Most lawyers are aware that they need to do SEO. The tricky part is knowing how to do it, though. I’ll admit: lawyer SEO is a whole different ball game than other professions. If you’re not careful about it, your website might get buried in search results and no one will find it—and if no one finds it, then you can’t attract new clients! That’s why I’m here today: to help you learn how to optimize your site so that people can find your firm when they perform a search on Google or Bing. First of all, let’s talk about what makes lawyer SEO unique compared with other industries (and yes… there are plenty of differences).
Lawyer SEO is a whole different ball game than other professions.
As a lawyer, you’re more likely to be penalized by Google for doing things that would be fine for other professions. This is because lawyers tend to get in trouble with their clients when they accidentally make some small mistake that costs them money or makes them look bad.
For example, let’s say you’re a civil rights attorney and you have a client who sues someone because they were discriminated against at work. If your client finds out later that their case has been dismissed due to an error on your end (like forgetting to file one piece of paperwork), they might not be happy—and neither will anyone else who was looking into hiring this firm when they saw it had so many cases dismissed!
This makes SEO for law firms especially tricky since there are many ways for mistakes like this to happen without even realizing it until after the fact—which means doing SEO right requires extra diligence and care from lawyers themselves
There are 4 big factors you need to consider.
There are 4 big factors you need to consider when it comes to SEO for law firms:
- Domain authority. This is the most important factor in Google’s algorithm, and it refers to how much authority your website has in general. It’s measured by looking at a variety of metrics like how many links point back to your site, how long it’s been around, and more.
- Page authority. This is essentially a subset of domain authority that looks specifically at individual pages instead of an entire site. If one or more pages on your site have high page authority (and low bounce rate), they may rank higher than other pages with lower page authority but greater visitor engagement and traffic overall—which means they could be getting better results for certain keywords because they have higher ranking potential than other pages on your website that don’t have as much user engagement\footnote{Google considers bounce rate—the percentage of people who visit once then leave—as an indicator of user satisfaction with content or quality.}
Scoring high on these points is critical if you want to maintain a high ranking.
To get a high ranking, you need to have a website that is optimized for search engines. This means having a good domain name, website design and content. You also need to have good backlinks (we’ll discuss these in another post). Finally, having social media presence can boost your rankings as well.
It’s important that all of these elements work together in order for your site to score high on Google’s SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). If one or more of these points are lacking, then it will be difficult for you to get listed at the top of the SERPs for relevant keywords that potential clients may use when searching online.
You should know how your competition is doing.
There are a few things you must do to understand how your competition is doing.
First, you should know the keywords they are using. Are they targeting the keyword phrases that you want to target? If so, it may be time for a keyword audit and update of your own website.
Second, it’s important to know what type of content they produce for their website. Is it evergreen content that will stay relevant over time? Or is it news-related content that will have less staying power on search engines? Knowing this information ahead of time can help shape how often and how much effort you need to put into creating new content for yours!
Third, look at their social media strategy: do they regularly post on Twitter or Facebook (and/or LinkedIn)? What kind of engagement rate do their posts get? Does their audience seem interested in what they share? Do these posts help drive traffic back up through referral sources like Google Analytics and Search Console?
Local SEO is especially important for lawyer SEO.
Local SEO is especially important for lawyer SEO. Lawyers are often looking for people who are in the same city or area as them, but don’t know exactly where to look. If you want to get found by potential clients, you need to consider local keywords and driving traffic from these keywords to your website.
You should write plenty of content on your website, and it should be well optimized.
It’s also important to write plenty of content on your website, and it should be well optimized.
This means using keywords in your content, using subheadings, using images and videos where appropriate, making sure that you have internal links on the page (more on this later), and generally making sure that your website is easy for search engines to find. If you want help with this aspect of SEO for lawyers, there are many free tools available online that can help optimize any piece of text for search engines such as Yoast or Google’s own Search Console.
You need to build up a foundation of links to your site.
You can get links from other websites by having them link back to you. This is called “link building,” and it’s a crucial part of SEO. The more links you have coming in, the better your site will do in search rankings.
There are many ways to get backlinks:
- Guest posts: Write an article for another website and include a link back to your own site in it (with permission)
- Directory links: List your business on all the relevant directories that exist online
- Social media shares: Share content from other sites with your followers on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn
Infographics are great for getting attention because they’re visually appealing and easy-to-digest information chunks that help people understand what you do as an attorney
Remember, no one gets it perfect the first time around. It’s alright if you make mistakes at the outset.
Remember, no one gets it perfect the first time around. It’s alright if you make mistakes at the outset. But don’t just sit there and wonder why your website isn’t performing as well as it could be. Take action!
Ask for help from someone who knows what they’re doing, or learn more about SEO yourself. You can even hire a consultant if you want to get an expert opinion on how to improve your site’s performance.
If after reading this article you have more questions, contact me! We have made many lawyers happy by helping them with their marketing strategies.
If after reading this article you have more questions, contact me! We have made many lawyers happy by helping them with their marketing strategies.
I am a lawyer, and I can help you with your marketing strategy. We have helped many lawyers with their marketing strategies.
Conclusion
It is important to know that there are many factors which influence your ranking in search engines. The four factors we have discussed here are just a starting point, and should be taken as guidelines rather than rules. If you are still unsure of how to proceed, please contact me so that I can help guide you through these complex waters!