Chances are, you are mistaken about which keywords you should be pursuing. The good news is, the right ones are probably sitting right there in front of you.
This is a story about discovering a sure-fire SEO strategy for a law firm…based on an off-hand comment by a client.
It started with a typical meeting with a potential client, a lawyer who specializes in personal injury. Specifically, he handles cases having to do with mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lungs. This cancer almost always occurs due to exposure to asbestos. That makes it common in older men who were previously construction workers, firemen, or in the navy.
This client wanted to create a “feeder” website that had information specifically about mesothelioma and mesothelioma cases. So I got to work doing the appropriate keyword research to determine potential traffic, possible topics, etc.
The results were grim, to say the least.
Mesothelioma cases are a hot commodity, and there were already several websites with information and good domain authority ranking for every keyword phrase that had anything to do with it. I let my client know that ranking for any of these would be near impossible: The competition was obviously pouring a lot of money into getting that online traffic, and they had already been at it for years. Even with a huge budget, we would only be playing catch-up.
The prospective client still wanted to move forward. He didn’t need a lot of cases to still make good money, so why not try?
Then the magic happened. We were wrapping up our conversation, having discussed next moves and topics for the website’s various pages. At one point, he is explaining how it’s the family members who often bring the victim in. “The victims are older gentlemen. Blue-collar types. They are rarely online. So it’s a son or daughter bringing them in. And it’s funny: Neither they nor the families even know the word mesothelioma. They always come in saying ‘Hey, I think I got that asbestos cancer thing. You know, in my lungs.’”
“Wait, what did you just say?”
We had just stumbled upon the gem here. The families most in need of this lawyer’s services did not even know the word “mesothelioma.” Probably had trouble just pronouncing it (I know I do!) But they always asked about “that asbestos cancer.”
We had been wrapping up, but I immediately got my laptop out and fired up some keyword tools. This time, the target was different—”asbestos cancer” and its variations.
It turns out, those keywords had just as much traffic as “mesothelioma” did. The kicker, though, was that there was only a tenth of the competition for those keywords. There was not a single site putting itself out there as the single comprehensive resource for asbestos cancer.
You see, doctors and lawyers alike use the medical term. So when anyone went to make a website, they used the term that they were used to. No one was paying attention to the wording that the target audience was actually using, let alone using in their searches.
We had stumbled into a wide-open field in terms of SEO opportunity. And it was all from an off-hand comment about how clients actually ask for the service to begin with.
This story has a not-so-happy ending, unfortunately. The website never ended up taking off, for a variety of reasons. In the meantime, many of those other sites ranking for mesothelioma eventually figured this out, too, and now many of them rank for “asbestos cancer” as well.
So the lesson here is two-fold. First, don’t assume you know what your keywords are. Listen to your audience and find out the terms they are using naturally in the searches. Then rank for those.
Second, if you do find a golden opportunity, don’t sit on it. There are plenty of competitors pouring tons of money into their SEO every day. And they have the same tools you do, or better. Take the opportunity now, while you can.
