Through this guide, you will learn –
- Law firm search engine optimization fundamentals
- How to conduct keyword research and increase organic traffic in the proper way
- How to create content for real prospective customers
- How to optimize a law firm website without a web development degree
- How to create and optimize a Google Business Profile for your law firm
- How to make yourself stand out in local search
- How to build links without getting penalized
- How to measure SEO success without a statistics background
- Attorneys should use SEO marketing services to get more cases.
What Do You Mean by Attorney SEO??
Attorney SEO is the procedure of emerging the quality and authority of website content to obtain and increase search engine rankings as well as organic website traffic to a law firm’s website.
When people need a lawyer or legal services, they usually look for one of the following:
- Social media
- Search engines
- Word of mouth
Search engines are not only the most popular digital marketing channel used by people, but they are also the easiest to measure return on investment for (ROI).
The ability to reach a large number of people organically (i.e. without advertising) on social media has declined significantly in recent years, particularly on platforms like Facebook.
As a result, many businesses have turned to paid advertising on them instead (which is what Facebook wanted all along).
It’s already clear that most people rely on search engines to find legal services. While social media and word of mouth are important, online search almost always dominates the research phase.
When we examine the digital marketing channels used by Morgan and Morgan to drive website traffic, we see that organic search outperforms social media and paid advertising.
Other than referrals (which aren’t always consistent), search engine optimization is the only marketing channel your attorney firm can invest in that can yield compounding returns over time.
For example, content shows three opportunities:
- Possibility of ranking for more keywords and driving more traffic
- The capability for high-quality content to generate natural link-building opportunities further improves your ability to rank higher on Google.
- The procedure to convert website visitors into potential customers by persuading them to believe you and contact you.
How Should I Go Through the Guide?
Before we dive into the fundamentals of lawyer SEO, it is important to note that, while this guide is intended to be accessible to a wide range of skill levels, a certain level of comfort with technical/computer issues is expected.
If this is your area of expertise, please proceed to the next section (“Why is Law Firm SEO Important?”).
However, if you are unfamiliar with technology or would simply prefer to have a professional SEO company for personal injury lawyers handles things for you, we would be happy to discuss the attorney SEO services that we provide.
What is the Reason Why Law Firm SEO is Crucial?
Consumers rely heavily on search engines to find, research, and select a law firm.
- Organic search (SEO) accounts for 53% of all traffic, while paid search (PPC) accounts for 27%.
- Google Search, Google Images, and Google Maps account for 93% of all global traffic.
- 86% of people ignore paid ads in favor of organic search results.
- SEO, according to 61% of marketers, generates more leads than any other marketing initiative.
- Organic search generates 66% of call conversions in the legal sector.
The industry of legal marketing is cutthroat. If you own a law firm and want to generate new clients as part of your marketing strategy, whether or not your website can be found in Google search is critical.
Why is it necessary for my law firm to have a website that is optimized for search engines and conversions?
Because search engines are the primary way people find businesses to hire, attorneys must have a website that is optimized for search engines like Google (and, to a lesser extent, Bing).
Obviously, this isn’t a novel concept, as the Yellow Pages are no longer (and haven’t been for quite some time) the go-to source for research that they once were.
Businesses require the best resource to answer searchers’ questions, satisfy user intent, and highlight the company’s specialization.
A website, regardless of the industry, serves as the central hub for your search engine optimization strategies. It serves as the foundation for everything you will do to position yourself in front of your ideal prospective client, as well as create and promote your brand.
Your website’s design is also crucial. A website holding a high ranking with a poor design will fail to convert visitors into leads. It should be designed to foster trust, raise awareness, and motivate people to act.
- 70% of law companies acquire new clients through their websites.
- The first position in Google search results has a click-through rate of 31.7%.
- Only 0.78% of Google searchers click on results on the second page.
How SEO Compares to Other Law Firm Marketing Channels
1. Legal SEO vs PPC and Google Ads
Pay-per-click and endorse ads essentially lease your marketing visibility: it vanishes when you stop paying for them.
SEO for lawyers and law firms is an investment.
The content and backlinks you obtain have a long-term and evergreen impact; in other words, their Google rankings pay dividends far into the future. Yet, SEO creates an asset that your company owns rather than renting.
Furthermore, PPC in the legal industry can be prohibitively expensive. For example, if you’re bidding for a high-intent keyword like “car accident lawyer,” it could cost you $300+ per click on average.
2. SEO vs Social Media Marketing
On desktop, search traffic converts 10 times better than social media traffic!
Search engines (particularly Google) have only gotten better at comprehending the meaning of the phrases we type into them, and as a result, they are being used even more on the internet to slice through the noise.
Given the prevalence of search, it stands to reason that lawyers marketing themselves online should ensure that their websites are made and configured to be found efficiently while using these tools.
The Most Competitive Companies Bother About SEO
The graph mentioned below showcases the best 20 law companies across the US to get traffic on websites. The overwhelming reliance on search engines as a primary marketing channel demonstrates how critical law firm SEO is.
It’s already clear that most people rely on search engines to find legal services.
As per the National Law Review, almost 96% of people looking for legal advice go with search engines during their research procedure, and consumers about 74% visit the websites of law firms to take action.
Simply put, prospective clients find and hire law firms through organic search.
The most significant aspect of an SEO campaign is determining your return on investment (not just money, but also time). After all, whether you hire a freelancer or do the work yourself, you need to be certain that the seeds you’ve planted will bear fruit.
If you need an unbiased assessment of your company’s SEO health, contact our expert SEO strategist today to discuss your alternatives.
Key Points of Law Firm SEO
Google’s algorithm carries hundreds of SEO ranking factors that showcase the rank of a website. To achieve the best results, you must understand and implement all of them as part of your SEO strategy.
Google’s main goal with its search engine is to provide people with useful results as quickly as possible when they find them.
They explicitly tell us in the documentation for their helpful content update that we should focus on people-first content by asking ourselves the following questions:
- Do you have a current or engaged audience for your business or website that would benefit from the content if they came to you directly?
- Is your content clear in demonstrating first-hand expertise and depth of knowledge (for example, expertise gained from using a product or service or visiting a location)?
- Is there a primary goal or focus for your website?
- Will someone leave your content feeling they’ve learned enough about a topic to help them achieve their goal?
- Will someone who reads your content feel satisfied with their experience?
- Are you following our recommendations for core updates and product reviews?
If we want to create the kind of content Google wants to reward, we should ask ourselves these questions as we do keyword research, content marketing, on-page optimization, digital PR, and local SEO.
Keyword Research
The result would be catastrophic. Likewise, this applies once you publish new pages Just suppose you would be going forward regardless of understanding the validity of the case. along with articles on your website. The foundation of keyword research is good SEO after technical SEO.
If you create content without first conducting keyword research, you will waste time and money trying to get people to your site for search terms that no one searches for.
Our keyword research for lawyers chapter includes the following topics:
- Keyword research is important.
- How keyword research is done correctly.
- Which tools should be used?
- The important role search intent creates in how SEO works.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is one of the most popular and cost-effective ways to draw qualified traffic from your target audience to your site.
Going through and understanding the hierarchy between blogs, practice area pages, and post articles throughout the year can create a difference in ranking or not.
The chapter on content marketing for lawyers comprises –
- Your law firms require different types of landing pages.
- How could the topic clusters be made to rank on Google smoothly
- The long-form content holds thorough details that can be prioritized.
- Google implies important considerations to websites publishing information across the legal industry.
On-Page Optimization
The way you initiate your law firm’s website architecture can have an impression on your Google rankings and how you examine performance data in tools like Google Analytics.
It is not as simple as simply creating pages to properly optimize them for search engines. Several factors assist Google in determining what your content is about and how well it will satisfy searchers seeking answers.
Our on-page SEO for lawyers (also known as on-site SEO) chapter will help you understand the various SEO tactics you can use to improve your search engine rankings, such as:
- How to design your website.
- How to generate your title tags, meta descriptions, and page headings.
- How to develop the user experience and page speed.
- Top practices for image optimization and internal linking.
- How to use schema markup to increase clicks by including FAQs and reviewing special snippets.
Link Building
You’ve probably heard how crucial it is to build backlinks to your website. That is correct. However, building links to your law firm’s website can be difficult and dangerous if done incorrectly.
Here explain the link building for lawyers –
- What links are significant for lawyers,
- For attorneys, these are 16 proven link-building strategies.
- In order to get the best result, have that best practice from digital PR and off-site campaigns.
Google My Business
In the law firm’s online marketing strategy, the important component is your Google My listing which is also referred to as GMB but now called Google Business Profile. You won’t be able to rank in the map pack if people are looking for an attorney in your area without it.
Google My Business for lawyers includes everything from –
- How to begin step by step
- How to generate it to rank up in the nearby search results on the SERPs ( Search Engine Results Pages).
Local SEO
Local SEO for lawyers includes more than just your Google My Business listing. Pages on your site can also rank below map listings for keywords in organic search results. Several keywords trigger local search results without a map pack that you should target to avoid missing out.
Local SEO for lawyers carries the importance of –
- Favorable feedback on third-party websites.
- Getting your company listed in multiple directories with citations, and which ones to prioritize (hint: it’s not Avvo anymore).
- How to combat spam, which can easily steal your traffic and leads
Measuring and Assessing Performance
What you don’t measure, you can’t improve. We explain how to assess the success of your law firm’s SEO investment in the chapter Measuring SEO Success for Lawyers.
On-page optimization, link acquisition campaigns, keyword rankings, which traffic metrics to focus on, and how to track conversions and ROI by tying leads to marketing efforts using analytics and call-tracking phone numbers are all covered.
Understanding how to do this on your own can aid you to refine your SEO efforts if you’re doing things yourself, or it can help you gauge and hold your SEO company accountable.
Law Firm SEO Services
Law firms require the most common SEO services to rank higher on Google:
- Website SEO audits
- Technical SEO
- Content marketing
- SEO strategy
- Local SEO
- On-page optimization
- Link building
If you don’t have an SEO expert on staff and need to hire an agency, make sure they provide these services.
It’s important to remember that SEO is not the same as web design or web development.
However, good design and UX (user experience) are critical to the overall success of your website.
If you require those services, make certain that the firm you’re working with offers them and includes them in a statement of work.
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By SEO
- Mar 31, 2023
By SEO
