In this case study, we’ll show you how we got a personal injury lawyer to page 1 of Google within 30 days of starting personal injury SEO on their website.
The Results: Page 1 of Google Within 30 Days
Keyword Rankings From November 1 to November 30
The November 1 column (in the video above) shows where these keywords were ranking. None of them were on page 1 at all, and most weren’t even in the top 100.
As of November 30, some of these keywords were in the top 10, and the others had jumped up as well.
There was a considerable difference, meaning the increase they had since then. Almost every keyword except 2 jumped up into the top 100 at the very least.
Search Volume Behind the Keywords
An important point about these keywords is that one of them gets 1,300 searches a month. That’s “car accident lawyers,” and they’re now on page 1 for it.
“Criminal victim lawyer” gets 210 searches a month, and it was at position 6 as of November 30. “Workers comp lawyers near me” gets 720 searches a month as well.
These are some pretty serious ranking keywords. There’s decent search volume behind them, not some random obscure things that nobody searches.
Verified in Google Search Console, Semrush and Google Analytics
Google Search Console shows the past 16 months of data, and the site was flatlined the entire time. Impressions started as of Monday, November 4 or October 31.
There has been a sharp increase in impressions since then, which aligns with the report.
Semrush shows the top organic keywords. Some of these were brand keywords before. They did rank for their brand and for a couple of the lawyers’ names, which we’ll go into below.
As of November 1, they went from 1 or 2 keywords in the top 10 to 10 in total in the top 10.
Across all keywords, they have 392 keywords, with a steep increase as of November 1, which is when we started doing the SEO.
In Google Analytics, we only started tracking when we started working on this, so we don’t have any data before mid-October.
They’ve had 488 organic search users in total. A good chunk of these are going to be from the brand keywords and the names of the lawyers. However, they’re getting a decent amount of organic traffic.
The Problem: An Established Website That Wasn’t Ranking for Much
How did we do this, and why did these results happen so fast?
There’s something very important to consider with this website that doesn’t usually occur. These results are abnormal, and they don’t usually occur when you start an SEO campaign.
There were 2 main factors that allowed these results to happen so quickly. The important thing to know about this website, which is what made it unusual, is that it was already an established website.
Semrush shows they had been ranking on Google for some time over the past 2 years, and over all time they had been around for a while. They just weren’t ranking for much.
In 2023 this year, something happened. We’re not sure what it was, but we think they launched a new website.
They got a bit of an increase and then floated along for a long time. The sharp increase came when we came in and optimized the whole website.
Fixing the Website
We didn’t add any new pages at this point. We only optimized the existing pages for the different personal injury services they offer, such as car accidents, workers comp, personal injury in general and so on.
We ran those pages through Surfer SEO, made sure they were all optimized and had a higher score than all their competitors, then published that content and let it do its thing.
We’ll be continually making more pages and following the usual content strategy we talk about.
Why the Rankings Moved So Quickly
Because this website was already established, they shot up in rankings very quickly. We would also argue that the amount of branded traffic they get plays a part in this from Google’s perspective.
Personal injury is usually a very competitive niche, but in their particular city it isn’t as competitive as usual. That also played a part in allowing them to jump up for the main keyword so much.
In most cases, especially with a brand new website that has never been on Google before and has no established history, this sort of thing is almost unheard of. It’s very, very rare for something like this to happen.
You may have an established site that’s been around for a while, and you may be ranking for a couple of the keywords you’re supposed to, but not in the top 10 or even the top 50. If you are established within your particular niche, something like this is entirely possible if it’s done correctly and the whole site is optimized correctly.
Need Help Getting Your Personal Injury Firm to Page 1 of Google?
If you’d like us at Dominate Marketing to help get your more personal injury cases, fill out the form below. In 30 minutes, you’ll know exactly what you need to do to get more high value cases.