SEO for a law firm can be a daunting task!
What is law firm SEO in the first place?
How can you improve your law firm’s SEO results and better rank in search engines?
You don’t need to be an online marketing guru to become a great SEO expert.
All you need is dedication, discipline and hard work!
In this article, we will look at SEO for law firms by understanding what is a Law Firm SEO, defining your client’s persona, understanding how a law firm SEO is different than basic SEO, understanding your competition and some key SEO strategies you can employ.
This article is divided into the following sections:
- What is Law Firm SEO?
- Identify Your Law Firm Client Persona
- How is SEO Different for Law Firms?
- Very expensive keywords
- Many lawyers are found through local search
- Website and client reviews can be a two-edged sword!
- Understand Competition
- How are your competitors ranking?
- Learn everything about your competitors
- SEO for law firm strategies
- Create Legal Content
- Structured Data
- Local SEO
- Backlinks
- Track Your SEO Results
- SEO For Law Firm Takeaways
Let’s get started!!
What is Law Firm SEO?
Law firm SEO is online strategies deployed to have your law firm’s website better rank on search engine result pages.
Most law firms operate in a highly competitive and saturated markets.
To gain an online advantage over competitors, getting traffic to your law firm website will directly result in increased profitability for your firm.
There are key strategies and best practices you can implement in optimizing your website, its content, its architecture and online presence to dominate the search engine results in your niche.
Identify Your Law Firm Client Persona
For effective law firm SEO practices to bring you real and concrete results, you should take some time to identify the persona of your typical client.
For most law firms, a client will be searching the web either to find out more legal information about a subject-matter or find a lawyer to speak to regarding a recent legal issue they are facing.
With that in mind, you should build your entire website to cater to the needs, wants and demands of that typical client persona you are going after.
How is SEO Different for Law Firms?
SEO for law firms is similar to SEO for other businesses out there.
Law firm SEO does have its own unique considerations to address.
Very expensive keywords
Since law firms operate in a highly competitive market, the legal keywords that you may need to pursue can be extremely expensive.
According to a HubSpot study, the keyword “Houston Maritime Attorney” will cost you a whopping $1,090.00 per click!!
That is absolutely out of this world!
Your law firm will need to tackle SEO in a very strategic and tactical way.
Many lawyers are found through local search
Another important factor for law firm SEO is that most online searchers look for a local law firm.
This makes it crucial that you optimize your website for local SEO searches.
Website and client reviews can be a two-edged sword!
Getting customer reviews and feedback on your site can be great.
This is true for many businesses.
What about law firms?
Well…
Yes and no!
Lawyers are professionals bound by rules of professional conduct and must observe their law society regulations relating to advertisements.
In some jurisdictions, putting customer reviews and feedback on your website may be a violation of the rules of your professional code.
In some other jurisdictions, it’s something that you can do without any restrictions.
If you are authorized to put customer reviews and feedback on your website, the social proof rewards that you will get will be amazing.
If you are not careful, you’ll get dinged by your law society!
Make sure you navigate this carefully!!
Understand Competition
How are your competitors ranking?
You have figured out your typical client persona and you recognize that you are in a highly competitive market, so now what?
The next thing you should do is to understand your competitors and how they are ranking on search engine result pages.
Do your keyword research for the keywords you want to rank for and see who appears on the first page.
In the legal industry, you will inevitably see the top spots dominated by paid advertisements and local results.
You may also see large aggregator sites like Bestlawyers, ThreeBestRated, Avvo, Justia and other sites of that nature taking up a lot of organic listing real estate.
You’ll notice that you may have 25% to 40% of organic results spots you can meaningfully fight for.
That will require a lot of time and effort, but it’s feasible.
Learn everything about your competitors
Once you’ve identified your competitors and how they are organically listing, learn everything you can about them.
What keywords are they ranking for, what is their domain authority, how many backlinks do they have, what is their website structure and more.
Make sure you fully understand your competitors and what keywords they are after.
Understand your competitors’ SEO strategies so you know what you are up against.
Then…
Do everything your competitors are doing and then some!
Let’s consider some actual SEO techniques you can employ to better rank your law firm’s website.
SEO for law firm strategies
There are basic SEO strategies all businesses can employ to boost their rankings online.
We have identified a few SEO strategies to help your law firm outrank your competitors in your legal niche.
These strategies work particularly well for law firms.
Create Legal Content
The best SEO strategy for your law firm is to create the best legal content out there.
Create content to answer your users’ questions
You’ve done your research and you know what is the typical customer person you are after.
What are they looking for when they visit your law firm’s website?
Where are they located?
Are they searching on mobile or on the desktop?
What keywords did they use to find your website?
Based on the data you gathered on your site visitors, make sure you create content that is directly related to your user’s query and what they are looking for.
If you are a business lawyer offering contract review services, write about the best practices for drafting a contract.
Provide your users with checklists or FAQ’s
Provide checklists and useful contract tips to your site visitors.
Answer user questions in a frequently asked questions format.
This can be quite helpful for very common questions your users may have.
Make your content so great that users come back
The more you attract users looking to learn more about contracts and best practices, the more you will have the chance to convert some of that traffic into a paying clientele.
Creating great content is the best law firm SEO strategy you can implement!
Structured Data
Next in your SEO arsenal is structured data or Schema markup.
This is a fantastic way of giving visibility to your website on organic search results.
Add rich snippets to your page
Structured data, especially rich snippets, represent additional information, context and details about your web page.
You can highlight your legal services, your law firm, the location you render services or provide business details like opening hours or pricing.
To place a schema markup in your page, you’ll need to include a snippet of code in your page’s header or body.
You can use Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool to test that your structured markup was successfully placed on your web page.
Make sure you do this to get ahead of your competitors.
Get Google featured snippet
If you do this right, you can get a Google featured snippet by providing a step-by-step answer to common legal questions that people have.
Structured data, schema markup and rich snippets can work wonders for you if you are able to score a Featured Snippet on a Google search result page.
Local SEO
Most people looking for a lawyer will do a local search.
For your law firm’s website to be found, you’ll need to show up in the local search results.
That’s where you need to focus on your Local SEO strategies.
You can do that using Google My Business.
Google My Business is a way for Google to validate that you are a real business operating out of where you claim to be.
Local results will appear for people searching for businesses near their location.
Once you are verified, Google will include your law firm’s website in local search results.
This is where you can capture the local searches performed by your users.
You can read useful content provided by Google to help you improve your local ranking on Google.
Local search is a crucial SEO strategy for law firms!
Backlinks
Backlinks is one important law firm SEO strategy that your law firm should employ.
Backlinks improve your site authority
Backlinks are the number of websites linking to your site and web pages.
The more people link to your site, the more your site authority will go up, especially if the sites linked to you have high authority themselves.
Register for online directories
One way you can create links to your website is to get registered in legal directories, local chambers of commerce and online business directories.
By registering in these online directories and getting them to link back to your website, you will help improve your site authority in general.
Create a lead magnet
A lead magnet is a downloadable document or form your user can use providing them high value.
Lead magnets can be a good way for you to get backlinks as others may link to your lead magnet so they help their own users.
Putting the effort to create backlinks to your law firm’s website will put you on the path to driving more traffic, more leads and more sales!
Track Your SEO Results
You’ve put all the effort in putting together the right SEO techniques in place, now you need to measure your results.
Tracking your SEO results is crucial
Tracking your SEO results is equally important as implementing an SEO strategy at all.
It will take a long time for your SEO efforts to pay off.
It’s not something that you can work on today and get results by next week.
You need to be patient.
Analyze how your website is performing on search engines
As you are waiting to hit the first page of Google, you should monitor how your pages are performing.
What keywords are you ranking for? Which keywords are doing well? Which pages are giving you the best results?
Analyze your SERP visibility to see how many keywords you are ranking for and the estimated traffic.
Use Google Analytics to examine where your traffic is coming from and where they are going.
Track your law firm’s leads coming from organic search results.
With all the data you collect and gather about your law firm’s website, you will then be in a position to correct course and ensure you remain on the right track.
SEO For Law Firm Takeaways
Having read this article, you are better equipped to tackle your law firm’s SEO strategies.
Remember, you are running a marathon, it’s not a sprint!
Achieving results is a fruit of constant effort and dedication to SEO.
Your law firm operates most likely in a highly competitive and over-saturated market so you’ll need to have a robust law firm SEO plan.
In this article, we looked at SEO for law firms by understanding what is a Law Firm SEO, defining your client’s persona, understanding how a law firm SEO is different than basic SEO, understanding your competition and some key SEO strategies you can employ.
We hope that you enjoyed it.
Do you have any tips or recommendations relating to SEO for law firms? We would love to hear from you. Drop us a comment!
