How Competitive Is SEO Law? What You Should Know

If you ask me “how competitive is SEO law,” my obvious answer would be “quite competitive.” Other persons may have a contrary view, but as an expert and someone with experience helping law firms, SEO for law firms is quite competitive.  

Remember that thousands of law firms are there, and many are fighting for the same audience you’re fighting for. Additionally, they are deploying several SEO strategies to ensure they appear in search results. 

Some of your competitors are aiming for the top, like you. They want to rank high, too. But with an effective SEO strategy and with the right SEO expert handling your project, you should be fine. 

Here, we will discuss how competitive SEO law is and more! Keep reading to get more details. 

How Competitive Is SEO Law?

If you understand SEO and how it works, you’ll know it is complex and competitive. Well, lawyer SEO is not so difficult for experts who have gained substantial experience in the field. But it is highly competitive. 

Let me explain why SEO law is quite competitive. 

1: Lawyer SEO is not a long-term investment:

SEO is a long-term commitment. You can only get the desired result if you approach it this way. 

What does this imply? If you hire an SEO agency and put them on a monthly payment, you need to continually renew your commitment every month.

Understand that you won’t get the results of the SEO effort overnight. Sometimes, it could take several months. If it’s a new website and you haven’t done any SEO work, it could take much longer to see results. 

The long-term commitment can be financially draining, particularly when you hire a firm whose SEO services are expensive and can empty your wallet. Most lawyers competing with larger law firms may struggle to sustain their investment in SEO. But that shouldn’t be the case. 

SEO isn’t a one-off. It is a long-term project and needs constant effort. Treating it as a one-off project could cost you massively. You could lose online visibility and more business. Of course, new clients can only learn about your service when you appear in search engine results.

Instead of hiring popular and expensive law firm SEO agencies, search for affordable law firm SEO services. With this, you can finance your SEO project long-term and get the desired results without emptying your wallet. 

2: Law firms like yours are desperate to appear in search results: 

You want your web pages to appear in users’ search results, and so do other law firms. What makes it more competitive and tricky is that these competing law firms are targeting similar keywords as you. 

SEO is about the survival of fitness. Google will only display web pages whose content it deems valuable and worthwhile in search results. It doesn’t matter how good-looking and captivating a website is. By the way, Google and other search engines don’t pay much attention to a website’s aesthetics during ranking.. 

So, be ready to go the extra mile for your search engine optimization project or hire a law firm SEO expert prepared to go the extra mile to help you outrank your competitors. 

There are different SEO strategies you can deploy to improve organic traffic and move ahead of your competitors in search rankings. 

Besides in-depth keyword research to find relevant keywords with acceptable search volumes, here are other SEO strategies to deploy:

• Ensure your content is well-optimized: Ensure the headline (H1) and subheadings (H2, H3, H4, etc) have your primary and secondary keywords. Your primary keyword is the focus keyword or search term. It’s the keyword you want your website to rank for. It would help if you also aimed to rank for the secondary keywords, but remember that they’re not as important as your primary keyword. 
• Populate your site with quality content: Online visitors who land on a website are likely not there to check how gorgeous it looks. They are there for information and to determine if the attorney has what it takes to represent them in court. You can convince legal help seekers that you are the real deal with high-quality content. Use content to provide value and show your expertise. This way, you can build trust and win the hearts of prospects. 
• Monitor site load speed: How fast does your site load? Under or over 2 seconds? The ideal page load time is below 2 seconds. On mobile, your site should load in under 1 second. If your site’s load time is over 2 seconds, probably 4 seconds or more, you could miss out on some businesses. Most legal consumers won’t wait for your page to load. Some are in a hurry and would likely move to another website. Most personal injury consumers may be in a hurry to find a personal injury attorney, given the contentious nature of the case and the possible health risk of the client.     

 A Handy Tip: Using various tools, you can monitor your website’s load speed. Two examples include Pingdom and Google Analytics. 

• Ensure your website is responsive and mobile-friendly:

Over 85% of Americans use smartphones. Furthermore, over 6.92 billion people, or 85.74% of the world’s population, use smartphones.  

What does the increase in smartphone users mean for attorneys? It means the majority of your visitors will be from mobile phones, as mobile search has taken over. 

To get your slice of the increased mobile search, ensure your website is mobile-friendly and responsive. This means the way it loads on a desktop should be the same on a mobile device. 

• Build quality and niche-relevant backlinks:  Backlinks are one of Google’s primary ranking factors.They remain a viable off-page SEO strategy to boost traffic and ranking. You can even improve your online reputation via backlinks. Strive to get niche-relevant backlinks. It would be best to focus on getting a balanced mix of do-follow and no-follow links. 

3: SEO is time-consuming and demanding:

The fact that SEO takes time turns most people off. They prefer paid ads that give instant results. But the benefits of SEO are massive. It can help improve your ranking, ensuring you appear in search results for targeted keywords. 

Another interesting thing about SEO is that it sends qualified leads to your website. Most visitors that land on your page are actively looking for attorneys in your practice area to get legal advice. 

To reap the benefit of investing in search engine optimization, you must be ready to adhere to SEO best practices. Follow white hat SEO techniques and improve your website’s UX. 

The bottom line is that SEO takes time. You might wait for six months or more to start getting tangible results. And during the waiting period, you mustn’t take your foot off the gas. Continue implementing your SEO plans to ensure your competitors don’t outrank you. 

4: Google’s regular algorithm updates:

Google updates its search algorithm frequently, with some minor updates happening daily. In 2021, Google made over 5000 changes to its search algorithm. It changed its ranking system, user interface, and other areas. 

In the same year, Google conducted over 800,000 experiments. This implies Google’s search algorithm is changing on average 13 times daily. 

There is no consistency regarding how many times Google updates its algorithm annually. They can decide to update it anytime they deem fit. 

The constant update impacts all websites. But while some will be hit harder, some won’t suffer massively. Nevertheless, the fact remains that keeping up with Google’s regular algorithm changes can be tiring and demanding. It means law firms serious about succeeding online must pay constant attention to their SEO. 

It is common for most lawyers to lose their zeal to keep investing in SEO. Many may even want to try other strategies to get quick results and avoid the complexities of Google algorithm updates.

Unfortunately, no website is immune to Google’s algorithm changes. Additionally, SEO needs constant effort to impact your online business. 

Conclusion

So, how competitive is SEO? You can see from this explanation that search engine optimization is highly competitive. 

Many law firms want to appear on search engine result pages for their targeted keywords as much as you do. They want to succeed online. 

Additionally, SEO is a long-term project. You need it for as long as your website remains online. So, the cost can stack up quickly and become financially demanding for most law firms to consider. It could even be worse when dealing with a pricey SEO agency.  

The best way to deal with this is to find an affordable SEO agency. And understand that affordable doesn’t mean cheap. Instead, you’re dealing with a law firm that has a conscience and is not greedy.