When you are a legal firm, your law firm SEO strategy is not something that is cut-and-dried, nor is it a practice that turns leads into conversions overnight. Instead, you have to go the distance in making sure your content satisfies your readers’ inquiries while you increase your influence grows steadily online.
Making Your Content Specific and Readable
To earn credibility as a law firm, you need to make sure your content answers readers’ inquiries and that your website is easily found in the searches. For instance, let’s say you want your website to show up under the keyword, “criminal defense lawyer in Los Angeles.” In this case, you need to use content that is specific to the keyword and explains this practice area.
Organize your content so you answer a user’s questions about your location, what you practice, and if your firm can fulfill the client’s specific legal needs. The user will also want to know about your background and what you charge. These questions will give them the answers they need to decide whether or not they want to proceed.
Therefore, the law firm SEO for your legal website should provide initial answers to the questions clients normally ask. Your keywords should reflect this as well. Search engines are designed to send visitors to the best sites – reliable platforms that are both authoritative and popular.
If Google’s algorithm concludes that your site can answer a client’s question, it is more likely to boost your ranking in the SERPs. By following the guidelines supported by law firm SEO, you can provide clear descriptions of your legal services as well as feature up-to-date customer testimonials. Both these features will instill potential clients to call your firm and further discuss your services.
Law firm SEO is big on answering a visitor’s questions and also on optimizing content. Answers also are given through the use of keywords and keyword phrases. When Google assesses a legal firm’s website, it sends a bot to crawl, read, and index content, gleaning the info needed to better know the purpose of a site and its content.
Therefore, to incentivize readers to review your content, you need to target a keyword for each page. In this case, your keyword might be criminal defense lawyer in Los Angeles. Using this keyword phrase makes it crystal clear that your site covers criminal defense in LA.
Where to Insert Keywords and Keyword Phrases
To top optimize your home page and webpages for keywords, you need to insert keywords in the following parts of a page:
- The title tag
- The description tag
- The headings and subheadings
- The body of the content
- The URL of the webpage
If you are a smaller local law firm, most of your clients probably live close to where you live and work. Therefore, when you practice law firm SEO in this case, you can focus on local SEO for lawyers.
Varying and Optimizing Content
One of the most challenging parts of law firm SEO is identifying the keyword for your content and using long-tail forms and variations of the keyword. You want your content to cover as much of a search term as possible.
For instance, for the primary keyword, criminal defense lawyer in Los Angeles, variations might include best criminal defense lawyer in LA or fees for criminal defense lawyer in Los Angeles.
Backlinking to Your Webpage
One of the criteria Google uses to rank websites higher is the quantity and quality of a site’s backlinks, or the referral links placed on a website that point traffic to the platform.
If your legal website receives links from authoritative websites, Google pushes your website up in the rankings. However, if your website only features a few backlinks, it’s a strong indicator that you need to do something to increase your credibility.
Therefore, it is important to remember that Google wants to send users to the best places online to search for information and receive answers. If the bots see that your legal firm’s content has many referring links coming from reputable websites, it will view your site as a highly trustworthy platform.
According to Forbes, the algorithm Google uses focuses more on the value and richness, and differentiation of your content – all factors that are considered before backlinking, or which sites link to you. Therefore, focus on content first and backlinking second.
Local SEO for Law Firms Using Off-Page Citations
As a law firm, you can also use local SEO to capture clients through off-page citations. In this case, Google counts the backlinks that come from websites where a business’s contact details are displayed.
Sources of Off-Page Citations
Below are some sources where you can receive off-page citations to improve your legal firm’s local SEO:
- Legal directories
- Local directories, such as Google My Business
- Social media profiles, such as Facebook or Twitter
- Shares of your content on social media channels
- Endorsements or testimonials on other websites
Again, SEO for legal firms is a digital marathon – not a 500-yard dash. Link building takes time to develop but it does reap substantial results. These results play an integral part in your SEO goals. To get backlinks from relevant websites, you might also:
- Write blogs articles related to your specialty and ask your readers to share them
- Offer free legal advice and consultations to a local media outlet
To realize any of the above goals, you need to partner with a digital marketing agency that works exclusively for lawyers – a company that understands the special SEO needs of law firms.
Search Engine Journal says it is important to define your goals, establish a budget, and do what it takes to make your website stand out. You can realize these initiatives when you align yourself with a company that can help you make the most of online resources and technologies.
Start Implementing your Law Firm SEO Strategy Now
To execute your law firm SEO strategy, contact a digital marketing firm to find out more about its total line of digital services. In LA, your go-to marketing agency is Attorney Marketing Online. Phone (888) 992-9529 or (323) 433-6529 for more information today.
