Today I am taking a look at the top ranking personal injury sites in Phoenix, AZ.

If you are new, welcome aboard, please be sure to read how personal injury attorney SEO works.

This article is part of an ongoing blog series: Local SEO Case Studies.

Why does one firm outrank the next one?

As of July 2015, ranking in Phoenix is all about a nicely usable site, great content, and links, links, links. (note: I have a brief article called the Three Pillars of SEO which you should read if you are new to SEO.)

I am not going to mention here who has links from where although I will go ahead and state that most of the top Phoenix attorneys have a decent link portfolio. The competition in Phoenix is not as nearly as fierce as it is in LA. In a linkbuilding effort, some PIs and their SEOs have served up contests, scholarships, collaborated with local business owners, and sponsored attorney forums online. At least one of the firms below has a bit of a spammy profile- this is “normal” in the personal injury niche, but not something I would ever put into practice. Once you get to the bottom of page 1 and into page 2 you’ll fine attorneys who have several links from directories, which attorneys should in usually avoid. A good rule of thumb is if the directory isn’t going to refer real traffic to you it is useless.

Observation: Most Phoenix attorneys are missing the boat on content.

Some have no content strategy. Unique content improves rankings and shows up in search results, hopefully getting cases. Some attorneys have their 10 pages up discussing their areas of practice and that’s it. If that were my practice I’d start working towards getting a few hundred articles up onto the blog.

Some have poor content. A few attorneys are putting out content but an article about “Teen safety tips” is something that is literally never going to get read, whereas “injuries from drunk drivers” or “Interstate 10 truck accidents” will get read by local people who are injured and hopefully land a case.

The top 10:

Phoenix personal injury search results - July 2015

Phoenix personal injury search results – July 2015

I won’t address the local search results (aka map results) a whole lot because as you can see these results are greatly correlated with organic rankings. And yes, this is quite different than how they were displayed just 1 year ago. Getting these coveted spots is important, especially in mobile search, and is done mostly with SEO.

Below are the top 10 in organic and a brief observation of their websites through my eyes.

  1. Lambergoodnow.com The clear winner in Phoenix AZ Personal Injury is The Lamber-Goodnow Injury Law Team at Fennemore Craig, P.C. Lambergoodnow.com is a WordPress site. They have a decent backlink portfolio. They have an active blog, which is great, and helps their SEO, although I would be willing to bet that they could more traffic and cases with a new content writer.
  2. FindLaw.com  They seem to be the search results everywhere lately.
  3. AVVO.com Same goes for AVVO.
  4. www.curielandrunion.com WordPress again. WordPress has been doing very well lately. Well, it has been doing well for a decade now. If you are considering WordPress for your law firm do contact me as I have the inside scoop on all of the marketing firms pushing sites- some agencies are disabling standard parts of WordPress, which is unfortunate to see. Anyhow, this site is performing well and could greatly increase traffic with a good content marketing strategy.
  5. www.personalinjuryattorneys.me Yet another WordPress site. This site is performing good. If I were doing the content it would be a bit different however they are putting up personal injury content on a regular basis which is great.
  6. Thumbtack.com You need great content and links unless you’re Thumbtack. This site is everywhere lately. There is a big story behind Thumbtack which I’ll cover on this blog soon.
  7. Phillipslaw.com  Phillips Law Group is running Joomla I believe. I see Joomla goofed up a lot but this site looks great. They are putting out some great content as well.
  8. 1800theeagle.com Goldberg & Osborne have a WordPress site. This site ranks very well across several cities. The domain has some nice age –  circa 1999.  This site could drastically benefit from a good content strategy. This site also has a massive backlink portfolio. Further explanation: additional exposure for powerful personal injury websites.
  9. BreyerLaw.com  This site is NOT WordPress. Breyer Law Offices looks like an interesting law firm. The site could benefit from a blog with regular content updates. They have done an excellent job building out sub-categories; instead of just stopping at “fractures”, there are subsections such as Meniscal Transplantation Surgery. I didn’t look, but they are likely #1 for a wide variety of searches.
  10.  www.jkphoenixpersonalinjuryattorney.com Kelley Law Team is running a WordPress site that looks nice. WordPress is great because you can easily begin adding content. That said, this site could improve in ranking and capture more leads with more content. I recognize Attorney John Kelley from YouTube videos- so he is indeed doing a form of content – video content – and optimizing the videos nicely.

Mobile note: Surprisingly, mobile search results are almost the same as desktop results. I didn’t check each site but it appears that everyone has a mobile friendly site.

Takeaways:

  • Overall, all of these websites are set up very well. Of course, there is always more that can be done.
  • WordPress doesn’t make a site rank, but it is an excellent platform that is SEO friendly and makes adding content a breeze (note: some law firm marketing companies are stripping out basic WordPress functionality – avoid these companies like the plague). Contact me if you need a WordPress site like this.
  • While ranking on page 1 for your “money keyword” has obvious benefits, personal injury sites with a lot of content get MORE traffic than a site that ranks #1 for a key phrase or two.
  • I elaborate on marketing strategies in greater detail privately in my exclusive personal injury attorney SEO newsletter.
Len

Leave a Reply