SEO for Law Firms:
How Can Law Firms Improve Their SEO Rankings?
Since its emergence in the mid-90s, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become an essential online promotional strategy for businesses, especially those in highly-searched categories like law firms. SEO for law firms is highly competitive nationally and locally, including in places like Jacksonville and Northeast Florida.
As a Jacksonville digital marketing firm, Beson4 has been providing SEO services for law firms and other First Coast businesses for over two decades. This includes law firm SEO checks; local, national, onsite and offsite SEO services; website design, keyword evaluation and planning; SEO analytics; link building, reviews generation, and more. For legal firms and attorneys who are searching for ways to improve their organic search engine rankings or maybe investing in SEO for the very first time, here is some helpful information based upon our many years of experience.
Why is Search Engine Optimization Important?
Search engine optimization helps people discover your business organically (i.e. vs. paid advertising) when searching for information online. SEO is a systematic process, and not a single event or one-time occurrence. Many SEO improvements can often take several weeks to begin showing up in your analytics.
SEO is tightly integrated with the design and development of your website– the content within it and its technical build quality. Google and other search engines consider hundreds of factors before directing users to a website in response to a specific search query. The goal of SEO is to make your website the search engines’ best choice to satisfy those queries by being perceived as the highest quality, most relevant and authoritative source for answers to those queries.
So, how can law firms improve their SEO rankings? Well, it all starts with keywords and smart, high-quality website design.
Keywords, Content & Website Design
It goes without saying that to be successful with digital marketing, you must have a well-designed website. This is especially true for good SEO. Your website must be fast, responsive, strategically designed, and developed in a sound technical manner to present useful, relevant information to your site visitors. Websites with more pages have additional chances to be ranked for specific terms and keywords, although information should always be carefully organized. When we say, “keywords” we mean those specific words and phrases that prospective customers are using when searching for a business like yours – in this case, a law firm.
Unless you are pursuing national clients from outside of your local market area, it is always best to use a local SEO strategy to minimize competition and maximize your chances for success. You want to let both your audience and search engines know your local markets- the specific geographical areas and business segments that you serve. Some of this can be accomplished by creating directory listings on platforms like Google My Business. But you also want your content to support this, so your content needs to align with the words and phrases people actually use when they search for a business like yours.. These same words and phrases also need to be incorporated into your meta data- your website’s back-end code that includes its title tags, descriptions, alt tags, etc.
Recognize that a person who received a DUI likely isn’t going to search for the term, “law firm” or “attorney”, but more likely, “DUI law firm, Jacksonville” or “DUI representation, Jacksonville”. You may want to narrow your geographic location terms even further to capture inquiries from more specific parts of town (i.e. “DUI lawyer, Orange Park”).
Law firms can easily integrate more narrowly focused keywords into their websites by adding blogs or news sections to their websites. Posted content should be always relevant, educational and fresh.
Finally, remember that mobile-friendliness and site speed are two of today’s most critical elements for strong SEO. Users will leave your site in droves if your website does not launch quickly, typically two seconds or less. You can test your site’s speed and learn more about performance insights, here.
The mobile experience is a high priority as more searches are conducted on mobile today, than desktop. You should take this into consideration by using only fully responsive websites. When developing mobile layouts, use bullets and shorter paragraphs to break down long sections. How your copy is written, structured and presented is crucial for good user-experience (UX).
Set Up a Google My Business Page for Your Law Firm
Every business needs a Google My Business page. It is a critical online hub that is almost as necessary as your website itself for sound SEO.
How do you go about it?
- Go to Google My Business online.
- Use the Create Google My Business Page option to edit your details
- Fill in the profile section with correct details and add professional pictures
- You can get more ideas for optimizing your Google My Business details rom Google Support
Online Directories, Social Media & Reviews
Be sure to list your legal firm in online directories like Justia, FindLaw, Avvo, the Yellow Pages and others. Create social media accounts to share content, and boost your business visibility. Every account you establish and every post, tweet or link is one more opportunity to be discovered – or many more, depending upon how “sharable” your content is.
You should also regularly ask for reviews and feedback from your customers. Make it easy by sending them links inviting them to post their comments in places like Google Reviews, Facebook and other social media and reviews websites. All of this works to increase your online visibility, authority and credibility.
Create Backlinks
Getting backlinks from other businesses and authoritative sources is also a powerful SEO tool – one of the most important variables in helping Google determine your site’s authority, credibility, quality score, and page rank. Good blogs can often help achieve this organically. So can PR. You can also help generate backlinks by inviting others to link to your website. While backlinks from authoritative third parties are most powerful, you can also help bolster your SEO with smart, relevant internal links, as well. Good internal links help keep visitors engaged and informed with content on your website.
Start Improving Your Law Firm’s SEO Today
If you have yet to jump into search engine optimization or simply want to improve your law firm’s SEO with more smart, effective SEO strategies, then contact Beson4 for a free digital review and consultation. We provide affordable, effective white hat SEO services for law firms and integrate it seamlessly with all of your other digital marketing and branding efforts. Call 904.992.9945 or email contact@beson4.com.