Law Firm SEO – 5 tips for legal firms

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process used by digital marketers to drive visitors to your law firm’s website and to boost online visibility through rankings on search engines (Google, Bing etc). There are various techniques that are used by SEO specialists to improve performance and achieve profitable results, that cover:

• Content best practices
• Technical SEO
• Backlinks and off-page activity

What does SEO mean in law?

SEO techniques can be used to attract relevant traffic to your firm’s website by ranking in Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs). This can be achieved by being visible for keywords and terms that your target audience is searching for online. In doing this, law firms can attract visitors that are more likely to convert into clients or future employees to add value to their firm – making it a profitable strategic approach.

How does law firm SEO generate the most website traffic?

Google almost monopolises the search engine space, boasting just over a 92% market share. So, when it comes to SEO, digital marketers play by Google’s rules to achieve the best results. This means that optimisation is in-line with Google’s algorithm and websites are essentially built and updated to a criteria best suited for Google to understand and rank in its results pages.

28% of people will click on the first result on Google when they’re searching online. Clicks drop to 2.5% for the 10th result and beyond page one results tend to drop off entirely. As the saying goes in digital marketing, ‘the best place to hide a dead body is on the second page of Google’. Legal clients are no different in how they use Google to search for firms or legal services and this should signal to law firms the importance of their website ranking as highly as possible on page one of SERPs. The higher your website ranks, the more likely you are to attract higher volumes of website traffic.

How to boost ROI with law firm SEO

 1. Keyword research

Any effective SEO strategy will include keyword research at the earliest stages. Identifying the most relevant keywords and terms for your firm and sector that are already being searched for is a great way to ensure your website is getting in front of the right audience. Typically you’d optimise pages on your website using a primary keyword and then secondary keywords. This means the main focus of the page is targeting the primary term and the secondary keywords are supportive of that topic, these typically are subtopics that are also relevant.

During this research, identify common questions that are also being searched by your audience. The most common reasons to carry out an online search is for one of the following:

• Informational intent – this is often specific searches for information, which could be a question on a service. Keywords associated with these types of searches might include, ‘why, how, information on’.
• Navigational intent – searches in this category are usually for particular websites, so ranking for your firm’s name for example could rank here.
• Transactional intent – this is more suitable for services or products that can be ordered online
• Commercial investigation – when people are researching services or products that also have transactional intent, they’re likely to visit websites by using key terms like ‘best law firm for…’.

Keyword research ensures that your firm can then produce content that your audience is looking for and importantly increases the likelihood of potential clients picking up the phone to get in touch.

2. Content

Content is a key driver for law firm SEO to be successful. When a potential client searches a key term, Google will then carry out a scan (a crawl) to find the most relevant website pages to list in its search results. By following best SEO on-page content practices, Google can easily read your site and rank your firm’s website. Some of the keyword signals that should be included in the optimisation of law firm content are:

• Title and meta description
• Headings and subheadings
• URL naming

Another important aspect to consider when creating content to power your law firm SEO strategy is the user experience. Google likes relevant, quality content that gives its users the answers they need and in an accessible manner. This means avoiding forcing keywords into your copy, but writing authentically to best serve your visitor’s intent. This can be achieved by varying your content across your firm’s website to include FAQ pages, service pages, news updates or blog posts.

72% of people report a preference of learning about a service or product via video. Google is user-experience driven and so recognises the importance of a variety of content mediums being included on websites. This means, including video content and imagery as well as text can help boost your law firm SEO performance.

 3. Backlinks

For SEO, gaining backlinks (follow links from other websites to your firm’s site) plays an important role in how well your website ranks on search engines. Think of it as a popularity contest, the signal sent to Google is that ‘your firm’s site is being talked about’ and therefore has credibility and is worthy of being ranked highly for all Google users to see. There are some nuances in backlinking, but for the purposes of this article gaining backlinks from credible sources can help law firm SEO performance.

 4. Mobile

57% of people will be put off by a website that isn’t optimised for mobile and will not recommend the business as a consequence. With over 54% of all search traffic coming from mobile devices, law firms cannot afford to overlook the importance of optimising their websites across devices. Firms that fail to make their website accessible to potential clients risk missing out on valuable new clients and cases.

30% of mobile searches are location based, so law firms that have ranked their offices for terms such as ‘divorce lawyer near me’ or ‘law firms in Manchester’ stand to capitalise on high volumes of quality website visits from potential clients in the area by leveraging local SEO tactics.

 5. Technical

Technical SEO is critical for the success of a law firm SEO strategy. This aspect of the discipline looks at how your website is structured and if it’s optimised to Google’s technical criteria. Put simply, technical SEO ensures that Google can navigate your website easily when it’s looking to rank it during online searches, so law firm websites that include effectively structured data markup for instance make it easy for Google to quickly recognise and understand the website’s content to show it in its results pages as perhaps a featured snippet, an image result or local business. You can see more about what Google recommends here, alternatively speak to a law firm marketing agency that specialises in SEO.

How effective is your firm’s search marketing strategy?

Law firm SEO plays a critical role in driving website traffic and overall digital performance. How well is your current website investment performing for your firm? To put your website to the test and find out how your firm stacks up against your competitors digitally, contact us to speak to us about a Digital Marketing Audit or to find out more about how your firm could be getting a better ROI from SEO.

We’re Ultimedia, a team of digital specialists who design, build and optimise websites for enterprise level organisations worldwide. We’ve been helping businesses achieve their digital goals since 1995 and are proudly certified across Google, Hubspot, Microsoft and Optimizely platforms. Get in touch today to speak to an expert about your project requirements – we’d be happy to help.