Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP
Challenge
Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP (SSEK), a law firm based out of Houston, Texas have over 30 years of experience in securities law. They previously had notable discoverability and visibility on Search Engines meaning that potential clients could easily find them and cases were coming in. Unfortunately, after working with a website design company during a website redesign and site migration in 2017 who said they could also handle SEO, the firm experienced a substantial decrease in their rankings for a number of crucial terms. Over the next 12 months, SSEK continued to see their rankings suffer for important national and local search keyword terms. As a law firm in the highly competitive legal industry, SSEK understood that they had a problem. As their ranking for important terms continued to drop, they noticed a correlated decrease in the number of cases that they were receiving. That’s when they decided that it was necessary to work with a real SEO expert to help them regain the search visibility that they lost. SSEK Law Firm partnered with Pedestal Search to discover the search landscape opportunities that they could leverage to improve their positioning in Search Engines.
Solution
SEO Audit Our SEO specialists began by running an in-depth SEO audit of the SSEK Law Firm website looking at over 40 factors that impact a website’s Search Engine rankings. A search benchmark assessment and a competitor analysis were carried out which helped Pedestal identify where the law firm ranked for core search terms in comparison to their main search competitors. It also helped to identify other terms that SSEK should be competing on. While SSEK previously had a decent and extensive search term profile, Pedestal discovered the full extent of the rank decrease that they experienced. This included a wide range of valuable keywords for the client’s audience that were both high-volume and of high-intent. Next, our specialists carried out an in-depth technical SEO audit that uncovered thousands of developmental aspects on the website that was less than optimal for discoverability on Search Engines such as: Hundreds of duplicate content Thousands of missing meta-descriptions 404-page errors Lastly, Pedestal also assessed the on-page and off-page factors that impact a website’s ability to rank competitively on Search Engines. It was discovered that SSEK was missing out on essential on-page search term opportunities and had a poor-quality backlink profile that was filled with concerning spam. Once these insights were uncovered, Pedestal had painted a clear picture for SSEK and could prescribe a program to address the firm’s SEO issues. Technical Remediation Pedestal designed a two-part comprehensive SEO technical remediation that focused on addressing the core developmental and on-page aspects harming SSEK Law Firm’s search presence. This included but was not limited to: Disavowing spam links Remediating duplicate content Optimizing meta-descriptions & page titles Fixing redirect issues After four months of working with Pedestal Search, SSEK achieved a 62% increase in organic traffic, a 245% increase in organic search visibility YoY and first-page ranks for a variety of high-intent keywords such investment fraud lawyers and investment fraud attorney texas. After our technical SEO remediation strategy started in March 2019, SSEK experienced a significant increase in organic traffic (Note: A slight decrease in organic traffic occurred in April after redirect issues were fixed which is common and was expected by Pedestal). On-Page Optimizations After completing the initial technical SEO remediation for SSEK, we also started helping them to optimize their content using our SEO-driven LIFT content optimization platform. As SSEK produces content on a regular basis, we wanted to ensure that they were receiving the correct SEO benefits for their efforts, especially in terms of keyword ranking. Our proprietary SEO LIFT checker systematically applies over 120 SEO checks that Search Engines like Google look for when ranking content in organic search results. Having this system in place will continue to help SSEK rank on competitive search terms, attract new organic users and further regain the search discoverability that they had lost in 2017. Paid Search Following the success of their Search Engine Optimization strategy for SSEK, the Houston-based law firm also decided to engage Pedestal for their Pay Per Click (PPC) services as well. SSEK had previously been operating its paid search account in the same way for nearly 15 years. They wanted to explore new paid search opportunities they could leverage and ramp up their PPC performance. Once again Pedestal began with an in-depth audit but this time focused time on SSEK’s paid efforts. We uncovered dozens of potential improvements that could be made in their PPC account including: Use of ineffective bidding strategies Irrelevant ad copy and keyword targeting By optimizing the bidding strategy, improving keyword targeting strategies and creating custom Paid Search landing pages, in three short months Pedestal has already helped SSEK achieve a 70% decrease in CPA.
Results
Pedestal’s tailored made SEO-driven LIFT optimization strategy for SSEK Law Firm boosted the firm’s organic online presence by 782%. From our efforts, we pushed many of SSEK Law Firm’s focused search terms back to the first page of Google Search. Today, their organic traffic has also increased by 241% year over year (YoY). Our partnership is still going strong and we look forward to elevating SSEK Law Firm to even greater heights in the future.
Pedestal
Pedestal Search is a marketing technology company and full-service digital agency that prides itself on delivering top-rate results via our team and technology. Launched by ex-Googlers who worked directly on the search engine at Google, our company combines an intricate knowledge of Internet Search and digital marketing with human-first marketing...
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