Unveiling the Power of SEO: A Legal Funding Company’s Journey – Case Study

As you know, it is crucial for companies to build a brand reputation and reinforce their authority. And having an effective SEO and content marketing strategy means gaining greater visibility on Google and other search engines, which translates into more leads and new customers. 

You can have a visually pleasing website and offer the best legal, financing and other services, but if the customers looking for them cannot find you, all your efforts are in vain. That is why you must have a state-of-the-art SEO strategy, because only then can you improve your ranking in search results and attract people interested in your services. How can you do this? 

In this SEO case study, I show you how Express Legal Funding, a Texas-based pre-settlement funding company, achieved a positive impact on website traffic. As the image below shows, looking at the period from November 2022 to June 2023, there was an exponential growth in its organic visibility. 

Introducing the company

Express Legal Funding is a reliable pre-settlement funding company with a strong commitment to financially assist injured and damaged plaintiffs throughout their legal claim journey. Based in Plano, Texas, it is dedicated to providing essential financial support to those seeking compensation from the party responsible for their loss. The process involves the company making a non-recourse advance to purchase a stake in the potential case proceeds  from a personal injury claim and various types of civil lawsuits.

When I met Aaron Winston – Strategy Director at Express Legal Funding – he told me that before meeting the WordLift team, he had created quality site content, and he is well versed in SEO, achieving good results. However, he realized that in order to further optimize and make the most of what he was doing, there was still a piece missing. He knew it was important to educate Google and give it the information it needed to understand who you are and what you do to get more visitors and better rank website content in search results and become an authoritative voice in the industry. He was looking for a sustainable, future-proof, and easy-to-implement solution that would give him an immediate competitive advantage that, once in place, could not be undone. And that’s where the WordLift team came in to help Aaron make a difference with his SEO strategy.

The request 

Aaron Winston, as Strategy Director and a legal funding expert, had a clear vision for his online presence. He aimed to improve his website’s E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) to establish himself as the go-to authority in the field. 

The website was already thriving with well-implemented structured data, providing a sturdy groundwork for his digital journey. It’s essential to give a shoutout to Aaron’s exceptional content, which is undoubtedly top-notch, contributing significantly to the overall outstanding performance of the website.

To achieve his goal, Aaron knew he needed to take things to the next level and do what others weren’t. One of his key aspirations was to obtain a knowledge panel—an impressive feature displayed on Google’s search results, showcasing essential information about a recognized entity or individual.

Obtaining a knowledge panel would not only enhance his online credibility but also boost his website’s visibility and attract a wider audience. Aaron realized that this would be a pivotal step in cementing his reputation as “The Legal Funding Expert.”

What has been done 

We have implemented several SEO measures to enhance the online presence and authority of Aaron Wiston and Express Legal Funding. 

First, we implemented Author markup for all writers on the website. This step makes sure that each author’s credentials and expertise are very visible, which makes them more credible to visitors and search engines. We developed Person Entities for the entire team to reinforce the website’s Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T). By linking these entities to their respective user pages on WordPress, we enabled search engines to collect comprehensive information about each author. This data is integrated into the structured data of their articles, adding another layer of authority to their content. 

To further optimize and create a stronger entity presence, we created a Kalicube account for Express Legal Funding and Aaron in particular. This helped us to create uniform information across all of Aaron’s websites and entities, and give the boost needed to get a Knowledge Panel. This can help AI ecosystems and search engines to better understand Aaron’s entity. This ensures that search engines can accurately associate all relevant information with Aaron, improving his individual and overall online presence. As a result, Knowledge Panels appeared in Google search results, providing concise and informative snapshots of each author’s background and contributions. 
Together with Aaron, we had many exciting learnings on this journey. It was evident how important it was for search engines such as Google to extract information to create a KP from a page that can be controlled & managed by Aaron. By this, what we mean is how all relevant info tied to Aaron must be present on a dedicated page, such as an About Page, and how using structured data and consistent data across social profiles helps to disambiguate Aaron from others, make his entity stand out, and ultimately bag him a KP. Aaron’s book also helped to disambiguate his entity from many others and make it truly unique. We utilized book schema markup to achieve the same.

To further optimize the website’s visibility, we built a comprehensive knowledge graph (KG) and established strong interlinks between the main website and the blog content. This strategic approach enhances the website’s overall authority and facilitates the discovery and indexing of valuable information by search engines.

In addition to the above efforts, we integrated Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) based on the “People Also Ask” feature. By addressing common queries related to our client’s domain, we enhance the website’s relevance and cater to the needs of users and search engines alike.

When we analyzed the results consistently, we were able to find out using analysis that the pages where WordLift was implemented saw ~53% increase than the ones without it. This helped us to navigate our efforts in the right direction, and also measure the impact of our efforts. 

Overall, our combined efforts have significantly improved our client’s Google E-A-T standing, increased the visibility of their website, and provided a more informative and engaging experience for their audience.

Challenges & Opportunities 

In the journey we made together with Aaron, there were two major challenges we encountered that made our work harder but also more exciting. I will tell you about them below. 

As we saw before, to get Aaron’s Knowledge Panel, we started with Kalicube account and created consistent information about him across different profiles. We also created a Wikidata page with all the necessary info. We saw a basic Knowledge Panel appear for Aaron in no time, and everything worked great. Unfortunately, the page got deleted within a few weeks, and we lost the Knowledge Panel too. 

We gathered all the information about the client in the structured data. We turned the “AboutPage” into an entity collector and went about building a coherent digital identity. Even then, since many people had the same name, search engines needed help to disambiguate Aaron’s entity and identify him as a Legal Funding Expert. 

When Aaron published his book a few months later, we utilized this to distinguish his entity and establish him as an author. All his personal entities were updated to match this, and we got the Knowledge Panel back. 

Aaron continuously posts  top-notch, original content that is helpful for readers and those seeking legal funding help. The growing traffic proves this. Another challenge to overcome was other websites plagiarizing the content on Express Legal Funding and ranking. 

These sites took a significant percentage of traffic until legal action was taken, and the infringing pages were taken down. The original content within the site is created after extensive research and efforts and is protected fiercely against copyright infringement.

Results 

In June 2023, our efforts yielded remarkable results across different aspects of the business. 

Regarding traffic, there has been an important 48.8% increase in impressions and a 46.13% increase in clicks compared to the previous three months.

The rise in traffic has been complemented by a substantial boost in editorial work.

One notable achievement is the successful completion of the “doxxing article.” In this endeavor, we have found ourselves competing with major players like Avast and Kaspersky, targeting a highly competitive, short-tail term. Remarkably, our page’s performance has been nothing short of outstanding, especially when compared to its published time. These results speak to the impressive E-A-T that Express Legal Funding has gained, as it was able to hop into another industry’s topic, which it had never written about, and quickly rise to the top search engine rank positions.

This article is now ranking not just for long-tail terms but also for the high search volume term ‘doxxing’ in the 5th position, also getting FAQ rich results. The traffic is also growing well when we compare over a 28-day period. 

Overall, these outcomes demonstrate the efficacy of our initiatives in driving traffic and optimizing content for improved search rankings and user engagement.

“Working with WordLift has been great for us at Express Legal Funding. It was the last missing key needed to get a Google knowledge panel for myself. The AI software has built upon the success I already had as an author establishing myself as a topical authority about pre-settlement funding. Since working with WordLift, the daily website traffic and quality of the leads we have received from Google have increased, enabling us to be more effective in our underwriting process, which is a top goal of a legal finance company.”

Aaron R. Winston – Strategy Director & “The Legal Funding Expert”