Law firms are always critical in their choices. They are known not to take anything as claimed rather go with the solid proofs directing their journey.
Be it in their court proceedings or their digital storefronts.
SEO is one such conception going around that has piqued the interest of many, including attorneys, to drive growth in their business.
Don’t believe us? We had solid data backing our statement:
- 96% of people seeking legal advice use a search engine to browse their options (Google Consumer Survey, Nov 2013).
- 74% of consumers visit a law firm’s website to take immediate action like appointment bookings, calls or emails. (FindLaw U.S. Consumer Legal Needs Survey 2014)
- 62% of legal searches are non-branded. (FindLaw U.S. Consumer Legal Needs Survey 2014)
- 72% of people seeking legal advice only contacting one attorney. (FindLaw U.S. Consumer Legal Needs Survey 2014)
- 85% use online maps to find legal service locations. (Google Legal Services Study Sept 2013)
- 71% of people looking for lawyers, thinking it is important to have a local attorney. (FindLaw U.S. Consumer Legal Needs Survey 2014)
I am sure now we had made a common ground establishing why SEO for lawyers. Now, you must want to know how?
There are various aspects that we all are noodling around but have not yet incorporated. This guide will cover all A to Z of lawyer’s marketing.
So, let’s get going….
1. Customer Convenient Website:
Any website ever being created has been with the sole goal of serving to customers, which does not only require good quality service offerings but also how we platter it to our customers for their intake.
There are many do’s and don’ts that one should keep in mind while ensuring that your brand website is customer friendly.
| Do’s ✔ | Don’ts ❌ |
| Easy Readability | Jargons |
| Quality information | Complex structuring |
| Explanatory images | 404 pages |
2. Amplify Your Web Speed:
Once you confirm that your website is user-friendly, the need is to make it approach users within no time.
Being a lawyer, one knows the value of rapid response and how important every second is to a client’s case; the same is the case with your website.
A browser expects a rapid response that allows there anxiety and stress to go down swiftly.
See the pointers below and, one can boost their speed highly.
- Your JPEG image quality should not exceed 85%; JPEG subsampling should have a 4:2:0 ratio. For grey PNGs, one has to use the right colour space.
- Web caching remembers previously loaded resources, and therefore, when someone revisits the site, it won’t take long to reload the resources.
- Remove unnecessary data, and adjust your HTML tags and codes to score 100 percent on Google Page Speed. One may minify codes, abbreviate codes, format others, etc. There are plugins available for this too, that facilitate your work.
- Make sure your server receives very few requests to increase the response time on your site. This can be done by deducting the sum of CSS and JavaScript files accessible on your web. Besides all this, it is also essential to have a reliable web host.
- There are various plugins available for compression activation that will make it easier for you. One can edit files for compression, allowing in the setting of your server.
3. Unclutter Your Website:
Your website can be loaded with informational and value content but, at the same time, be home to many zombie pages that affects its efficiency in total.
Deleting your zombie pages is the right answer, but really what are those?
Those are just like they sound “Zombies” nor living and neither dead. They are some pages that are floating around with no purpose—and bringing danger to those around by reducing their value.
You can perform a quick scan to identify those, just check out your Google analytics for the following:
- Total visits (Page views)
- Unique Page views
- Time on Page
- Bounce Rate
- Exit rate
- Pages per session (Pages/Session)
If you have a vast number of pages then priorities them to perform testing on, one can look it following:
-
- Old press releases
- Paginations
- Archives
- Non-quality or thin content pages.
4. Look Into The Building Blocks:
Until now, we had complied with our site with good forefront that is loading at rapid speed with surety of no unnecessary pages lingering around.
Now comes one of the most important stages of ensuring you are on the right track to pursue the correct strategy of SEO for lawyers: reassessing your primary building blocks.
These building blocks comprises all the elements that collectively form a customer intent service that Google algorithms examine for ranking preferences.
- Navigation: Navigation is one of the most important factors for the client experience. If he or she is unable to find their way through your site, then it’s giving out nothing than the feeling of a trap. You should be able to make their way from one page to another as per their specific requirement.
- Content: Revised, specific and insightful content frequently attracts visitors to your site. In 2020 a big, simple list of keywords won’t fool any search engine. Useful, credible content – which integrates relevant keywords – is the only form of content worth creating on your website and blog.
- Backlinks: Link juices are very important when it comes to website optimization; it shoes your customer and search engines your authority and your authenticity. Law firms should ensure to incorporate links strategy for exploring a larger audience as well as getting their trust.
- Title tags: It defines the webpage’s content and helps users direct themselves to your website. You can think of title tags as the file names on the filing folders to use an analog example. Title tags have to be designed with keywords defining the page information.
- Website structure and sitemaps: Incorporating the sitemap into the Google Search Console informs Google about the content of your pages. It’s necessary to apply your sitemap to all top search engines so they can find pages faster on your site and rate them accordingly.
- Meta descriptions: Its website/page describes the results of the Google Search Engine (SERP) query. Since meta-descriptions have to be below 160 characters, concision is essential. This small amount of immovable property will make or break if users visit your page.
- Call to actions: Another powerful method of improving your site outlook and persuasion power is a call to action. Make sure the website has buttons and other Action Calls. Once you have drawn in a consumer, you have to make their relationship with you as easy as possible for them to continue.
- Schemas: Schema markup is a technique of advanced SEO standards. It enables crawlers in search engines to provide users with rich knowledge even before they visit the website. It helps to improve the CTR (Click By Rate) and conversion rate.
5. Keyword Strategy:
Keywords are as it says the key, but until you find the right match, the lock of potential opportunities won’t open in fact it would divert its direction.
The need is to plan the best suitable keywords for your brand: not just high value but high volume is needed.
Long-tail keywords are also great incorporation to answer inquisitive queries and voice search responses.
Some of the basic phenomena, based on which a keyword could be planned are as follows:
- Your target audience – Recognizing your Target audience is of utmost importance. It allows an understanding of the needs and how we can cater to it.
- The keywords’ volume – You can use a tool such as Google’s Keyword Planner and the free Keywords Everywhere to find out the monthly search volume for a keyword and then plan your strategy ahead.
- The keywords’ implicated search intent – “Lawyer reviews” implies much more commercial intent than “do I need a lawyer?” For the highest impact, choose commercially-inclined keywords that indicate the consumer is ready to start a conversation.
- The keywords’ competition – The more people that choose to optimize for a keyword, the harder it is to rank for it. That’s why you’re going to have a LOT more trouble ranking for “divorce lawyer” than “family law.
Google Keyword Planner will be your best bet. Most tools that find how much competition you have are paid tools, but we use Moz and SEMRush (to name a few) the most often.
This is a helping glance of a majority of high volume keywords in the law industry that can be chosen from.
6. Localized Appeal:
SEO may help you grow your reach, but it also helps in focusing on the nearby searches known as local SEO.
By creating the local impact, you may not insure volume, but the value is for sure. The competition is also less, and so is the distance for the customer to your brand that makes them approach you faster and quicker.
Now reaching out to your audience is not so tough, just amend your practices or get partners Like Kinex Media, who can do this on your behalf.