When your prospective clients look for hiring legal services, they are going to use search engines to find law firms in their area. Law Firm SEO can help to boost search engine ranking and attract those clients to your website.
SEO optimisation is a slow and time-consuming process, but if implemented correctly, it pays off massively. It comprises two main components: on-site optimisation and off-site optimisation.
We will perform the latest SEO practices while doing online marketing so that your law firm website can rank high on search engine results.
The practise of optimising your website to enhance a website’s search engine rankings and gain organic traffic is On-page SEO; it is also called On-Site SEO. In addition to publishing appropriate and high-quality content, on-page SEO contains HTML tags (title, meta, and header), headlines, and images. It even means ensuring your website shows a high level of proficiency, conviction, and reliability.
Optimising Your H1 Tag: H1 is the title to your webpage and must explain the page suitably. That is the basic and even the most significant thing to get right. Search engines crawl the page content, and the H1 tag assists it in deciding what the page is all about.
Optimising Your Page Content: You must use relevant keywords while writing content for the legal service you provide. Make sure that images are used in the content and have alt text describing that image purpose. Internal linking needs to be done to the relevant pages. For instance, if you have a call to action page or a separate page for other services,
then that is a great internal linking opportunity.
Meta Title: It offers a primary cue or context to the current subject matter on an individual page. The title tag has an influence on organic rankings, and we make sure not to leave any stone unturned.
Meta Description: It offers a description of the page information exhibited in the SERPs below the page’s title. When you search online with keywords, you find different pages with titles and short descriptions in search results; those are called Meta Title and Meta Description.
It is one of the most vital elements of a successful Law Firm SEO strategy.
Off-Page SEO is not just link building, but it is far more than that. Tactics like citation building, content marketing, brand building, social media management, and more come under the Off-page SEO strategy.
These are many of the three things that can help your law firm develop a presence online and attract prospects when searching to hire legal services online.
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:
The content on your law firm website must offer answers to the basic questions a prospective client would have. Like
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 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.
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.
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:
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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:
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:
In many ways, link building helps in improving the results with SEO:
Here’s a quick method to find keywords for the law firm website:
Here are the steps:
In case you decide to follow it on your own, we suggest referring to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
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.
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.
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:
These are some of the tools that can easily show you the success of your Law Firm SEO.
The cost depends on the size of the website and the number of legal services. There are numerous packages and options to suit all sizes of law firms. Packages usually start from £900 + VAT per month, and the cost depends on the marketing goals and the number of website pages.
Usually, SEO practice starts showing its results within 4-6 months. But SEO grows over time, and with time you will see great results from continuous search engine optimisation of your law firm website.
Usually, a digital marketing agency will ask you to sign a contract for 12 months, but we do not tie our clients in a long term contract. Law firm SEO takes commitment and time; we ask for the same.
An experienced and qualified team of SEO can promise improved results. The only difference between ads and SEO is that it takes a minimum of 4 months to show results, and ads instantly display the results. Therefore, to instantly get a big leap in web traffic, a focused Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign with Google Ads is suggested for Law Firm. But when it is about organic traffic and the long-lasting positive response of visitors, SEO is the answer.
The quality of the content is essential, but the quantity of the content also plays a significant role in online marketing. For example, approximately 600-700 words per page are required, but long-form content (2000-3000 words) can perform better.
It is always recommended to go through the content once before it goes live online. This gives the idea and confidence that what you want to share online is appropriate. In addition, going through the content will not waste time but help enhance the quality of the content. This will lead to excellent results on search engines.
You can do SEO yourself. Perform research online and watch YouTube videos to know what exactly SEO is. But what an expert with more than 10 years of experience in the field can do for your website, you won’t be able to fetch those results merely through reading about SEO online. So it’s better to communicate with experts if you require.
There are a few things that you need to look at:
Warning signs that the SEO consultant is not an appropriate one: