SEO Success: Interim report Aitken Partners

Client website: www.aitken.com.au

In 2009, Aitken Partners became a welcomed SEO and Online Marketing client for MessageForce. While the first phase of our SEO efforts are yet to be completed, we received the following memo from Andrew Clarke, Aitken Partner's Marketing Manager. Suffice to say, we were pleased to hear these words from him and have published it here for your viewing.

Memo from Andrew Clarke: SEO 1 December 2009:

The Australian legal industry is a competitive environment with firms ranging in size from a handful of partners up to a couple of hundred all chasing the same work. The level of resources in terms of marketing varies massively, with some of the larger firms boasting teams in excess of 50 staff.

Aitken Partners is a mid-sized firm based in Melbourne with nine partners and 70 staff servicing a wide range of clients. In 2008 the firm rebranded from Aitken Walker & Strachan to Aitken Partners on the back of a couple of acquisitions and the need to adopt a modern business structure. In August of that year I joined the staff as its only marketing person with the job is improving the firm’s general position as goal number one.

The firm had a new website that was missing the mark with a bounce rate of around 60 percent and static content.

In the second quarter of 2009 it was decided to revamp this site, and once that rework was completed to undertake an SEO campaign to lift Aitken Partners from anonymity in a web sense, to significant on inside the first 10 listings on a Google search in key areas.

The web revamp was undertaken with MessageForce, our chosen SEO partner, contributing guidance as to what would work well with an SEO campaign. The new look website was launched in August with active blogs and news stories proving a defined content stream on the front page – bounce rates halved and all user stats saw a significant increase.

In October we commenced the formal SEO campaign, competing against numerous bodies and faceless law entities as well as other firms for premium listings. It was bodies such as the Law Institute of Victoria and LexisNexis which often snared the best results, many of them using their broad base to better ratings even on a law firm name than law firms themselves.

Our primary practice areas include Commercial Law, Property Law, Wills Estates & Succession, Litigation, Family Law and Workplace Relations – all among the most competitive areas on the web.

The results were immediate, we not only saw a jump onto the front page of many searches but also an increase in our general web traffic. Our lawyers were also reporting an increase in the number of inquiries coming into them, with the random person featured on an area of law page getting phones calls and emails. As of the end of November, we have five new clients from our web activity.