You are a lawyer with vast experience in your field. Nothing regarding laws and how to work with them-and even around them-escapes your gaze. However, you don’t seem to be getting enough traction.
Your website is in place. Your phone numbers and contact info is all there but there still never seems to be enough leads coming in. This is because even though you are pretty good at your craft, people simply don’t know you exist.
This is where you must up your law firm’s SEO game to generate more traffic and, ultimately, transform it into more leads. Not sure where to start? No problem. Check out these 10 SEO tips for law firms & solo attorneys.
Tip #1: Determine your Target Keywords
In order to ensure that people come to your page via organic search, you must know what people are looking for. The knowledge of these keywords is the first step in optimizing your site for traffic and extends beyond just SEO into a fundamental knowledge of marketing for lawyers.
Make a list of keywords that are relevant to your practice. These will be your main keywords. Once you have done this, use Google to check out suggested keywords. As you are typing these keywords, consider Google’s suggestions for things that people are looking for.
Also, consider checking other suggested keywords at the bottom of the search page.
You will also want to use a tool that shows you exactly what it is that people are searching for and in what volume. Some you can try include:
- Wordstream
- Keyword.IO
- SERPS
- Google Keyword Planner
Tip #2: Use These Keywords Wisely
Now that you have your list of keywords that both have a decent search volume and are relevant to your practice, you must use them. These keywords should now be on all of your content, including home page, service pages, and blog posts.
Keywords must be included in your H1s, H2s, H3s, your call to action and the content itself. Avoid penalization from search engines by not simply sprinkling keywords here and there aimlessly.
Also, do not forget to include your highest-ranking keywords in your title, subtitle, and meta description. We will talk about this with more detail later on.
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Tip #3: Create Unique Content
They say content is king and there are several reasons to believe that. But we are not talking about words alone here. We are talking about a content experience that leaves readers wanting for more.
This involves not only written content but visuals, interactive content, etc. The more content you create, the better search engines will look at your website. A very long piece of content, with SEO-optimized headings and subheadings, will very likely rank higher as they are considered an authority in what they are presenting.
If we crunch it down to word count, we can say that more than 1000 words is good, but 1500-3000 words of content is even better. Whenever you start writing a blog post from an idea you just had, go check the length of your competitors’ similar topic. If they usually add content with 2500 pages, your post will have 3000 words.
Unfortunately, lawyers are not very good at writing. They already have a lot in their hands to deal with as it is. However, when you consider the returns of creating unique and specialized content, you realize that this is one enterprise that will also require your effort.
The most common type of content for a website include that one written for:
- Blog posts
- Social media posts
- Guest posts
Use tools like Copyscape to make sure your content is original. You don’t want your content to look exactly like your competitors.
Tip #4: Work a Little Extra on Design and Structure
A website with a proper structure, order, and easy navigation is pivotal to SEO.
Whenever someone falls into your website for the first time, you must make sure that their first experience on your site is significant. Nobody wants to stay on a website that looks like Charles Manson’s basement.
In the case of lawyers, work on something sober that depicts professionalism and friendliness. Don’t overpopulate your home page with so many details about what you do. If you can keep people in your site for more than 5 minutes, they are likely to go and figure out what your expertise is by themselves.
Tip #5: Make Sure Your Website Loads Fast
Your rebound rate will significantly drop if you optimize your website for what we know as site speed. A website that loads pretty fast provides a great experience for visitors. This is better for everyone and better for you, ranking-wise.
We understand that this is no easy task. If you believe you barely have time to write content for your site, maybe consider hiring a high-end web developer to get that and other tasks done.
Tip #6: Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly
52% of global traffic on the Internet comes from mobile devices and this per cent tends to the rise. Due to their little practicality, the use of desktops and even laptops to search is slowly decreasing.
Besides this, 60% of Google searches are done via a mobile device. What’s more, this 60% of users will get less than half at-a-glance results that they would get on their laptops. What does this mean to you? That in order to increase your chances of getting traffic from mobile devices, you must aim at the first places on the search engine results page.
Also, make sure your mobile site loads fast as well.
Tip #7: Optimize Titles of your Pages and their Meta Descriptions
The search results on a page include not only the title of the page and the URL, but also a meta description. This is important as it tells users what your website is about or what will they find on that specific page.
Both the title tags and the meta description make up the metadata of your page.
The title tag tells users and the search engines what that page is about. You can see the importance of placing keywords there.
The meta description is another great opportunity to place relevant keywords in there. This will better inform the search engines about how relevant your page is to what users are searching for.
Content management systems such as WordPress usually have a feature that allows you to customize this meta description. If this is not done, then the search engine will take the first 160 characters of your pages and place them there.
Customize it so that, instead of your meta description to look cropped like this:
It looks like this:
Tip #8: Get Social
When your site gets social signals, Google understands that your site is being shared because people find value in it. The best and easiest way to make people share your content is by adding social buttons.
You should also have set up accounts on at least the major social media sites – Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, etc. Add relevant posts in those social networks and get people to share and comment on them.
You want all these social media posts to get shared, retweeted, liked, and read by as many as possible. The more content you write, the greater the chances of stacking up these social media signs.
Tip #9: Create Keyword-Specific Pages
When we talk about website structure, we are essentially referring to having all your services in a row, and all the sub-services connected with them.
For instance, let’s say that you specialize in family law. This would be your keyword. Having more information and spokes to this hub will greatly increase your ranking in search engines. From family law, you then create content for all its branches – child custody, divorce, child support, etc.
Creating keyword-specific pages will help you rank and the more content you create the more authoritative you will appear to the search engine logarithm.
Tip #10: Add Your Website to Google My Business
In order to improve how your site appears on Google Search and Google Maps, you must add it to Google My Business.
This is a Google tool that puts your most relevant information in one place and helps attract more visitors to your site. If done properly, it will make your business grow in traffic.
A GMB profile is easy to set up. Once your listing gets verified, you will keep adding information. This information includes your attributes so that people can easily tell what your firm specializes in and all those relevant keywords we have been talking about.
You should also add images, your profile, and all the info that will add value and inspire people to click to your website. One important feature of a GMB is that it allows users to leave a review. Online reviews are very important because they make visitors feel more confident about your services.
Conclusion
SEO Optimization for law firms and solo attorneys is still a thing and you must invest time and effort into using it. Take advantage of everything that you can to improve your online presence, get the traffic you need, and convert all that to valuable returns.