If Google is the search engine, SEO is the lead generation engine!
SEO, when done right, is one of the best lead generation Strategies for any law firm.
A typical law firm serves clients within its geographical location - city, or state. And one of the best ways to acquire those clients is through a local SEO strategy. Law firms can easily rank for local search queries such as
- "trial lawyers near me"
- "Property lawyers in Lagos"
- "lawyer in California"
- “top family lawyer in Lagos”
And because these search terms are performed with transactional intent, it is an avenue to close the deal with clients.
In this article, we'll dive deeper into law firm SEO or simply put law and attorney SEO.
But first, my lord, permit me to ask…
Is SEO Legal?
Although we are not in a courtroom, I think letting our lawyers know a little about what we do as SEO will set the tone right.
Hey My lord, SEO is legal. Alive and breathing! And I'm here to prove that to you...
At one point, we have all used search engines to search for information, search for businesses online with navigational types of queries, or seek direct answers to questions.
Chances are high that you have performed queries like:
"Dollars to Naira"
"What time is it in California" or Toronto or somewhere else
"Today's news" ...etc.
In the same way visitors on Google perform searches to find, learn or even buy phones or TVs, People also seek out legal services—either to learn or contract a law firm nearby.
SEO in the Picture...
Gaining visibility and ranking on Google for people to see what you have, the legal service you offer requires adequate knowledge of how search engines work and how to optimize for it.
And this is where SEO comes in.
The SEO industry utilizes a set of techniques with best practices — laid out by search engines (e.g., the Google webmaster guidelines) to help businesses and companies rank top of Google, and drive relevant traffic to their website.
So, the law firms are not left out of these benefits and it is a means lawyers can improve their law firm’s chances of getting found by people searching for the services they offer.
Under the hood, SEO works to make your website accessible to Google crawlers and users alike, and optimize your content to make it readable and discoverable by search engines.
The process makes it easier for Google algorithms to scan your website for content in order to make sense of the content, catalogue it (indexing) and display the right page on your website to users on the search results page (ranking).
Because SEO is a process with many things involved, many experts recommend having a
holistic, ongoing SEO strategy; strong enough to sustain or increase traffic and keep your door busy all the time.
What Is Law Firm SEO?
Law firm SEO or Attorney SEO or legal SEO is the process of increasing your law firm’s visibility in search engines, helping you to drive targeted traffic to your website and office.
The purpose of law firm SEO strategies and implementation techniques is to get your law firm’s website ranking at the top of the organic search results so that you can attract more prospective clients.
First-page visibility is a fiercely competitive position and many lawyers struggle to obtain first-page ranking on search engines like Google and Bing.
To make things easier, SEOs employ a variety of tactics to get you to that position where you too can generate traffic, and turn the traffic into new clients.
Why Is Law Firm SEO Important
Now that you understand what SEO is all about, let's take a closer look at some of the benefits.
The benefits of SEO to your law firm are by far beyond the rankings that we have mentioned earlier, SEO can serve your law firm in many ways:
- Law firm SEO increases your law firm’s visibility on Google and improves your website traffic.
- Increases your brand authority and reputation; leading to more trust in you.
- Help you attract more clients.
- Legal SEO can generate positive PR for your law firm.
- Attracts positive client reviews.
- Increases conversions/lead generation on your website.
- Attorney SEO attracts new partnerships & networking opportunities.
Let's look at some of these in detail
Legal SEO as a lead generation engine
1. Drive Relevant Traffic Through GMB
With SEO you can drive more phone calls from Google My Business Profile (GMB) and local search in addition to the one-spot you occupy on the regular search results.
An optimized Google My Business profile ensures that when users search for queries like...
- “family lawyer near me”
- or “Property lawyers in Abuja”
...your law firm’s GMB profile shows up for these terms. From here, users can click on your website link or call you with the number you provided on your profile.
This strategy is part of local SEO that will
improve your local presence and create more opportunities for potential clients to know about your law firms.
2. Generate Additional Traffic Through Your Blog
Aside from bringing clients to your law firm through the Google My Business page, your blog is another platform where you can provide amazing valuable information that will attract visitors from search engines.
With your blog, you can target keywords potential clients are using to search for your services online, and when they visit your site, you convert them into leads.
A professional SEO knows how to uncover the low-hanging fruits to go after that will yield a return on investment within a short space of time.
Low-hanging fruits keywords are usually high-volume, low-competitive keywords that you can turn into engaging blog topics. You can then optimize this content to attract users who are searching for those keywords and properly guide them down your lead generation funnel. You can even monetize your blog for extra income
Some SEO content ideas for Your law firms
- How-to articles.
- Complete guides on legal topics.
- FAQ pages (Good for
- Featured Snippets).
- Ebooks.
- Legal Checklists.
- Interviews with industry professionals.
- Local event guides.
SEO is the number one lead magnet for your law firm.
So, ensure your content strategy includes lead generation so you can see a direct return on your investment.
Then, all you need to do is to nurture, or in the case where you include a callback request form on your website, you can easily call and close the deal.
3. SEO Positions Your Law Firm as an Authority in Your Niche
A reputable online presence of your law firm is a signal of authority in your niche. People begin to see you as an expert in the legal world. This can land you invitations from top officials to speak at an event. It could make people trust you more and choose you above other lawyers in the industry.
SEO can land your law firm at a height you never dreamt of, and open doors to partnerships thus bringing more money to your firm.
Law Firm SEO Tips to Rank Your Website on Google
The coveted spot on Google isn't for a joker. It is something you need to take seriously, prioritize, and invest in it.
To rise to the top of the organic
search results, follow these steps and you will start to see tangible results from your marketing efforts. Remember, patience wins it all.
1. Keyword Research
Keyword research is an integral part of any SEO campaign. The law firm is a competitive niche and to outrank your competitors, you need a solid SEO strategy - and that must begin with keyword research.
Your goal in keyword research is to find low-hanging keywords — having a high search volume, low-medium difficulty and has maintained a constant trend in the past months.
These types of keywords will attract the right kind of prospects to your website.
To avoid calls from people who either need something you don't offer or are just on the phone to waste your time, you need to uncover the search intent behind these keywords.
To be honest, off-base keyword targeting is the main reason behind those calls that don't seem to be in line with your services.
It's important you carve a niche for yourself, define your audience and target users with the right keywords.
Keywords such as “car accidents,” “product liability claims,” “family law,” “criminal defence,” “employment law,” etc are very broad keywords and search engines will interpret the intent in several ways.
Also, keywords such as “lawyer in Lagos” or "lawyer in Texas" will end up with different meanings.
But targeting “[practice area] lawyer in [location]” is more specific. E.g.,
- "criminal lawyer in Texas.
- "Tax law practitioner in Lagos"
This will ensure that only the right and potential clients call you for your services.
2. Website Design
While developing or designing your website you should pay more attention to the users and consider the effect on SEO.
A bad web design can harm your SEO. For instance, if the design does not factor in performance in terms of loading speed, you may find it hard to rank on Google.
Speed is top of those factors Google uses to rank websites.
Some SEO-friendly Website Design Best Practices
Load speed: Users won't wait for long if your site fails to load in under 3 seconds.
Typography: Use simple and readable fonts type and sizes to improve your readers' experience on your site.
Mobile responsiveness: mobile device-friendly websites will boost your conversion rate.
Site navigation: Good website architecture and navigation let users find information easily.
Conversion text and buttons: Adding obvious call-to-action buttons so users
know how to get in contact with your law firm.
Graphics: Using professional graphics
or custom photos rather than generic stock images will help your law firm's credibility.
Internal links: Proper internal links to other pages and posts on your site ensures users can find additional resources with ease when they visit your website.
Test your site design elements: Check to see that the contact forms are working and messages are delivered as configured. Also, check all clickable links and ensure they do not lead to a 404 page.
A professional web designer with knowledge of ethical SEO knows these best practices and can assist you to build a site that’s fast, functional, mobile responsive and user-friendly.
3. Branding & Authority
At the time of writing this article, Messi made his second assist of the season finding Mbappe in a sea of defenders. How his pass was able to locate the striker was amazing.
This is exactly what Branding does to your law firm. It singles you out in a sea of competition. It gives you so much credibility and reputation— enough to solidify your brand.
SEO is a spotlight for your brand. But let's highlight the components of branding:
- Investing in a professional logo.
- Building an aesthetically stunning website.
- Choosing colour combinations for your brand.
- Writing a clear mission and vision statement for your business.
- Creating a unique selling proposition (USP).
However, branding goes beyond those visual elements such as logos, it's abstract! It's a promise made, promise delivered.
4. Technical SEO
Just as the name implies, technical SEO refers to all the technical inner workings of your website. Those elements and functions keep your site running smoothly but have a direct or indirect effect on search engines' crawlers.
A typical example is a robot.txt file in the root directory of your website, which tells search engines what to crawl and what not to crawl on your website.
Another is the directive that tells search engines to index/noindex or follow/no-follow a certain webpage on your site.
Something like these, if not properly configured can affect your website's visibility in search engines.
You could have the best branding or attractive website in the world, or implement the best on-page SEO with the right keywords but if your site has technical issues, nothing moves.
Some technical SEO best practices
- Use an absolutely readable short URL: example “legalfirm.com/company-law/”.
- Fix all 404 error (not found) pages: point them to live pages
- Create and submit a sitemap of your website to increase crawlability.
- Use SSL: Secure your site using https:// not http://
- Ensure your website is responsive to multiple devices.
- Set up Google Search Console and Google Analytics to track traffic to your website.
5. On-Page Optimization
On-page optimization is the direct process of incorporating keywords you discover from research into your web pages.
The goal here is to make your content discoverable by searchers who are using such keywords to find information or something else on Google.
The focus or target keywords for your site should target specific pages and not be used on more than one page throughout your website.
And to avoid repeating the same focus keyword on the page, use synonyms or related keywords.
Content optimization is about optimizing for readers and search engines. So, when carrying out the process, make sure your content is readable, sounds natural and it's scannable as well.
Here are the basic things you need to know to implement on-page optimization:
- Use a focus keyword for each specific page or post on your website.
- Optimize your content with the focus keyword and related keywords or synonyms.
- Use your focus or target keyword in the title tag or your post or page.
- Use the target keyword or a related keyword in your page’s Heading 1 (<H1>).
- Link to other relevant pages or posts on your website.
- Link to reputable, authority sources, as needed.
- Include high-quality images with descriptive alt text containing the keywords you have used in the body of the content.
We have a more in-depth knowledge base on On-Page SEO optimization best practices for your advantage. Do have a look at that.
Off-Page SEO Optimization
The term Off-Page SEO is usually used to refer to link building in the industry. It means all the practices carried out outside of your website to increase its rankings on search engines.
Law firms can boost their rankings in the local search pack by paying attention to their Google My Business profile.
Create accounts and submit their information to reputable directories (like Bing Places, Finelib, NGcontact, etc.).
These local directories will help your website get found by potential clients and will send SEO-friendly trust signals to your website.
Another important but less often considered by local businesses is reviews. Client reviews are a huge one for your law firms.
A 5-star rating and positive reviews can be the deciding factor that convinces a potential client to work with you over a poorly-reviewed competitor.
Reviews are also part of what Google uses to rank your website on local packs for near me and other localized search queries.
In addition, acquire backlinks from other websites through guest posting on industry-related blogs, getting featured in interviews, or investing in PR services.
Backlinks are one of the heavyweight ranking signals on Google. When a reputable business website or authority blog links to you, it can send the trust signal that your website needs to rank above others in search engines.
A law firm's SEO is different in the sense that reputation is everything. Your SEO must be solid and ensure that everyone linking to your site has a level of trust in Google's eyes else they send bad signals that could also affect your ranking.
100 quality backlinks are better than 10000 low-quality backlinks to your website.
7. Conversion Optimization
There is no point in bringing people to your website without converting them. Traffic is important but the end goal is rarely
traffic; it’s leads or revenue. By creating a strategy with conversion optimization in mind when building your website, you increase your chances of turning that traffic into actual clients.
Conversion optimization best practices to make the most of the traffic to your website:
- Create simple and relevant menu navigation.
- Add clear and concise call-to-action buttons.
- Create a Contact Us page with information that's consistent with the Google My Business profile and social handles.
- Make people easily find and call your number
- Include contact forms throughout your website.
- Inter-links new pages to relevant pages on your website (including blog posts).
- Showcase client testimonials and reviews.
- Give users opportunities to subscribe to your newsletter, ebooks, or other downloadables you have created.
The goal here is to create multiple touchpoints across clients' journeys as they
engage with your content.
8. Content Marketing
We talked about creating content and posting it on your blog. But in an actual sense, it’s not enough to just publish, pray, and wait
for the traffic to roll in.
There is one more thing you have to do; it's content promotion. You need to create a multi-channel marketing strategy in order to get the most life out of your content. You don't want the money and time spent creating those content to be a waste of course.
So, each time you publish a new post, notify your readers who have subscribed to your blog and share the post across social media. You can even repurpose the same content as a YouTube video or reference it in a paid ad.
Get on forums like Reddit and Quora, find questions related to your piece of content, answer them and link to the full article on your website.
Conclusion
Legal SEO is necessary when it comes to targeting searchers within your service area. Because the majority of the law firms operate within a specific service area.
Reviews are super useful for law firms. It can be a pointer or sign of good reputation and trust to your clients.
The more positive reviews you get, the
more likely other people choose to work with you.
Content marketing and promotion play an important role in business. 84% of people expect brands to produce content that entertains, engages, provides solutions, and produces experience.
Remember, without content, there's no SEO, there's no marketing.
If you need help setting up your law firm—website design, promotion strategy, and SEO, we are just a "phone" step away from you. Call us today or request a callback.