Lawyer SEO Company - Search Engine Optimization For Attorneys
The future of business is online, and there is no getting away from that fact. One might as well say that the "right now" of business is online. If you want more leads and clients for your law firm, then SEO is the most effective and stable long-term method. Though SEO is essential for any business, let's look at SEO for Law firms specifically. SEO is a broad topic, but we have created a short guide to help lawyers understand why it's so important for their niche in particular.
What is SEO for Lawyers?
Let's begin by defining what SEO is. SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a set of processes designed to optimize your website to make it search engine friendly, so it will potentially rank high in the SERPs (Search Engine Results).
Search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing use automated spiders or web crawlers to scan web pages, index, and rank them. The web pages are evaluated to determine where they should rank in the SERPs. Google has over 200 ranking factors in their algorithm to assess a webpage or website. The primary consideration is whether your web page meets user intent for the query.
It would be best to understand that search engines are dynamic and always in a state of evolution. For this reason, even if your competitor is currently ranking above you, if you optimize your site better, you have the potential of stealing their spot.
SEO for lawyers has its own set of challenges, it is a highly competitive market, and it is categorized as a YMYL or Your Money, Your Life niche. A YMYL website is one that provides financial, medical, or legal advice. According to Google, these types of sites that could impact a visitor's finances, health, or safety, 'have very high page quality rating standards.'
"Worked with Will and his team for a couple of months now. They are very professional and service oriented. Deliver on time and super responsive when I have had any questions or concerns."
"Great service. Each month our traffic increases and we get tons of new leads. The only issue for us is keeping on top of all the new business!"
"The Search Initiative really know they're stuff; took our site from nowhere to first page of Google for lots of really important keywords. We'd happily recommend them."
"I think your team has done a wonderful job. Jonny does great work and is a very knowledgeable project manger. I would recommend your services to others that are looking for a hands-off SEO approach."
SEO is typically broken down into three types, with an additional fourth one for local searches only:
- Technical
- On-site
- Off-site
- Local
Though it can be divided into separate areas, SEO is holistic, and it's the sum of all its parts that will move the needle the most. That is not to say that individual SEO tweaks won't help your website rank better, but for far-reaching results, you need to cover all the bases.
So let's take a look at these four areas:
Technical SEO for Lawyers
Just like a shiny fast car that is amazing to look at but is a mess under the hood, a website that looks great and has fantastic content but has technical issues isn't going to get you very far. Traditionally technical SEO was all about optimizing a website so that bots could crawl render and index it with no issues. While ensuring that your site is easy to crawl and can be indexed is still essential, there are other technical issues to pay attention to.
In the last few years, one crucial technical SEO factor is ensuring that a website is fully responsive and will work on all devices. In 2019 statistics show that a mobile device was used by 80% of users to search online, and this is a growing figure exponentially. If your website isn't mobile responsive on all devices, then you are sure to be missing out on customers.
Site speed for both desktop and mobile devices is another crucial technical factor that Google can penalize you for and will alienate your clients. This is another technical issue that often goes unnoticed by the uninitiated. Your web developer may have built you a beautiful looking site, but if it is bloated and takes too long to load, a visitor is likely to abandon the page, click away, and visit your competitor's site. The chances are that Google will see it as a poor user experience and penalize the site accordingly. There are free online tools that can test page speed, and if your site is mobile friendly.
There are many other considerations to think about when determining the technical health of your website. The best SEO services for lawyers will perform a thorough audit on your site using auditing tools such as Screaming Frog or Sitebulb to determine any technical issues.
Onsite SEO for Lawyers
Some technical and onsite SEO crossover aspects involve optimizing title tags, meta descriptions, schema, and more. Other important onsite factors are keyword research, conversion rate optimization, and content; we'll take a closer look at these three areas in this guide.
Keyword Research
Keyword research and competitor analysis go hand in hand. When we talk about competition, we are discussing sites in the search engines which are outranking you. If you can discover what keywords or phrases they are ranking for, then you'll know which ones to target for your site.
For instance, you might find that your competitor is ranking for the keyword' (city) car accident lawyer,' but they are also ranking for dozens of other similar keywords such as '(city) car accident attorney' (city) auto accident lawyer and more. Using paid SEO tools such as Ahrefs, you can find out who your competitors are, the keywords they are ranking for, the backlinks they have acquired, and even run a content gap analysis to find out terms that they are ranking for and you aren't.
Ideally, you will want to rank for two types of keywords money and informational. Your money keywords are those that are going to lead to new clients, so for a lawyer, your money keywords would be those such as 'Fort Myers car accident lawyer' or 'divorce lawyer El Paso.' Informational keywords are used to give your site authority even though they have little chance of converting new clients. These would be keywords such as 'car accident statistics El Paso' or 'Florida texting while driving law.'
Conversion Rate Optimization
Abbreviated as CRO, it ensures that your site is best optimized to convert clients. CRO covers a wide range of techniques beyond this guide's remit, but a quick win for law sites is to make your homepage your biggest priority. Ensure that it is user friendly and it should have a clearly visible CTA or Call to Action at the top of the page in the right corner above the fold. Introducing live chat functionality to your homepage could also be a good idea.
Content
Once you have found all the keywords that your competitors are ranking for, you can use them on your money and informational pages. If you want your site to look authoritative in Google's eyes and receive lots of visitor traffic, then add regular content to your site. The best Law firms usually have a blog for all their info content; this can be the difference between a couple of hundred visitors to thousands a month. Even if the blog pages don't convert visitors into clients, your website will still rank higher in the search engines, and you can also interlink from your blog posts to your money pages to boost authority.
Offsite SEO for Lawyers
Offsite SEO is all about the acquisition of links. When you obtain backlinks from high-quality websites, Google sees this as a vote in your favor, and accordingly, this will improve your rankings. Gaining quality backlinks involves getting your site listed in legal directories and outreaching to relevant websites of authority. With links, it is all about relevance and authority; ensure that you only outsource to the best, spammy, low-quality links will reverse any SEO gains you make.
Lawyer SEO for Local Search
One of the benefits for local businesses over other websites is that they get the chance to appear twice on the first page of Google. As well as the organic results for your website, local businesses can appear in a boxed section known as the Google Snack Pack or Google 3 pack and, also, Google Maps. When a local query such as 'divorce lawyer near me' is searched, the top three divorce lawyers will be shown in the locality.
As clicks on the three listings in the Google Snack Pack and Maps are substantially higher, it comes much valued. To get into the Google 3 Pack, you need to set up your GMB (Google My Business] listing and optimize it correctly, providing as much information possible about your business.
Most lawyers are local to a specific city, county, or state, and they need local SEO optimization.
Why is SEO for Lawyers Important?
For the majority of people hiring the services of a lawyer isn't something they do regularly. When they require a lawyer, the two most common ways of finding one is to seek referrals from friends or family or search on Google. It might be that they are referred to two or three lawyers; the logical choice would be to go with the one that is at the top of the rankings in Google. It might be that they aren't even the best lawyer available, just that they had their website better optimized in Google's eyes.
Your visibility also carries over to branding and authority; search engine users trust Google to show them the best webpage to match their user intent. Joe Lawyer who ranks number one for 'personal injury lawyer Twin Falls, Idaho' might not be the best in Twin Falls. Bob the Lawyer, who is on the second page, doesn't get the trust or visibility because he hasn't optimized his website for the search engines even though he might be the best lawyer in town.
A Google consumer survey from 2013 found that 96% of people used a search engine to seek legal advice, and you can safely assume that this figure has grown since then.
Why Lawyer SEO Marketing is Better Than Paid Ads
PPC or pay-per-click marketing is a paid form of marketing where, for instance, you can advertise with Google to have an ad for your business displayed at the top of the search results page. While this is an effective way of driving qualified traffic to your website, its significant disadvantage is that when you stop paying to run your campaign, the faucet gets turned off. With SEO, once your web page is ranking in the SERPs, it will continuously receive organic traffic at a much lower cost. With PPC, you will be bidding on individual keywords while a single, well-optimized webpage can rank for dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of keywords.
SEO Services for Lawyers
Hiring a company to handle your SEO is a smart move. However, you must retain an SEO company that is reputable and ethical. Lawyers are highly regulated and have to adhere to strict ethical standards for digital marketing with each state bar offering specific guidelines. Often the law firm is also held responsible for the conduct of any digital marketing agency acting on their behalf. You and the SEO service you employ must be on the same page and take an ethical approach to market your business.
Though it is not impossible to perform SEO on your site if you have gained some knowledge of the process and have the paid tools at hand, it is not advised. SEO is a time-consuming task, and it is a challenge to keep up with the constant changes.
A reputable SEO service will have a team of experts with years of experience under their belts, paid tools, and proven case studies. They will also have a team of professional content writers who can write both engaging and SEO friendly copy and know your niche. To help with offsite, a large agency will have outreach specialists who can obtain backlinks from authority sites in your niche.
How Much Will it Cost for Attorney SEO Services?
It should be understood that SEO in the local legal market is hugely competitive, so this will reflect in the costs of any SEO service provider that you hire. The benefit of SEO is that it is very straightforward to analyze and track the data, which allows you to determine if you are getting a good ROI from the services provided. However, SEO is not a quick fix, so give it a little time before you start seeing and measuring results.
How Long Before I see the Results from an Attorney SEO Campaign?
The length of time is dependent on several different factors, including how competitive the keyword or keywords you are attempting to rank for are, and how well your website is already optimized for the search engines and how big a budget you have to run your campaign.
Typically you'll start seeing results after about six months. SEO isn't a quick fix, but using best practices once your site is ranking, it should, at the very least, maintain its position. The better possibility is that it ranks for more keywords, gaining authority, and leading to more clients booked.
In Conclusion
In this digital age, SEO for your law firm isn't an option; it is a must-have if you wish to remain competitive. Hiring an SEO agency with a proven track record understands your business's specific needs, and that of Lawyer SEO will ensure your online visibility.
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