Herman & Wells is a law firm devoted to representing clients in claims to recover for losses, injuries, and damages, usually related to personal injury or homeowner’s insurance. We developed a keyword-driven content marketing strategy that resulted in explosive organic traffic growth, keyword rankings, and organic leads for the practice.

The Challenge

Knowing they could never compete with the deep pockets and stacked marketing teams employed by the huge players in their field (Morgan and Morgan, for instance), the two-man team at Herman & Wells needed a way to both create awareness and convince potential clients that their ethical, smart legal approach would be their best choice for justice.

In order to operate successfully without an expensive traditional advertising spend, Herman & Wells needed a content strategy that would generate organic search engine rankings and tell a convincing story.

The Objectives

Our content and SEO strategy’s objectives were to:

  • Find less competitive and highly-niched keywords that would provide easier ranking opportunities
  • Increase total keywords ranked for niche content to help bolster more general keywords, at least regionally
  • Convince potential clients that our client was the best choice to represent them in their case
  • Increase leads for both homeowners’ insurance and personal injury claim clients

The SEO Strategy

Since we can’t outspend the big players, we had to outsmart them by uncovering opportunities to grow awareness then creating the most convincing narrative possible to elicit immediate conversions.

We decided to take on organic search engine rankings through highly-targeted and selective keyword research, a modest search marketing spend, regional geo-specific SEO, and a StoryBrand-certified rewrite of their website content.

Through this rewrite, we positioned the attorneys as experts, but more importantly, as guides. Content addresses frequently asked questions and common mistakes that potential clients make during their search for justice, and shares

Through highly-structured long-form content, niche service pages, blog articles, premium content pieces, FAQs, videos and more, we have loaded the Herman & Wells website with useful information and a conversion-prompting narrative.

The Tactics

In our third year working with Herman & Wells, the work we accomplished evolved as we measured, optimized and grew their content library.

To start off 2019, we performed a content and keyword audit and competitive analysis and layered it on top of the firm’s existing services to create an in-depth content strategy that leveraged blog posts and service pages. The content strategy included multiple pieces of long-form, short-form, rewritten and brand new content that we created and published throughout the year.

We ran a StoryBrand workshop that led to two structured narrative brand scripts that we utilized to rewrite their homepage and key landing pages. The new scripts and copy positioned Herman & Wells as the helpful guides who would shepherd their clients on their paths to justice.

We recognized that every unique piece of content needed to serve three purposes:

  1. Rank well in organic search engine ranking pages (SERPs)
  2. Function as a landing page for targeted SEM campaigns
  3. Convince and convert visitors to fill out forms or reach out for help

Much of Herman & Wells’s case experience did not have an associated page detailing that specific experience or issue, which provided a huge keyword ranking opportunity. We created several pages to provide information and generate rankings associated with those niche claims, like specific information about whiplash, transgender rights claims, option to repair disputes, and more.
Herman & Wells also opened a new location, which we supported with a location-specific personal injury page to improve rankings on local search in the new location.

We added a pillar page to the website, focusing on long-form content around hurricane preparation from an insurance perspective. This pillar page offered comprehensive information, linked out to related blog posts, and answered common questions about the topic in the form of Google’s favorite Q&A format. All in an effort to gain higher organic rankings and encourage users to engage with our premium content (downloads) and gather email addresses.

We supported the pillar page with a checklist that users could download to use before a hurricane to prepare for filing an insurance claim, so that if the worst happened, they’d be ready and Herman & Wells would be top of mind to help fight any underpaid or denied claims.
Finally, we wrote blogs relating to high-volume keywords, which were designed to pull in organic traffic and introduce them to Herman & Wells as a potential solution to their problem.

The Results

Our strategy brought with it a 181% increase in organic search traffic and a 278% increase in organic leads year over year – staggering results for a local law office.

The results were proof enough that our focus on specialty services and supporting top of funnel blog content helped establish their office as a leader in the industry and one of the top law firms in Tampa Bay. Through our partnership, we’ve managed to grow Herman & Well’s presence in the local SERPs with major growth in high quality traffic and leads in 2019 and beyond.