SEO for lawyers: 7 SEO strategies to enhance your law firm’s website

Gone are the days when people browsed the yellow pages to look for lawyers. Today, most businesses are rushing to the digital world, making the market more competitive. 

It is a digital game for every company–even for law firms.

Whichever industry you belong to, an online presence can make or break your business. If you want people to notice you, how would you do it? 

This article will teach you about search engine optimization or SEO for lawyers and how it can put you on the digital map. 

Why is SEO for law firms important?

SEO is a marketing strategy that could help your business increase its online presence through search engines. This way, more people can reach your website and become paying customers soon. 

Law firms need SEO. Money is down the drain if people search for law services and your website does not appear. Check out why SEO matters to your law firm:

Ranks on SERPs

Every day, Google processes approximately 3.5 billion searches. This number only shows one search engine. How about the other search engines like Yahoo and Bing? 

When people need legal assistance but do not know where to find one, they turn to search engines like Google and Yahoo. They may type “law firms near me,” and the search engine returns a results list. This page is the search engine results page or SERP. 

Among the results, which would people check first? Probably the first one on the list. If you want clients to notice you, you must rank your website higher in SERPs. 

You can improve your site’s ranking with the right SEO strategy.  

Builds a strong digital presence

Have you ever tried searching for a brand but ended up with nothing? You must have questioned its credibility and made you look for other competitor brands. 

The thing about today’s digital world is if your business is not online, you are a ghost. You are invisible. You must build a strong online presence for your law firm to survive.   

Remember that existing online does not equate to being digitally present. Your existence might mean that you are on the map. However, an online presence has a deeper layer of being visible, credible, and reputable. 

There are several ways to increase your website’s online presence. Since the competition is tough, building an aesthetically pleasing website is not enough. Implementing different SEO strategies can attract more clients, increasing revenue.   

Enhances brand credibility

A strong online presence helps establish credibility and build trust with the community. Clients are more likely to engage with law firms nearby and understand the legal landscape.  

Guest posting and link building are SEO strategies that can boost your credibility, given that you have relevant and reputable sources for links and guest posts. If your website has few or low-quality backlinks, search engines may consider it a sign of low credibility and authority. 

Your website will generate organic traffic and more revenue if you have built trust and credibility. 

Generates higher quality leads 

Bringing in new clients is the lifeblood of every business. Sure, generating traffic is nice. However, there is little benefit if it does not turn into paying clients.  

Ranking higher in SERPs increases the number of leads visiting your website. SEO can help you reach people who have never heard of your business. 

As your website becomes more visible, more clients will connect with you. 

SEO for lawyers: 7 SEO strategies to implement on your website

Now that you have understood why SEO matters for your law firm, the next question pops up. How can you generate more traffic to the website? 

Executing the following SEO strategies could deliver measurable results to your law firm and and help you generate more clients: 

1. Conduct keyword research

Keyword research serves as the starting point of your digital journey. Without this process, you cannot begin your SEO campaign. 

Competition is fierce in the legal industry. If you want clients to find your law firm website, you must rank on top of SERPs for many relevant keywords. However, you can only achieve this goal if you get your targeted keywords right. 

You must identify the words and phrases your target audience could type into their search engines. For instance, the typical search terms are “law firm” or “lawyer.” These words are too general, making it difficult to rank. 

You can add your location and expertise to be more specific. When conducting keyword research, consider its relevance, authority, and volume. 

You can also use keyword research tools to help you refine your keyword options.  

2. Begin local SEO

Local SEO for lawyers is optimizing your law firm’s website to boost its ranking in SERPs within a certain radius of your office. 

When people search for “lawyer in [your location],” the search engine will return a list of other law firms in your area—another tough competition.

This is why you need to level up your local SEO game. You can do this by optimizing your Google Business profile, creating optimized local content, joining local legal directories, getting client feedback, and regularly updating and optimizing your website. 

3. Practice link building

Link building is another SEO strategy that you can run to outrank competitors. This is a practice of getting other websites to link to your law firm site. These are called backlinks. 

However, the goal is not only building backlinks. It is building backlinks on websites with high Domain Authority. The more high-quality and authoritative sites you acquire, the higher the page can rank on SERPs. 

There are several link-building techniques to apply to your law firm’s website. You can publish content on another website that addresses legal topics. Moreover, you can work with a business podcast and talk about your legal experience. 

Other techniques include answering questions on community forums, becoming a resource for others, and pursuing media coverage. 

4. Create optimized and high-quality content

You can write about legal topics you are passionate about and want others to read about them. However, if that content does not rank on search engine results, it is a shame that nobody reads or shares it. 

Educational and optimized content are factors in ranking your law firm site. High-quality content answers the reader’s questions. It should be readable, accurate, well-formatted, and educational. Before publishing your content, you must ensure that it is SEO-optimized. 

Optimizing your content can drastically improve your online visibility. Search engines like Google prioritize users. It wants them to read engaging and not keyword-stuffed content. 

You can write several types of content on your website, including landing pages, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) pages, practice area pages, resource pages, case studies, and blogs. 

5. Improve user experience (UX)

You must consider how your clients feel about using your website. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Is the website’s design, structure, and purpose clear?
• Can the website cater to people with disabilities and with different backgrounds?
• Can the website solve problems? 
• Is the website easy to use? 

Building a website is a silent battle between UX and SEO. However, these two disciplines can work together to develop a better website user experience. 

SEO attracts visitors to your site, while UX keeps them longer. 

An effective UX design will improve user-engagement metrics, including Bounce Rate and Page Dwell Time. In return, these metrics influence your ranking, credibility, and audience retention. 

6. Publish blog content

Creating content can help you draw in potential clients. However, you should not publish blog posts for the sake of publishing something. 

You must ensure that each piece of content on your website is informative, optimized, and useful. Since it is one way to disseminate your services and brand, your blogs should resonate with your target audience.

Drive website traffic and sales by writing content that:

• Answer questions that potential clients might search
• Educate readers about the industry and your legal services 
• State an opinion about industry trends
• Satisfy the searcher’s intent

7. Measure results

Incorporating SEO strategies is not enough. You must set a benchmark to check which works and which doesn’t. 

These pieces of information are available in Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Both tools can help you analyze and measure the traffic, quality of inbound links, and more. 

You must also create baseline reports and conduct monthly follow-ups. These reports can serve as a data-driven tracking system to objectively identify whether your campaign succeeded or not. 

Get the legal clients you need with the right SEO strategies

SEO works on auto-pilot. It means that it is working even when your whole team is sleeping. 

However, the digital world is ever-changing. The SEO strategies that worked months ago might not work in the next months. It is because algorithms change, and you and your competitors change too. 

You should learn to adapt quickly to the latest trends and business needs. This way, you can improve your law firm’s online visibility and attract more traffic to your website.