Showcasing Your Legal Awards & Accomplishments Properly

Key takeaways:

• Recognition through legal awards and accomplishments can help bolster your website’s performance in Google search.
• Ensure you’re using the right awards from recognized providers to achieve the best possible outcome.
• Array Digital can help you every step of the way by improving how well your website meets Google’s latest algorithm changes.

Online marketing for lawyers is complex, and showcasing your value isn’t as simple as saying, “Hey, I’m the best lawyer in town!”

In fact, using the term “best lawyer” or “best attorney” goes against American Bar Association (ABA) guidelines, which means you need data to tell your audience why you are the best choice without saying you are the “best.” This is where showcasing your awards and accomplishments comes into play.

What Is E-e-a-t?

Google is always on a mission to improve the results it provides searchers. To do this, it scrutinizes a website to determine how valuable that site actually is to the searcher they direct to it. E-E-A-T is the methodology they use for making this determination.

First, what is it? E-E-A-T stands for:

• Experience
• Expertise
• Authoritativeness
• Trustworthiness

This is not a ranking factor. Rather, it’s a part of Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines. Google’s Quality Raters assess the quality of the content on your law firm’s website to determine if it meets these very high standards.

Now, let’s break down these four elements a bit more based on how Google Quality Raters interpret your site to determine how well you meet those guidelines:

• Experience: Does the content creator have first-hand or life experience with this topic? As an attorney, you must be able to demonstrate that you have experience in the specific area of interest for the searcher.
• Expertise: Expertise is one of the easier factors to demonstrate as an attorney. Your license and education showcase your expertise in the area.
• Authoritativeness: Your site must be considered a resource, a “better-than-average” tool for people to use to get the valuable information they need. However, utilization of backlinks from other sites (such as .edu and .gov websites) can improve just how valuable that content is.
• Trustworthiness: Is the content on your site trustworthy, accurate, and respected? That’s not as easy to demonstrate, but if your content meets the previous three standards, it should work well.

Let’s Talk About E-e-a-t in Relation to Lawyer Awards and Accomplishments

A law firm website could be very simple. It could communicate the legal services you offer and the law school you attended with a simple call-to-action (CTA) to call you. Yet, that does not demonstrate any real value.

A person who needs a criminal defense attorney to help them navigate a precarious situation needs a significantly higher level of information before making the decision to contact you. By utilizing annual accomplishments, advocacy statements, public service, and even the pro bono award you received locally, you are providing not just expertise and experience but demonstrating trust.

Why?

• Awards clearly demonstrate that you do a fantastic job in that one specific area.
• Standing out in the legal community isn’t easy to do, but accomplishments like this allow you to do so (People want the attorney that’s the Lawyer of the Year to represent them in a personal injury case!)
• Clients want to have peace of mind. Knowing you have extensive experience in that practice area and spend 40+ hours a week in the practice of law in that area gives them that reassurance.

Tips for Showcasing Lawyer Accomplishments

Passing the State Bar isn’t enough to convince someone to contact you, but your accomplishments will. It’s a way to provide proof of what you do and what you have done for others through your legal profession. Here’s how to do it.

Provide Case Studies on Your Website

Once you complete a case, write down what occurred and why. Here’s a very simple template to use that works perfectly to demonstrate your accomplishments. We’ve created this for personal injury law, but apply it to any legal practice area within your firm.

• The case: Provide relevant background information about the incident leading up to the injury; list the data, location, and circumstances surrounding it
• Injuries sustained: Document the injuries your client suffered, detailing all levels of harm, medical care needed, and long-term impact.
• Legal strategy: Detail the legal strategy you used to prove the clients’ losses, including legal arguments, expert testimonies, or other approaches you took to help prove loss and negligence
• The outcome: Detail how the case was resolved, including settlements provided, mediation utilized, arbitration efforts, or the verdict from the trial; and detail the outcome as it applies to the client.

When creating this case study, keep the language simple. While you can reference case law and utilize some legal terminology, remember your reader. They want to see what happened, what you did, and why it worked.

Showcase Monetary Achievements You Won for Clients

Stating you provided outstanding service to a client is one thing. Demonstrating that through documentation of the actual awards your clients received is very different.

Without a doubt, you should state the amount of money you helped your client recover if you are a personal injury lawyer. Place these results in all or one of the following areas of your website so they are clearly noticeable:

• Header
• Contact page
• Home page

Stating that you helped a car accident victim recover $1.5 million is not a promise to a future client. Rather, it’s a demonstration of what you’ve accomplished by providing legal aid. The reader recognizes that if you did it once, you may be able to do it again.

Talk About Your Personal Experience Throughout Your Blogs

Google’s recent update to blogs has taken blogs back to their original purpose: to share personal experiences, details, stories, and insights. Blogs are not the same as web content that’s more formal. Recognizing this, infuse your legal blog with your personality, insights, and personal experiences.

For example, if you are speaking about non-economic losses in a truck accident, you can demonstrate in your blog how you proved that a client suffered pain and suffering.

Storytelling is a valuable aspect of blogging. It builds trustworthiness. Google wants to see this more readily in the content on lawyer websites. That means you will need to work closely with content creators to incorporate stories and personal insights into blog content. It could also play a role in how well your site ranks.

More so, be unique. Work with your content creators to build unique elements into the blog posts, insights from cases, personal experiences, or anecdotes that make sense to the topic. Your experience as a lawyer is unique.

This makes blogging more challenging. It doesn’t have to be. We encourage you to work closely with a marketing team to infuse this type of personality and storytelling into the content you create. That way, it will continue to meet Google’s algorithmic changes over time.

Build Out an “about” Page

To demonstrate your experience and expertise, create an “about” page on your website. Ensure that this page outlines the following:

• Who your attorneys are
• Their education and law school
• Professional associations
• Insight into the types of cases taken (family law, personal injury law, business law, etc.)
• Accomplishments and awards received by each attorney

This helps with attorney branding, the process of building out what your law firm represents to the world.

Lawyer Awards and Why They Matter

Award recipients should state specifically which awards they won and why. Even if you were a nominee, getting those award terms on your website helps to build trustworthiness and expertise. That’s critical to E-E-A-T, but it’s also what your potential clients need to see — if they are going to hire general counsel to make business decisions for them, they want to see that your legal departments have the merit to make wise decisions. Awards demonstrate this clearly.

5 Awards That Are Worth It

It’s common to see all types of awards out there. Not all of them have the same value and weight in creating a positive impression. The following are five awards we believe are worth it from an E-E-A-T standpoint and from turning website visitors into leads.

• ABA Top 40 Young Lawyer Awards: Young lawyer recognition is valuable, and this particular award is even more promising because there are only 40 people out of thousands selected.
• ABA Pro Bono Publica Awards: For those who do pro bono work within the community, this professional award helps demonstrate trustworthiness and character. It enables you to show you care, which prospective clients need to hear.
• National Law Journal Legal Awards: Only a few honorees receive this award, indicative of truly exceptional legal service. It’s competitive, and that’s what helps make it desirable.
• Super Lawyers: Because only other attorneys can nominate each other for it, it offers a sense of authenticity that some other awards do not.
• Smith Awards: This is an outstanding lifetime achievement award that’s clearly demonstrative of your expertise in the field of law practice management.

How Awards and Nominations Impact Referrals

Awards demonstrate to other attorneys that you have the experience necessary to support their clients. If a referral doesn’t go well, that reflects back on that attorney’s reputation. If their client needs a civil rights attorney or needs a very specialized area of criminal defense, having a recognition or award on your site demonstrating your experience can lead to that referral.

Why Law Firms Partner With Array Digital

Array Digital works to ensure our clients always have a website that’s performing at its best. To achieve this, we listen to our clients and then create custom strategies for them. If we see there are opportunities for you to add content, annual awards, insightful case studies, or other valuable, confidence-building material to your site, we’ll encourage it.

Testimonials

“Array Digital and Kevin Daisy, in particular, have the right attitude about helping companies raise their profile and gain more clients. They deliver value and results. I highly recommend them and refer my clients to them.” — Eric D.

“Erik and the Array Digital team are top-notch in the digital marketing spaces, particularly for SEO. Their understanding of Google, the algorithms, and the work involved in getting websites ranking on the first page is unparalleled. Thank you, Erik!!” — Andrew Z.

“The entire team at Array Digital is amazing! They are incredibly knowledgeable and very quick to respond to their client’s needs or concerns. If you are looking for a professional team to handle your website, I definitely recommend them!” — Donna T.

First Hand Experience Matters, Let’s Showcase It Together

Any award you have received should be showcased on your website. If you’re leading the way as an attorney in your community, document it. Let us help you.

At Array Digital, we build websites that meet E-E-A-T standards and turn visitors into clients. Contact us now to find out how we can help you. Call 757-333-3021 or fill out our contact form now.