Why Is SEO For Lawyers So Important?

To keep up with the lat­est dig­i­tal trends, every brand in every indus­try and niche should strive to have a strong online pres­ence. When it comes to SEO for law firms, the sit­u­a­tion is the same. Legal con­tent opti­miza­tion and law firm SEO mar­ket­ing are both essen­tial steps that can help lawyers gen­er­ate more leads and traf­fic and ulti­mate­ly, get more clients. 

Here are the prac­tices that make the best SEO for law firms.

The Basics of Legal SEO

SEO or search engine opti­miza­tion is a con­tin­u­ous, over­ar­ch­ing process that aims to make your web­site and brand more vis­i­ble on the inter­net by increas­ing your site’s rank­ing on results pages of the most pop­u­lar search engines like Google and Bing. 

SEO for lawyers means that by increas­ing your rank­ings, more peo­ple in need of legal help will see you online, click on your links, and if your web­site and its con­tent man­age to pro­vide the infor­ma­tion they are look­ing for, chances are, they will reach out to you and con­sid­er using your services.

In order to achieve this, law firms need to focus on opti­miz­ing the fol­low­ing three main categories.

Site Content

Legal con­tent opti­miza­tion entails not only the writ­ten mate­r­i­al on your pages but even the images and videos. High-qual­i­ty, key­word-opti­mized, valu­able con­tent can great­ly con­tribute to bet­ter rank­ings and vast­ly improve your users’ over­all experience.

Strong Backlinking

A strong and pres­ti­gious back­ing pro­file gives your web­site and law firm cred­i­bil­i­ty and man­ages to evoke trust from your audi­ence. These exter­nal pages and links to your web­site can help you estab­lish your­self as an author­i­ty in your area of expertise.

Technical SEO

UX or user expe­ri­ence is anoth­er cor­ner­stone for SEO for lawyers as it is for the rest of the sites that aim to rank high on search engines. Opti­mized title tags, page speed, and site struc­ture are cru­cial in rank­ing high.

The Importance of SEO for Lawyers

Organ­ic search has always been essen­tial for lawyers who are look­ing to grow their prac­tice. Research data shows that 96% of the peo­ple who are look­ing for legal advice turn to search engines, and 74% of con­sumers who actu­al­ly vis­it a web­site will ulti­mate­ly take action.

SEO may seem like a dif­fi­cult task. How­ev­er, set­ting up an effec­tive law firm mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy with a reli­able team of SEO experts shouldn’t be daunt­ing, and the efforts will pay off in the long run.

Content as a Ranking Factor

What are the basics of legal con­tent opti­miza­tion? Cre­at­ing tru­ly valu­able and SEO-friend­ly con­tent will boil down to three basic criteria:

1. Offer­ing Val­ue to Your Users

After doing your key­word research, aim to pro­vide use­ful infor­ma­tion that answers the inquiries (or search terms) of your poten­tial clients. 

For instance, if you are tar­get­ing the key­word “Per­son­al Injury Lawyer in Flori­da,” it only makes sense to have con­tent on your site that per­tains to this key­word, let­ting your poten­tial clients know more about this prac­tice area and your firm. In this case, this will be per­son­al injury law in Flori­da, and your exper­tise in the matter.

When it comes to legal con­tent opti­miza­tion, your web­site should strive to give pre­lim­i­nary answers to your clients. Search engines tend to show web­sites to users that are the best match­es for their search terms, and if you man­age to ful­fill search intent with your con­tent, the engines will most like­ly rank you high­er. When this hap­pens, the search engines start to active­ly gen­er­ate leads.

2. Opti­mize for Keywords

Answer­ing user ques­tions is only part of the “bat­tle.” Good legal con­tent opti­miza­tion also means that search engines should know that you are doing a great job when it comes to answer­ing these ques­tions. You can sig­nal this through the use of keywords. 

When search engines eval­u­ate your con­tent, they will look for these key­words to make sure that you are, in fact, a per­son­al injury lawyer from Florida.

Key­word opti­miza­tion should be a detailed and strate­gized process where you place them in your:

• Title tags
• Head­ings
• Sub­head­ings
• Descrip­tion tags
• The web page URL
• Spread out even­ly through your site con­tent and blog topics

3. Use a Vari­ety of Con­tent on Your Site Address­ing Keywords

First off, iden­ti­fy a pri­ma­ry key­word for each service/topic you want to cov­er. Then, use a wide vari­ety of long- and short-tail key­words in the pieces of con­tent that relate to that spe­cif­ic con­tent. This is one of the more dif­fi­cult steps in SEO for lawyers, but you will want to cov­er as much ground as you can.

The Power of Off-page Citations and Backlinks

Con­tent is impor­tant, but it will bring the best results when com­bined with a strong back­link pro­file. These two steps are able to help tell search engines that your pages are def­i­nite­ly worth show­ing among the first results for searchers.

Good SEO for lawyers also means hav­ing sev­er­al qual­i­ty back­links or refer­ral links on oth­er sites that can dri­ve traf­fic to your platform.

Think of it as an SEO pop­u­lar­i­ty con­test. The back­links point­ing toward your sites work like votes, and they indi­cate that your indus­try thinks high­ly about your exper­tise. The more back­links you have, the bet­ter. This is espe­cial­ly true when these links come from oth­er attor­neys who are also regard­ed as sea­soned experts.

Apart from that, it’s always a good idea to have your con­tact infor­ma­tion on sev­er­al dif­fer­ent pro­fes­sion­al direc­to­ries on the web. It makes it eas­i­er for your poten­tial clients to find you and will sig­nal search engines that you’re a trust­wor­thy firm to do busi­ness with. As such, seek to obtain back­links from local and legal direc­to­ries like Google My Busi­ness and Avvo.

When it comes to SEO, you should nev­er for­get that search engines want to show users the best pos­si­ble sites to find answers to their ques­tions. When the search engines are able to see sev­er­al qual­i­ty refer­ral links from oth­er author­i­ta­tive sites, your busi­ness will also be viewed as a law firm that peo­ple could entrust with their legal issues.

Law Firm SEO Done Right

Apart from the steps we high­light­ed above, a good law firm SEO strat­e­gy should incor­po­rate a myr­i­ad of oth­er impor­tant things like opti­mized, sim­ple site nav­i­ga­tion, and mobile-friend­li­ness. 

In essence, good SEO is for the long-term, not for the short run. Imple­ment­ing these strate­gies takes time, and see­ing them work their mag­ic will also take a while. Patience and expe­ri­ence are both key fac­tors when it comes to SEO success.

Hir­ing an expe­ri­enced SEO agency could help you with imple­ment­ing these strate­gies and pro­vide you with guid­ance on oth­er impor­tant fac­tors such as devis­ing a sol­id con­tent strat­e­gy, con­tent dis­tri­b­u­tion, key­word research, and more.

The truth is, the world of search engine opti­miza­tion is in a state of con­stant change, mean­ing that you will always have to mea­sure your met­rics and tweak your ongo­ing strate­gies to help you grow both online and offline. All this can be over­whelm­ing when you have a busi­ness to run as well. Out­sourc­ing your SEO needs will enable you both to grow and focus on what you do best: help your clients with your knowl­edge of the legal system.