The needs of your visitors are constantly changing. The ways in which they search and find your website also change. Did they find you via Google, Bing, Facebook, Google Places, or did they click on a referral link? What keywords did they search to find you? What content did they read? Did their visit result in a Web form or phone call? What did visitors read last month or the month before?
This type of information needs to be constantly monitored and compared to historical data to understand visitor trends on your website. Evaluate this information to make informed decisions about website content and adjustments that need to be made. At Consultwebs.com, we constantly review our Platinum clients’ data and make recommendations or make the changes needed to make their website(s) perform at the optimum level.
What Metrics should your Firm Track
In this final chapter, we will quickly guide you through the process of creating your own goals to track conversions.
Let’s hit the ground running. Here are some basic metrics that you’ll want to monitor to be sure your campaign is moving in the right direction:
Analytics
- Overall Site Performance
- Organic Traffic – How much of all the traffic to the site is actually organic. Meaning users had to actually find (not by paying for you to arrive on your page.
- Referral Traffic – This is traffic that visits your site from links that appear on a different website.
- Direct Traffic – Users going to your law firm’s website directly, using the browser.
- Bounce Rate – These are one-page sessions, (usually very short) that instead of going to another page on your website, decide to get out and continue their search elsewhere.
- Average Time Spent on Site
- Pageviews – How many eyes have been on your page. Was a particular page loaded?
- Conversion Rate- This is a number calculated by taking the total number of conversions and dividing that by the number of interactions that led to a conversion during that time.
Search Console
- Clicks
- Click-Through Rate (CTR)
- Queries (keywords)
- Impressions, and in Google Search Console
- Indexed Pages
Social Metrics
- Any other social networks on which you’re active or share your content
What Goals to Track
We will go over the process to track five types of conversions that should cover the majority of the needs for your firm:
- Lead Signup
- Purchase
- Button Click
- Session Time
- Pages / Session
It assumes a “Thank You” page exists on your site for some of the goals. A “Thank You” page is a page on your website where the users are redirected to, after successfully completing the desired conversion action. (e.g: a purchase, newsletter signup, etc)
Setting up Goals in Google Analytics
Pro Tip: In Google Analytics you are limited to 20 Goals-per view. You are not able to delete the Goals you create. You are able to edit the Goals later on, but keep in mind that you should avoid doing so. Once a goal has been recorded using the assigned Goal slot, It will always be reported as a conversion for that slot, even if the Goal settings were changed afterward.
1. Open your Google Analytics account settings by clicking here or clicking “Admin” in the sidebar.
2. Select your Law Firms Google Analytics Account, Property, and View.
- Important Note: Make sure you’re selecting the Universal Analytics property (and not a GA4 property)
- You can identify your Universal Analytics property by noticing the ‘UA-’ prefix in the Property ID.
3. Click “Goals”
4. Click “New Goal”
5. Name your Goal
6. Select your preferred Goal ID and Goal Set slot (If you don’t have any Goal yet leave the default option). Select “Event”, and click “Continue”:
- Pro Tip: The Goal Slot ID you select won’t affect the way values and conversions are calculated by Google Analytics, It is merely an option that allows you to group similar individual goals under the same “Set”. (Up to 5 individual goals per “Set”)
Click the goal method you would like to track
- Destination: If you have a “Thank You” page for your conversion, you can select this Goal.
- Duration: If your Goal is defined by how long the user session lasts, you should select this Goal.
- Pages/Screens per session: If your Goal is defined by how many pages the user has viewed on your website, you should select this Goal.
- Event: If your Goal is to track button clicks, form submits, mouse scrolls, among others, you should select this Goal.
Pro Tip: You should only use this option If your website already has events implemented (unlikely, unless you or a programmer has done it for you).
Select the option that better fits what you want to track:
Creating a Destination Goal
- Select “Destination” and click “Continue”
- Enter the settings for this Goal:
Pro Tip: In this field, you will only enter the URL Path, not the full URL. (e.g.: If your “Thank You” page URL is “http://www.abcdefg.com/thank-you/ “ you are only interested in “/thank-you/”.)
Destination
- Equals to: If your “Thank You” page URL does not use parameters (e.g: /thank-you/?name=John) you can select this option.
- E.g: [Equals to] /thank-you/
- Begins with: If your “Thank You” page URL contains parameters and does not contain a subpath (e.g: /thank-you/upsell/?name=John), you can select this option.
- E.g: [Begins with] /thank-you/
- Regular expression: If your case does not fit any of the above cases you can either select this option or contact a developer.
- Value: This field is optional but recommended. If you are able to estimate how much this conversion is worth to you, you should enter it here.
- Funnel: Leave the toggle in the “Off” position, unless you are already familiar with this option and want to set it up.
Pro Tip: If you believe this Goal might have already been triggered by someone (if you already have people that visited your “Thank You” page in the past 7 days) you are now able to do a quick test to assess if your Goal has been properly implemented by clicking “Verify this Goal”:
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- Click “Save” and you should now be able to see the Goal you have just implemented, make sure the “Recording” toggle is “On”
Creating a Duration Goal
Pro Tip: Session Duration should not be mistaken for being the time a user spent on your website. Google Analytics tracks session duration by subtracting the time of the first hit on the first page from the time of the last hit, or engagement hit on the last page. This means that the time the user spent on the last page without triggering any engagement hit will not count towards this metric.
- Select “Duration” and click “Continue”
- Enter the settings for this Goal:
- Duration: The session time after which you would want the Goal to be considered complete.
- Value: This field is optional but recommended. If you are able to estimate how much this conversion is worth to you, you should enter it here.
Pro Tip: If you believe this Goal might have already been triggered by someone (if you already have people that visited your “Thank You” page in the past 7 days) you are now able to do a quick test to assess if your Goal has been properly implemented by clicking “Verify this Goal”:
- Click “Save” and you should now be able to see the Goal you have just implemented, make sure the “Recording” toggle is “On”
Tracking a Pages per Session Goal
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- Select “Pages/Screens per Session” and click “Continue”
- Enter the settings for this Goal:
- Pages/Screens per session: The number of pages the user has to view after which you consider the Goal as complete.
- Value: This field is optional but recommended. If you are able to estimate how much this conversion is worth to you, you should enter it here.
Pro Tip: If you believe this Goal might have already been triggered by someone (if you already have people that visited your “Thank You” page in the past 7 days) you are now able to do a quick test to assess if your Goal has been properly implemented by clicking “Verify this Goal”:
- Click “Save” and you should now be able to see the Goal you have just implemented, make sure the “Recording” toggle is “On”:
When Will I Start to See Results from Legal SEO?
The time it takes to see results from legal SEO varies among law firms. It all depends on where you’re starting compared to those ranking above you. If you have a brand-new website and your competitors have been actively marketing for years, you should be prepared to accept that you have some catching up to do.
Depending on the strength of the players in the market, the investment of time and resources that you make into your strategy, and lots of other factors, catching up could take several months to years. If you have an established website with good traffic and decent rankings already, the time to see results will certainly be reduced.
We have come to the end of the Consultwebs Law Firm SEO Guide, and what a journey it has been! We’ve managed to go over quite a bit in a relatively short period of time. We know all this information barely scratches the surface of legal SEO, but we hope we have provided you with a strong foundation on the subject and helped you understand its intricacies a bit more. If you have any questions feel free to contact our experts at Consultwebs and gain additional insights on seeing success from your law firm’s digital marketing efforts.