 – my tasks were: renovating the website in accordance with SEO & Accessibility standards to rank higher in Google, which were successful.
This reference project was a website for a divorce lawyer who requested a redesign and an improvement in her SEO. She was a very nice and kind lady, so I participated in many, many consultations with her for every minor change. I spent a lot of time on consultations and meticulous “fiddly work” on the site, despite having already managed to get her site to the top of Google early on.
The Challenge: Limited Marketing and Evaporating Time
Unfortunately, my marketing tools were limited, as a law firm cannot be advertised in the same way as any other business.
By the end of the job, even though I had completed the SEO service and the site design update, I realized that the consultations had taken up an enormous amount of time, draining resources from other projects, and it was not financially viable. Although the client thought I should guarantee specific phone calls, I couldn’t do that, as I don’t necessarily consider that a marketing task. The statistics showed that people were coming to the site, as it had moved to the top of Google.
The Lesson: Pricing, Content, and Expectations
So, the lesson is this: no matter how nice or charming the client is, you must not underprice yourself, neither in money nor in time investment.
The content provided is also crucial, as lawyers have to “sell” themselves in a completely different way. I am not an expert in legal divorce texts, and content writing was not part of my brief (back then, AI was not available for copywriting as it is today). It doesn’t matter how much I focus on keywords, meta descriptions and titles, accessibility, and blogging, if a competitor’s content is more compelling, they can “sell” themselves more easily—even if they aren’t at the top of Google.
A Personal Postscript
As a follower of Jesus Christ, I am happy when people do not get divorced, and I wish that was the reason the calls didn’t come. However, the reality is likely the content gap described above.
I regret that we parted on bad terms with this client, and it was all due to poor communication, which failed despite the many consultations. I hope one day there will be a restoration in our relationship… but I too am learning from my early-career mistakes.
