LAW FIRM MARKETINGSearch Engine Optimisation (SEO) for Law Firms

Who does not want to attract more visitors to their website? You have a higher chance to get more leads if your website ranks on the first page of the search engine. With the help of good SEO practice, you make your website more evident to your potential clients.

It is important to rank high because most people who search for a service online don’t have the patience to go through a lengthy list of results. Instead, they choose the ones that emerge on the top of the result page. Therefore, your aim should be to hold the top spot on the search engine result page.

It is a fact that SEO for law firms can work wonders. The advantages of SEO for law firms are immense. These are a few benefits of SEO for lawyers and law firms:

• It produces new traffic with high-quality content.
• It turns site traffic into leads (phone calls and form fills).
• Getting ahead of the local competition with increased click-through on the website.
• With the assistance of Google My Business and other local listings, drive more phone calls.
• Branding, it sets their law firm as a respectable authority in their niche.
• It can help to reduce the paid advertisement cost; SEO gets more clicks than PPC.

Legal Content

The content on your law firm website must offer answers to the basic questions a prospective client would have. Like

• Is this a law firm in the United Kingdom?
• Does the firm specialise in law prospective clients need help (i.e. Family Law, Employment Law, Immigration Law, etc.)?
• Can the law firm help with clients specific requirements? If yes, how?
• Is the law firm any better than other law firms?
• Is the law firm affordable?
• Does the webpage covers answers to basic questions related to the service client looking for?

Search engines help online visitors to find a better place to get answers to their questions. Hence if Google thinks your site is likely to resolve user’s queries, it is likely that Google ranks your website higher in its search engine results.

Backlinks

Backlinks are the referral links placed on different websites that drive traffic to your law firm website. You should give importance to the quantity as well as the quality of backlinks.

Suppose your law firm receives numerous links from other famous websites. In that case, they are basically seen as an endorsement, it increases the page authority of your website, and as a result, it increases web domain authority.  However, if your law firm’s web page has merely some backlinks, your website will struggle to rank high on search results.

Local Citations

Your firm’s contact details appear in all sorts of places on the website; to make it visible to potential clients and search engines. The local citation refers to any mention of your company online. This could be in a business directory, or on an industry-specific site, a blog or any other local website. Using consistent contact information on local directory submission will help a lot to boose local SEO for your law firm.

Technical SEO

This is the most critical factor- technical SEO, it can build or break the law firm SEO performance. Unfortunately, it’s the toughest to get it correct, particularly if you are not an SEO expert.

Technical SEO is a criterion of how “Google-friendly” the law firm’s website is. It expands to other things such as website security and sitemaps, etc. It can get challenging to implement, so law firms hire SEO consultants for law firm SEO; it lowers the risk and speeds up the process.

Here are a few things to remember regarding technical SEO:

• Ensure your firm’s website pursue every Google’s guidelines for crawling, indexing, rendering.
• Ensure your law firm website has good architecture
• Ensure your firm’s website is loading fast and mobile-friendly

• Mobile friendly

These days people are more active on mobile phones than on desktops or laptops. So, making the website responsive for all devices is needed when designing your law firm website. Non-responsiveness displays poor design on the screen. This sends a bad signal to search engines such as Google, and it decreases the ranking. Thus, design and SEO work together.

• Easy to read design

SEO will not work well if the content is not readable easily. So, it is advisable to create a design that enhances the readability of the content because then only good quality content will have the opportunity to shine and increase organic traffic.

• Easy Navigation

Easy navigation helps prospective clients to easily explore your website and find out the information they are looking for. It also reduces the bounce rate because clients find the website user-friendly and stay on the website for a longer time. This even enhances the chances of generating more leads because users will find the information they are looking for easily.

• Avoid Keyword Stuffing

There is a minor difference between inserting a keyword and stuffing it. When the keyword is used excessively without the proper context, it is known as stuffing; keywords should be used in such a way that goes with the flow. Please make sure that you do not stuff keywords but naturally blend them with the content. Keyword stuffing will affect the SEO ranking negatively.

• Publish fresh content

Your law firm website can be penalised by search engines if you use plagiarised content. Poor quality content will not resonate with users, and you will not only lose the lead, but it will also affect your credibility. Therefore, make sure that your website’s content is fresh, creative, engaging, and plagiarised-free. Only then is there a chance that your Law Firm SEO works.

• Post client review on the website

The client reviews and testimonials posted on the law firm website increases the trust of the prospective clients. And when it comes to SEO, Google evaluates the reviews, backlinks, click-through rates, bounce rates, and many related characteristics to decide which websites are trustworthy.  And, certainly, client reviews will help search engine optimisation of the law firm website.

Technical SEO refers to website and server optimisations that help search engine spiders crawl and index your site more effectively. The know-how of SEO changes with every update of the search engine algorithm. A common myth about search engine optimisation is that there are no changes required once the strategy is built. Search engine ranking criteria keeps on changing with Google’s algorithm and needs attention from time to time. Therefore, we need to revisit the strategy whenever required and use the latest tactics to continue marketing your law firm online efficiently.

A few technical SEO best practices to pursue:

• Use SSL – to make the website more secure
• Reduce the page loading time
• Fix duplicate content issues
• Create Sitemap
• Add structured data markup
• Register the website with Search Engines

When Google knows where your firm is physically located, this data is shared in search results. When someone searches for a service with nearby providers, Google will often show a map with 3 law firms (the 3-Pack). Getting to on this map involves several elements:

• Precision: Ensure your Google My Business listing shows the exact phone number, address, name and business hours as your website.
• Category: Be specific. Do not go for a common category such as “Law Firm” if a particular option such as “Personal Injury Lawyer” is available
• Citations: A local citation refers to your law firm address, phone number and name on other websites, make sure that you provide consistent information on all external websites.
• Reviews from clients: Having a steady stream of recent positive reviews can help boost your local SEO performance.
• Proximity to User: Your ranking also depends on your proximity to the potential client. This is challenging to manage as Google may determine to show the listing of a lower attribute competitor since they are physically nearer to the person searching for an attorney.

In many ways, link building helps in improving the results with SEO:

• Guest blogging is becoming very famous, and legal marketers are tactical about using guest blogs for online marketing. Set a clear objective from the start and target blogs that will transmit traffic to your website.
• Online forums like Quora. Many prospective clients will post questions about their legal problems online.  This shows an excellent opportunity for lawyers to obtain some recognition, assist people, and earn links by answering those questions.
• Share resource link. Some websites have credibility and authority. Use them in your content, and it will help to improve the authority of the webpage.

Conduct keyword research

Here’s a quick method to find keywords for the law firm website:

• Jot down all services, specialities, and locations of the law firm.
• Do keyword research – determine which strategic keywords to target in your website’s content. Use tools to find keywords, but in essence, you are trying to find the answer of this question: What are prospective clients searching for?

Write and broadcast content

Here are the steps:

• Use the keywords you searched and produce content that helps your clients to understand the legal service you provide.
• Address client’s frequently asked questions, talk to existing clients and do the survey on why they hired your law firm, what they are looking for in the service you provide?
• Do not forget to utilise keywords in the meta description, headings and title.
• Use calls-to-action in the website to guide prospective clients on how to hire your legal service.
• And lastly, remain consistent in producing and publishing content on your law firm website.

Ensure the website for the law firm is technically perfect when you begin executing SEO tactics

In case you decide to follow it on your own, we suggest referring to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

• Generate backlinks and increase online presence
• Claim your every online profile, including Google My Business.
• Brightlocal is a tool that you can use to automate the submission of the law firm to various local directories.
• Encourage the client to drop reviews
• Aim for at least five new backlinks monthly.

Budget

Some SEO experts charge hourly rates; you can negotiate and ask for fixed fees if you prefer capping the cost. Getting results from Law Firm SEO takes time, and it is a laborious job to do. Just to start with, you would require to invest £500 – £2000 per month, so make sure you incorporate it in a law firm’s budget if you are determined to invest in online marketing.

Where to search for an SEO professional for the law firm

The excellent SEO experts will have an amazingly effective website on search engines that will show all their services and share information on how they help law firms succeed through SEO. Search on google about them, book a free consultation with them and share your requirements.

What to discuss when hiring an SEO specialist for your law firm

It can be a good decision to hire an SEO expert who has knowledge and experience in legal marketing. They know the industry and the specific pain points that prospective clientele have when searching for the law firm’s services. You can discuss the role of backlinks, technical SEO, content, and instances of their experience helping other clients like you. We all want to save on the cost but do not get lured with lucrative offers, discuss the price and what they offer in detail before hiring the SEO specialist.

Law Firms spend a lot of money and time on search engine optimisation. Thus, it is essential to check the results that show the success of the online marketing strategy. Now how can you measure it? Well, there are tools that help to measure and analysing the data:

• Google Analytics
• Google Search Console
• SEMrush
• Ahrefs
• Moz
• BuzzSumo

These are some of the tools that can easily show you the success of your Law Firm SEO.