10 Proven SEO Tips for Law Firms

If your law firm’s website is struggling to get leads for your practice, the problem may be because potential clients aren’t able to find the website. When it comes to website searches, most people don’t go beyond the first page of the results, so if your law firm’s website isn’t showing up on the first page these potential clients cannot find your website. This is where SEO (search engine optimization) comes into play. SEO for law firms is a marketing strategy that will help your website make it into the top search results. Here are 10 proven SEO tips to improve search result rankings for law firms.

Tip #1: Understanding SEO for Law Firms

One of the first and most important tips to improve SEO for law firms is understanding what SEO is. SEO is a digital marketing strategy that helps to increase the organic search of traffic to your law firm’s website. When off-site properties and websites are optimized, it provides search engines and the targeted traffic with a clear message of you and what your business does. The clear message leads to higher rankings within the search engines, which leads to more traffic to your website, which then leads to more leads and more potential clients. The major search engines look for websites that offer users a good experience, such as relevancy and functionality. Implementing small changes to the content on your website through the use of SEO strategies will result in excellent results and higher conversion rates (more traffic) to your website and ultimately to your law firm.

Tip #2: Have an Understanding of Keywords

Keywords are used as a tool to target your potential clients. You should base your target keywords on your audience (clients), location (your law firm is local), and the market (type of law practiced). The right keywords will attract the right clients to your law firm, especially if you have a specialized area of expertise. For instance, if your area of expertise is family law, examples of keywords may include divorce, custody, adoption and etc. If your law firm offers free consultations, instead of simply stating “free consultations” an example of using keywords for a family law practice may read as “free consultations for dissolution of marriage cases”. The more precise keywords are, the more targeted your audience is.

Tip #3: Know Your Market

One of the first and important steps in optimizing the website for your law firm is to understand your firm’s niche and goals. For instance, if your targeted traffic is those in need of personal injury law, you will need to have specific and targeted keywords that will help to attract website traffic for this market, such as people injured in auto accidents or work accidents. Think about what type of searches you want to be ranked for and considering the primary areas of practice is the best starting point. Make a list of the keywords that are associated with the practice, do a little research by entering these keywords into the search box, and then review the results. Do the results relate to your law firm and the type of law you are best known for? This is a good way to eliminate the keywords that aren’t relevant to your practice.

Tip #4: Search Engine Optimized Home Page

The first thing potential clients see when visiting your website is the home page. It is essential that your home page looks professional and reads warm and welcoming. The easiest way to achieve this is by using the proper keywords and placing them in the proper as well as effective places. Keywords should be used in headlines, sub-headers, the content, and the call to action. The keywords you choose should be the ones you want to rank your law firm the highest for in searches, such as your area of practice and the city you are targeting. For example, a headline may read as your city of practice personal injury attorney” and a subheading may include keywords that describe a specific type of personal law and the content will include a description of the specific type of personal law.

Tip #5: Ranking Website Pages

Higher rankings on search engines are generally given to websites that are user-friendly and relevant for what visitors are looking for. So, the more relevant your website’s content is about specific topics, the higher your law firm will rank in the searches. The structure of your website is a critical part of SEO, so not only is being user-friendly important, but the more specific the content pages relate to the keywords the higher your ranking will be. For instance, if you want to rank high in the searches for personal injury law, consider having individual pages for each type of personal injury service your firm offers, such as work injuries, accidental death, and medical malpractice, and auto accidents.

Tips #6: Know Your Competition

Monitoring your competition's SEO performance will allow you to see how high their website and content ranks, the amount of traffic that their page generates, and their audience. This will help you to identify the areas of your website that may be weak in regard to your targeted audience. The primary goal is to improve your law firm’s strategies for SEO by learning from the competition. Closely review the websites of law firms in your area that have expertise in the type of law you practice.

Tip #7: Mobile Friendly Website

More and more people are using mobile devices to search for attorneys, so it is essential that you have a mobile website that is user-friendly. Primary search engines use a responsive web design as one of the major factors when scoring websites and determining rankings, so it’s important that that you verify the ease of your website on mobile devices.

Tip #8: Monitor Your SEO Rankings

Successful SEO strategies are possible if you know how to measure your metrics on the charts. Tracking your SEO rankings will allow you to monitor your website traffic, the number of clicks, the content quality, and your SEO ranking. This data can then be used to improve SEO scoring and help you move up in the algorithm rankings. One of the easiest ways to track your rankings is by searching your keywords to find where your website falls in the ranking.

Tip #9: Improve Local SEO

A goal for many law firms is local traffic, so you’ll want to ensure your SEO strategies include local improvements. One of the easiest ways to accomplish this is with Google My Business, which is a tool used to drive local traffic to your website while at the same time improving an online presence. It will allow you to improve the way your practice shows up in Google Maps and Google search by providing detailed information about your law firms, such as the address, phone number, and reviews.

Tip #10: Maintain Digital Marketing Campaigns

In order to keep up the momentum for improving SEO, your marketing strategies must also have regular digital marketing campaigns to continually attract clients. A good digital marketing campaign will also allow you to utilize the keywords you have chosen to improve your SEO. For instance, using keywords in content posted on social media platforms will give you an opportunity to get noticed locally for the type of law practice you have experience in. Be sure to post on every social media platform you can and keep all content current.

It’s important that when using SEO for your law firm that is designed to improve the visibility of your website with creative and specific content, without keyword stuffing. In many situations, overuse of the same or similar keywords will hurt instead of help your chances with higher rankings. The keywords should be relevant, meaningful, and suitable for the content in which they are used.