Law Firm SEO: A Guide to Ensure Your Firm is Found Online
How to Create and Use Law Firm SEO
One of the most important ways that your law firm brings in potential clients is via your website. However, that website cannot be effective if it is never seen. If you are having problems being found online by prospective clients, then you need to take another look at your law firm’s SEO strategy.
Law firm search engine optimization involves optimizing your website, so it ranks higher in the search engine results pages. Multiple factors affect Google’s algorithms, with each of them influencing how your website ranks compared to others. To get visitors, you want to show up on the first page, preferably before the fold.
To make sure you excel in all of these factors, your law firm’s SEO strategy should include at least a few key components. Follow this advice to get on track and ensure potential clients can find your law firm online.
How to Follow a Successful Law Firm SEO Strategy
Gain Backlinks
One of the many factors that the Google algorithms look for when determining your ranking is how many other websites on the internet connect back to your page. As a bonus, having more organic backlinks increases not only your rankings but also the chances that someone will stumble across a backlink and visit your site.
The key here is that the backlinks should be organic and not forced. Google penalizes for overstuffing backlinks in a manner that does not seem useful or natural. Avoid this by taking care to create backlinks and allotting the proper amount of effort.
Some of the simplest backlinks to include are those from online directories, such as My Google Business or Yelp. Once again, in addition to helping your SEO ranking, joining these directories will give potential clients another way to find you.
Another strong option is to write articles for other websites as a guest blogger. Writing a useful and highly informative article will also serve the bonus purpose of helping establish your law firm as an industry expert, which encourages clients to consider you.
Create and Optimize Your Profile on Other Sites
Your business listings on other pages, from My Google Business to lawyer-specific websites to the Bar Association website, do more than just gain backlinks. By following the same SEO strategy when creating content for those profiles as you would on your website, you can boost your SEO rank.
This comes from the fact that Google will notice the information on these profiles is consistent with that of your website. The key here is to ensure all the information on your law firm’s public listings is accurate and that you have at least some optimization included for your specialty or location.
Do Not Forget About Google Business Profile
While it is wise to list your law firm on as many online directories as possible, the most important one to include is Google Business Profile. Google has an obvious bias for companies that take advantage of this profile since you provide the search engine directly with the information.
Even if you have the same information on your website or other directory listings, be sure to fill out Google Business Profile. You can incorporate keywords into the description and add images, as well. As a bonus, creating this type of profile will let people leave reviews, which gives potential clients more confidence in your services.
Choose the Right Keywords
When choosing keywords to try to rank for, make sure that it is realistic and relevant. Choosing too broad of a keyword will increase your competition exponentially, making it near impossible to rank for it, at least not without excessive time and effort. It is also likely to bring visitors that are not relevant.
You will want to choose a range of keywords that can help your law firm rank, but make them specific. Examples would be keywords that mention your practice areas or are geo-targeted.
As part of the selection process when choosing keywords, do some keyword research. Look at the keywords used by your competitors and use tools like Google Analytics to see which keywords are relevant yet attainable.
Use Your Keywords Wisely
When it comes to keywords, you also need to use them wisely and have a firm strategy in mind. One of the best options is to make specific pages of your law firm’s website for a given keyword. This helps you rank higher and encourages website visitors to see you as a priority in the industry. A simple example of keyword-specific websites would be creating a separate page for each legal service you offer, with that legal service as the keyword.
Create Useful Content with the Keywords
In addition to specific site pages for keywords based on such things as practice areas, you also want to create other content that incorporates the keywords. A blog is the most common method of doing so, as blog posts let you share your expertise while incorporating keywords.
Blog posts may also attract people to your website before they need your services. This way, your firm’s name will already be in their head when they are looking for a lawyer, increasing the chances that they will go with you. Blogs are also another useful way to show potential clients that you are a legal expert in your area, just like you would with guest posts that create backlinks.
Pay Attention to How You Appear in Search Results
As you set up new pages on your website and the homepage itself, make sure to optimize how they will appear in the search results. This means paying attention to the title tags and meta descriptions. Most content management systems make it incredibly easy to set these up for each page on your website.
Local SEO with BrightLocal
As you create an SEO strategy for your law firm, do not forget to consider localizing it. Local SEO includes strategies such as using localized keywords and creating local business listings. It also involves ensuring your firm’s location information is accurate on Google Maps. BrightLocal is a great resource for local marketing, as it takes care of tracking rankings, SEO audits, and more, along with reputation management.
Remember that your local SEO ranking depends on numerous factors, including keywords in online reviews, the Google Maps business rating, if you have a Google Business Profile, online reviews, and online citations that mention your firm.
Optimize Your Website for Mobile
Remember that most of your clients, or at least many of them, will search for your firm on their smartphone. Because of this, Google and other search engines rank websites higher if they have a responsive web design or a design that is otherwise optimized for mobile.
Of course, having a mobile-optimized or responsive web design also helps reduce your bounce rate. After all, mobile users are not likely to stay on a website that does not load properly on their devices. That lower bounce rate helps with conversions and can help with your ranking.
Check Load Speeds
While working on your website, make sure that it loads quickly enough. This is another factor that affects whether visitors are likely to stay on your website, as well as your Google rank. If your website’s speed is too low, try saving images as JPGs, reducing image sizes, updating any plugins (in the case of content management systems), and minimizing HTTP requests required for downloading graphics or scripts.
Consider a Legal SEO Vendor
Instead of attempting to take care of your law firm’s SEO yourself, it is wise to hire a legal SEO vendor. These firms are familiar with the various SEO strategies that produce the best results and stay up to date with changes to Google’s algorithms.
You have to spend money to rank well, allowing your website to be found online. Only then can you successfully gain clients. This is money well-spent, as an SEO vendor will use more effective strategies and you will not have to sacrifice time spent on other responsibilities.
The Impact of Law Firm SEO
Pros
Law firm SEO provides long-term results, increasing your ranking on search engines like Google. A higher ranking increases the potential for clicks, leading to an increase in clients.
Search engine optimization does not require continuous paying, like you would need to do with pay-per-click or traditional advertisements.
Various firms specializing in SEO for attorneys exist, and they can take care of everything for you.
Cons
You cannot be successful with law firm SEO overnight. It will take time and effort to achieve results.
The best results require spending money, but you should think of this as part of your marketing budget.
Conclusion
To get the most out of your law firm’s SEO strategy, you will need to ensure that it is well-rounded and includes various components, from content creation to keyword optimization to a mobile-optimized website. All these strategies work together to deliver results and increase your ranking in the search engine results. If you need somewhere to start with all of your SEO options, sign up for Podium’s free messaging tools.
