Key Factors in Growing Your Website Traffic as an Attorney
Here are the two things that influence your website and search traffic on a massive scale.
Competition
In digital marketing, when it comes to lawyers, we look at two competition determinants: location and practice area. If you’re in a major city like Chicago, you have a lot of direct competitors, people browse more websites and talk to more attorneys before they make a decision, so you’ll need more visitors to sign up for one client.
The same goes if you’re a general practitioner or have chosen a high-in-supply practice area. All other variables held constant, attorneys who focus on a narrow practice area will need fewer visitors to get one client, than general practitioners, or those in the highly competitive niche.
User Experience on Law Firm Website
User experience refers to the overall quality of experience your website delivers to the visitors and how it compares to that of your competitors’ websites. In essence, your website is supposed to match or exceed prospects’ expectations. However, we often see law firm websites that do anything but match visitors’ expectations.
Proper Technical Optimization Is Key in Converting New Clients
If your website is outdated and under-developed; if it looks worse than your competitors’ websites; if it’s difficult to understand what is it that you do or there’s no proof that you are good at what you do (links to reviews, testimonials, case studies), then you could be getting a lot of traffic, but struggle to sign up new clients.
Different Types of Website Traffic
When you understand the different traffic sources, you can better plan your advertising campaigns and SEO efforts. But first, you need to know there are five types of website traffic:
1. Direct Traffic
This is when visitors travel directly to your website by typing in the URL directly into the browser, or have a bookmark for your website saved. The majority of direct traffic comes from returning visitors.
The quality of your services, the types of products you offer, the customer service you provide, as well as online brand exposure all play a part in direct traffic. The better your business, the better your direct traffic.
2. Referral Traffic
This is when website traffic comes from users directed to your website through external links or other websites, without searching for you on Google. For example, when a visitor clicks on a link shared on social media platforms.
To improve referral traffic, you should focus on creating valuable content and marketing it across social media platforms. Influencer marketing can also increase website page views and unique visitors to your entire website.
3. Organic Traffic
Organic traffic refers to the number of visitors who reach your website through search engines like Google that don’t click on paid search ads. Improving this source of traffic is the primary goal of inbound marketing.
Law firm SEO is the best digital marketing strategy to bring in the most traffic over the long term. However, it can take a few months after implementation for traffic data to improve.
4. Social Traffic
This is any traffic that comes from social networks and social media platforms. For example, a person who clicks on a Tweet or an Instagram post and then arrives at your website. Social traffic measures the performance of social media campaigns regarding the ability to generate website traffic, as well as conversions.
Social traffic is important because the more places you can connect with your audience, the better. Social media marketing for lawyers is especially significant to connect with your target audience and build customer relationships.
5. Paid Traffic
When it comes to PPC for lawyers, the traffic is produced by users clicking on paid advertisements within search engine results pages for specific legal search queries. These ads are crafted and funded by law firms through advertising platforms like Google Adwords in an effort to secure prominent positions in SERPs.
The only way to improve paid traffic is either by increasing your bidding amount or via A/B testing to see which advertisements attract your target audience best. Remember, paid ads are always a short-term strategy, and should never replace your SEO efforts.
How to Measure Website Traffic
There are a few things you need to understand before you dive into different tools and stats, showing your website performance. This is what you actually want and what should you aim for.
Knowing What You Want to Achieve
Setting the right objectives will become the foundation of your marketing efforts and website development. You should hope to have a great SEO strategy that attracts more traffic and converts visitors into business opportunities. When you put your goals under the spotlight, you can start to measure what you really care about. Before you get started on improving traffic statistics, make sure to measure and establish your traffic benchmarks, such as:
- Number of visitors
- Number of leads/inquiries (phone and contact us form submissions)
- Cost per lead (CPL)
- Close rate (number of inquiries it takes to get one new client)
- The average revenue per client
Review Industry Standards
Do you know what traffic stats mean? As in, do you know what your industry’s standards are for poor, average, and good traffic? You’ll want to use industry-specific research as an example, such as this report by Word Stream, to learn what a good conversion rate is.
According to WordStream — a software that simplifies online advertising and a company that’s an authority in online advertising statistics — an average law firm website converts at 2.07%.
What Conversion Rate Is Considered Good for a Law Firm Site
High-performance websites for lawyers, on the other hand, can convert at 10% or even higher. We know this because we have clients whose websites convert visitors at that rate. However, WordStream tells us that top legal websites have a 6.4% conversion rate, which we accept as a reasonable top-tier performance for most great websites.
How to Calculate the Conversion Rate for a Legal Website
Now, let’s do the math and see what this means for you.
Say you get 2000 website visitors per month. If your website converts at 2%, this means 40 people will contact you: either by calling or by filling out a contact form.
Of these 40 people, around 75% won’t be a good fit. Statistically, it’s just the way it is in any professional services industry. Whatever may be the reason (I bet you heard them all before), now you’re down to 10 genuine qualified lawyer leads that are interested in working with you.
Out of those 10, if you’re good on the phone and answer all their questions, you’ll manage to convert 2-4 clients. So, an average attorney website would need 2000 unique visitors to sign up 2 to 4 clients.
If you have a high-performance website, then you can aim to convert at a 6% rate — rounding down the 6.4% conversion of top legal websites, according to WordStream — you’d around 12 clients signed up from 2000 website visitors. The difference is projected revenue is likely to be in tens of thousands of dollars, monthly! There are numerous web design agencies for law firms. If you specialize in real estate, here’s the list of the top real estate website design companies that can increase your law firm average conversion rate significantly.
Now, that we understand basic factors affecting website traffic stats we need a way to actually look at them. As a website owner, you have only one real way to check how much website traffic you get and it’s to utilize a website traffic checker.
Website Traffic Checker Tools
These analysis tools can work with two types of traffic data:
- All website traffic, which can come from different traffic sources (search engines, ads, forums, social media, referral traffic, etc.).
- Organic traffic, which means they estimate only the search traffic you get.
Google Analytics is still one of the best and most powerful tools to track website traffic. With Google Analytics, you can monitor and analyze how much traffic your website receives. It provides an enormous amount of information about who is visiting your website, what they are looking for, and how they are getting to your site as well as other metrics. Other notable applications to help you start tracking your website traffic include; Crazy Egg, Kissmetrics, Ubersuggest, Semrush, and Ahrefs. If you want to measure your website traffic for free, then Google Analytics is probably your best bet. It also integrates seamlessly with Google Ads, which allows for more centralized traffic data.
Important Website Traffic Metrics to Measure
Number of Unique Visitors
This is what we’re talking about when we refer to website “traffic.” Your traffic is the measure of how many unique visitors arrive at any one of your landing pages. SEO (or Search Engine Optimization) is the linchpin to greater visibility across Google, meaning your website will show as a relevant result for more users searching for services you provide. There are literally hundreds of metrics in play that tell Google how much of an expert you are in your field. The more of an expert Google thinks you are, the more search results you’ll show up in, and the more organic traffic your website will receive. And more traffic = more leads = more sales = more profit!
Often the best way to improve organic search traffic is through content marketing for lawyers, especially blogging. When you blog, you constantly publish content on the web that is valuable to potential customers. When prospects click to read your blog, they should be directed to your website. This signals to Google that your website is relevant, and therefore drives more traffic, and creates returning visitors. Doing this consistently will improve your Google ranking and organic search traffic.
Bounce Rate
The “bounce rate” measures when someone looks at whatever landing page of your site they land on, and then decides, “Nah, not for me.” And they leave. You’ll see numerous articles talk about 50-60% average bounce rates. Your website should continually strive to engage visitors beyond looking at a single page. Is your website designed deliberately to encourage positive user behavior? If visitors are bouncing quickly off your site, talk to your web design and development company, or contact us.
Dwell Time
Google cares about bounce rate, but it also cares about how average visit duration. This is an indicator of whether the content users find there is valuable or not. And that’s how Google decides if your content is “relevant.” The more time users spend on your site, the higher your Google ranking will be and the more of an “expert” you’ll be indexed as.
And the higher your rating, the higher you’ll show up in search, and the more total visits you’ll get. As long as you maintain longer dwell times, the effect will snowball, and you’ll have killer search rankings to show for it. So, make sure that the content on your website goes beyond basics and really expands into answering the many common questions your prospects and clients have for you. FAQs, for example, provide an excellent framework for developing content that attracts large volumes of website traffic.
Traffic-to-Lead
Traffic-to-lead is a fancy way of talking about conversion rates. And there are two conversion rates your company needs to focus on: desktop and mobile. Imagine it. You have a killer lawyer website design, and desktop visitors are converting at 10%. But then, on mobile, you’re only converting 2%. Looking at today’s statistics on website visits from mobile devices, this would mean you’re missing out on half of your business. That’s why we look at both desktop and mobile “traffic-to-lead” conversion rates.
Lead-to-Opportunity Rate
This is an internal metric for your web design and digital marketing agency. Not only are you measuring website traffic, but here you’ll measure whether that traffic ends upbringing in real opportunities for you to serve new clients. If you haven’t seen these numbers before, ask your digital marketing company today where your website stands and what their goals are over time.
Cost-Per-Lead (CPL)
Here’s where you keep your pulse on cost. If your marketing costs are climbing, but your client flow is doubling, cost-per-lead (CPL) calculations will keep costs in perspective. This is one of the most important metrics in web marketing. You could even argue that it’s what all the others boil down to: are you getting new clients in a cost-effective manner?
How to Get 1,000 Visitors to Your Law Firm Website?
Here’s what you can do to ensure you make the best of your digital marketing investment.
Have One of the Best Websites for Lawyers on the Market
Your website should always look at least as good as the website of your biggest and best competitor. People do judge every book by its cover and for underdeveloped sites, even if you offer the best service in the sector, the bounce rate will be high. Your website has to deliver the right first impression or you’ll be out of the race before you start.
We won’t get into details about what makes a website perform better than an average here, as you can find detailed info here. If you’re serious about growing your firm and personal prosperity, I do recommend you get familiar with this.
Assess the Demand
It’s good to have very ambitious goals, but you must know whether they are realistic. Here is how you can determine that: speak with your marketing experts, tell them your goals — say you want 10 or 20, or whatever new clients every month — and then they can check the potential of the market online and tell you if that’s feasible.
Yes, marketing agencies can do that, they can tell you how many people have looked for your services in any given area, for any given period.
Strategy, Execution, Reporting
Once your goals are validated through research, your marketing agency should craft and present you with comprehensive marketing strategies for achieving them.
They should send you monthly performance reports so that you can track progress and hold them accountable for the money you spend and the results they should have delivered — and they can optimize your strategy for maximum results.
If you want us to look at the numbers in your market and assess where your website is now versus where it could be, contact us here, and let’s discuss!
Comrade is a Chicago-based digital marketing company that specializes in website design and marketing for attorneys. Read more about our content marketing service for law firms.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many visitors does the average website get?
On average, 2.17 pages are viewed per session on a local business's website. Just 1.88 pages are visited on average per session by mobile-only users. Goals aren't set up on 54% of websites in Google Analytics.
What is a good percentage of returning visitors?
It varies depending on the sector, but a decent return visitor rate is about 30% on average. And if you can achieve a 50/50 split between new and returning guests, you'll be in great shape.
What is a good conversion rate?
A decent conversion rate is greater than 10%, with some companies reaching an average of 11.45%. Earning a high conversion rate puts the company in the top 10% of global advertisers, which means your conversion rate is two to five times higher than the average.
