Do you want your law office to be the first one a potential client sees when they search for a lawyer in their area? How about getting organic traffic to your website without running expensive ads? That’s what law firm SEO is all about.
Law firm SEO means using specific strategies to improve your website’s quality, increasing its search engine ranking in the process.
We’ll explore how law firm SEO can benefit attorneys and law offices, what Google looks for when ranking websites, and how to get started with SEO.
Related: What Are Google SERPs?
Do Law Firms Really Need to Worry About SEO?
Did you know that Google Consumer Survey found that 96% of people needing legal advice turn to the internet for answers? That statistic alone should be enough of an answer — Law firm SEO is essential for growing your practice and finding new clients.
An analysis of over a million web pages and 12 million search queries shows just how important SEO is; for example,
- If you snag the #1 spot in the search results, it’s ten times more likely for someone to visit your site compared to the page in the #10 spot.
- Plus, the page that ranks first has an average CTR of almost 28%!
- Moving up a single spot in Google’s search results increases CTR by almost 3%; the higher your original ranking, the more significant boost you’ll see by getting your page to the next position.
Statistically speaking, your law firm should care about SEO — You can be sure your competitors are paying attention to their ranking, so make them worry about yours.
Want to outrank your competitors? Book a meeting with our law firm SEO experts today to gain the benefits of search engine visibility!
How Does Law Firm SEO Affect Your Website’s Ranking?
While Google’s ranking algorithm takes a massive amount of data into account when determining which page will take the top spot, the big four considerations are:
1. Content
Your website’s content is how you give potential clients information — It’s also a crucial factor in ranking in the top spots.
Content includes everything from images and videos to blog posts and landing pages.
But how do you create content that brings visitors to your site and motivates them to take action?
How to Improve Law Firm SEO By Creating Better Content
You need to consider two factors when creating content that provides useful information and ranks on search engines:
- Your content must be high-quality, accurate, and helpful to potential clients.
- It also needs to target the right keywords and include them in a natural way.
So you want to ensure the content you post clearly answers questions that your potential clients will have. For example, if you’re an immigration lawyer in California, consider what someone looking for your help would search on Google.
That’s relatively simple; however, keywords present another challenge. You need to target the keywords that people search for most often and use variations that will help your pages outrank your competitors — This is where working with a highly-rated content agency can help.
2. Backlinks
Next, Google likes to see backlinks (other websites linking back to your site); it shows that your content is authoritative, relevant, and trustworthy.
If a website with high domain authority links back to your content, you’re more likely to rank higher — These backlinks are like a vote of confidence to Google.
How to Improve Law Firm SEO By Gaining Backlinks
Creating and executing a link building strategy is a topic for a whole other day; it’s a massive undertaking. However, we have an easy link building hack you can use to improve your local law firm SEO.
There are probably various sites that contain your law firm’s contact information: Google My Business, social media platforms, legal directories, review sites, etc. You can reach out to these pages to obtain backlinks much easier than you can with other websites!
Related: How to Get Powerful Backlinks
3. Technical SEO
Next up, let’s take a look at technical SEO — The strategies you employ to ensure your website and content are recognizable to search engines.
Technical SEO means ensuring all of your content includes aspects like:
- Title and header tags
- Meta descriptions
- URL structure
- Internal and external links
- Alt text for every image
- Optimized site architecture
How to Improve Law Firm SEO By Optimizing Your Formatting
Your website’s technical SEO is a significant factor for ranking highly; if you have a poor site structure, Google might not even index your web pages.
Luckily, Google offers SEO guidelines to help you optimize your formatting for technical SEO. In addition, it’s best practice to use a flat structure, meaning you can get to any page on your website with minimal clicks. This structure makes it easier for Google to crawl and index all of your content.
4. User experience
Finally, user experience (UX) plays a massive role in Google’s ranking system. When we talk about UX, we look at things like:
- How easy is your website to navigate?
- Is your website visually appealing?
- How quickly does your website respond to input?
- Does each web page load quickly?
Again, Google offers guidelines to help optimize your UX for its search engine. But we have a few tips, too!
How to Improve Law Firm SEO By Improving Usability
Ensuring your website is mobile-friendly is an extremely crucial UX factor — almost two-thirds of Google searches come from mobile devices. In addition, mobile users are significantly more likely to scroll through search results instead of automatically clicking the first one compared to desktop users.
Your website’s layout should also make navigating your content easy while avoiding intrusive elements like large overlays that obstruct part of a page.
Another critical factor is your website’s loading times; you can test this with free tools from Google:
Improve Your Law Firm SEO With the Right Partner
People spend around 6 ½ hours online every day. When you close up your firm for the night, your website should continue working for you — Think of an SEO investment as having a 24/7 salesperson on your staff.
If your website isn’t utilizing strong law firm SEO techniques, you’re missing crucial opportunities to draw in more clients.
So let us help you gain stronger online visibility: Book a meeting with our SEO specialists and content experts at Content Dog today!
Related: How to Create Content That Ranks
Last Updated on June 5, 2023 by Hilda Wong