As with forests, so with law firm websites — burn out the deadwood for a healthy, thriving environment.
As a legal marketing firm, the first step we at Obu Interactive recommend for our new clients is to start fresh with a “website scrub,” which is a one-time website overhaul to clean up organization, functionality, and existing content. This involves behind-the-scenes web design work, new content creation you can see, and results you can verify that we then sustain consistently going forward.
Just as you untie sandbags from an air balloon to reach greater heights, that is what we do with your website: cut off dead weight so you can soar. Contact Obu Interactive at (800) 619-5944 for your consultation, or read on to learn more about how a website scrub best serves your goals.
Why Do Lawyers Need Digital Marketing? The Anatomy of a Website Scrub
Because your website is your first impression in a digital environment, your site should operate as professionally as you do.
If you’ve been to a fancy restaurant, you know there are two sides to the experience: the front of the house with the decor, ambiance, and waitstaff, and the back of the house where the food gets cooked, the dishes get washed, and the trash is carried out.
A website scrub is a similar dual-action service: the visual changes to the words and images you see on your site, and the operations behind the presentation that keep the process running smoothly. Here’s the breakdown of the procedure:
What You Don’t See
Think of taking a hoarder house and dumping everything outside on the lawn to sort while the structure is renovated. Think of how medics and surgeons clean wounds before treating them by sterilizing, scrubbing, and (sometimes) using lab-grown maggots to consume the dead tissue, leaving all that is alive to heal. It’s a dirty business, but it gets you pristine results.
This is what happens behind the scenes in a website scrub:
- Identify: We “crawl” your website and identify every single page (including hidden ones like drafts, orphans, and duplicates). We take down any that are harming your site’s performance right away.
- Relocate: Our Site Squad points out which pages perform well and should be cleaned up and put back. Then the web design team sets to work creating a new platform to house the “pillar pages” — the ones that address your main areas of practice.
- Cannibalize: Our Content Team goes in to sort the rest, combining duplicate topics without losing any good content, and linking them to your pillar pages as they go.
The name of the game is organization. Are the spokes of your wheel attached to the hub? If your website is a map, can people find where they’re going? Is all your content placed logically, and does it lead those who need a lawyer to contact your firm? We make sure the answer is “yes” to all questions.
When the dust clears, we’ve recovered all that was good or salvageable from the website you arrived with, and we’ve put it in an upgraded, cleaner, organized home.
What You Do See
If the invisible web design work is the pre-surgical scrub and life-saving triage, the work you can see are the results of a plastic surgeon. Now that your website is stable, it’s time for a beautifying, aesthetic operation.
Here’s what you’ll see happen after your website’s foundation is secure:
- Enhancement: While maintaining your firm’s tone and brand, we refine how it looks and functions. This is done by updating your content to meet today’s best search engine optimization (SEO) practices so that you appear where your potential clients go to seek.
- Creation: Each of your main practice areas should have a dedicated page. If there are gaps missing, we fill them, and if you change course year-to-year, we go adapt your website’s content to match.
- Invention: If your firm expands into new fields of practice, because either the office makeup has changed or the law has opened new doors toward justice, we are ready to research and build your new content from scratch. Sometimes that means creating a whole new search lane for your firm to occupy first.
The reason we prioritize the dirty work of a scrub is so that the new content we create for you isn’t dragged down by competing pages on your website. We do away with any old web code (programming language) that slows down a prospective client’s access to your services.
You wouldn’t install brand new electronic equipment in a decrepit property with cobwebs and broken windows, right? That is exactly why you shouldn’t present your new content on an outdated website.
How Website Scrubs Improve Your Leads
A website scrub is so-called because it’s a cleansing. Just like any intensive cleaning, it gets messier at first, but quickly clears. As the dust settles, your new website still looks like the place you call home, but the way users interact with it is vastly improved.
A website scrub delivers your potential clients:
- Access: If you have a zillion blog posts on your website that address the same topic, they’re fighting with each other for a search engine’s attention. If Google’s algorithm doesn’t know which page to serve up for your prospective clients, it will skip your firm’s site and prioritize a website that makes better sense.
- Efficiency: A law firm’s website passes through many hands over the years, and not all of them expert. Maybe you had website management that is now defunct, maybe someone had a whiz-kid niece or nephew who added a cool feature that no longer works with the web platform’s new version. Those mismatching pieces and old bits of code slow down your website. After a scrub, your pages load faster.
- Usability: If a potential client arrives at one page on your site and can’t figure out how to contact you, that’s a problem. If they don’t know how to navigate to the About Us or Case Results page, or can’t easily search for more information, they may “bounce” (aka, leave immediately after a glance). Obu Interactive eliminates these preventable issues ASAP.
The way we best serve your law firm is by serving your potential clients. If we ensure that someone in need of legal services can find you, quickly learn about your practice, and make contact, then we’ve done our job. The rest we leave to your capable staff, your own version of a bedside manner, and the good works you do to achieve justice for your clients.
The way we best serve your law firm is by serving your potential clients.
How Do I Clean Up My SEO? How Do I Clean Up WordPress? Contact Obu Interactive
The reason we at Obu Interactive recommend a website scrub as part of your onboarding process is because it saves time, wasted effort, and frustration in the long run. First we remove the web structure and content issues dragging down your SEO scores. Then we can patch or (preferably) ditch the rickety rust bucket of WordPress in favor of the well-oiled machine that is Webflow. After that, your law firm’s website takes users on a smoother ride towards that Contact button. A professional website scrub means more leads at a faster clip, with no avoidable breakdowns along the way.
If there’s anything slowing or cluttering up your website right now, we’ll junk that mess on day one. If there are pieces missing from the full picture of your practice areas, we fill them in. After that, every new campaign you want to run, topic you want to cover, or piece of news you want to highlight will be created and installed seamlessly.
Want a website scrub to be the beginning of a beautiful future? Contact Obu Interactive today at (800) 619-5944.