Measuring the Results of SEO

measuring seo success

As with all law firm marketing strategies, part of the secret is measuring performance and adjusting campaigns to make them more successful in the future.

The problem is that SEO for law firms takes time to work.

After the changes are made, patience is required, and performance needs to be measured and monitored over months rather than days or weeks.

In this chapter, you’ll learn:

  • The significance of setting specific, measurable SEO goals.
  • Essential tools for tracking and analyzing your SEO performance.
  • 5 KPIs every law firm should track.
  • How to hold your SEO agency accountable.

Let’s begin.

Understanding the Significance of Tracking On-Page SEO Results

Tracking your on-page SEO results is so pivotal.

To adequately measure the effectiveness of an on-page SEO strategy, you need to track metrics like:

  • Keyword rankings
  • Organic traffic
  • Website conversions from organic
  • Website conversions from referrals
  • Local SEO

Tracking these results allows you to pinpoint areas for improvement on your website, whether that means optimizing certain pages, enhancing content readability, or speeding up page load times.

The key knowing how to identify which tactics are working well and which aren’t, so you can make informed decisions that can significantly influence your site’s search engine visibility.

Understanding how users interact with your site — identifying the pages they visit, the duration of their stay, and their actions — can help you identify issues with your content. For example, if users are landing on your blog post and leaving instantly, that signals an issue with the content or the website itself.

Ultimately, it’s about understanding how all of the small changes you make to your website affect your long-term goals.

We recommend using Semrush’s Site Audit to easily track your law firm website’s performance on metrics like backlinks, on-page SEO, rankings, and more.

Attorney Michael Oykhman

“My website continues to dominate all the top website searches in my industry and my business has grown 10-fold as a result.”

Michael Oykhman

Oykhman Criminal Defence

Talk to a Marketing Specialist

Get More Traffic & Leads

How Long Does SEO Take to Work?

Before we dive in, you should understand that SEO isn’t immediate.

Typically, you should allow a period of 4 to 6 months for an SEO strategy to start yielding visible results.

SEO is an ongoing process of improvement and optimization. Achieving a high position in search results is only half the battle; maintaining that position requires effort and adaptation to evolving search engine algorithms and competitive landscapes.

Here’s what Google’s Maile Ohye has to say about SEO timelines.

A LinkedIn survey by Ahrefs, which garnered responses from nearly 4,000 participants, added more weight to the ongoing effort required for solid SEO.

The reality is that every case is different. The time it takes to start seeing results depends on your practice area and location. Some practice areas have more competitive keywords, and different geographical areas (more populated areas, specifically) are much more competitive.

If you’re working with a professional, expect to see some results in the first 3-6 months. Things should really pick up at the one-year mark.

5 KPIs to Start Tracking Today

All good marketing involves tracking how each campaign is performing through metrics and KPIs.

Let’s dig a little deeper.

How to Track Your Google Rankings

Arguably the most important metric for most SEO campaigns, you should definitely be monitoring the rankings for your targeted keywords on a weekly basis.

There are many tools out there that you can use, some free, some paid. Our tool of choice is Semrush.

Semrush

The most straightforward way to check how one of your pages is ranking is to use the Organic Research tab.

It’ll display a lot of information, including what keywords you’re ranking for and for what URL.

You can also utilize their Position Tracking tool to track the keywords you’re targeting more systematically

Semrush is a paid tool, so it may not be for everyone.

Google Search Console

For free alternatives, there’s nothing better than Google Search Console.

Using this tool, you can see what queries are bringing users to your website, how you rank for these queries and historical data.

To find this data, simply log into your GSC and:

  • Click “Search results” under “Performance” on the left-hand side.
  • Scroll down and click the “Pages” tab.
  • Find the page you want results for and click it.
  • Select the “Queries” tab to see what queries are bringing in traffic to that page.

This is just one (free) way to see what keywords a website is ranking for.

How to Track Your Organic Traffic

Measuring your organic web traffic is also worthwhile and can help you optimize your SEO if you’re able to dig deep.

Aside from raw traffic numbers, tools like Google Analytics show you what keywords drive that organic traffic and what those users do on your website once they land there.

Google Analytics is a truly powerful tool and can tell you things like:

  • Which of your website pages is converting at the highest rate? This can tell you what keywords are worth investing more time in.
  • Which pages are users bouncing from quickly?
  • What keywords are driving users to convert?
  • Do different geographic and demographic groups behave differently once they land on your site?

These answers can be used to further shape your SEO efforts, and they’re available for free through Google Analytics.

Google has several video, blog, and course resources available for you to learn how to use Analytics. Check out the video below to get started.

How to Track Your Website Conversions

It’s all well and good to know what keywords are ranking well and how much traffic you’re getting, but what you really want to know is…

At what rate are users converting?

For law firms, this looks like visitors signing up for a free consultation, signing up for a newsletter, or calling your office.

The great thing is you can use Google Analytics to track your conversions too.

We use Google Tag Manager for clients to create tags and triggers to track form submissions and click-to-calls

From there, we can track it in a GA4 account.

GA4-tracking

By doing so, we can identify which pages are pulling in the most conversions and optimize conversion rates based on the data.

You can also identify which traffic sources are performing the best and create a conversion rate optimization strategy around that data.

traffic-by-source

This is all a bit high level and requires some deep knowledge of SEO. We typically recommend working with an SEO specialist, but if you want to do a deep dive, we recommend you watch the video below to learn how to set this all up.

How to Track Referral Traffic

Not only do you want to track your organic traffic, but you also want to keep an eye on your referral traffic.

It’s a good metric for measuring the effectiveness of your link building (thing guest posts) and off-site SEO tactics like social media.

Tracking referral traffic can tell you what off-site SEO and link-building tactics are bringing in traffic and if they’re actually converting that traffic into clients.

You can measure the effectiveness of things like:

  • Legal directory listings
  • Guest posts
  • Paid social media content

And once again, Google Analytics is the best way to track referral traffic.

To see your referral traffic, log in to your GA account and click on Traffic Acquisition.

Scroll down to the table and type Referral into the search bar.

How to Track Your Local SEO Efforts

We use CallRail for all of our clients to track local SEO campaigns.

callrail-metrics

It’s a great tool to track your calls and:

  • Measure phone call conversations from search, digital marketing (including PPC), or even offline
  • Record phone calls
  • Automatically show the right number to the right audience

You can use a specific tracking number for your Google Business Profile to measure the performance of your local SEO as it relates to your GBP.

We also use the built-in performance tracker on GMB to measure how many calls a GMB receives each month.

gbp-call-tracker

What to Do After Measuring Your SEO Results

After tracking and analyzing all of that information, you’re left with… well, a lot of data. But what comes next?

Understanding your SEO metrics is only the first step. The real magic lies in using this information to refine and enhance your SEO strategy.

Here’s how to pivot from measurement to action to fix any flaws in your SEO strategy and make sure you meet your goals.

1. Analyze Performance Trends and Anomalies

Begin by identifying patterns in your data.

Have certain pages shown significant improvement in rankings or organic traffic? Are there any unexpected drops?

By pinpointing these trends, you can figure out what’s working and what might need a rethink. For example, a drop in traffic on a specific page could indicate issues with content relevance, keyword targeting, or technical SEO. Or poor rankings could mean your blog doesn’t match search intent or isn’t as comprehensive and helpful as it should be.

Request A Free Consultation
Have Questions About Marketing with JurisPage?

2. Prioritize Areas for Improvement

With your data in hand, figure out which areas hold the most potential for impact.

This might mean doubling down on high-performing content, optimizing pages that are nearly ranking on the first SERP, or addressing technical SEO issues that could be hindering your site’s performance.

3. Set Specific, Actionable Goals

Based on your analysis, set clear and achievable goals for your SEO strategy.

These could range from increasing organic traffic by a certain percentage, improving the ranking of specific key pages, or enhancing your site’s mobile usability.

Make sure these goals are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

Marketing-for-Lawyers-SMART-Goals

4. Implement Strategic SEO Enhancements

Armed with your goals, begin making targeted improvements to your website.

This could involve:

  • Content Optimization: Refining existing content or creating new content targeted at gaps in your keyword strategy.
  • Technical SEO Adjustments: Improving site speed and mobile-friendliness and addressing vital issues in the core web.
  • On-Page SEO Tweaks: Enhancing meta descriptions, title tags, and headers to better capture and convert organic traffic.

5. Monitor Changes and Iterate

SEO is not a set-it-and-forget-it task.

After implementing changes, continue to monitor your metrics. This ongoing observation will let you see the real-time impact of your adjustments and make further improvements as needed. This cycle of measurement, analysis, action, and re-measurement will propel your SEO strategy forward.

Getting Started with Your Law Firm SEO

You’re now at the end of our SEO for Lawyers guide. You should have enough know-how to begin working toward a successful SEO campaign for your firm.

To recap, we’ve covered:

  • An introduction to law firm SEO
  • The ranking factors you need to know to rank on Google
  • How to do keyword research
  • How to use content marketing to attract leads
  • The basics of on-page and off-page SEO
  • How to optimize your website for local rankings
  • The ins and outs of link building for law firm websites
  • How to measure the effectiveness of your SEO

If you’ve made it to the end and decided you don’t have the time to invest in learning and implementing SEO on your own, we can help.

JurisPage is a marketing agency that works solely with law firms. We know the ins and outs of legal marketing and are here to help. Schedule a free consultation with us today.

As with all law firm marketing strategies, part of the secret is measuring performance and adjusting campaigns to make them more successful in the future.

The problem is that SEO for law firms takes time to work.

After the changes are made, patience is required, and performance needs to be measured and monitored over months rather than days or weeks.

In this chapter, you’ll learn:

  • The significance of setting specific, measurable SEO goals.
  • Essential tools for tracking and analyzing your SEO performance.
  • 5 KPIs every law firm should track.
  • How to hold your SEO agency accountable.

Let’s begin.

Understanding the Significance of Tracking On-Page SEO Results

Tracking your on-page SEO results is so pivotal.

To adequately measure the effectiveness of an on-page SEO strategy, you need to track metrics like:

  • Keyword rankings
  • Organic traffic
  • Website conversions from organic
  • Website conversions from referrals
  • Local SEO

Tracking these results allows you to pinpoint areas for improvement on your website, whether that means optimizing certain pages, enhancing content readability, or speeding up page load times.

The key knowing how to identify which tactics are working well and which aren’t, so you can make informed decisions that can significantly influence your site’s search engine visibility.

Understanding how users interact with your site — identifying the pages they visit, the duration of their stay, and their actions — can help you identify issues with your content. For example, if users are landing on your blog post and leaving instantly, that signals an issue with the content or the website itself.

Ultimately, it’s about understanding how all of the small changes you make to your website affect your long-term goals.

We recommend using Semrush’s Site Audit to easily track your law firm website’s performance on metrics like backlinks, on-page SEO, rankings, and more.

Attorney Michael Oykhman

“My website continues to dominate all the top website searches in my industry and my business has grown 10-fold as a result.”

Michael Oykhman

Oykhman Criminal Defence

Talk to a Marketing Specialist

Get More Traffic & Leads

How Long Does SEO Take to Work?

Before we dive in, you should understand that SEO isn’t immediate.

Typically, you should allow a period of 4 to 6 months for an SEO strategy to start yielding visible results.

SEO is an ongoing process of improvement and optimization. Achieving a high position in search results is only half the battle; maintaining that position requires effort and adaptation to evolving search engine algorithms and competitive landscapes.

Here’s what Google’s Maile Ohye has to say about SEO timelines.

A LinkedIn survey by Ahrefs, which garnered responses from nearly 4,000 participants, added more weight to the ongoing effort required for solid SEO.

The reality is that every case is different. The time it takes to start seeing results depends on your practice area and location. Some practice areas have more competitive keywords, and different geographical areas (more populated areas, specifically) are much more competitive.

If you’re working with a professional, expect to see some results in the first 3-6 months. Things should really pick up at the one-year mark.

5 KPIs to Start Tracking Today

All good marketing involves tracking how each campaign is performing through metrics and KPIs.

Let’s dig a little deeper.

How to Track Your Google Rankings

Arguably the most important metric for most SEO campaigns, you should definitely be monitoring the rankings for your targeted keywords on a weekly basis.

There are many tools out there that you can use, some free, some paid. Our tool of choice is Semrush.

Semrush

The most straightforward way to check how one of your pages is ranking is to use the Organic Research tab.

It’ll display a lot of information, including what keywords you’re ranking for and for what URL.

You can also utilize their Position Tracking tool to track the keywords you’re targeting more systematically

Semrush is a paid tool, so it may not be for everyone.

Google Search Console

For free alternatives, there’s nothing better than Google Search Console.

Using this tool, you can see what queries are bringing users to your website, how you rank for these queries and historical data.

To find this data, simply log into your GSC and:

  • Click “Search results” under “Performance” on the left-hand side.
  • Scroll down and click the “Pages” tab.
  • Find the page you want results for and click it.
  • Select the “Queries” tab to see what queries are bringing in traffic to that page.

This is just one (free) way to see what keywords a website is ranking for.

How to Track Your Organic Traffic

Measuring your organic web traffic is also worthwhile and can help you optimize your SEO if you’re able to dig deep.

Aside from raw traffic numbers, tools like Google Analytics show you what keywords drive that organic traffic and what those users do on your website once they land there.

Google Analytics is a truly powerful tool and can tell you things like:

  • Which of your website pages is converting at the highest rate? This can tell you what keywords are worth investing more time in.
  • Which pages are users bouncing from quickly?
  • What keywords are driving users to convert?
  • Do different geographic and demographic groups behave differently once they land on your site?

These answers can be used to further shape your SEO efforts, and they’re available for free through Google Analytics.

Google has several video, blog, and course resources available for you to learn how to use Analytics. Check out the video below to get started.

How to Track Your Website Conversions

It’s all well and good to know what keywords are ranking well and how much traffic you’re getting, but what you really want to know is…

At what rate are users converting?

For law firms, this looks like visitors signing up for a free consultation, signing up for a newsletter, or calling your office.

The great thing is you can use Google Analytics to track your conversions too.

We use Google Tag Manager for clients to create tags and triggers to track form submissions and click-to-calls

From there, we can track it in a GA4 account.

GA4-tracking

By doing so, we can identify which pages are pulling in the most conversions and optimize conversion rates based on the data.

You can also identify which traffic sources are performing the best and create a conversion rate optimization strategy around that data.

traffic-by-source

This is all a bit high level and requires some deep knowledge of SEO. We typically recommend working with an SEO specialist, but if you want to do a deep dive, we recommend you watch the video below to learn how to set this all up.

How to Track Referral Traffic

Not only do you want to track your organic traffic, but you also want to keep an eye on your referral traffic.

It’s a good metric for measuring the effectiveness of your link building (thing guest posts) and off-site SEO tactics like social media.

Tracking referral traffic can tell you what off-site SEO and link-building tactics are bringing in traffic and if they’re actually converting that traffic into clients.

You can measure the effectiveness of things like:

  • Legal directory listings
  • Guest posts
  • Paid social media content

And once again, Google Analytics is the best way to track referral traffic.

To see your referral traffic, log in to your GA account and click on Traffic Acquisition.

Scroll down to the table and type Referral into the search bar.

How to Track Your Local SEO Efforts

We use CallRail for all of our clients to track local SEO campaigns.

callrail-metrics

It’s a great tool to track your calls and:

  • Measure phone call conversations from search, digital marketing (including PPC), or even offline
  • Record phone calls
  • Automatically show the right number to the right audience

You can use a specific tracking number for your Google Business Profile to measure the performance of your local SEO as it relates to your GBP.

We also use the built-in performance tracker on GMB to measure how many calls a GMB receives each month.

gbp-call-tracker

What to Do After Measuring Your SEO Results

After tracking and analyzing all of that information, you’re left with… well, a lot of data. But what comes next?

Understanding your SEO metrics is only the first step. The real magic lies in using this information to refine and enhance your SEO strategy.

Here’s how to pivot from measurement to action to fix any flaws in your SEO strategy and make sure you meet your goals.

1. Analyze Performance Trends and Anomalies

Begin by identifying patterns in your data.

Have certain pages shown significant improvement in rankings or organic traffic? Are there any unexpected drops?

By pinpointing these trends, you can figure out what’s working and what might need a rethink. For example, a drop in traffic on a specific page could indicate issues with content relevance, keyword targeting, or technical SEO. Or poor rankings could mean your blog doesn’t match search intent or isn’t as comprehensive and helpful as it should be.

Request A Free Consultation
Have Questions About Marketing with JurisPage?

2. Prioritize Areas for Improvement

With your data in hand, figure out which areas hold the most potential for impact.

This might mean doubling down on high-performing content, optimizing pages that are nearly ranking on the first SERP, or addressing technical SEO issues that could be hindering your site’s performance.

3. Set Specific, Actionable Goals

Based on your analysis, set clear and achievable goals for your SEO strategy.

These could range from increasing organic traffic by a certain percentage, improving the ranking of specific key pages, or enhancing your site’s mobile usability.

Make sure these goals are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

Marketing-for-Lawyers-SMART-Goals

4. Implement Strategic SEO Enhancements

Armed with your goals, begin making targeted improvements to your website.

This could involve:

  • Content Optimization: Refining existing content or creating new content targeted at gaps in your keyword strategy.
  • Technical SEO Adjustments: Improving site speed and mobile-friendliness and addressing vital issues in the core web.
  • On-Page SEO Tweaks: Enhancing meta descriptions, title tags, and headers to better capture and convert organic traffic.

5. Monitor Changes and Iterate

SEO is not a set-it-and-forget-it task.

After implementing changes, continue to monitor your metrics. This ongoing observation will let you see the real-time impact of your adjustments and make further improvements as needed. This cycle of measurement, analysis, action, and re-measurement will propel your SEO strategy forward.

Getting Started with Your Law Firm SEO

You’re now at the end of our SEO for Lawyers guide. You should have enough know-how to begin working toward a successful SEO campaign for your firm.

To recap, we’ve covered:

  • An introduction to law firm SEO
  • The ranking factors you need to know to rank on Google
  • How to do keyword research
  • How to use content marketing to attract leads
  • The basics of on-page and off-page SEO
  • How to optimize your website for local rankings
  • The ins and outs of link building for law firm websites
  • How to measure the effectiveness of your SEO

If you’ve made it to the end and decided you don’t have the time to invest in learning and implementing SEO on your own, we can help.

JurisPage is a marketing agency that works solely with law firms. We know the ins and outs of legal marketing and are here to help. Schedule a free consultation with us today.

Schedule Your Free Consultation

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Ready to maximize your marketing budget? Fill out the contact form or call us today for a complimentary consultation. We will listen to your story, work to define your business objectives, and recommend an approach to deliver maximum ROI for your firm.

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