Single site vs Multiple sites for a Law firm with Multiple Officers

[Vishal]

One of the law-firm I am working with has a reasonably good presence & the majority of traffic is organic.

However, for the last 2 weeks, they have been entertaining the idea of having a separate website for each of their locations.

So here is the scenario:

1. Law firm has 5 offices & about 40 lawyers.
... (a) Miami, Florida
... (b) Orlando, Florida
... (c) Tampa, Florida
... (d) Atlanta, Georgia
... (e) Charleston, South Carolina

2. Each is a physical location with an on-site staff of lawyers.

3. Area of practice remains the same for all locations. i.e. ‘area’ of personal injury in auto accidents (car, truck, motorcycle, etc.), medical malpractice, product liability, etc.

Why or why not would you want to have a separate website for each office. Budget is not a real concern & so having unique content would not be an issue either, since there is an on-staff writer & if required additional writers can be hired by the firm.

At most, I am leaning towards one site per State, however, am personally not in the favor of one site per location/city. What would you do?

1. Only one website. + One page (on the main site) for each location.
2. One Website for each State.
3. One Website for each city.


Thank you for the help & input.

[bwnbwn]

I like the idea of multiple websites for local.
Each one can have address verified local is big IMO
Aslo reduces pages no need for client to look just makes it much easier for user.
I vote each office have a website

[bwnbwn]

If u go that route u can still keep main site as is. I believe local will outpace main site in traffic probably in a year or less

[RedBar]

so having unique content would not be an issue either, since there is an on-staff writer & if required additional writers can be hired by the firm.

How confident are you / they that enough unique content for each site can be created relatively easily?

Obviously each location probably has many different example cases but is this becoming a job for the website creators rather than overall promotion of the business.

I like the idea of local however for some larger clients they like to see ... larger!

It's an interesting conundrum, until 10 years ago we used to have many country-specific and country language sites but eventually took the decision to focus on a core of much fewer websites.

It's worked for us however YMMV greatly!

[not2easy]

If you are comfortable in WordPress you could use Multisites and have a central administration for multiple related sites. It would require at least one competent manager for the overall structure. That would allow a brand site with local branch sites under one roof.

Edited to add - if you aren't familiar with the concept, it is explained at Wordpress [wordpress.org]

[RedBar]

Great link not2easy, having an in-depth read of this now.

[Vishal]

I like the idea of multiple websites for local.

How confident are you / they that enough unique content for each site can be created relatively easily?

Unique content is not really a problem. In addition, since each office has its own caseloads & as such if needed, reviews & case studies only for their location's practice can be posted on their site.

Till recently they had an in-house copy-writer, just for their content & ads. However, from the point of view of 'changing' the writing style (i.e. different styles/ideas for different offices), we are exploring the idea of having multiple writers (either for short-term or outsourced).

If you are comfortable in WordPress you could use Multisites and have a central administration for multiple related sites

Their site is already using Wordpress & I like the idea of Multisites Admin, however honestly I don't really have any real experience with managing WP Network sites - will have to look into that, else - at least for now, may have to go the route of independent sites, till I can get my knowledge level up on this. :(

If u go that route u can still keep the main site as is. I believe local will outpace main site in traffic probably in a year or less

If the law group would hear this sentence coming out of my mouth, they may not even want to hear about anything else & want to jump for this idea of multiple sites. Even if we end up following this idea, I would prefer a tailored approach, as only with proper planning, we would be able to achieve the results that you are mentioning. :)

Thank you all :)

[RedBar]

@Vishal

This is going to sound rude when it's not meant to be however your comments sound more like an on-going job creation scheme costing hundreds of thousands of Dollars every year minimum.

Do such sites actually really need so much information and constant updating?

I ask because I mentioned your post to a good friend who is the head of a UK regional, multi-office law firm slightly bigger than your scenario and he was horrified at the thought of constant updates and multiple copywriters and the necessity for them.

Is this a basic but huge difference between the USA and UK?

As I wrote, this is an observation not a critique.

[Vishal]

Personal Injury law is a very aggressive field.

But to answer your question more directly, yeah, I agree, having plenty of sites would be additional work, I am just trying to evaluate the situation, so I can properly advise them on if it ends up being worth it or not. As mentioned in the first post. I personally would think of having one site per state (at most), instead of one per city, as that would be a hassle, however, I need to do the whole audit for them of my finding (including pros/cons for sites per cities, as there can be clear advantages too) , and what they do with that, will be up to them. (Right now, I still think that instead of having one site for all states, multiple site would help them focus their organic traffic efforts better & produce better results).

However, I can't really imagine the concern of money being an issue with them. I don't know about legal system/fees there in the UK, however, in the US, Personal Injury Lawyers can end up charging 50% of the total amount of winning being awarded to the victim. Also, this (up-to) 50% share (fees) does not include office expenses and other legal expenses occurred during the case, as this expense amount is taken from the 50% share that the victim is supposed to receive.

Clarification: Depending on the type of the case, lawyers in some states do charge less than 50% of the total judgment.

Hope this helps.

[tangor]

One will have to justify costs/labor to potential use.

City level makes sense only if the city is a major geo location with populations in excess of 200,000+

While people do need lawyers from time to time, they don't need them ALL the time and certainly don't "shop" them like folks shop big box stores online.

[Vishal]

I agree with that point ... :)

[Robert Charlton]

Budget is not a real concern & so having unique content would not be an issue either, since there is an on-staff writer & if required additional writers can be hired by the firm

The difficulty, IMO, is not getting unique prose, but rather getting unique ideas to express.

That said, good law sites, IMO, almost need to be content heavy... for each type of offense or litigation, to prepare potential clients for the hurdles that they face, what information and documentation they'll need to gather, likely outcomes, etc.

Something important to be considered is naming conventions for the firm... Are there a few senior partners for whom the entire firm with its many offices is named... or is each office named for its senior partners (as in the classic "Dewey, Cheatem & Howe")? In either case, how are you going to distinguish between the names of the lawyers themselves and the name of the firm (or office)? Schema might be important for these distinctions.

My experience in geo targeting is that for this type of business, state names are unlikely to be used in "attorney placename" type queries. The articles that attract backlinks need to be useful guides for your potential clients, and these may or may not require jurisdiction names (ie, state, county, or city). You might do better to have a core site covering the basic principles of the law, perhaps referring to more local variations where necessary within the overview articles. I wouldn't try to have separate overview articles, though, for each locality. Google has gotten good at digging placenames out of a well-organized page, at least for long queries, which is how I'm increasingly finding myself searching.

I'd then use either placename subdomains or directories to cover the individual lawyers, testimonials, office location, etc. I myself would have one for each office. I think there's a much better chance for higher quality content this way, and fewer problems with article backlinks.

For best results, each location is going to have to attract a chunk of its own backlinks. You're going to have to be careful to avoid overlapping backlinks, btw, to the subdomains/directories in this part of your setup, if you "build" backlinks.

Natural backlinks usually sort this out by themselves. .

Hoping this is helpful.