also enhances the consumer experience.

If we don’t back up the images with structured data, they won’t provide us any SEO benefits. They will just enhance the visual appearance of the page.

Always Submit an Image Sitemap

An image sitemap is a map that describes all images of your site. It includes an image URL, short description, alt text, licence, title, etc. The purpose of this map is to enable search engines to understand the purpose of each image. In this way, they will find it easier to index your site.

Luckily, WordPress users can enjoy this feature for free. They don’t need to create a separate map for images as the platform automatically saves all their images in the main sitemap.

Also, those already having a main sitemap don’t need to create an image sitemap separately. You can easily add information to your existing sitemap.

But make sure to add accurate detail to each image. Otherwise, you won’t get any SEO benefits as search engines cannot match the information with the image.

Use High-Quality and Royalty-Free Images

Finding images for your site is not difficult. Start searching, and you will find billions of options. But every image is not the right choice for your site. You firstly need to see the copyrights and licence of the image.

Stock images are available on several sites, but people only prefer reliable sources as they provide customisable and high-quality assets. These pictures portray a positive image of the site besides providing context to the search engines.

Additionally, paid stock photos are a better option than free ones. Since they are not overused, they leave a positive impression on the visitors. Many new and established businesses use paid stock photos and provide a great user experience.

Consider the Right File Format and Image Compression

Try to understand the purpose of each file format. You can use JPEG when you want a drastic reduction in file size. However, consider PNG if the quality is your first concern in comparison to file size. If you are using animation, GIFs are the best option.

Once you have chosen the file format, thinking about compression should be your next step. Adding pictures without compression will take a lot of space and increase the loading time. Thus, the user experience will spoil. No one wants to do it, so compressing images is essential.

Try to understand the two types of compression before proceeding:

Lossy Compression

It is a type of compression in which you compromise the image quality to decrease the image size. Thankfully, the quality compression is negligible. WordPress users can automatically get this feature for JPEG files.

Lossless Compression

Here you don’t compromise on the image’s quality, but you cannot significantly reduce the file size. The reduction of file size in lossless compression is just 5%. In some cases, marketers want to keep the premium quality of the images. Therefore, they opt for lossless compression.

Final Words

Image optimisation can let you achieve your SEO goals. If done correctly, it can help you compete well with your rivals.

Tips like providing context to the images, choosing the correct format, and providing an image sitemap are helpful. Likewise, using the best quality images and considering the correct form of compression is essential.

Following all these tips can let you optimise your website images without increasing the loading time. Add them to your SEO strategy today!

Ruler Analytics: ‘How SEO became our best acquisition channel’

Laura Caveney, Head of Marketing at Ruler Analytics, has over six years of experience in digital marketing, working across digital content and SEO. She has worked in a variety of sectors, from the charity sector to the travel industry. Laura settled into Ruler in 2020 mid-pandemic to support the marketing team build on their current marketing strategy.

Here, she explains how SEO has become their best acquisition channel over the past couple of years.

Thank you for taking the time to chat with us! We love seeing examples of SEO becoming the best acquisition channel for businesses. Tell us why you decided to make this your main focus?

When I first joined Ruler, we were getting the majority of our inbound leads via partner referrals. While it was fantastic to have this resource and strong relationships with our agency partners, content and SEO felt like a huge opportunity to improve results.

The first job was assessing what we currently had and what was missing. Ruler had a small number of really high intent, middle-of-the-funnel blogs that were working well to drive demo enquiries.

When we looked over the content we had and compared it to the marketing funnel, we found we were missing content from the top and from bottom of the funnel. We know that many marketers aren’t aware of attribution or that it could be a solution to their problem. As such, there was a huge untapped opportunity there with keywords we could use to kickstart customer journeys.

Conversely, at the bottom of the funnel, we wanted to support current customers as well as those in the decision-making stage of the process to fully understand what Ruler was capable of and why it’s a better product than our competitors.

While we knew building our SEO would take a lot of time and effort, it was clear even just from the handful of blogs we already had driving demos, that it would be worth it.

How long have you been focusing on this?

Organic search has always been a priority for us and we have been making small waves of improvement incrementally. But, we really saw a shift after we realigned our strategy in January 2021. That’s where we found our feet in terms of content and SEO and started seeing amazing results.

Now, we regularly assess our content and our strategy and shift to ensure that organic traffic grows month on month.

Talk us through your strategy over the years. Has anything shifted through trial and testing?

When I first joined Ruler, the aim of the game was to just write more content. We got through a lot of blogs, and while traffic went up, there wasn’t a huge shift in traffic.

We assessed what we had done and looked critically at what types of content we were creating and who they were aimed at. We found that a lot of our content was very top-of-the-funnel heavy. And, we were popping in demo CTAs left, right and centre and hoping they would stick.

So, we decided to split out our content strategy into three funnel stages and we defined six content pillars. We went through all of our current blogs and applied each to the relevant stage and pillar.

This exercise left us with clear gaps in our content that made it easy for us to see what was missing. From there, we researched keywords and titles that would fit the gaps that were left and got to work.

While we created huge numbers of new blogs, we also capitalised on the SEO goodness of existing content. It took a year to get through our rewrites but we’re now in a position where we can do short, snappy updates and get our content into top rankings with much less effort.

Our final focus for content in 2021 was creating data-driven pieces of content. We found highly relevant keyword opportunities and created our own data. Whether that was using the data from our product or tapping into our community, we were able to create strong, relevant statistics that other marketers would find interesting.

This helped in two ways. First, we were creating highly-optimised content that was ranking well. And second, users were landing on our data and linking back to it. As such, our domain rating increased from 55 to 69 in a year with very minimal work on backlinking.

Now, for 2022, we’re shifting again. We’ve nailed our SEO process, but now, we want to expand out into thought leadership. While our SEO content is working great at driving new inbound traffic, what we’re missing is the key to getting more people to stay.

So this year, we’re going to share more data still. Our own tests and successes as marketers, plus insights to what we’ve learned during our time in marketing. I’m excited to see where this latest shift takes us.

How have you found the process so far?

The process has been a long slog but our traffic has increased by nearly 300% from December 2020 to January 2022. And that year of hard work has put us in good stead to diversify our traffic while knowing that we can expect fairly consistent levels of organic traffic month on month.

Some months we were writing 20 blogs between just two of us and at the time, it was hard to believe that that hard work would be worth it. And while getting through that big push of content was difficult, it’s got us to a really good base of organic traffic now that we can improve on and optimise.

SEO is definitely a long-term game, but the rewards are so worth it. What advice would you give to others in a similar position in terms of timeline expectations?

Stick at it. The hard work is worth it in the end. There were times in 2020 when I felt like I couldn’t write another word. But, by getting through a big content shift like that, you just don’t know where you could end up. And just know, while it feels like all that effort is futile in the moment, in three to six months it’ll pay dividends.

Do you have any future plans for increasing SEO focuses, or perhaps focusing on other areas?

Yes, we’re looking to continue creating data that is useful and valuable. And we’ll always keep our ear to the ground. We’re very lucky to be able to use an attribution tool as part of our regular reporting.

With it, we can see the levels of traffic blogs are getting and how that’s translating into leads and sales. Even better is that we can see how organic search is informing customer journeys. Whether it’s from a first-click view of a blog or last-click conversion, we can definitively prove the impact of our content. This insight helps us understand a blog’s role in the customer journey, better plan for future content, plus tweak existing content.

It’s been particularly useful from a CRO perspective too as it shows us if a blog is getting high traffic but low conversions, or vice versa. That gives us clear actions when it comes to rewriting and updating existing content.

Ahead, we want to use this inbound traffic to develop our email offering. We love the idea of creating a community and want to use our success in dominating niche keywords to better support marketers with attribution, lead tracking and more.

How Small Business Owners Can Acquire Assets To Grow Their Business

This article discusses the ins and outs of acquiring digital assets to grow your small business. It also discusses the advantages and disadvantages.

Growth is a requirement if you want to remain competitive as a small business owner operating online. You need a solid strategy for growing your business.

While most businesses will opt for tried and true growth methods, thinking outside the box can yield impressive results.

One of the best outside-the-box methods is acquiring digital assets (e.g., niche websites, social media profiles) to help further grow your small business.

Let’s discuss the ins and outs of digital assets.

The Status Quo of Growing Your Business

Most businesses opt to pursue traditional growth methods for lack of knowing better. Some of the more popular growth strategies typically include things like:

Obtaining organic traffic through content marketing
Developing an email list
Being active on social media
Investing in paid advertising
Word of Mouth

However, there is another less known way to pursue your growth goals that can potentially yield better results: growing your business by acquiring digital assets.

Digital assets are significant because they don’t come with much of the overhead that brick-and-mortar businesses have. It’s also possible to find a wide range of assets within your price range, giving you more options than traditional acquisitions.

Why Perform Growth Through Acquisitions?

The digital mergers & acquisitions (M&A) landscape is still largely in the early stages compared to more traditional brick-and-mortar businesses. That leaves plenty of opportunities for strategic acquisitions that can grow your business overnight.

Unlike traditional acquisitions of brick-and-mortar companies, which can be complex, owing to the transfer of hard assets such as land, vehicles, etc., digital assets can be easily transferred in short timespans – often in a day.

This allows you to utilize cash on hand or leverage capital towards a growth outlet that provides more immediate returns than advertising and social media strategies.

Acquiring digital assets allows you to take on a company’s clients, content, website traffic, search rankings, email lists, etc. These can lead to more users for your service or buyers for your product in short order.

What Kind of Assets Can You Acquire?

There are many digital businesses, which we will cover below, and not all of them will make for good acquisitions for all types of companies.

Before you begin looking at businesses to buy, you must understand the upsides and downsides of that particular website model.

Understanding these risks and benefits will help you plan how the digital asset can fit into your current business model in the short term and over the long run to help you maximize returns.

Blogs and Niche Websites

Blog and niche websites can be an excellent investment, as they provide businesses with various ways to engage their audience and drive growth. This is especially true for online businesses or those that operate on a national or global level.

Typically, blogs and niche websites benefit from content that can rank in search engines like Google and Bing. This content drives traffic that can be monetized in a variety of ways, including:

Affiliate Marketing
Digital Products
Ad Revenue

By buying a website, you can use this traffic for marketing your products and services to visitors to the blog. It’s also possible to monetize through the aforementioned methods to increase revenue.

Social Media Profiles

Acquiring a well-established branded social media page or profile can expand your potential customer base overnight. This is a common way for businesses to skip past the growth phase of building up their social media profiles.

You don’t have to keep the branding of the social media page you buy, either. There are many prominent social media profiles and pages that have been purchased in the past and changed to new names without losing subscribers, so long as the new branding is relevant.

You first need to understand which social media platforms your target audience spends the most time on. Then, you need to figure out what type of content can help you better engage them. Different businesses will benefit from specific social media platforms, so don’t just rush out to a market like FameSwap and purchase an account.

Not all businesses will benefit from social media, either. So, start with understanding if you’d be better off acquiring another asset such as a blog or aged domain.

Lead Generation Sites

For service businesses that rely on a steady stream of new leads, a lead generation website can provide you with plenty of growth opportunities. Some of the business types that commonly work with lead gen sites include:

Locksmiths
Plumbers
Roofers
Commercial Refrigeration

Because building lead generation websites can be complex, it’s best to purchase an established website to skip past the initial growth phase.

Ecommerce Businesses

For brick-and-mortar retail stores, acquiring an established eCommerce business can quickly allow you to expand your reach without the costs associated with building new stores.

Purchasing an established eCommerce business can be a better option than trying to build your own. For one, buying a site that is generating revenue ensures you already have customers visiting. It also allows you to skip past setting up the eCommerce backend, which can be costly and time-consuming.

You can altogether skip the initial phases of a new eCommerce website, allowing you to instead focus on bringing in new customers and expanding sales. Any business that sells products, from clothing shops to sporting goods stores, can benefit from purchasing an established store.

SaaS Businesses

Saas, for the uninitiated, stands for “software as a service”. It’s a method of licensing software on a subscription basis instead of the traditional way of selling software licenses.

Likely, you’ve already used SaaS software many times in your life. Some of the largest software companies in the world have moved to SaaS models, as it makes their software more accessible to consumers. Some popular SaaS brands include:

Adobe Creative Cloud
Microsoft Office Online
Google Workspace
Quickbooks Online

Depending on the type of business you are operating, you can acquire an established SaaS product that can benefit your customers and work complementary to your business and expand your potential customer base.

An example of this would be a marketing agency purchasing customer relationship management (CRM) software. The agency can offer the CRM to their clients and now also has a host of businesses that use the CRM they can provide marketing services for.

Look at the acquisition of keyword research tool Ubersuggest by Neil Patel for a real-life example. Purchasing this tool allowed him to market services to people using the keyword research tool and expand his potential customer base overnight. He was also able to turn the keyword tool into a paid subscription generating further revenue.

Aged and Branded Domains

Aged domains are domains that were previously used for websites but have since been dropped, either due to disuse or because a company forgot to renew its domain.

The first of those is what you want to look for. Avoid domain squatting, which is buying a domain from an active company that simply forgot to renew, as that is illegal.

Instead, look for domains previously associated with businesses but have since been discontinued. The benefit of these domains is that they have a backlink profile, traffic history, and likely residual brand recognition. You can do a few things with these domains, including:

301 redirect to your primary website
Building a new website on them (LeadGen, secondary brand, etc.)
Change your current domain to the new one

Aged brandable domains can be beneficial. These will allow you to build a secondary website to capture more search real estate and improve traffic and leads. Or, you can redirect to your primary domain to increase your SEO backlink profile.

How to Find These Assets

There are a few different places to find digital assets listed for sale. I recommend that business owners who haven’t worked with digital assets stick to reputable public marketplaces, which is listed in the next section

Public Marketplaces

Public marketplaces are websites set up for people to list their websites, SaaS businesses, and other digital assets for sale. A few of the most popular public marketplaces include sites like:

There are many others, so keep looking if you don’t find something of interest on one of the above marketplaces.

These marketplaces typically have vetting processes for websites and other listed assets. Usually, this vetting will verify the website or assets analytics, traffic, finances, and additional important information.

While this doesn’t mean you can forgo doing your own due diligence, it can provide a good starting point for first-time buyers that decreases risk.

Private Brokers

Similar to real estate sales, there are private brokers, such as Website Properties, that work with sellers to help find a buyer and facilitate a smooth sale of digital assets.

You can find digital asset brokers for everything from social media profiles to websites, YouTube accounts, crypto portfolios, etc.

One benefit of working through a private broker is that you are likely to find higher-quality assets. Because broker fees are typically higher than public marketplaces, they tend to be more selective about who they are working with.

Private Sellers through Outreach

Many of the best opportunities won’t be publicly advertised on public markets or available through private sellers. Instead, you will have to reach out to private individuals and create those opportunities.

The best way to go about this is to use a tool like Ahrefs to discover websites similar to what you want to purchase. Make a complete list of each website that meets your criteria and send out letters of inquiry.

You will likely be surprised at how many website owners would be interested in selling for the right price. As with anything, make sure to do your due diligence to put yourself in a better position for negotiation.

6 Things to Watch Out For

There are a few key things you need to know before attempting to purchase a digital asset. As with any investment, things can go belly up quickly if you don’t perform your due diligence and don’t fully understand what you’re getting into. The following are 6 things you should watch out for when investing in digital assets:

1. Have a Long-Term Strategy

When you first start looking at websites, you will likely find numerous sites that look appealing. However, don’t be too quick to make a purchase.

The first thing to think about is how a website fits your long-term strategic goals. You want to purchase a digital asset that will grow with your business and continue delivering value over the long term.

Consider your business’s long-term goals and mission. Make sure that any digital asset you purchase fits in with that mission before making any purchases.

2. Perform Due Diligence

Due diligence is what separates successful investors from those that barely scrape by. With digital assets, due diligence can save you a lot of money and headaches in the long run.

While you can minimize your potential downsides by purchasing assets from reputable marketplaces, nothing will take the place of due diligence. This means going over the analytics, finances, link profiles, followers, etc.

The reality is there are people out to scam whoever they can. As with traditional investment schemes, digital assets have their share of scams that the unwise investor can fall for when rushing into a purchase.

The first rule is never to purchase a digital asset where you can’t see at least six months or more of records or all relevant records for assets less than six months old.

Use multiple tools to verify any data you are presented with.

3. Ensure the Asset Integrates with Your Workflow

Just because a digital asset passes your due diligence and fits within your long-term goals doesn’t mean it’s right for you.

It may not be worth the trouble if you have to expend considerable resources to integrate a newly purchased asset into your current workflow.

I’ve seen websites that, on paper, looked like great investments. The sites made plenty of money, had consistent traffic, and were primed for long-term growth. However, upon further looking at how the business was set up, things were unorganized and would have required a significant overhaul to work efficiently.

There are plenty of assets available for purchase, so don’t feel compelled to buy one that doesn’t integrate well with your workflow or complicate your business.

4. Sign a Sales Contract Laying Out the Terms

Once you’ve decided to purchase a digital asset, make sure you have a contract detailing timelines, deliverables, an NDA if necessary, and anything else you need to protect your investment.

Ensure that, when writing out the timelines, you leave yourself room to review all the deliverables.

Some sellers may not want to work with contracts. This is particularly common with low-value sales. However, you should be wary of sellers who won’t use contracts for larger transactions.

5. Don’t Overpay

It seems like an obvious statement, but you don’t want to overpay for a digital asset. As with any other investment, there is a negotiation process, and the more information you have, the better your position will be.

Digital assets are typically sold in multiples of between 32x and 36x the average monthly profit of the previous six months. However, there can be a massive variance in this. I’ve seen websites sell as low as 12x and as high as 40x or more.

As part of your due diligence process, you should have a solid understanding of traits unique to each asset that increase its value. Things like high-quality content or aged and brandable domains can make a website more valuable. Look for digital assets with these specific traits that are undervalued.

6. Use an Escrow Account

With higher valued assets especially, the transfer and payments must be run through an escrow account. This will decrease the risk for both you and the asset seller.

An escrow account serves as a holding account for funds and acts as an intermediary for transferring files, passwords, domains, and other deliverables. The seller doesn’t transfer anything until the money is deposited, and you don’t release funds until all deliverables are confirmed.

You will need to discuss with the seller whether you are responsible for the escrow fees or if you both do a split. Avoid sellers who don’t want to work through escrow.

Actionable Takeaways

If you’re in the growth phase of your business, and the prospect of pumping money into SEO or advertising for a year doesn’t appeal to you, acquiring digital assets may be the way to go.

You can seriously cut down the time it takes to see results by acquiring established digital assets already bringing in traffic and income. However, be prepared to spend money. This is not a good strategy if you don’t have working capital or cash reserves.

Assets that are established and bringing in revenue will sell at a premium. The good news is that you can find digital assets at all price levels, making it more likely to find solid assets within your price range. So, if you want quick growth without the downsides and risks of SEO and advertising, consider purchasing digital assets.

11/01/2022

Matt Tomkin

4 Steps for Successful Collaboration Outreach

How do you create a successful marketing collaboration outreach campaign? After all, networking is an important business aspect in any industry. Let’s discuss what steps are essential to initiate and establish a successful collaboration outreach strategy.

Before we get into that, let us ask you a different question. How many emails do you get a day?

The answer will obviously depend on what you do (or how popular you are). But overall, the number of emails we send every day is growing. According to statistics, by the year 2025, the number of daily emails we send and receive is expected to increase to over 376.4 billion.

That’s a LOT of emails. Now, in addition to email communications, marketers use social media as a collaboration outreach tool. So, add on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram messages, posts, and stories. You’ve got yourself a whole ocean of information going around the world in hopes of reaching just the right shore.

Within this, we, as marketers, have a very difficult task to do - stand out. Somehow we need to figure out a way to reach out to people in our niche and deliver our message in a way that is so unique, it will capture people’s attention. Not easy! But not impossible either.

So here are steps to creating a successful collaboration outreach.

1. Have something cool to share in collaboration outreach

Have you ever been to a party where you get stuck talking to someone who has a lot to say? Yet, you find yourself staring absent-mindedly at the dessert table, wondering how to introduce the excuse of going to get some cookies just to get out of the conversation?

Well, you’re on your own there with the “talker.” But we would like to point out that not being “the talker” yourself when planning a collaboration outreach is a really good idea.

As we established, we all get bombarded with information pretty much every waking minute. So when we do open an email or read a social media post, we just want to get value from it. It could offer informational, supportive, inspirational, or entertainment value. Or, it could bring up something that would address the current pain points we’re experiencing in our lives.

Whatever it is, the information you send has to matter to the recipient, not to the sender. Therefore, it’s essential to focus on the needs of your audience, not on your own goal to promote yourself. Of course, you still do need to promote yourself a little bit. So the key here is to find your audience, then learn enough about it so you can support the audience’s needs.

To do that you have to get creative.

Shoot For Radical Differentiation For A Successful Collaboration Outreach

Being creative with your content will ensure that you get your audience's attention. Of course, we are all tired of hearing the endless calls for “being creative” and no specific advice on how to do it.

Louis Grenier, the creator of Everyone Hates Marketers, comes to the rescue here, with a specific plan to create radical differentiation in content marketing. According to Grenier, radical differentiation is what it takes to stand out and be noticed in the sea of information. He recommends a five-step process to create a strategy that makes a company stand out. (Click on the link above for more information on each step.)

Get rid of your self-limiting beliefs - take risks, you CAN do it!
Pick a direction - simplicity and focus go a long way
Obsess over your customers - make them your top priority in every way possible
Engineer your uniqueness - what is different about you? Highlight that!
Identify your status quo - where are you at on the market?
Show it to the world - it’s not fair to hide your unique self from people. Show off!

2. Find the Right People (Once Again by Being Creative)

A natural step in a successful collaboration, this one is probably the trickiest one. Making friends is hard enough. Making friends in the right places is even harder. Where can you find your collaboration partners?

Your email box

Yes, you read that right. Some of the people you need are already right in front of you. All those emails you get? Some of the senders can be recipients of your content and potential collaboration partners.

For example, let’s say you get a message from a company that is offering you products or services, but you have no need for those products and services. However, the company and its audience are in your niche (selling similar products or sharing content on similar topics). Instead of trashing the message or letting it drown under piles of more daily emails, email the sender.

In your reply, let the sender know that while you might not be interested in his or her offer, you are open to collaboration. Personalise the message by discussing a specific piece of content on the sender’s site that you found interesting and offer some of your content. Suggest a collaboration that can be beneficial for both parties.

One advantage of these email replies is that the original senders are more likely to open and read your email. After all, your message shows up in their mailboxes as a reply to a message they have sent themselves.

Of course, there is always a chance that the person emailing you does not handle content and would not be the right contact person for a content collaboration. That is why it might be helpful to include a quick note at the end of the email, asking to be forwarded to the right person in this case.

Backlinking and Journalist Tools

Content marketers are always on the lookout for expert insights. That is why tools such as HARO, JustReachOut, and others similar to these offer a great opportunity for successful collaboration outreach.

These tools can connect you to the right audiences when it comes to sharing your expertise and insights. But there are additional opportunities there. Once you connect with a writer or marketer through the platform you can build and maintain strong collaborative relationships. That, in turn, can help build up your audience.

Here is an example of this strategy at work:

Social media

Whether we like it or not, social media rules the world today. We use it for everything, from shopping to connecting to our distant relatives. It is also a gold mine for building relationships and creating successful collaborations.

The important thing here is to remember that just like when you walk into a room full of people, connecting with them takes time and effort. Good news for introverts, however. On social media you can be as outgoing, engaging, and frequent with your interactions as your time and energy allows. All of that can be done from the comforts of your home or office, no need to even dress up.

Participate in Twitter Chats, read and comment on LinkedIn posts and articles, and join some Facebook groups that discuss topics relevant to you. You never know whom you're going to meet on social media, but you can bet you will learn a lot from these interactions. You might even have some fun along the way.

A8: Depends on the platform. Once a day on LinkedIn and Facebook. 3-4 times a day on Twitter. #BizapaloozaChat

— LiveHelpNow (@LiveHelpNow) December 20, 2021

Google Search

Another great source for collaboration outreach is, of course, Google search. After all, this is where you want your content to appear. It only makes sense to find what content already appears on the first pages of the search, and try to join the party. Here are steps to connect with people who write and share topics similar to yours and to enhance your content promotion strategy.

Come up with a list of keywords relevant to your content topic or products
Search each of these keywords in Google Search
Review the results and see if you have any information to add
Find contact information for content authors and publishers
Contact these important people and offer them your content to add
Offer them something in return. After all, they have already completed their work and it has been popular and relevant enough to reach the top of Google Search. What is in it for them if they add your content to theirs? What can you offer?

Here is an example of such an email from a fellow marketer at Motionbox:

3. Stand Out with Your Messaging

Going through tons of email messages every day can be a monotonous task. Wouldn’t it be great if the emails we got were fun to read? Well, in the words of Michael Jackson, “If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make the change.”

The first thing your recipients see is the subject line of your email. You only have a second or two to appeal to them through one that does not cause them to yawn and move on with their busy lives. Check out this one:

Yes, that is the same Louise Grenier that called for radical differentiation when it comes to marketing content. He stays true to his belief and adds a flare of creativity into everything he puts out. I say he is on point with getting my attention.

Once you get your contact to open the email you still have some work to do. You can make your email body text stand out by creating unique, non-boring messages. Here is one that I think did a stellar job at that.

I mean, how can you say no to that face? If Ayah sent me an old boring email about link collaboration, there is a chance I would miss it. But Archie makes this email memorable, increasing chances for a successful collaboration outreach. Ayah and Archie for the win!

There are many ways to make your emails stand out by adding some fun and creativity to them. The more “you” you make the messaging, the better. Remember the words of another great poet: “There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”

4. Don’t Give Up and Follow Up

Years ago, back when I was in Journalism school, I got an internship at my local city paper. My biggest assignment on the weekly basis was to select five top events in the city to highlight in the weekend section. Five. Mind you, every week a pile of about 300 print-outs with event details sat tall on my desk. There was no way in the world I could read all 300 and select five. Most of the time I’d read from the ones on top, discarding those that did not fit or sound fun, until I had five. Sometimes I would cut the pile in half and read from the middle, but those events on the bottom of the pile never had a chance.

The lesson here is that in the vast world of information (of which there is so much more in digital format) sometimes to stand out you might need some pure luck. You never know who will come across your emails, when, and in what state of mind. Research shows that the percentage of cold emails that receive a reply varies between 1 and 3 percent. That is one to three people out of 100!

How can we make our own luck? By staying positive, staying persistent, and following up. If someone misses our message the first time, there is a chance our recipient might see it the second time.

And if not, perhaps we need to reach someone else’s desk.

So, how does one create a successful marketing collaboration outreach campaign? By sharing the right content with the right people in a creative way. By being authentic and fun. By being uniquely you in every message you send. And by never ever giving up.

Natalya Bucuy
Content Marketer at HelpSquad

Natalya Bucuy is a content marketer at a B2B live chat agent company, HelpSquad. With expertise in customer service and marketing, she has written numerous articles on the topic of customer experience, employee experience, and small business operations.

19/11/2021

Matt Tomkin

Law Firm SEO – The fundamentals to better search rankings

The legal sector is one of the longest standing and seen as one of the most professional sectors in the UK. A number of law firms are really lucky in that their client base is relatively secure and has been for some time.

They get recommendations from other professional service providers for the services they offer and have spent numerous years building those networks to create a solid foundation for the firm to keep going.

Recently, with Covid-19 being a large driver in this, we have seen a number of law firms now looking at what other channels are available to drive revenue and visibility for their brands.

We work with a number of law firms on their SEO presence and continue to see great results from organic search visitors.

Table Of Contents

But, how does a Law Firm do SEO?

3 core parts to SEO

Technical SEO for legal sites

Page load speed - why is it important and how do you fix it?

Mobile usability: we all know why this is important, don’t we?

Check nothing is blocking Google or the search engine spiders

Core Web Vitals: what are they and why should you care?

What are the Core Web Vital measurements?

Search content for legal sites

Writing for search engines and users is an art

Creating search content for each stage of the buyer journey

Links for legal sites

But, how does a Law Firm do SEO?

What do they need to implement internally within their business to gain from SEO as well as the component parts that have to be implemented correctly to gain the up-tick in visitors from Google, Bing, Duckduckgo or any of the other search engines?

3 core parts to SEO

There are 3 core parts to SEO, these are:

Technical SEO, Content and off-site signals.

Technical SEO for legal sites

Technical SEO is all about making sure your website is built in a way in which the search engine spiders can access the information and understand all the information in the most efficient way possible.

Top level technical considerations are things such as:

Page load speed
Mobile usability
Checks that nothing is blocking googlebot from accessing the websites pages, etc.

Then there is Core Web Vitals to consider, but this does incorporate a number of scores that we’ll discuss in further detail.

Page load speed - why is it important and how do you fix it?

In a nutshell, page speed is how fast a web page is loaded when a user visits it.

No-one likes a slow website! It’s as simple as that. Google, and the other search engines, therefore see this as a ranking factor (how they decide where your website/page sits in the search engine results) and a slower website is seen as bad for the user.

The ideal time for a website to load on mobile is between 1-2 seconds. Yes, this is fast, but studies show that 53% of mobile site visits are abandoned if pages take longer than 3 seconds to load. Here is the study for further information: Think with Google.

However, with the addition of Core Web Vitals, there is now more complexity in the recommendation to “just make it load faster”. Core Web Vitals have been introduced to help website owners understand how to improve overall website experience, rather than outright speed.

For example, the content layout shift measurement is now targeting those annoying moments when you go to click something, but the page shifts as you do it and you end up on a random page; i.e. one that you didn’t want to go to.

Mobile usability: we all know why this is important, don’t we?

Everyone now uses their mobile to browse the internet! If your website doesn’t show properly on a mobile device and users are unable to read, click or even use the site at all, then this is going to affect how you rank on Google and on other search engines.

In Q1 2021, internet users on mobile devices accounted for 54% of all traffic, and this is not slowing down. People are moving away from their laptops and just using mobile devices for all things internet. Make sure they can access your site properly.

Test your website now to see if it works on all the latest devices, use Blisk to check.

Google now, and has been doing so for a few years, ranks websites using a “mobile first” ranking method. This means that if your site doesn’t work very well on mobile, it is very unlikely that the site will perform well on desktop Google searches either.

Check nothing is blocking Google or the search engine spiders

Website owners and developers can use a very tiny piece of code on the back end of a website to ask Google, amongst others, to not index an entire website, or just certain pages. This is great when you want to make sure some pages don’t show up in search for whatever reason, but we have seen examples of developers forgetting to change this to allow indexing of an entire website.

Sometimes, this happens when a new site has been built and the site is set to ‘no-index’, making sure there isn’t a duplicate. The only problem is, it gets forgotten about when the site goes live.

Believe me, this happens. We’ve seen websites disappear from Google within days due to a tiny error like this. Normally, it’s easy to sort and relatively quick to get the rankings back, but it can have permanent damage if not found quickly.

This is just one of many things that can affect how search engines get blocked or have issues with finding and indexing your website pages.

Core Web Vitals: what are they and why should you care?

Core Web Vitals is the name given by Google to a number of measurements that affect user experience and they believe every website owner should be measuring.

They will be used to help determine where a website ranks across all of Google’s tools. As of yet, we’re not sure how much of an impact this has on search results, but you can be sure they will be having some; especially in competitive sectors such as law.

They are measurements from real world data, so it is extremely important to keep a close eye on these scores within your Google Search Console portal.

Page experience is so important and should form part of your overall plan for how to attract new visitors and keep them on the site. However, if you need a push to do this, then Core Web Vitals is for you.

What are the Core Web Vital measurements?

They are split into 3 aspects that affect user experience: loading, interactivity and visual stability.

Google terms these aspects as Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures loading performance. To provide a good user experience, LCP should occur within 2.5 seconds of when the page first starts loading.
First Input Delay (FID): Measures interactivity. To provide a good user experience, pages should have a FID of 100 milliseconds or less.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures visual stability. To provide a good user experience, pages should maintain a CLS of 0.1. or less.

It has never been more important to measure how your website loads for your end users and to make sure that there is a budget in place to improve the way your site is built. This is why we moved into website development, to help our SEO clients’ sites load better and hit the scores where needed.

If you need any help understanding your website's speed metrics or technical issues, get in touch.

Search content for legal sites

So, you have likely heard the saying “Content is King” - this phrase does have some truth to it. The real saying however, should go “The Right Content is King” when it comes to SEO and gaining website visitors from search engines.

What we mean by this is that you can write as much content as you want but, if your goal is to get more visitors to your website via organic search, then you need to make sure it matches what Google knows the user is looking for. We call this the ‘intent of the searcher’.

Blog content that doesn’t target search is very important, but only once you have customers on your website. We’re talking about SEO in this article, so we will be concentrating on what we term ‘search content’ or ‘SEO content’.

Writing for search engines and users is an art

When you are looking for more traffic from Google or other search engines, you have to think about what they understand the intent of a search to be. We call this the search intent.

Search intent is basically what a user wants to find when they type something into the search box.

There are 3 different types of search intent as we define them.

Informational: A searcher is looking for content to help understand something or find the answer to a question.
Navigational: The user knows where they want to go and uses a brand name or place to find the relevant website.
Transactional: A user is wanting to buy a product or service. This can include researching a type of product or service, and it could be that they know what they want to buy and go ahead and purchase.

A great example of an informational search would be “How long does probate take?” which is searched for an average of 6,800 times per month in the UK (and this is actually an underestimation of the actual volume!).

The person searching this is higher up in the sales funnel and we want to answer this question for them along with other relevant information surrounding the topic in the best way possible. Once we have answered all the questions this searcher has, they will likely move through the buyer funnel to the point where they will then use a more transactional search, such as “probate solicitors” which is a 1100 per month search volume; again, an underestimation.

Creating search content for each stage of the buyer journey

It is so important to create content for each stage of the buying process.

Links for legal sites

Google was the first search engine to use links to help decide where to rank a website in its search results. They worked on the basis that some links are more trustworthy than others. As an example, the BBC would be very trustworthy as they have very high editorial standards and are one of the most trusted websites and organisations in the world.

However, a website that is not trustworthy and has lower editorial standards will be discounted as a link in the eyes of Google. They need to be good, relevant and trusted links.

It is therefore important that you build inbound links to your website that are from trustworthy sources. Let’s be honest, you’re not likely to get a link from the BBC every day of the week, so we use a tool that estimates the potential domain rating of a website.

This score is out of 100 and can help build a picture of how valuable a link might be if you were to gain one to your website.

The Law Society website https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/en, as an example, has a domain rating of 84/100, meaning that having a link from this site would be great for any law firm.

The content of the page linking to you is important too. Let’s say a major newspaper uses you as a source for an article about probate law; this would be seen in the eyes of Google and the other search engines as a trusted and reliable source and would be a great link.

On the flip side of this, an article about changing the tyre on a car that contains a link back to a law firm's website would not be a relevant or trusted source.

20 Apr 2025

Matt Tomkin

As a search marketing agency, we get asked about SEO vs. PPC a lot. Of course, what we recommend completely depends on the client and their industry, and there are many things to consider before we look to recommend either channel.

In this guide, we’ve gone back to basics about what each of the processes involve (feel free to skip ahead if you’ve already got some understanding), how they can work together and the pros and cons of each.

Table Of Contents

What do SEO and PPC stand for?

SEO stands for ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ and PPC stands for ‘Pay Per Click’.

Search Engine Optimisation isn’t just a case of optimising your pages once and never looking at them again. Due to constantly changing search algorithms, site infrastructure updates, your competitor’s activity and much more, you constantly need to be on the ball to make your site as search engine friendly as possible. This is done through a mixture of technical SEO, content marketing and digital PR.

PPC refers to the ads that you see at the top of Google search results. As a business you will pay per every click received on your ad. It’s not a case of paying the highest, although this is a factor - rather, it’s all about the quality of your landing page experience, ad copy quality along with a whole host of other factors.

What is the difference between SEO and PPC?

There are a few differences between SEO and PPC to bear in mind:

The positioning on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page)

First and foremost, the most obvious difference between the two is their positioning on the SERP. The paid ads are the first results you see and are labelled as ads, as shown in the graphic above.

The organic results are shown from that point onwards and are what search engines believe to be the best match to a user’s query, starting from the best match and descending from there.

The goal for both search channels

With SEO, it’s likely that you want to boost the site's visibility in the search results, which is a great investment in the overall value of a business. There are a number of advantages to SEO, improving your keyword rankings, increasing your domain rating through gaining links, improving site traffic, bringing more site visitors that will lead to more sales and leads.

SEO is best viewed as a long term investment in your business, it can take some time and considerable investment to make major gains in organic search but the value keeps building over an extended period.

With PPC, you’re normally directing your site visitors to one page (often a particular service page you’d like to push, or a contact form we term a landing page) with the aim being to get users to take an action - ideally, buy a certain product or contact you for more information.

We wouldn't recommend starting a PPC campaign without having a very focused landing page, or set of landing pages, depending on the campaign and number of ad sets you are running.

The time frame

SEO is a long-term strategy and investment in your businesses long term lifespan.

Creating a new piece of content, whether a blog or new service page, goes live, you will need to wait till the search engines ‘index’ the page.

This can be sped up to an extent, but it completely depends on your website's authority and how important the search engines see your website. It can take 3-6 months before you start seeing traffic to the page - in fact, the average time a URL takes to hit page one is over 12 months, according to Ahrefs. On the other hand, paid ads are live immediately and can start generating results quickly when done correctly.

The sort of visitors you will bring to the site

Having managed PPC for a wide variety of clients, alongside undertaking SEO work, we have certainly noticed a difference in the sort of leads that each one will bring in.

With SEO, you’re likely to attract the sorts of visitors who may be at the top of the sales funnel. For example, if you’re a craft insurance business, many small craft businesses won’t know exactly what they need to cover them from claims - these sorts of visitors are at the top of the sales funnel.

Say for example they search a question such as: ‘What sort of insurance do I need for craft fairs?’. They may come across your piece of content, a guide to showcasing at a craft fair. After reading the guide and finding out the sort of insurance their business needs, they may request a quote from you as you have positioned yourself as an expert. (p.s. - you can also read our guide for more information on how to use Google searches to create content that answers user’s questions).

If you did want to target people who are more towards the bottom of the funnel, perhaps you want to create a highly targeted piece of content around getting a quote for insurance. SEO can target both top of funnel and bottom of funnel users, it all depends on the content produced and the competition for the terms.

With PPC you can attract visitors much further down the sales funnel who are either looking to make a purchase now or are looking for very quick results - e.g. someone who has left organising their car insurance until the last minute and is looking for a quote as soon as possible.

They may fill in forms from several of your competitors in order to see who responds first. This means that you may have to filter through more leads to see who is seriously considering buying your product or using your services.

In some instances, you may want to target further up the sales funnel, like promoting a piece of content or a guide, but typically we do see PPC being used for bottom of the funnel purposes.

How SEO and PPC work together

Although SEO and PPC do have their differences, you can seriously reap the benefits of using both together.

Getting greater target audience insights

PPC can give you invaluable data about your target audience. Once your ads have gone live, Google collects information about who is clicking on your ads, such as their age, gender, industry, job role, the area they live in, etc.

This data can help you to refine your next projects as part of ongoing SEO. For example, if you are a business coach and you see that owners of insurance businesses are clicking on your ads, you might want to create a piece of content or a service page around ‘Business Coaching for the Insurance Industry’. This can help you to continue bringing in leads through your PPC work and also attracting those leads organically too - it’s a win-win situation as you start to dominate the SERP!

Increased brand awareness

Using both together also boosts brand awareness. For example, someone might be carrying out some quick research about your industry, and once they visit your landing page from an ad they get a general idea of your offerings and who you are. They may get distracted and leave the site.

However, when that person searches again, or really does need your product this time, they will remember your name and click on your organic listing this time. Or, you could even use remarketing list search ads on Google and make sure you are there for both organic and paid ads.

Testing what works and using it in your SEO efforts

You can also test new keywords that can help with your SEO. Choose a word or phrase that you think you could potentially rank highly for and use it in your PPC ads. If you see great results, this is a sign that you should start to include this keyword in your content.

You can also review statistics such as time spent on the site and bounce rates to see what is working on your landing page and what isn’t - for example, are people getting tired of reading a huge piece of content, or is a call to action too far down? This can help you avoid the same mistake in other pieces of content across the whole site.

Does PPC affect SEO?

Not directly, but as we’ve touched on, you can use the insights to better your SEO. It can be part of your overall SEO strategy, but it’s not essential to your efforts, especially if you have a smaller budget starting out.

What are the pros and cons of SEO and PPC?

SEO: Pros

Increase traffic, leads and brand awareness
It often isn’t as costly as PPC can be
Visitors who view your site are likely to have a higher level of trust as search engines have suggested you as the best match to their query, rather than paying to get there
You can easily attract local traffic to your site by taking advantage of Google My Business and other local listings
You can become an authority figure in your industry as people search your site for information and guides
One great piece of content can consistently bring in leads - we’ve seen this with some of our client’s top performing pages

SEO: Cons

SEO takes longer to see results, so return on investment isn’t instant and needs a consistent budget
In some extremely competitive industries, SEO needs a vast amount of resources to compete. You may need to use PPC as well to generate results in the shorter term
There are no guarantees with SEO - algorithms change constantly
You can suddenly go down in rankings due to a variety of factors, such as competitor activity, the toxicity of the sites that have been linking to you, algorithms etc.
The organic results aren’t as high up on the SERP

PPC: Pros

Generates almost instant results
Return on investment is very clear
Can feed into your SEO strategy and give insights that are more difficult to find through SEO
Gets you to the top of the SERP immediately, compared to months or even years of effort with SEO
Targets people who are at the bottom of the sales funnel, and so are looking to buy NOW
You can set a maximum daily budget to make sure you aren’t spending too much

PPC: Cons

Once your competitors catch onto you efforts, you could face a bidding war where essentially the price per click consistently increases
Many people don’t trust ads as much as they know businesses have paid to get there - 97% of all clicks go to organic search results.
Money can be burned up quickly if it isn’t done correctly - we’ve spoken to many business owners and marketing managers that have tried their hand and spent so much with little ROI!
You can get caught up in ‘click fraud’, a process where people or certain pieces of software constantly click on your ads to use up your money
The data can be complex to understand for those who are new to PPC

So, which is better overall?

Sorry to go for the typical SEO answer here, but really… it depends (yes, we can hear you booing over there).

If you want quick results and know how to optimise a campaign as best you can, PPC might be the best option for you.

However, if you want to put the effort into an SEO strategy over time and bring in consistent organic results, that could be a better choice.

In our honest opinion, a combination of both works really well due to the insights you can get. For the clients we do this for, we are constantly reviewing PPC campaigns to see what’s working and what isn’t, then implementing this into their content.

If you want great results that will take your business to the next level, get in touch with us today. All of our clients receive monthly video reports that prove real return on investment and growth over time.

What is content marketing for law firms?

Should law firms invest in content marketing?

Does content marketing actually work for the legal industry?

What should a content strategy for a law firm include?

What type of content should law firms create?

Blogs

Service Pages

Case Studies

Explainer Videos

Social Media

Best practices for law firms creating content

Answer questions in your content

Featured snippet optimisation

Create a content hub

Prove your EEAT

SEO optimisation for all content

Updating and refreshing content

Let Tao Digital handle your content marketing

What is SEO for Law Firms?

What is PPC for Law Firms?

Why SEO and PPC is important for Law Firms

How SEO strategies work for Law Firms

How PPC strategies work for Law Firms

Can you use PPC and SEO together?

Does SEO or PPC have a greater ROI for Law Firms?

The pros and cons of SEO vs PPC for the legal sector

SEO Pros

SEO Cons

PPC Pros

PPC Cons

How do you know whether your law firm should invest in SEO and/or PPC?

Let Tao Digital take care of your SEO and PPC

What is PPC for law firms?

Should a law firm invest in SEO or PPC?

Types of PPC strategies for law firms

Paid search marketing

Display advertising

Social media advertising

Retargeting advertising

How much should law firms spend on PPC?

The benefits of PPC for law firms

Target audience reached

Measurable results and ROI

Immediate results

Flexibility and scalability

How to set up a PPC campaign for a law firm

Set goals

Research and select the right keywords

Create a campaign that resonates with your audience

Optimise PPC landing pages

Review and test your PPC campaign

How can law firms track the success of a PPC campaign?

When will you see results from a law firm PPC campaign?

PPC mistakes that the legal industry make

Not setting up remarketing

Running campaigns for too long

Using too many keywords in an ad

Keeping under-performing keywords

Ignoring the appearance

Driving users to the irrelevant landing pages

Law firm PPC with Tao Digital

Email Marketing: How and When

Best day or time of the week for email marketing

How often to send emails

Best image size for email marketing

What is a Good CTR for Email Marketing?

Best Practices for Email Marketing

Subject Line Tips

UK Email Marketing Law

Pros and Cons of Email Marketing

Summary

Four Proven Tips to Optimise Images for your Website

What is Image Optimisation?

Never Forget to Add Context to the Images

Use Titles and Captions

Alt Text

Structured Data

Always Submit an Image Sitemap

Use High-Quality and Royalty-Free Images

Consider the Right File Format and Image Compression

Natalya Bucuy
Content Marketer at HelpSquad