If you’re running a law firm and looking for ways to drive traffic to your website, it might be time to think about using search engine optimization (SEO). After all, every inquiry begins with a search.
In fact, the numbers show more than 95% of people seeking legal advice are actually using Google and other search engines, while 75% of users directly visit a law firm’s websites to take legal action.
Then again, this story is not new.
Almost every law firms are aware of how important SEO is, especially in terms of lead generation. And this has made the legal environment one of the most competitive sectors.
It is therefore up to you to find ways to stay ahead of the competition, and here we have compiled an action list and tips to help boost SEO for lawyers.
What is attorney SEO?
When it comes to attorney SEO, it is a search engine optimization strategy that aims at attracting more potential clients to the firm’s law website by ranking in search engines.
Specifically, this SEO strategy is often long-term and aimed at increasing the overall ranking of a firm’s website to further boost the traffic.
Why is SEO important for law firms?
Then again, it’s not just about ranking your website on top when people are searching for “law firms in Kansas City” or “New York City law firms“
Most people use online resources to find legal services around them. Recent studies show that 96% of people looking for legal advice use search engines such as Google to research legal advice.
How to start?
To get started with SEO for lawyers, you need to have a Google my business page. My business from Google helps clients find your law firm quickly by looking at your firm’s name online. Using my business places your law firm’s profile across several properties such as Google Search, Google Maps, and Google+.
My Business from Google helps your clients find instant helpful information. The following are things you can find on your profile:
· A link to the firm’s website
· Phone number
· Directions to the firm
· Physical address with a map
· Business hours
· Price range and the reviews
If you claim your profile, you ensure that every detail about your law firm is accurate. In case of any changes, you are in charge of that to not lose any clients. Taking control of your profile allows your clients to engage with you.
Claiming your profile allows you to reply to comments and reviews and truly connect with your customers to provide them with extra value.
What are the fundamentals of law firm search engine optimization?
You want your law practice to survive and thrive, especially during these hard times. Therefore, you must obtain a steady stream of clients to help you brave the economy. While there are various ways you can use to put the word about your law firm out there, the best way to help your clients find you is to invest in search engine optimization for attorneys.
Once you have the concept of SEO nailed down, you get core traffic to your law firm’s website. It is, as a result, reduces the amount of money you use to advertise. Although SEO is a good concept to incorporate into your law firm website, it does have a learning curve that takes time to understand. Below are some of the few tips to help you get started.
1. Study your competitors
The first thing to do is to study how your rivals in the law sector are handling SEO. Analyze how they have structured their websites and which keywords they are using to keep their clients. Take note of the type of content they put out on their blogs and note which sites they link back. Tools such as Alexa are resourceful in finding ways to implement the techniques you’ve learned.
2. Research on keywords
Once you’ve analyzed what your competitors are doing, it’s time to research the best keywords to use to get ideas for any additional keywords you can use in your law firm’s website. You can take advantage of the Google keyword tool to get a list of all the search terms related to your desired keywords, rank them and add them to your list. Here is a step-by-step guide on how you can find the right SEO keywords for lawyers.
3. Fill out your title
Search engines use your title and meta description tag to show your website. The two items are the first things your clients see when searching for a law firm near them. To ensure that the search engine doesn’t cut off the title and meta description tag in the result page, limit the characters to 60 in the title and the meta description to 200 characters or less.
4. Claim your Google my Business profile
Claiming your profile, as mentioned above, helps you get listed in Google my Business. You will have to provide information such as an address, business, and contact information. You will also have to get verified using your law firm’s phone number or a postcard from Google.
5. Consistency is key
Consistency in details goes a long way when it comes to attorney SEOs. Different spellings or mistakes can direct the client to another law firm’s website. Ensure that your firm’s name, address, and any other information is consistent across your social media, website, directory listings, and any other online changes which you can be found in.
6. Ask your clients to give your firm reviews
Another good way to boost your firm’s ranking is to get online reviews. Studies show that positive reviews help your firm get traffic and clicks, unlike your competitor who has no reviews. You can point your clients to Yelp, Facebook, and Google reviews to ease their review process.
Creating content to reach your potential clients
For your prospective client to be interested in what your firm is offering, you need to create content that will appeal to new eyeballs. In simpler terms, you should create pages that are valuable resources for your potential clients. The information should be informative and encompassing.
If you’re unsure of the best way to create appealing content, check out the following tips that will hopefully make it easier for you to navigate the problem.
1. Create easy to navigate content
Don’t make a potential client work for your content. Ensure that your website’s content is easy to navigate. Breaking the content down into categories and tags helps with SEO and navigation. Your client will be able to understand where your content starts and ends. No content organization drives away potential clients.
2. Create legal content that is relevant to your client
Traffic alone can’t help you get prospective clients. You have to ensure that you have qualified traffic. Creating content that your clients can relate to help you attract qualified traffic. Take your time to understand your market and what they usually search for. You can also ask your previous clients questions, and they will give you feedback on what’s important.
3. Keep your clients reading
Getting your clients to read your content is one thing. However, taking it a step further and suggesting similar posts to them will get them stuck to your content for as long as possible.
4. Add a legal Q&A content
Create a section that provides answers to any questions that your prospective clients might have. Creating in-depth content through a Q&A section helps you create legal content that considers your clientele’s problems.
Website optimization
Website optimization refers to the process of using advanced strategies, tactics, tools, and experiments to enhance your website’s performance and further drive qualified traffic to your website. Website optimization helps you increase conversions and increase your revenue.
SEO is one of the most imperative aspects of website optimization. It helps you rank higher in search engines and helps people find your law firm’s websites easily and quickly. The other aspect of website optimization is on-page optimization.
On-page optimization ensures that potential clients land on your films’ website. It provides them with the best user experience and compels them to take the next step, which converts into a lead. Therefore, website optimization helps you tap into an untapped market most efficiently and opens doors for more lead conversions and revenue gains.
Strategies to optimize your website
There are various strategies and approaches your firm can use to improve your website. Below are two of the best ways you can optimize your website.
1. Be mobile-first
In today’s world, it is not enough to have a website that only looks good on desktop computers and laptops. To thrive in the online world, your website needs to also appeal to mobile users everywhere. In 2018, studies reported that about 52% of all traffic to many websites came from mobile users.
Most Google searches nowadays are conducted by smartphone users. This has necessitated Google to switch to mobile-first indexing, where they majorly rank and index your mobile pages. Therefore, any slip ups can cost you heavily on potential mobile conversions.
To help you go mobile, you need to run a basic mobile usability test to correct any issues that the text brings up. You also need to ensure that your website appears appropriately to any screen size on popular phone models. You should ensure that:
· There are no popups
· All content is visible
· The content is easy to read
· The site is easy to navigate
Covering all these basics will see you get rewarded by your users and search engines.
2. Build your website’s architecture
Site architecture is really the first thing you need to get right when building an SEO friendly website. Website architecture refers to the hierarchy of pagers that helps your users find your content. It involves the technical considerations that allow search bots to crawl your page. The following are some of the best practices for an SEO friendly website architecture.
· Use a simple URL and keep it as short as 128 characters. Your URL should also be joined with hyphens and should have lowercase words
· Use a sitemap to help bots find your content easily
· Be keen with anchor texts for your pages to flow. Your pages should be reachable in few clicks
· Reduce the page loading time and ensure your site is secure and mobile-friendly
Local SEO
Your law firm can benefit from using local SEO. Local SEO is a strategy associated with search engine optimization that helps your law firm remain visible to users doing local searches. Local search isn’t an entirely new concept. As a matter of fact, it has been around for a long time but was only limited to searches on desktop computers.
However, with the increase in mobile usage, mobile search has seen an outburst. For example, if you are in your office and Google ‘pizza delivery’, the search engine will bring you pizza restaurants near you. The results will differ if you are at home as it will bring you pizza restaurants near your home.
Your law firm needs to ensure that it incorporates local SEO into its search engine optimization efforts to help you tap into the local client market around you.
Add schema to your law website firm
Schema is a code that you enter on your website to help search engines return more informative results to your prospective clients. Schema interprets data to search engines. If, for example, you type your website’s name, Google may come up with various similarly-named places.
However, if you put the right markup around the firm’s name, the search engine will return results relevant to your website and not just some random words.
Backlink building
Backlinks refer to links that connect your website to another website or page. Search engines usually consider backlinks as votes for specific pages. If your firm’s page has many backlinks, the search engine will keep suggesting your firm’s websites, which will result in high organic search engine rankings.
Backlinks are also called incoming or inbound links, and they essentially tell the search engine that information on your website is valuable and credible. High-quality backlinks usually have these traits.
1. They are from authoritative websites
If a site has plenty of authority, it translates to your website. This concept is called domain authority. Google puts a lot of weight on authoritative sites.
2. They have your target keywords in the anchor text
You want to ensure that your links have anchor texts that contain your target keyword. You should, however, pay attention to how much you use keyword-rich anchor texts,
3. The sites that link to your website are related to your site
The website that links to you should contain similar information contained in your site. In this case, if another page links to you, they are more likely to be talking about legal concepts or problems. Google always sees to it that backlinks occur when two sites are related.
Press release distribution
If your law firm is starting out, you need plenty of press coverage. Unfortunately, press coverage doesn’t come easily, and you need to work for it. Even if your firm is one of the best, you still need to ensure that you get press coverage to ensure that your stream of clients is steady.
Distributing press releases can help your law firm get covered on huge publications. There is also a significant chance that the major publications will link back, which will boost your search engine visibility.
Maintain a healthy link profile
A healthy link profile is one that doesn’t attract Google’s attention as spam. Whenever you’re linking to another article or another page, linking to your site should be as natural as possible. Your link profile should be relevant and diverse. You should avoid link baiting. Your link should also appear on other platforms such as social media, blogs, and business directories.
Social media distribution
Research shows that 47% of the population received their news from social media in 2018. Most people use social media platforms such as Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram. Users on the different social media platforms favor specific types of content over others. Therefore, your firm needs to tailor its content to appeal to users in various social media users across all platforms.
Performance tracking and analytics
Google offers businesses various free marketing tools that help them keep track of their performances. One of the most popular tools was introduced in 2005 and is called Google analytics. Google Analytics helps your firm estimate what drives clients to your site, what type of content appeals to the clients, and how traffic performs. Conduct an A/B split test and optimize your firm’s content to maximize your ranking,
Summary
SEO takes a long time to understand. It is a long-term game that needs a lot of time and money to help you build your brand and reach your clients for lead conversion and revenue generation.
