Before the internet, law firms could only rely on print advertising and referrals to obtain clients. In recent years, however, the field of marketing has significantly changed for lawyers.
Today, the majority of people are looking for services and products online. In addition, online legal services in the US have experienced a USD$9 billion market size increase since 2020.
This makes the internet a critical channel for law firms to scale and grow. That said, if you want to be visible to your clients online, you need to invest in SEO.
Understanding SEO For Law Firms
SEO or search engine optimization refers to a collection of strategies and techniques that can help improve your law firm website’s ranking for chosen keywords.
Nowadays, people use search engines like Google to look for information. In this case, they’re looking for legal information and answers or searching for an experienced attorney in their area to help with their legal issues.
Law firm SEO can help your business show up as a result of those searches so that potential clients will find it. This results in increased lead generation and improving your law firm’s revenue.
Law Firm SEO Best Practices
Here’s a list of some law firm SEO best practices:
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Focus On Local SEO
A subcategory of SEO, local SEO refers to strategies that help local businesses with a physical location or serving a geographic area like law firms to be more visible in localized search results. In simpler terms, it helps promote your website locally.
For instance, if a user living in New York got into an accident, it doesn’t make sense to look for a personal injury lawyer in Los Angeles.
Clients are searching for the best law firm to answer their legal questions or looking for someone to represent their legal issues within their area. So, if you haven’t worked at your local SEO, you’re losing clients to your competitors.
Local SEO involves numerous strategies, but the most important task you should do is to claim your Google My Business (GMB) listing.
This listing gives potential clients important information about your law firms such as Map directions, phone numbers, hours of operation, and website. Also, since it belongs to Google, a well-maintained GMB listing gets favored exposure from Google search results when users are looking for local law firms.
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Invest In Content Creation
Content marketing is one of the most significant elements of SEO for lawyers. It means creating relevant and valuable content that provides users with the information they need.
Search engines want to provide users with better results and experiences. If search engines think that you have useful and relevant content, they’ll rank your page higher in search results.
Content creation is particularly important for law firms since the law and overall legal industry tend to be complicated and confusing. It can help you provide answers and fact-based articles to people’s legal questions, showing potential clients what you know and your specialty. This can help in proving your credibility and authority.
Not only that, but content creation can also increase organic search rankings and drive traffic to your website. This can result in increased lead generation.
When writing content for your law firm, make sure to write for humans and not for the search engines. This means you should write content with accurate, useful, and relevant information that answers users’ questions. You should include keywords, but use them smartly.
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Keyword Planning
Keywords are the words or phrases that users search for on search engines. They’re a critical element of your web content and determine your law firm website’s rankings.
Years ago, websites dumped and stuffed keywords on web pages to the point that they become difficult to read or nonsensical. Today, search engines penalize websites that stuff too many keywords on a single page or content.
You need to do keyword planning and research and use a variety of keywords. It’s also important that your chosen keyword fits your content naturally.
Depending on your keyword research, keywords can be as simple as ‘law firm services’ to long-tail keywords like ‘choosing a personal injury lawyer.’ Also, as mentioned in the first point, users will look for localized law firms to help them with their legal issues. Thus, your keywords should also include your location. For instance, you can try using ‘DUI lawyer near me’ or ‘family law firm in Charlotte, NC.’
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Optimize For Mobile
The convenience of mobile devices has increased mobile searches. In fact, over 60% of Google organic search traffic originated from mobile devices.
With a majority of users searching for answers on their mobile phones, having a mobile-friendly site is a must. This can help in increasing user experience and providing you with an edge against competitors.
Furthermore, mobile-friendliness has been a major ranking factor for search engines, especially Google. So, when designing your law firm website, you need to make sure it’s responsive and accommodates any mobile screen size.
Take Away
And there you have it! Having good visibility on search engines is essential for law firms to survive in this modern-day digital world. Since law firms are one of the most needed services in existence, a good SEO strategy should be implemented to help you succeed.
We hope that this guide has given you a better idea of what SEO is and the top best practices that you should implement when starting.