Case Study Law Firm SEO Strategy Leads to 4,300% Annual Traffic Increase

Trial Guides Digital Marketing grew from years of success in digital marketing to plaintiff lawyers as a trusted publishing resource. After 20 years of successfully marketing our legal brand, the team noticed a need for highly effective attorney-specific website assistance and SEO work in a field filled with marketers who don’t understand the differences in legal practices and varying business objectives. With over 20 years of experience in the legal field we know that not all lawyers have the same professional or business objectives. The way to market a law firm seeking a low volume of high value cases for litigation in a subspecialty of law is very different from a law firm seeking a high volume of many different types of personal injury cases.

With a keen understanding of the challenges facing modern-day attorneys—and firsthand experience with the shortcomings of generic digital marketing firms—we set about creating a highly effective boutique, full-service digital marketing firm.

Today, our team of digital marketing professionals works with some of the country’s leading law firms. Since our legal marketing agency founding in 2021, we’ve helped clients get stronger leads, better cases that meet their practice objectives, and improve their Google ranking above competing law firms. 

We are proud of the work we do–and honored to be part of the solution to the marketing challenges faced by law firms. We're thrilled to be able to share another phenomenal result in this February 2025 case study. 

After years of successful work as a trial attorney, including prestigious co-counsel work on large class action cases and record setting verdicts in catastrophic personal injury cases, our client was not getting new high value cases from the law firm’s web site. As many senior lawyers have recognized, less experienced lawyers who are better marketers were getting the best quality cases. 

Even with regular, long-form blog posts, keyword targeting, and strong online reviews, the law firm’s website traffic has been small and unchanging for years. The firm web site generally saw between 60 and 150 views a month, with negligible leads or site conversions. With changes to the law firm’s state bad-faith law that would affect their business, the law firm knew they needed to improve their web presence to remain competitive.

The lead attorney and law firm owner approached TGDM to help improve his website traffic and increase client leads. He also wanted to sharpen his online focus to only high-damage cases involving certain types of injury. He signed with TGDM and since then, he has received two SEO-optimized content pieces every month.

Project Challenges

Optimizing Existing Content for SEO. While this client’s website featured dozens of blogs on topics ranging from brain injuries to insurance bad faith, not enough of it was written in a way to optimize reach through search engines. The content was too technical for Google’s algorithm to achieve a top ranking with Google for the types of cases the firm wanted. Our first step would be reconfiguring the existing content to make a more significant impression on search crawlers. In particular, this would include writing or improving metadata and image alt text, strengthening the web site’s internal link structure, and performing an in-depth toxic backlink analysis.

Confidentiality Agreements. Given the sensitive nature of this client’s line of work, and the State Bar’s strict confidentiality requirements, we were offered the opportunity to improve the website under the condition that we would need to be extremely careful as to what kind of content we were creating under the lawyer’s name. As many of this law firm’s cases involve the handling of highly confidential information, we would need to be mindful of any information that could inadvertently reveal client information or pose a legal liability.

Recent Changes to Bad Faith Law. This law firm had a long and extensive background with insurance bad faith in multiple states, despite their primary state not recognizing first party bad faith. Then, in late 2023 the Supreme Court in the law firm’s primary state recognized first party bad faith. Our client knew he had to move quickly to differentiate himself from other law firms that would advertise for bad-faith insurance cases. This included competing against an influx of large national law firms with an extensive online history of insurance bad faith cases moving into the state that would compete for business.

Months 1-4: Setting the Stage for Success

Our team began the project with a deep dive into our client’s competitors’ content. We then structured a six-month plan of action that included capitalizing on currently trending keywords, and crafting content to siphon traffic from competing law firms. We concluded preliminary research with a definitive list of keyword targets, practice areas, and stretch goals (commercial keywords with 1000 or more views a month).

Our first few content pieces updated his existing content to include recent changes to case law and high-ranking keywords that were already appearing on Google pages 2-5. (Google gives more weight to established blogs over new content.) We then rewrote all the client’s practice area pages and supplemented his blog with new content related to three specific practice areas: brain injury, truck accidents, and insurance bad faith. While this law firm’s web site is hosted on an excellent platform, small but fundamental changes in the web site structure and web page headings resulted in nearly immediate increases in traffic and web site ranking.

Months 5-8: Stabilized Numbers, Steady Traffic Growth

Traffic on new and reworked content improved exactly as predicted, with spikes in interest starting within 6 months of work. By October, the client’s average traffic was roughly double where it was in the previous year. The client began noticing a modest uptick in calls and inquiries through the website.

Month 9: A Blog Goes Viral

Successful content drops at the right time, offers an exhaustive explanation of a popular topic, and demonstrates value to a large number of site visitors. This is exactly what happened on December 11, 2024, when we published a topical blog on the topic of the December 4 murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. (The killer’s bullet casing inscriptions, “Delay,” “Deny,” and “Depose,” were reminiscent of “delay, deny, defend”: the insurance industry’s open-secret approach to handling insurance claims.) 

The TGDM team includes a full-time writer with a background in insurance bad faith. Sensing the urgency in publishing a topical blog, they immediately got to work crafting a blog that not only addressed the suddenly-popular question, “What Does ‘Delay, Deny, Defend’ Mean?,” but deftly established their client as an authoritative voice on the topic of insurance bad faith.

The plan worked. Not only did the blog rack up almost 6,000 views in its first month, but other pages began ranking higher as well. Within a month, the client was on Google’s page 1, not just for “delay, deny, defend,” but for “trucking accident attorney,” “construction accident attorney,” and, most importantly, “traumatic brain injury lawyer.” Injury-specific blogs on an array of subjects—orthostatic tachycardia, parietal lobe injury, and so forth—also began to trend.

Month 10 and Beyond: Blowing Past Projections with an Explosion of New Cases

By February of 2025—just ten months from the client’s first content going live—our client posted “a significant increase in calls and website contacts from potential clients.” In January 2025 alone, the client secured no fewer than 12 phenomenal case leads. In his own words:

1. Severe TBI: skull fracture and quadriplegia case of a 12-year-old who was in a coma for over 80 days and whose past medical damages are ~$3,000,000.

2. Severe TBI: Auto vs. pedestrian collision resulting in a 16-year-old with severe TBI, skull fractures, and 14 days in the hospital with permanent injuries.

3. Severe TBI: Auto v. pedestrian collision resulting in permanent brain injury with the client in lifelong 24-hour care. Multiple fractures. 10 surgeries to date.

4. Severe TBI: Auto case involving vision disturbances, inner ear injury, and PTSD

5. Severe TBI: Cement truck v. auto collision with traumatic brain injury and spinal cord / neurological injuries impacting client’s ability to walk

6. Concussion: Auto v. Scooter collision involving a concussion and arm fracture

7. Truck Accident: Logging truck vs. Auto crash with a mild traumatic brain injury

“We have also received calls related to multiple insurance bad faith cases against a variety of auto, homeowners, disability and health insurance companies, as well as multiple mild traumatic brain injury and spinal disc injury cases.”

As of this writing, the law firm’s website traffic continues to climb. The case intake calls and web site inquiries have exploded, as a direct result of the increased web site traffic.

Our client has accepted ten high value new cases in the past month, with several more on the way. The potential value is well in excess of $20,000,000 even in a state with low settlement offers and jury verdicts. The influx of new cases has allowed the firm to hire additional lawyers and decline a high percentage of lower value cases that many other law firms would accept. The firm sees this as a direct result of the Trial Guides Digital Marketing team, a clear-eyed content creation strategy, and a long-term relationship with the right marketing partner.

The client’s year-over-year growth is truly staggering. By December 2024, their organic traffic had grown 2,694.4%, with a 69.1% growth in organic keywords. Their current estimated traffic value—a rough estimate of what it would cost for sponsored content on the pages for which they are currently ranking organically—is more than $30,000 a month.

Trial Guides Digital Marketing continues to lead the industry in high-touch customer service, strong SEO results, and bespoke content creation that both captures the client’s voice and captivates their target audience. To learn more about TGDM, our team, or our digital marketing solutions, please reach out for a free site audit and marketing consultation.