Nearly 26% of law firms worked in 2020 to improve their technology and another 8% worked towards improving their law firm SEO and social media presence.
But why does the legal industry need to invest in law firm SEO in the first place?
SEO is one of the best ways to get discovered online. Typically, law firms are local businesses that operate in a limited geographical area.
And a lot of people start with an online search to find local businesses and this applies to legal firms too.
So, it’s essential that you ensure that your law firm’s visibility remains great on search engines such as Google. And for this, you need to leverage the power of law firm SEO.
Want to learn how?
Let’s dive right into the intricacies of SEO for your law firm.
Disclaimer: This content contains some affiliate links for which we will earn a commission (at no additional cost to you). This is to ensure that we can keep creating free content for you.
Table of Contents
What is Law Firm SEO?
Law firm SEO or attorney SEO (for individuals) is a form of SEO that involves various techniques and strategies that are targeted towards increasing the visibility of law firms on search engines.
These law firm SEO marketing strategies involve things like designing and optimizing your site, creating high-quality content, and conducting keyword research, among other things.
The idea behind law firm SEO is to ensure that your site ranks higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant search requests. This improves the chances of people noticing your website and can drive more traffic to your site.
And why is that?
That’s because nearly 43% of all clicks go to the website that is displayed at the top of the SERPs. On the other hand, if your law firm lists on the 10th position, the CTR is only about 3.11%.
Now that you know about the importance of law firm SEO and ranking higher in local search results, let’s try to get a deeper understanding of how you can ace your law firm SEO.
Law Firm SEO: Your Guide to Optimization
This guide to law firm SEO can be divided into three main sections:
We’ll cover all of the major law firm SEO strategies for each of these parts to help you understand how to optimize your law firm website and content, and improve your search engine rankings.
So, let’s dive right into the world of law firm SEO.
Part 1: On-Page SEO for your Law Firm
On-page law firm SEO or on-site SEO for law firm refers to all the optimizations that you can carry out on your site. These include both the front-end and back-end (technical SEO) optimizations.
But why should you do on-page law firm SEO?
The idea behind on-site SEO for your law firm is to make the entire browsing experience of your site more enriching and smooth for the visitors.
The goal of search engines is to send their users to websites that provide accurate information and also provide a good browsing experience. If your site is able to achieve this goal, you’ll be on your way to the top of the SERPs.
Whether you’re an attorney or an entire law firm, you should strive hard to follow these law firm SEO strategies to increase your brand’s search visibility.
So, let’s take a look at the most important on-page law firm SEO strategies for your law firm that you should be leveraging now.
1. Website Design
When it comes to on-page SEO, the way you design and develop your site has great effects on ranking your site. Here are the various things you should keep in mind while designing your site to improve your law firm SEO.
1.1. Leverage a Mobile-Friendly Website Design
About 51% of all web traffic now originates from mobile devices. However, these screens are smaller. As a result, the sizes of all of the web elements need to be such that they fit in those screens. This should be done to improve the overall browsing experience of your law firm’s website.
Image via Statista
To make sure that your law firm website is mobile-friendly, you should go for the mobile-first design approach. You should choose a responsive theme when start designing a website for your business.
A responsive web design uses responsive web elements that will automatically resize themselves based on the screen size. As a result, your site will appear clean on screens of every size.
But user experience isn’t the only reason why you should be designing mobile-friendly websites. Google is rolling out their mobile-first indexing update, which states that websites that load and appear better on mobile devices will rank higher on search results pages than those that don’t. In other words, having a mobile-friendly website is vital for boosting the SEO of your law firm’s website.
Tools We Recommend: Google Mobile-Friendly Test
1.2. Improve Your Website Loading Speed
Your website’s loading speed is another important law firm SEO ranking factor. A slow-loading site can frustrate your visitors and spoil their browsing experience.
And guess what?
It could also lead to them bouncing off your website, which would mean that you might lose a potential client. This is especially true for mobile users as data speeds could fluctuate and this can lead to longer loading times for your site if it’s heavy.
In fact, page loading speed is so important that even a 0.1-second improvement in it can increase the number of page views. That’s why optimizing your site for loading speed is one of the major law firm SEO services offered by SEO companies.
Google realizes the importance of page speed when it comes to the browsing experience, which is why it’s rolling out the Core Web Vitals update. This update will make it important to optimize your site for three Core Web Vitals, which include:
- First Input Delay (FID)
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
Image via web.dev
You need to ensure that your website adheres to these requirements to improve the chances of ranking higher in search results. If your website’s performance is poor, it might lose the chance to rank higher in a relevant google search.
Tools We Recommend: Google PageSpeed Insights, web.dev
1.3. Do Internal Linking Properly
Internal links are those links that link to another page on your website. These links play an important role when it comes to law firm SEO and user experience. You should try to add a good number of relevant internal links to all of your web pages.
But why?
When it comes to visitors, internal links redirect them to other informative content on your website. This may act as a deterrent to them bouncing away from your website. As a result, it can increase the average time users spend on your site.
This, in turn, positively affects your law firm SEO as search engines would deem your site to be a useful resource for your audience because they’re spending more time on it.
But that’s not the only benefit of adding internal links.
These links also make it easier for search engine robots to find new content pages on your site to index. When you add links to an existing indexed page, the robots may scrape through it again and discover the new pages and index them. This speeds up the indexing process and can help you get more pages listed in the SERPs. Now, you know how internal links are one of the most important SEO ranking factors, especially for a law firm.
For example, note how Clifford Chance has added internal links to their blog posts.
Image via Clifford Chance
1.4. Create Landing Pages for the Services You Offer
Landing pages can play an instrumental role in improving your law firm SEO. You should consider creating a separate landing page for each service you offer to your clients. Be it corporate legal services or litigation services, you should create a page for each of your services.
But why?
The idea is to get your law firm site ranked for as many relevant keywords as possible. Also, you can optimize every landing page for the specific keyword related to it. This will boost your law firm SEO efforts by increasing your site’s chance of getting ranked higher in the organic search results for that keyword.
What’s more?
Each landing page is designed to achieve a particular goal. In most cases, this goal is lead generation where the copy and web forms are designed to get the visitors to share their contact information with you.
These dual advantages of getting more traffic to your site and boosting lead generation make landing pages an integral part of law firm SEO.
For example, note how Simpson Thacher & Bartlett have focused on Law firm SEO by creating a special landing page to cater to clients from the Energy – Power & Renewables industry.
Image via Simpson Thacher & Bartlett
You can also create separate landing pages to target keywords related to each practice area that your law firm covers.
Tools We Recommend: Unbounce, Leadpages, ShortStack
1.5. Build an SEO-Friendly Website Structure
Your website’s structure also influences your law firm SEO success. A well-structured site is easier for search engine robots to crawl, which means that the crawlers can find new pages of your site with ease. This, in turn, can speed up the indexation process of your site on search engines.
And guess what?
The site structure also affects the browsing experience of your visitors. A poorly structured website will not be easy to navigate. As a result, it may lead to a poor user experience, which can put off your visitors and negatively impact the SEO efforts for your law firm.
So, how can you design a website with a good structure?
You should start by creating a navigation tree for it. Your goal should be to reduce the number of clicks it would take visitors to reach their target page. Try to ensure that they can reach their desired destination in less than three clicks.
This tree should determine the way you develop your website’s navigation.
What’s more?
Along with the website structure, you should also pay attention to the page structure. You should develop your content such that it can be divided into bite-sized sections. The idea is to ensure that your visitors don’t face a wall of text.
Instead, they should be able to skim through your web and blog content with ease and remain engaged. For this, you should break your pages into sections using header tags.
For instance, note how Fortis Law Partners have broken down their homepage using header tags and made their content easy to read to maximize the SEO for your law firm website.
Image via Fortis Law Partners
1.6. Optimize the URLs
URLs also have a role to play in law firm SEO. By default, your URLs may include a mix of numbers, special characters, and alphabets. However, such URLs can be difficult for your visitors to understand.
That’s why it’s a good idea to go for custom URLs that can be designed such that they’re easy to understand.
And how can you do that?
You should include your target keywords in the URLs to help your visitors and search engine robots understand what the page they’re visiting is all about.
For example, note how Latham & Watkins, LLP has added the target keyword, “reduce carbon emissions,” in the URL and title. This is an easy way to boost your law firm SEO.
Image via Clean Energy Law Report
2. Website Content
Is content one of important SEO ranking factors for a law firm?
Yes! While your website’s design matters, the content you add to it matters even more. After all, content forms the base of your website. Nobody’s going to visit your website just for its design. Instead, most people are likely to reach your website through search engines.
And they’ll do so by looking for things, answers, and services. Your website’s content needs to be able to answer the questions of your potential clients if you want to grow your firm and improve your law firm SEO results.
Content has a major role to play when it comes to law firm SEO.
So let’s take a look at how you can leverage website content to improve your law firm SEO and attract potential clients.
2.1. Conduct Keyword Research
Keywords are one of the most important components of your site’s content and SEO for law firms. Not only do they help search engines identify what your page is all about but can also play a major role in helping boost your law firm website’s SEO performance.
But why do you need keywords at all?
The main reason is that keywords are the words used by searchers on search engines to find lawyers and law firms similar to yours. So, if you include the same keywords in your content, your website may show up in relevant search results and this is one of the important ways to boost your law firm site’s SEO performance.
It can help the right people (potential clients) find your law firm site and services.
So, how can you go about keyword research?
To begin with, you need to find a reliable keyword research tool such as Semrush, KWFinder, and Google Keyword Planner.
Image via Google Keyword Planner
You need to enter your primary search term in the tool. When you do so, the tool will come up with a list of related long-tail keywords. Along with the keywords, they’ll also show the keyword difficulty score and search volume of those keywords.
Your goal should be to select keywords relevant to law firms and services from this list. Then, you should filter them based on their search volume and competition. Look for keywords with high volume and low competition to make the most out of them.
You can also hire a digital marketing agency that offers competitive SEO services for law firms.
Once you’ve selected the keywords, you need to start including them in your site and blog content. The idea is to use them to help the search engines determine what your website and its pages are all about.
Tools We Recommend: Google Keyword Planner, Semrush, KWFinder
2.2. Segment Your Keywords
Finding and using keywords in your content isn’t enough. You need to have a well-planned marketing strategy for leveraging your keywords as well.
But why?
The main reason for this is that there are many different types of keywords that you may need to use. These include:
- Navigational keywords: These keywords are usually related to brands and are also called branded keywords. Examples of this are Sidley Austin LLP, Baker McKenzie dispute resolution, etc.
- Transactional keywords: These keywords are used by searchers when they have an intent of completing some transaction. This could be a buy or sell transaction such as “legal services in Washington.”
- Informational keywords: Searchers use these keywords when they’re looking for some sort of information. For instance, “how to file a lawsuit” is an informational keyword.
But why should you segment your keywords in the first place for law firm SEO?
The simple reason behind this is keyword usage. Placing transactional keywords on your service pages is likely to deliver good results as the intent of the page is to sell your law firm services.
On the other hand, if you’re writing blog content, it will be a good idea to use informational keywords as the search intent there is to give information related to law.
2.3. Start a Law Blog
Starting a law blog can help you add more helpful content to your site and target more relevant keywords.
But how can this help with law firm SEO?
When you add a blog and write blog posts, you’ll likely write on a wide range of topics. And here’s where things get interesting.
For each post, you’ll have to conduct keyword research and find the right set of target keywords. Over time, with the growing number of posts you write, you’ll also end up creating content on more keywords.
As a result, your site will potentially be able to rank on the first page for a lot of keywords and you’ll be able to drive website traffic to numerous pages. This straightaway will provide a huge boost to your law firm’s brand awareness as more unique visitors will land on your site every day.
How will this help with your law firm SEO?
When your website starts ranking for a greater number of keywords, you’ll receive more website traffic. If these visitors find your content useful, they’ll spend some time on your site and may even visit multiple pages.
This, in turn, signals to the search engines that the visitors are finding helpful information on your website as they’re spending a long time there. As a result, your site will rank higher for organic search results, helping you boost the SEO performance of your law firm website.
And how does all of this contribute to your bottom line?
This is the most obvious question that you might want an answer to as blogging will require you to invest both time and money. You may also have to spend money to promote your blog content to drive traffic to it.
So, you’d naturally wonder how an investment in this type of digital marketing strategy can help you fine tune your law firm SEO efforts.
The increase in traffic can directly help you grow your digital presence and build brand awareness. It can also help you generate more leads and revenue for your law firm in the long run.
People visiting your site may end up checking out your law practice, and many of them might get in touch with you for the same. Additionally, you can promote your services through your blog content and generate even more leads.
Finally, if you consistently share good content, those interested in learning more about legal stuff may be inclined to register for your subscriber list. This would instantly turn them into leads.
For example, note how Pardo Jackson Gainsburg, PL has included a blog on which they share helpful content regularly to attract and engage prospective clients.
Image via Pardo Jackson Gainsburg, PL
Tools We Recommend: WordPress, Wix.com
2.4. Focus on Content Structure
As mentioned above, you need to structure your website well to ensure a smooth browsing experience for your visitors, one of the law firm SEO ranking factors. But just like the entire website, you need to take into consideration the experience that each page of the site provides visitors with.
After all, you wouldn’t want your visitors to get overwhelmed by seeing a wall of text on each page or blog post that they visit.
So, what should you do?
You should use header tags like H1, H2, H3, etc. to structure your content and divide it into different sections and subsections. The idea is to make it easy for your visitors to be able to go through your blog posts, landing pages, and other site content.
Along with using header tags, you can also use ordered and unordered lists to further substantiate your points and provide information to your visitors with ease. These lists can help convey information quickly without beating around the bush.
When the visitors find it easy to go through your posts, they may spend more time engaging with them. As a result, it can improve the average time spent by visitors on your site and can give a boost to your law firm SEO.
And there’s more.
When you get your content structure right, you will also stand a better chance to get listed in rich snippets on the SERPs. This can give your website added visibility and bring in even more traffic. That’s good news for your law firm website’s SEO.
3. Technical SEO
Technical SEO can be treated as a subset of on-page search engine optimization as it deals with optimizations that you can do on your website. However, unlike on-page SEO for a law firm, technical SEO mainly deals with optimizations that are technical in nature and don’t directly affect the user interface of your site.
However, these optimizations are important as they help in quicker indexation of your content pages. Additionally, they can contribute to the safety of your visitors while browsing your website, among other things.
So, let’s take a detailed look at the various technical law firm SEO techniques you should implement for your law firm website.
3.1. Use HTTPS
The security of your website is important to ensure that your files and data remain secure. However, it also affects the data of your visitors so you need to make sure that their browsing experience is safe too. After all, who would want to return to a spammy website?
That’s why it’s important to secure your website against attacks.
And how can you achieve that?
To safeguard your website, you can add an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate to your website. You can get an SSL certificate from any domain or hosting service provider. All you have to do is add it to your cart along with your domain name or hosting plan. It’s that simple!
In fact, some hosts such as Bluehost also offer a free SSL certificate when you buy hosting from them.
How does an SSL certificate affect your law firm SEO?
The goal of search engines is to direct their users to relevant and useful websites that can provide the right information quickly. But along with this, their goal is also to ensure a safe browsing experience for their users.
That’s why Google started including HTTPS as an SEO ranking factor in 2014. So, if your website doesn’t have an SSL certificate, it’s likely to be pushed down in rankings that hurts your law firm SEO.
There’s one thing that you should keep in mind when using HTTPS for your website. Without implementing a 301 redirect, you’ll be left with two versions of your website. This, in turn, would push the search engines to think that you’ve plagiarized your content from another website, which can affect your law firm SEO.
That’s why you should be careful and implement 301 redirects when switching to HTTPS.
Note how Skadden added an SSL certificate to their website to ensure that the browsing experience of their users remains secure, that can positively impact the SEO results for their law firm.
Image via Skadden
Tools We Recommend: Bluehost, HostGator, GoDaddy
3.2. Use Schema Markup
As mentioned above, rich results can come in handy to help you get even more visibility and traffic from Google search results. But to be eligible for showing up in rich results, you need to implement schema and structured data well.
There are numerous schema types that you can implement for your website but the most relevant ones for your law firm would be:
- LocalBusiness
- Attorney
- Article
- FAQPage
- Review
- KnowledgeGraph
- Organization
To implement the schema, you need to add the JSON code to your website manually. However, if you’re using WordPress, you can choose to leverage plugins that can help you implement schema without any coding knowledge.
But how does schema help with law firm SEO?
When implemented correctly, the schema will help your website show up in the corresponding rich results. These include:
- Knowledge Graph
- People Also Ask
- FAQs
- Reviews
- Maps Search
- Featured Snippets
These results occupy quite some space in the SERPs and can help you get more visibility.
For example, note how Rostron Carlyle Rojas Lawyers have leveraged the KnowledgeGraph schema. The Knowledge Graph is massive and shows their name, photos, location, working hours, positive reviews, and even contact information. This can serve as a great way to drive traffic to their website, acquire new customers, and improve SEO.
Image via Google
However, to succeed, you need to ensure that the schema is implemented correctly. This would require you to test the schema once you’ve added it to your website.
For this, you can leverage the Rich Results Test by Google. All you have to do is enter the URL and the tool will showcase all implemented schema markups and the potential issues.
Tools We Recommend: Rich Results Test, Schema and Structured Data for WP & AMP plugin
3.3. Optimize 404 Pages
What’s the link between 404 and law firm SEO? When you’re browsing through a website, you would want to have a seamless browsing experience. And encountering a 404 page is probably the worst way of spoiling this experience. These are pages that don’t exist or their URLs are broken.
Seeing a 404 page is an instant putoff for any site visitor and it can not only push them to bounce from your website but may also cause them to form a poor impression of your law firm.
As it affects users’ browsing experience, it’s also an important law firm SEO parameter. And that’s exactly why you need to optimize all of your 404 pages.
To do it well, you need to try to make 404 pages appear as normal as possible. Make sure that it looks similar to all of your other pages and allows easy navigation.
What’s more?
Along with the navigation bar and other buttons, you can also include some links to other pages on your website so that they can simply click on them and move away from your 404 pages.
The idea is to keep the visitors on your website so that the average time spent on your site increases.
If you don’t want to optimize your 404 pages, you can also choose to apply 301 redirects to each of them. This way, your visitors will be redirected to your homepage each time they land on a 404 page.
For example, note how DLA Piper Global Law Firm has optimized its 404 pages by adding links to other useful pages to re-engage visitors.
Image via DLA Piper Global Law Firm
3.4. Add Image Alt Tags
Search engine robots don’t have the ability to easily understand the context of your images. As a result, they rely on the accompanying text to figure out what the photo is all about. This text includes the title of the image and the alt tags.
While the image title typically provides the name of the photo, the alt text describes its contents and that’s why it’s extremely important to optimize it well.
And how can you do that?
Your goal should be to try and be as descriptive as possible when writing the alt text of any image you upload on your website.
What’s more?
To optimize it for organic search engine rankings, you should also try to include your target keywords in it. This way, you can improve your chances of getting the images ranked higher in image searches, which can help drive traffic to your website.
For example, see how BROSS LAW, LLC has included alt text for the photos on their website.
Image via BROSS LAW, LLC
3.5. Generate an XML Sitemap
Getting your pages listed on Google quickly has to be your first priority when it comes to technical law firm SEO. After all, what’s the point of all optimizations if your pages aren’t listed on Google at all.
How can you get your pages listed on Google?
Once you’ve created a website, you need to come up with an XML sitemap for it. This sitemap is essentially a list of URLs of your website that can be understood by search engine spiders.
The idea is to include all of the URLs that you want to get indexed by Google into this sitemap. This way, when the search engine bots will crawl the XML sitemap, they’ll know exactly which page they need to crawl and index.
So, how can you create an XML sitemap?
The process is simple, especially if you own a WordPress website. All you have to do is install a plugin like Yoast SEO and Rank Math. These plugins will not only help you set up your website for search engine optimization but also create a sitemap for you.
You can then submit the sitemap on Google Search Console. Every once in a while, the search engine spiders will use this sitemap to crawl your website and index its pages.
For example, note how WLRK has used Yoast SEO to generate an XML sitemap for their website.
Image via WLRK
Tools We Recommend: Yoast SEO, Rank Math
3.6. Ensure Your robots.txt File is Right
While the XML sitemap is important for getting pages indexed, the robots.txt file is no different. This is the file that explains the search engine robots which pages they must crawl and which ones they must not.
Why would you need a robots.txt file?
There may be several pages on your site that you may not want to get listed on search engines. You can include these pages in your robots.txt file and mention that they must not be listed.
Doing so is important as search engine robots have limited crawl budgets and if they spend them on pages that don’t need to be indexed, you’d probably miss out on ones that need indexing.
(If you need help with on-page optimization of your law firm site, you can hire a reputable law firm SEO agency like ours to do the job for you.)
Part 2: Off-Page SEO
Off-page search engine optimization deals with all the optimizations that you can do on websites other than yours. Doing so is important as it helps in establishing your site’s reputation as a valuable resource on the internet.
So, let’s dive in to understand how you can go about off-page SEO.
1. Build Backlinks
Backlinks form the backbone of any off-page law firm SEO strategy and the same applies to law firm SEO. Each backlink from another website to yours counts as a vote towards its authenticity and value.
So, naturally, you’d want to get as many backlinks for your website as possible, right?
No, that’s not the way to go about it.
And why is that?
It’s because along with the number of backlinks, their quality matters as well. Backlinks from more reputable and high-authority websites carry greater weightage than those from websites that aren’t as popular.
Along with the website’s reputation, their relevance matters too. When you create a link building strategy for your law firm, you should prefer to build links from high-authority sites in the legal niche. Links from legal sites will carry greater weightage than links from say, the travel niche.
Additionally, the relevance of the link and anchor text matters. The anchor text should be relevant to the page that the link is directing to but shouldn’t be overly optimized.
How can you build relevant backlinks to your site?
The best way is to leverage the proven link building strategies that never fail. You can start by writing guest posts for other authoritative sites in the legal niche. You should approach prominent websites and pitch ideas for posts to them. It’s a win-win situation as they’d get good content for their audience and you’d get your backlink.
A great place to start would be to reach out to influential bloggers in the legal niche to write a guest post for their site.
Along with guest posting, you can also look for broken links on other websites in the legal niche and then approach the site editors to replace them with links to your resources.
For example, note how Michael J. Schmidtberger from Sidley Austin LLP has got a powerful online presence by contributing to a few websites. This is a great way to ace SEO efforts for your law firm website.
Image via Google
2. Submit HARO Answers
HARO or Help A Reporter Out is a great way to boost your law firm’s off-page SEO. This network lets you help reporters around the world with their stories by answering questions related to your niche.
You can monitor their information requests on the website or receive emails related to the same. All you have to do is quickly answer their questions and send the answers back. If they like your answers, they may choose to feature them in their stories.
These mentions could be simple brand mentions or linked ones. As a result, you may end up getting a backlink from a high-authority news website.
But even if it’s just a simple mention, it could go a long way in establishing you as an authority in the legal niche and boost your law firm SEO.
Resources We Recommend: HARO
3. Increase Brand Mentions
While backlinks can help you with law firm SEO, even brand mentions can come in handy for it. These mentions may not be linking back to you, but Google still views them as a great way of understanding how valuable your brand is.
And why is that?
When your brand’s name appears on numerous high-authority websites in the legal niche, Google will deem each one to be a vote towards your authenticity and legal expertise. The search engine is likely to see it as numerous high-authority websites recommending your law firm. Thus, brand mentions act as important ranking factors and help you maximize the success of SEO for law firm.
What’s more?
Along with law firm SEO, earning brand mentions can also help you build trust among prospective clients. When the name of your law firm appears on several prominent websites, their visitors will start trusting your company and lawyers even more.
So, how can you get more brand mentions?
A great way to go about it is by getting featured in expert roundups. You can provide expert tips in such posts and get your answer listed.
You can then monitor your brand mentions online by using tools like Mention and Social Mention.
Tools We Recommend: Mention, Social Mention, Brand24
4. Leverage Social Media Marketing
While your social media marketing efforts don’t directly affect your law firm SEO, they do help you indirectly. Over 3.96 billion people use social media, which means that you can get access to a vast audience base through it.
Image via We Are Social
The best way to leverage the vast audience that social media has is to increase your reach. You should regularly share content with your audience on social media and include relevant hashtags in your captions.
The idea is to get people interested in your content and firm so that they will click on the links you share and visit your website. When you do so, you’ll be able to drive social traffic to your website. This can also help you increase the average time spent on your website by visitors.
What’s more?
You should also complete your social media profiles and include the links to your website. This may prompt many interested followers to click on the link to check out what your law firm does.
For example, note how Kirkland & Ellis LLP has added their site’s link to their LinkedIn profile.
Image via LinkedIn
Part 3: Local SEO
As law firms are usually local businesses that serve a specific practice area or city, local SEO efforts becomes an important part of law firm SEO. This form of law firm SEO allows you to get your law firm listed in local organic search results and can help you get added visibility on search engines like Google.
You can rank in local search results such as Google Maps listings, Knowledge Graphs, and more.
Let’s take a look at how you can optimize your website for local SEO.
1. Claim Your Google My Business (GMB) Listing
When it comes to local SEO for your law firm, nothing comes quite close to Google My Business (GMB). In fact, it’s the key ingredient of local SEO and can help you gain massive visibility in local searches.
So, it’s critical that you claim your Google My Business listing and fill out all of the relevant information about your law firm. This information includes the name, phone number, address, work timings, etc. of your law firm.
Why do you need to complete your GMB listing?
It’s because this is the information that will help drive traffic to your website and give you a chance to acquire customers. In fact, the “where to buy” and “near me” searches have shot up by 200% between 2017 and 2019.
Image via Think with Google
Additionally, all this information will show up in your Knowledge Graph, so you’d want it to be complete.
You should keep checking your Google My Business listing regularly to verify the accuracy of your information as people can suggest changes as well.
For example, note how Belin McCormick has got their GMB listing right with all of the relevant information added.
Image via Google
Tools We Recommend: Google My Business
2. Get Your Bing Places Listing
As GMB is for local business searches on Google, Bing Places for Business is for Bing search engine. If you want to get more visibility for your law firm across search engines, you should consider getting your Bing Places listing as well.
Just like GMB, you’ll have to claim your Bing Places listing and then complete the profile by adding relevant information. Post that, you’ll be required to verify the listing using a PIN.
Just like GMB, your Bing Places listings will also show up on the right side of Bing’s search results page and can help you drive traffic and potential customers to your website.
Note how the Bing Places listing for Belin McCormick is pretty similar to the one on Google.
Image via Bing
Tools We Recommend: Bing Places for Business
3. Acquire Citations
As getting backlinks and brand mentions can help with off-page law firm SEO, getting citations can help in enhancing your site’s visibility in local searches. Therefore, it’s one of the best ways to rank your site locally.
And how can you get these citations?
The best places to build citations are legal directories. When you get your business listed in those, people will be able to find your law firm with ease.
However, there’s a caveat.
Don’t get your firm listed in every law directory you can find. Instead, you should conduct thorough background research of each of the directories to analyze their reputation. After all, getting listed in a poor directory can harm your brand’s image.
4. Maintain NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) Consistency
Your law firm’s name, address, and phone number are critical as they’re the modes through which people can get in touch with your firm.
So, you must ensure that this information is not only accurate but also consistent through all the places where it’s mentioned. This includes social media, directories, legal websites, and even GMB.
The reason here is that conflicting information can weaken your law firm’s credibility, which can lead the search engines to give other law firms more preference over your firm. To avoid this, you should keep your NAP information updated everywhere.
FAQs
Q1. What is SEO for lawyers?
A. Search engine optimization (SEO) for lawyers or law firm SEO is the process of optimizing your website to drive more relevant traffic to it and get more clients for your law firm. The idea is to get your website ranked well for legal keywords and keywords related to the services you offer as a lawyer.
Q2. Why is SEO for law firms important?
A. Many legal service searches now begin online. If your law firm doesn’t have a powerful presence on search engine results pages for the right keywords, you might miss out on a lot of potential clients. That’s why law firm marketing and SEO for law firm are important to help you rank well in relevant search results.
Q3. How much does lawyer SEO cost?
A. SEO for law firm can cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars to nearly $10,000 per month. A law firm SEO expert determines the cost based on your requirements. However, on average, you can expect it to cost somewhere between $2000-$3000 per month.
Q4. What should I ask when I talk to law firm SEO providers?
A. Some of the questions you should ask law firm SEO providers are:
- Which methods do you implement to improve the search engine rankings of law firm websites?
- Can you guarantee a #1 ranking with your SEO services? (The trick is that a good SEO company will answer this question with a “No.”)
- What is your reporting process?
- Have you done law firm SEO or legal SEO for other law firms and lawyers in the past?
- Do you have any past work results to share?
Q5. How long does it take to see results from an attorney SEO campaign?
A. SEO is a long-term process and it can take anywhere between 6 and 12 months for the results of an attorney search engine optimization campaign to start showing. Usually, the results you’ll see at the 12-month mark will be much better than the ones at the 6-month mark.
Q6. How much do lawyers pay for SEO services?
A. Typically, lawyers pay about $2000 every month for a good SEO campaign for their law firm. However, there is no real way to find out a fixed rate for the same. It all depends on how aggressively you’re pushing your law firm SEO strategy.
If you want to create a lot of content every month and promote it, then you may end up spending more than $10,000 every month on SEO services.
Q7. What is legal SEO?
A. Legal SEO or SEO for a law firm is the process through which you can increase the visibility of your law firm on Google and other search engines. The added visibility can help you drive organic search traffic to your law firm’s website and attract prospective clients.
Q8. How do you market a law firm?
A. There are numerous ways to market a law firm, which include:
- Building a powerful social media presence
- Focusing on SEO for your law firm website
- Launching paid promotions
- Listing your business in multiple legal directories
- Leveraging email marketing campaigns
Q9. How do lawyers get more clients?
A. Lawyers can get more clients by leveraging the following methods:
- Growing their presence on search engines
- Improving social media presence
- Launching PPC campaigns
- Securing referral clients
Q10. How can I make my law firm grow?
A. There are several ways to make your law firm grow. Here are some of the most important ones:
- Invest in law firm SEO.
- Learn to delegate tasks.
- Outsource specific tasks to agencies.
- Hire people at the right time.
- Leverage technology and tools.
- Boost your social media presence.
Ready to Implement These SEO Techniques for Your Law Firm?
Using SEO for your law firm’s website is one of the best marketing strategies to grow your law firm’s visibility online. For this, you will have to get your on-page, off-page, and local SEO right.
You can start by getting your law firm’s website design right. Make sure your website is optimized for mobile and loads quickly. It’s also essential to add internal links and make navigation easy.
You should find the right keywords and include them in your content. Also, pay attention to the content structure of your web pages and blog posts.
What’s more?
Secure your law firm website using an SSL certificate, optimize 404 pages, and generate an XML sitemap.
When it comes to off-page SEO, you should invest in link building to get backlinks and mentions from popular websites. Consider participating in HARO questions and expert roundups.
That’s not all…
You should take advantage of local SEO strategies and claim your GMB and Bing Places for Business listings. It’s also important to acquire citations in popular directories and maintain consistency in your NAP information everywhere.
Do you have any questions about the law firm SEO strategies mentioned above? Ask them in the comments section below.
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