What Is SEO For Lawyers?
Anytime someone has a question, the first thing they do is type it on Google. The same happens in the case when someone wants to search for a law firm. Did you know that 93% of all global traffic originates from Google Search, Google Maps, and Google Images?
Furthermore, 61% of marketers agree that SEO generates the most leads compared to other marketing initiatives. As a law firm that wants to generate new clients, part of the marketing efforts should be focused on SEO for lawyers and everything that SEO entails.
The online space for the legal industry is hypercompetitive. You want to make sure your website ranks on Google search when someone searches for lawyers or law firms in their region. This article discusses the benefits of SEO for law firms and how it can help gain visibility online.
What Is Lawyer SEO?
Search engine optimization for lawyers is a long-term organic process to improve the visibility of your law firm’s website on Google searches. A well-designed and optimized SEO strategy can help you increase the quality and quantity of organic traffic to your website by ensuring that the website fulfills the factors which govern the ranking system on Google results. By increasing traffic, you have a higher chance of converting visitors into potential future clients.
SEO for lawyers entails various activities. For example, in-depth keyword research, link building, onsite SEO optimization, Google Profile optimization, SEO analytics, and content development together leads to increased website ranking and leads.
Google search is the first place where clients search for local services. Your law firm can become discoverable if you have used the right SEO practices. Moreover, out of all the marketing initiatives, SEO outperforms word-of-mouth and social media marketing.
For instance, one of our law firm clients experienced an 800% increase in website traffic with our customized SEO campaign. With the right strategies, their website was able to rank for various competitive keywords resulting in gaining leads and converting them into clients.
SEO for lawyers is a process that requires patience. However, the compounding return over time makes it an investment that’s worth it. You can have steady growth with the right SEO strategy to boost business outcomes.
Why Is SEO For Law Firms Important?
There are several benefits to using SEO for law firms and lawyers with a well-structured SEO strategy in place. You can rank your website for high-volume keywords by using the right SEO plan.
Furthermore, a well-defined SEO strategy helps you build your online reputation and establishes you as a trusted authority in your online niche and practice area. It helps create backlinks that enable your website to rank even higher than it already is.
SEO is showing no signs of slowing down or disappearing. On the contrary, as more people are using Google search to find local services, it is a golden opportunity for businesses to establish their online presence and connect with potential clients. One thing to remember is that SEO factors change with time, and the strategy should have the flexibility to accommodate these changes.
Why Should You Optimize Your Website For SEO?
In the past, the yellow pages were the go-to to search for a local business. However, today Google search is the modern alternative of yellow-pages that allows people to search for local businesses.
Now with Google being the primary search engine, your website is competing against thousands of others to reach the top spot in the search. However, there are only limited spots on the first page of Google that get any attention from potential clients.
SEO helps rank your website on the first page for maximum visibility. Furthermore, it also helps establish your business expertise by showcasing your knowledge and establishing credibility. Your website is the base of all your digital marketing efforts. The only thing that builds a solid foundation to help it establish itself online is SEO.
Your website needs to be SEO-optimized so that it gains traffic, converts visitors, builds trust online, and increases awareness. Lastly, it will help encourage the visitors to your website to take action.
SEO For Lawyers Ranking Factors
Let’s break down the SEO factors that help rank your law firm’s website. These are discussed in detail below:
Factor #1: Content
The number one lawyers SEO factor is content which should achieve the following three criteria:
1. It should answer the search intent or inquiry made by the user
Let’s understand this with an example. If you are a law firm in Michigan that wants to show up for the term “criminal lawyers in Michigan,” then your website content should revolve around speaking to your potential clients regarding your practice area.
You should step into your client’s shoes and try to answer some preliminary questions through your website content. Only if the searcher thinks your content fulfills the user’s search intent will your website be able to rank higher for that particular search term.
2. It should be keyword optimized
Keywords help search engines read what the content on a website is about. It’s great to answer the user’s search intent, but it should also be keyword-optimized to help you rank your website for that particular page.
When keyword-optimizing your website content, make sure the keywords appear in the title tag, headings and subheadings, description tag, the website URL, and throughout the paragraphs.
3. Create a variety of content to target various keywords in a category
Another important factor to account for higher website ranking is that you should first be able to identify a primary keyword and then use variations to build content so that it covers more ground in an online search. A variety of short and long-tail keywords should be used in your website content.
People usually search in natural language, and the goal here is to create as much content as possible that satisfies the search intent for the primary keyword. For instance, if you are creating content around “criminal lawyers in Michigan,” then you must also cover content on “best criminal lawyers in Michigan” and “how to find criminal lawyers in Michigan,” among other variations of the same keyword.
Factor #2: Backlinks and Off-page citations
There is a lot of great content on the internet, but Google has to determine which content is the best to rank on the first page. One factor that Google uses to determine this is by the quality and quantity of backlinks. Backlinks are referral links that help drive traffic to your website from other websites.
You can understand Backlinks by thinking of them as votes. If your law firm’s website has a lot of links from other trusted websites, it indicates to Google that your website has good quality content that other websites are relating to.
A lower number of backlinks will indicate that your popularity and credibility for content are low, so search engines will not consider sending users to your website. The more backlinks your website has, the more it is considered a reputable and trusted source by search engines.
Another factor that optimizes your website and helps it rank is off-page citations. Your contact information becomes visible in various places on the web, including potential clients and the search engine.
The best way to gain local SEO exposure is to gain citations and backlinks from places that display business information. Some ways to improve off-page citations include legal directories like Avvo, local directories such as Google My Business, reviews on other websites, social media shares, and your social profiles such as Twitter and Facebook.
Factor #3: Technical SEO
Technical SEO is one of the major contributors to your SEO success. It can make or break your website’s performance. However, it is the hardest to achieve, especially if you are not an SEO expert.
Technical SEO determines the Google-friendliness of your website, in easy words. It encompasses various factors, including sitemaps and security. Technical SEO ensures that your website is following the Webmaster guidelines for ranking, it is mobile-friendly and loads quickly, and whether it is easy to navigate.
A good thing about technical SEO is that if you have implemented the right SEO strategies from the beginning ensuring all the technical aspects are well-addressed, it will be fairly easy to optimize it further down the line.
Conclusion
SEO for lawyers is important if you want to gain visibility online, establish authority and become searchable in local searches. In addition, it helps optimize your web presence for success and ranking.
The right SEO strategies will help you gain traffic and convert leads into clients. For any business, that is the end goal of the website. While you can implement all these seo factors yourself, hiring experienced and qualified SEO specialists for your law firm will help you save time and effort on trial and error.
Rank Top SEO is one of the established seo firms that has helped lawyers and law firms establish themselves in the online space. Our expert teams can help you optimize your website using technical SEO, evaluate content gaps, recommend strategies to rank better and develop an SEO strategy leading to long-term success.
Search engine rankings don’t improve overnight but require consistent effort. Therefore, patience and consistent content creation are essential. We help keep an eye on your website statistics and switch actions when required to achieve your desired results.
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What Is SEO For Lawyers?
Why do law firms need SEO, and why is it important for their websites? SEO can be great for boosting visibility.
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