I can understand why SEO seems like a technical minefield to most people. Acronyms for starters always sound more complicated than they are, and while there are technical considerations involved with SEO, you don’t need a degree in computer programming to understand them. On the chance however, that you don’t have any real desire to understand the technical elements of SEO, or you’ve got someone else who can help with that stuff, what can you do that is within your skills remit?
There are plenty of SEO basics that you can implement to see immediate results, and the beauty is, many of these don’t require any real technical expertise. This’ll give you a better understanding of the mechanics behind your inbound lead generation, and will allow you to leave the technical know-how to someone who’s got the experience.
So let’s take a look at of the non-technical basics of SEO for law firms.
SEO Basics for Law Firms
1) External Links
Links are at the heart of any SEO strategy, and this is both internal and external links I’m talking about. Let’s start with external links.
Did you know that the average search result in the #1 position on Google has 3.8 times more backlinks (external links pointing to your domain) than search results in positions 2 through 10. It may sound like a fairly obvious piece of data, and that’s because it is, but backlinks really are crucial to your SEO strategy.
Generating backlinks doesn’t require any exceptional technical knowledge of anything SEO related, it simply requires you to outreach to generate more. There are many methods you can use to expand your backlink portfolio; from outreach blogging, writing testimonials to businesses you’ve dealt with, thought leadership content, leveraging your network, and creating citable, engaging and informative content. Take a look at our blog here on building backlinks for law firm to explore a few options!
2) Internal Links
Moving onto your inbound links, again, there’s some pretty simple solutions. The idea with your inbound link structure is to have your most important pages receiving the highest number of links coming into them from other areas of your site.
Let’s role play for a second. You’re a law firm. Your website ‘thebestlawfirm.com’ has got a decent amount of content. You’ve got a blog, several key service pages, some client resources, a news section, etc. Your priority page though is a landing page targeting ‘personal injury law’. Our target is to have that page ranking as high as possible on Google.
What do we do from a link perspective that can help achieve that goal?
Well, we take to Google of course, and find out what pages Google thinks are the most relevant pages on your site to ‘personal injury law’. We’re then going to make sure every single one of them has a link to your most important landing page ‘personal injury law’.
Step 1 – Enter into Google a search query that will specify only pages from your site (see query in bold below)
Site:Thebestlawfirm.com
Step 2 – Add your chosen keyword into the query to find the most relevant pages to that keyword (see query in bold below)
Site:Thebestlawfirm.com personal injury law
Step 3 – Google will identify the top 5-10 pages that are most relevant to that query, so now you can go into each page and add a link to your priority landing page.
It’s quite simple, yes, but if you do this for every single one of your priority pages and queries you’ll help Google understand what to prioritise. Of course there are technical considerations that can help boost the effectiveness of this process, but these are the basic fundamentals to boost your internal link structure. To understand how to embed a URL as best as possible from an SEO perspective, take a look at this blog to understand anchor link structure.
3) Google My Business
Again a pretty obvious one, but a lot of search queries are based on Geography. How many times have you searched ‘restaurant x location’ or ‘hotels y location’ etc. Google My Business (GMB) pages are Google’s answer to showing the most relevant business to any given geographic search query.
Your GMB page will allow you to show:
- Where you are located
- What you do
- How to contact you
- Where to find more information (your website)
- When you’re available
- Some initial photos/videos/FAQs
On top of that a GMB page allows you to do 2 extremely crucial things. Firstly, you can receive reviews, which are absolutely essential for your online credibility and visibility. Secondly, people can ask you direct questions from Google which allows you to understand what your audience wants to know about.
While it won’t do anything for your SEO, it’s always wise to make sure any social media profiles are updated alongside your GMB pages, just to ensure a cohesive brand identity online!
4) Researching & Using Relevant Keywords
A keyword or keyphrase is essentially the idea or topic that defines your content. It’s normally 1-4 words and gives a general idea as to what this certain page is talking about. Some keywords are very broad, whilst some are a lot narrower and are often sector or geography specific. Keywords are the foundation of good SEO and good content.
When your potential clients use search engines the hope is that they’re searching for your keyword or synonyms of it. That’s why you need to know what your potential clients are searching for. Research!
- Start off brainstorming some potential keywords. Write down what you do, what services you offer, where you are. You can also take this a step further and ask your audience what they want to know, what are your inquiries based on, what did you current client need support with, what were their problems. All these areas are the foundations for your keywords and content.
- Identify a few combinations of the above brainstormed keywords and search them in a keyword research tool like Moz or Semrush. These tools show how much search intent there is for a certain keyword, and how tricky it might be to rank for it. If it’s particularly tricky to rank maybe try adding a location element to your query to see if that helps (start broad and shift narrow)
- Enter your keywords into Google to see what your competitors are writing about in order to rank for the keywords most relevant to you. Are there areas you can expand on, areas you can offer more clarity, value, etc?
The end goal is to have a group of keywords that will be used for your content moving forwards. This group of keywords forms the key pillar for your content. The last thing you need to do is go ahead and create it!
Final Thoughts
These basics should stand you in relatively good stead moving forwards, and will hopefully give you an understanding of what contributes to your SEO. Of course we haven’t mentioned any technical elements, and while these basics are incredibly important, they are also most effective if partnered with a more well-rounded SEO strategy.
Checkout our Ultimate Guide to SEO here to understand a bit more about the technical and on-page elements of SEO that you can implement. If you’d like to find out more, contact us here for a free consultation!
