As a law firm, having a pretty website is not enough to increase your online presence. More goes into increasing your online presence than just a visually appealing website. What if that website is hard for your clients to navigate? What if you are unable to keep your clients from bouncing off your website because the content is boring? What if your website is not mobile-friendly for your users? All of these important issues can affect the way that your law firm is perceived by potential clients and Google.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization. It is a critical part of a digital marketing strategy. Every occupation takes advantage of SEO. As a law firm, you need to know what SEO is and how to use it to your advantage. If not, it can affect whether your clients are even introduced to you.
SEO is the main tactic that digital marketers use to bring additional traffic to a website. It is the way that websites are ranked high in search engines. Wouldn’t you want your law firm to be the first result on a search results page when someone types in a certain keyword? That is exactly what SEO can do for your law firm.
How SEO Helps Law Firms
Using SEO to your advantage can help your law firm attract the clients that you are looking for. Like any other service, your clients use search engines when it’s time to search for legal guidance.
When you consistently rank at the top of the search engines, it makes connecting you to your clients easier. The more visible your website is to your potential clients, the more likely they are to click on your website. Ranking high on the search engine’s results page also adds credibility to your law firm. To clients, you seem like the top expert in your field; otherwise, why would you be the first suggested result?
To make the most of SEO for your law firm, you must know how to use it effectively. Here are some ways your law firm can use SEO to its advantage.
Using The Right Keywords
If you do not remember anything else about SEO, remember the importance of keywords. Keywords are critical when it comes to search engines. When it comes to the content on your website, you want to use keywords that your potential clients typically use. Using these keywords strategically will help bring your website to the top search results.
Creating High-Quality Written Content
One way to strategically use keywords is through your written content on your website. Writing legal articles and blog posts on your website can help increase its rankings in search engines.
The more relevant and personalized your written content is to your potential clients, the more likely it will rank higher on the result pages. You can maximize SEO in your articles and blog posts by using different keywords strategically throughout the content.
Increasing Your Website’s Optimization
Your written content is not the only information on your website that increases through SEO. SEO can also help you fix any optimization issues with the rest of your website. It will not matter how great your content is because if your website is not mobile-friendly, potential clients will bounce away quickly.
Creating a comprehensive SEO strategy can help you fix these problems with your website. Your SEO strategies can help improve the user experience with your clients and give your website a more professional look. Additionally, some technical aspects of SEO can assist with fixing the slow loading times or broken links on your website.
Using Local SEO
SEO is a broad digital marketing strategy that can affect your website online and offline. One of the most important pieces of your SEO includes your Google Business Profile. The way that you use your Google Business Profile can help increase your law firm’s visibility online. Because your clients are more likely to search for law firms online, you want to make sure that all of the information in your GBP is accurate and consistent.
If your information is incorrect or outdated, it can create a bad experience for your clients. If your clients type in your city or zip code, local SEO strategies can make sure that your law firm is at least in the top three search results.
Using Link Building
Another SEO strategy that can help bring traffic to your website is link building. Think of link building as collecting various hyperlinks and adding them to one or several of your website pages. Because you may compete with hundreds of law firms in your state, link building can help bring organic traffic to your website.
You want to make sure that whatever links you use are relevant to your content, legal services, or user experience in some way. Additionally, you never want to spam your website with various low domain-authority links. Lower domain-authority links will not help your overall SEO.
Digital Marketing Next Steps
To learn more about how SEO can benefit your website, consider making an action plan for the steps that you want to take — and in what order. SEO can feel overwhelming, and it is important to take one step at a time. Start with keywording, creating great content, and then link building in order to increase your overall SEO.
Annette Choti, Esq. graduated from law school 20 years ago, and is the Founder of Law Quill, a legal digital marketing agency focused on small and solo law firms. Annette wrote the bestselling book Click Magnet: The Ultimate Digital Marketing Guide For Law Firms, and hosts the podcast Legal Marketing Lounge. She is a sought-after keynote and CLE speaker throughout the United States and Canada. Annette used to do theatre and professional comedy, which is not so different from the legal field if we are all being honest. Annette can be found on LinkedIn or at at annette@lawquill.com.
