Law Firm SEO | The Definitive SEO Guide For Lawyers & Attorneys
Study shows that 96% of people seeking legal advice use a search engine and 74% of consumers visit a law firm’s website to take action.
And who is the perfect law firm? Well, we both know it’s yours, but do your clients know it?. This is where things get complicated.
If you don’t have the right platform to make your case to those who need you the most, your competition is going to scoop up all of your clients.
We certainly can’t let that happen, and that’s why you need to know Law Firm SEO right now. Hopefully, this guide will help you rank high.
So, Let’s get started.
What is Law Firm SEO?
Law Firm Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves strategies, techniques, and tactics that help attract more prospective clients to a law firm’s website by obtaining first page ranking positions in search engines (such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo).
Why does your Law Firm need a website for SEO?
Law Firms need a website because the way that consumers find businesses has changed.
This isn’t a new idea, obviously, as the Yellow Pages are not (and haven’t been for quite some time) the go-to source for research that they once were.
Businesses need the best resource to answer searchers’ queries and intent and showcase the business’s expertise.
A website, no matter what business you’re in, is the central hub for your search engine optimization strategies.
It’s the foundation of everything you’ll do to put yourself in front of your ideal prospective client, as well as create and promote your brand.
The first position in Google search results carries a 34% click-through rate on desktop and 35% on mobile.
Studies have shown that the percentage of traffic from searchers drops to around 2-3% on the second page of results and fades out from there.
Pay-per-click and sponsored ads essentially lease your marketing visibility: that visibility disappears as soon as you stop paying for it. SEO is an investment.
The content and backlinks that you acquire have a long-lasting and evergreen impact; in effect, their rankings pay dividends long into the future. Ultimately, SEO creates an asset your firm owns, not rents.
Search traffic converts 10x better than social media traffic (on desktop)!
Search engines (especially Google) have only gotten better at understanding the meaning behind the phrases we type into them and are therefore used even more on the internet to cut through all the noise.
With so many people using search, it makes sense that lawyers marketing themselves online should ensure their websites are built and configured to be found easily using these tools.
How long does SEO take?
It depends.
There are numerous factors that influence how long it takes for a website to rank for a given keyword phrase but they can all essentially be boiled down to the following:
- The competitiveness (demand) for the target keyword phrase(s).
- The degree to which a site has already been optimized.
- The amount of money and effort allocated to an SEO campaign.
In other words, the current condition of a site and how much is invested into it to rank impact how long it takes to achieve first position rankings.
In general it can take anywhere from 4 months to more than a year to get where you want to be.
Practical Steps For Law Firm Optimization
To gain the visibility you need, you must perform search engine optimization (SEO) on your website to:
- Get the pages properly indexed
- Get the indexed pages appearing highly enough in the search engine results pages (SERPs) that prospective clients find your pages in Google
Google uses a complex algorithm to decide how to rank pages for keywords.
To be successful in Google’s rankings, optimize your website in such a way that provides prospective clients with the information they need in a user-friendly way.
There’s much more to these tactics, of course, so read on for the details. If you have any questions along the way, please contact Safdar Media to find out about our SEO services for lawyers.
1) Understand the Google results for legal search queries
Google’s search results are changing. There are currently 19 result types that dominate Google’s top spots.
This applies to the legal space as well. When searching for “DUI Law Firm Miami“, there’s a lot of noise:
- 7 paid ads (4 on top, 3 on the bottom)
- 3 local results (“Maps” pack)
- 10 organic results (“blue links”)
Think about that – of the 10 organic results, half of them are aggregator sites (Avvo, Yelp, etc) – only 25% of organic results are really available.
The competition for those spots is tough – you need to be realistic about your campaign and adjust your strategy accordingly.
My best piece of advice is instead of fighting aggregator sites, leverage them. They’ve done the hard work, they rank for everything.
The beauty of these sites is they have their own internal algorithms to rank.
If you optimize your profile to rank, you’re essentially ranking for your “money” keywords right off the bat.
2) Select your keywords
Keyword mapping is the process of optimizing pages and based on keyword intent.
We like to visualize using the “funnel” model.
“Awareness” keywords.
- Intent: Looking for your services.
- KW examples: Hire a Miami DUI attorney, Boston defense attorneys near me.
“Interest” keywords.
- Intent: Looking for information on your services.
- KW examples: Miami DUI attorney reviews, Miami DUI attorney cost,
“Action” keywords.
- Intent: Looking for information on their case.
- KW examples: How to fill out EB-5 Visa, DUI prison sentence length.
To do keyword research and find the intent you need to use SEO tools.
Although some tools provide a degree of free usage, the most sophisticated typically are not free.
Some of the tools we use include:
- Ahrefs
- Google Keyword Planner
- KWFinder
- SEMrush
- SpyFu
- Wordtracker
Your ideal keywords are highly targeted with steady to good levels of traffic and with manageable levels of competition.
The latter requirement is why, for example, you don’t try to simply rank for “law firm.”
3) Perform Website Optimization
As a baseline requirement, you must have a responsive site design.
If you do, you’re ready to move on, and here are key elements of website optimization.
SEO Site Structure
How your site is organized and where your content appears within your website’s architecture is an important part of having a search engine-friendly site.
Your site should be logically organized and structured in a way that makes it easy for site visitors to find the information they need.
Because you want potential clients to find your services section as quickly as possible. Put that selection far to the left in the main navigation bar.
Here is an example:
Beneath the main Areas of Practice navigation item, make it equally as easy for potential clients to find your legal specialties. Here is how Harrell & Harrell handles the areas of practice sub-navigation:
It can be tempting to put your About Us link first in the navigation, but it’s better for SEO purposes and users if practice pages are first.
Our experience with studying the click patterns of multiple client websites is that users go first to the practice pages and then to attorney profiles and About Us pages.
Look for other ways to provide a quality user experience (UX) throughout your site. If your site is easy to use, people will feel more comfortable using it and be more likely to spend more time exploring it.
Optimize URLs
Based on the keyword research you’ve conducted, use keywords in each URL on your site without overdoing usage.
We’ve seen, as just one example, some personal injury attorneys using the term “personal injury” on every single URL on their websites.
For example, they might use www.domain-name.com/personal-injury-attorney-about-us.
That crosses over from keyword usage to keyword stuffing, which can hurt your efforts rather than help your SEO.
A better URL for the about us page would be www.domain-name.com/about-law-firm.
This is a better choice because this page is about your law firm overall, not about a particular service, such as personal injury, that you offer.
More examples: Your motorcycle accident services page would be www.domain-name.com/motorcycle-accident-attorney and your car accident services would be www.domain-name.com/car-accident-attorney.
Page Speed
Page speed has been a ranking factor for desktop searches for several years and it’s now become a factor for mobile searches.
From an SEO perspective, Google states that pages that “deliver the slowest experience to users” will be negatively impacted.
Even if your speed is fast enough to satisfy Google, site visitors are impatient.
If your pages take too long to load, someone who really needs to hire a lawyer will likely move on to your competitor’s site.
This potential client is worrying about a legal issue, so he or she isn’t going to wait very long, probably much less time than someone ordering a pizza online or buying a pair of shoes.
In addition, if your pages are among the slowest to load, you’ll be hit with a double whammy: less visibility in Google and potential clients fleeing to your competitor’s site.
You can test your site at Page Speed Insights.
By using BestBuy as an example, we can see the following information about their mobile offerings:
This tells us that although BestBuy is reasonably well optimized, its page speed is mediocre.
More specifically, its First Contentful Paint (FCP) metric tells us it takes nearly two seconds for users to first see a visual response from the page.
It then takes another full second for the HTML document to load and be parsed; DCL stands for “DOM Content Loaded.”
We can learn even more from Page Speed Insights. For example, here is additional information about the mobile site’s page load distributions:
Another tool we recommend for checking page speed and other purposes is GTMetrix.
On-Page Optimization
When you optimize back-end tags on your website, they aren’t visible when someone visits your site, but they play a very important role in your law firm SEO strategy. Here’s how that works.
Let’s say a potential client of yours searches for “criminal defense attorney Dubuque Iowa” in Google. Organic search results that show up on page one are as follows:
As you can see the green line tells us the URL of the page, the purplish-blue line at the top of the search result is the title tag, and the smaller black text is the meta description tag.
So for each page and each post you write, enter the text you want to appear in the corresponding title tag and meta description tag.
Google is not required to use what you provide but typically does use well-crafted ones.
WordPress plugins make it easy to add title tags and meta description tags to your posts.
You can typically use about 60 characters in the title tag and 160 in the meta description tag.
If you add more, it may not show up in the SERPs, which is counterproductive.
Here is an example of the back end of WordPress, where the plugin allows you to enter tag information and the URL ending (slug):
Schema
This is an additional form of HTML markup that you can use on your law firm’s name on your own website, as well as on any address information.
You can find the schema information for local businesses here. It’s important that you use the appropriate schema for reviews on your site, as well.
By doing so, Google may reward you with a review snippet in search results.
4) Optimize for local search as well
Local SEO requires you to optimize for your specific locations.
This means that, if you have multiple office locations, you should have a unique optimized page on your website for each one in order to link well for your local audience.
GMB plays a HUGE role in local SEO. In fact, GMB listings are displayed either first or before organic search results:
If you haven’t already, set up and verify your Google My Business watch this video:
5) Create content that attracts new eyeballs to your website
You need to create pages that are a valuable resource for your target audience.
Top of the funnel content for example needs to be all-encompassing and informative.
The NJ Lemon Law Firm pictured below is a great example of a page that focuses on a broad keyword phrase on a page educating consumers about consumer protection laws in New Jersey related to automobiles.
I hope you’ve stuck around to this point – your SEO success hinges on the ability to create and distribute content.
You’ve heard it before: “content is king”.
I hate it.
This buzzword has sites launching blogs with content adding no value. In fact, it’s driving potential clients away.
Allow me to put it in perspective.
Let’s say you’re in the market for SEO services. You do a Google search for a couple of agencies in your area and you click on the first couple of results.
Let’s be honest, they all say the same thing. How can you tell the difference?
Every business’ website claims to be an expert. A great blog proves it.
Start by heading back to your list of keywords separated by intent.
- Use keywords tagged with “Purchase” in “Services” type pages.
- Use keywords tagged with “Info” in “Blog” posts.
Keywords with purchase intent should be targeted at sales/service pages. Each page should be themed at one main keyword. Include that keyword in:
- The URL
- Title of the page
-
tag
- 1 image title
- 1 image alt tag
- 2 – 3 times throughout the content (the page should include at least 350 words of relevant content)
99% of SEO agencies will stop at “purchase” keywords.
Thing is, you need more than words on a page to get Google’s attention. You need social shares, brand mentions, and a lot of high-quality links.
Why would someone share your homepage? Why would a website link to your services page?
They wouldn’t. I know this. You know this. Google knows this.
If your website has a ton of links pointing to 1 page it looks like spam and your website is going to get bitch slapped by Google.
“Info” type of content is what generates real shares and links. That’s why you need a blog.
That’s the easy part. The hard part is creating content people actually care about.
People don’t care about “10 Reasons to Hire an Attorney”. Give them something they can’t find anywhere else.
You paid $300,000 for an education – show us what you learned!
- In-depth guides
- Case studies
- Infographics
Don’t skimp on the details. Prove you’re an expert. Show why you’re worth $300/hour.
This content drives social shares, links, and traffic. More importantly, it establishes your firm as a trusted voice and industry leader for legal advice.
6) You need high quality backlinks
Links are still the #1 ranking factor. However, it’s not as easy as it used to be.
14 months ago I could rank a site with the click of a button. Literally, it was that easy.
Unfortunately, those days are over. Now, you need more than a handful of links.
In competitive verticals, Google ranks sites with authority and trust. Authoritative and trustworthy sites don’t have 1 type of link pointing to 1 page.
Building trust with Google is a process. Here’s how I do it:
- Social media and forum links to blog content
- Link outreach to blog content
- Internal links to money pages
- White hat link building to money pages
- Link buying to money pages
This is a long process. It takes a lot of time, resources, and effort. I promise if you do what I’m telling you, it will pay off.
Social media and forum links
It’s not enough to post links to owned accounts. You’ve got to build a buzz around your site.
The best way to do start is to get your content in groups and forums.
The mistake most make is pushing content in front of their target audience.
No one with a DUI is going to share an infographic about a DUI. However, if the content is good enough, your peers will.
Quora is a high visibility question and answer site. I’ve driven thousands of visits in the last few months alone using it.
The key to Quora is finding threads related to the content on your blog.
Internal linking
Linking pages internally passes link equity and ranking signals. You can use them to pass that valuable juice from your blog content to your money pages by interlinking them.
Link outreach
Link outreach is great because you can score high powerful “white hat” links for free.
Link outreach only works when you’ve got content worth linking to. You can write perfect emails but no one is going to link to your home page.
The best places where you can get links are:
- Resource pages
- Borrowing links
- Guest Posting
- Local press
7) Track results and scale efforts
Organic traffic is not free. There’s a considerable investment of time, resources and capital to get results.
To justify the cost, we need to understand the outputs of SEO.
- Overall search engine visibility
- Overall organic traffic
- Organic traffic to “target pages”
- Leads and phone calls from organic search
The following sub sections will outline everything you need.
Overall search engine visibility
It takes a while for your site to reach the top of Google and start getting traffic (6 to 12 months).
In the meantime, we can measure “SERP visibility”.
SERP visibility = the total number of keywords your website is indexed for.
To check overall visibility you can use Ahrefs, SEMrush or any other SEO tool.
It tells you how many keywords your site is ranking for over time. It also estimates traffic and the cost of that traffic (if you were to buy it through PPC ads)
Analyzing Organic Traffic
After a few months, your traffic from Google should be picking up. We can easily verify this using Google Analytics.
To view the report sign in to Google Analytics account. Then:
Audience > Overview (add Organic Segment)
It tells you how many visitors are coming to your site through search engines.
Organic traffic to “target pages”
When we analyze the organic traffic report, we want to make sure it is meaningful traffic.
We can dig into that by segmenting organic traffic reports to look at where traffic is going.
To view the report go to:
Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages (add Organic Segment)
It tells you the pages on your website that are receiving organic traffic. These pages should be your “target pages”, i.e. important landing pages on your site.
Leads and phone calls from organic
Most importantly, we want to know how SEO is impacting your top line. It’s tricky, but we can use analytics to track your firm’s leads and phone calls from organic search.
To view the report go to:
Conversions > Goals > Overview (add Organic Segment)
It tells you the number of completed goals from organic search. This should be set up to track both form submission and phone calls.
Conclusion
With most consumers searching exclusively online for an attorney, these proven techniques will steer you in the right direction.
SEO is not something that happens overnight.
It takes more than keywords for your website to rank higher than those of competitors who have a comprehensive SEO strategy in place.
It is a long-term process that requires time, patience, and hard work to achieve results.