SEO for law firms (otherwise known as search engine optimisation) is the process of making improvements to your law firm’s website to increase your visibility for key terms in the search engine results pages (SERPs). And it’s more important than you might think.
Why is SEO important for your law firm?
We are living in the digital age, which means SEO for law firms is just as important as SEO for e-commerce businesses. In short, it doesn’t matter whether you have an offline presence or not, if you’re not nailing your online touchpoints, you will be seriously limiting your growth. With almost 90% of customers beginning their buying journey with an online search, if you fail to show up where they expect to find you, you will simply lose out to your competitors.
And it doesn’t just increase your volume of traffic…
The great thing about SEO for law firms is that it boosts organic traffic to your website – but why does this matter? Well, if someone has landed on your site via organic search, surprise, surprise, it means they are actively researching a service or topic relevant to your law firm. These are the users who are searching with intent, so providing your content satisfies that intent – be it immediately or further down the line – you are likely to see a conversion.
For the legal industry specifically, the average conversion rate for organic search is 4.3% – this is significantly higher than the average conversion rate for law firms, which sits at just 2.6%. And it doesn’t end there. Other benefits of SEO for law firms include:
- Increase reach and brand awareness
- Simple to track
- Cost-effective
- Boost your credibility
- Enhance the user experience
5 tips to help your law firm rank in 2021
So, now you know what SEO is and how it can benefit your law firm, you’re probably keen to get a strategy in place. And you’ve come to the right place. We’ve put together 5 top tips to help your law firm get started with SEO.
But, before you get carried away, it’s worth noting that whilst invaluable in the long run, SEO is not a quick fix. It takes time to take effect and you can expect to wait weeks, sometimes months, before you start seeing results. That being said, it is essential for any law firm looking to build and maintain a good level of growth. So, here are 5 tips to help your law firm rank in 2021.
Forget about SEO
The first rule of SEO is to forget about SEO. Sounds like complete nonsense, but it works (we promise). When you think about it, it’s simple: if you want to improve your conversions and grow your law firm, you need to focus on your target audience. Seems pretty self-explanatory, right? Surprisingly, no. Far too often, law firms prioritise the search engines and get so caught up in technical jargon that they lose sight of why their website was created.
The good news is that the solution is simple: put yourself in the shoes of your target audience. Think about what they might be searching for – including keywords, topics and phrases – and what they would expect to find when they do. Equally, your website should be designed with the end-user in mind. Think about how easy it is to navigate, ensure key information is readily accessible and focus on creating a seamless experience that delights, not deters, users.
A blog is a lawyer’s best friend
A surefire way to get your site ranking in the SERP is to start a blog. Again, it links back to creating a website for your clients, not the search engines. Your content should be focused on topics that are relevant to your target audience and help to satisfy your client’s most pressing questions. The idea is to add value to their search – not interrupt it.
For more advice blogging for your law firm, check out our blog post here.
Get set for the small screen
Back in the day, if you’d made it to the big screen, you’d made it. Now, it’s all about the small screen (aka mobile devices). Over half of all traffic now comes from mobile devices, so if your website isn’t responsive, you will be missing out on a lot of opportunities.
The good news is, there are a couple of things you can do to ensure that your website is ready for mobile traffic. Some of these include:
- Reduce loading times
- Ensure navigation remains clear and functional
- Make taking action easy
- Use responsive web design
- Optimise images
Learn to link
Along with high-quality content, link building is the most important ranking factor used by Google to determine where your website is placed in the search results pages. This is why it comes as no surprise that for the 91% of pages that never get any organic traffic, the number one reason for this is a lack of inbound links.
To Google and the likes, an inbound (also known as a backlink) link is the equivalent of a recommendation. So, naturally, the more you get, the more credibility your site will have and the more likely the search engines will be to recommend your site to users. But don’t fall into the trap of thinking you can fool the search engines with spammy links – they are smarter than you think. If you obtain a large number of links from irrelevant sites with no authority, you will be doing more harm than good. Instead, focus on creating content that is so informative people can’t help but link to it.
And let’s not overlook internal links. They hold a lot of value too. An internal link links one page on your website to another and helps both users and search engines to navigate your site. For search engines, internal links offer insights into the relevance, value and relationship of your pages.
Location, location, location
When it comes to SEO for law firms, far too often firms will forget the importance of location. For the most part, your clients will want to meet with you face-to-face, which means when they are searching for a service, location will have a big influence on their purchase decision. But why are we mentioning this? Isn’t the whole point of SEO to reach new clients without the distance barrier standing in the way?
This is where local SEO comes in. Local SEO for law firms refers to practices implemented to help increase brand awareness and leads through local search. And, unsurprisingly, ranking for localised keywords is far easier than trying to reach the top of the SERP for broad phrases. Some simple fixes to help boost your law firm’s local SEO include:
- Create and optimise your Google My Business profile
- Request reviews
- Create more location-based content
- Research and make use of local keywords
So there we have 5 top tips to help your law firm climb to the top of the ranks in the search engine results pages. Still in need of a helping hand? We have over 10 years of experience helping B2B and professional service firms to create SEO strategies that deliver – and the results in our case studies speak for themselves. Contact us today to organise your free consultation.
