What can SEO for legal firms do? Why is it so important to law firms’ growth? If you’re yet to kick-start your law firm’s SEO campaign, you may have missed huge opportunities to get more clients.
Anyway, it’s not too late. You can still kick-start your SEO campaign for law firms. With the right search engine optimization campaign, your law firm can gain popularity in your local area.
You can become the go-to law firm for the locals, increasing caseloads and higher revenue. You can achieve this when you implement the right SEO strategy or outsource your SEO campaign to a reputable law firm SEO agency.
Here, we will discuss the meaning of SEO for law firms, the impact it can have on your business, and more. Keep reading for more details.
What Is SEO For Legal Firms?
Search engine optimization (SEO) for legal law firms or legal firms involves the use of diverse specialized online marketing strategies to increase legal firms’ online visibility. An increase in visibility means more potential clients can find your business online with ease.
Search engine optimization for law firms includes activities performed online and offline to improve a legal firm’s online presence. It can be on-page and off-page SEO.
The on-page SEO is performed on the main website to improve ranking, organic traffic, click-through rate, and other important metrics that will enhance a website’s visibility.
The on-page strategy includes keyword placement in strategic places within the content.
Off-page strategy includes activities performed offline to improve a website’s referral traffic, ranking, and online reputation. An example of an off-page SEO strategy includes link building.
You can get referral traffic via link building. Prospects that read your content and appreciate the quality delivered will click the link embedded in the content shared on other websites to visit yours.
Backlinks are one of Google’s major ranking factors. Therefore, when you build quality backlinks, you have met one of Google’s requirements to rank high in the search engine result pages (SERPs)
Take note of the emphasis on quality backlinks. All backlinks aren’t the same. Google will consider the relevance and quality of your backlinks to decide whether they are worth it.
That’s why a website that has ten high-quality and niche-relevant backlinks will do better than a website with a thousand poor-quality backlinks. So, the number of backlinks you have won’t matter to Google when they are all poor-quality backlinks.
Google considers a backlink poor-quality when it’s from spammy and low-quality sites. Niche relevance is another important factor that search engines consider.
What other SEO strategies exist besides on-page and off-page SEO?
Technical SEO is equally as important as any strategy to rank a website high in search engines. A fault in your technical SEO can hamper your site’s ranking, organic traffic, click-through rate, and even online reputation.
Technical SEO includes website speed, mobile-friendliness, URL structure, and others.
How Can SEO Make Legal Firms Successful?
A successful legal business receives tons of caseloads and delivers results. Your revenue increases, and you can expand to other locations.
The question is, how can you make your law firm visible online so that potential clients can find you? If people don’t know your business exists or consider you a reputable law firm, will they hire you? We all know the answer to this question.
With SEO, you can make your law firm visibility online. Potential clients seeking legal representation will be able to find and hire you.
SEO can make your law firm successful, and here’s how it does it.
1. Increase your search ranking:
When you implement an effective legal SEO strategy, your law firm’s official website will rank high in search engines. Having a web page that is ranking high for your target keywords is a big plus to your marketing campaign.
Imagine that your website is the first thing potential clients see when they enter a specific keyword into the Google search engine (or other search engines), and the search result pops up. Your law firm’s website appears in their search result.
That is what SEO can offer your law firm. It will make it easier for potential clients seeking legal representation to find you online. And when clients find you online, the chance of them visiting your physical location increases.
Your main goal when implementing any SEO strategy is to rank high in search engines. It’s possible with an effective SEO strategy.
2. Improve organic traffic:
An increase in organic traffic is important for the success of your law firm. The more the number of people visiting and navigating your website, the higher the chances of getting more qualified leads.
When a client visits your website, consumes your content, and rate you as a top-quality law firm, they’ll be highly convinced that hiring you will be a great decision. Legal clients want to hire a lawyer they can trust to deliver success in their cases. That’s why legal clients take time to evaluate a law firm before hiring.
SEO can improve your organic traffic and make your law firm a successful business. An increase in organic traffic can translate into an increase in foot traffic.
When clients visit your website and like what they see, they’ll either call or visit your law firm in person.
The beauty of SEO is that you can even make your law firm popular in your local area. In other words, your law firm will become the talk of the town.
An increase in local visibility means clients in your area seeking law firms to hire will find you with ease. That is what SEO can do for your business.
3. Improve online reputation:
An improvement in online reputation will positively impact your law firm. It will make clients feel more confident in awarding their cases to your law firm.
How does SEO improve online reputation? It does so by helping your law firm rank high in search engines.
Internet users know the difference between a paid and organic search result. Of course, Google makes it obvious on the search engine result page. Paid search results usually have the tag “Sponsored” written at the top of the search result.
So, it’s easy for legal prospects to find a search result that is paid and one that is organic. However, organic search results get more attention from prospects. Why? That’s because people believe it matches their search query.
Furthermore, internet users know ranking high in Google search results isn’t for the weak. They know it takes hard work, consistency, originality, and value for Google to consider placing a law firm website high on the search result page.
By the way, you’re competing with hundreds or thousands of businesses for the top spot. So, the reason you’re ranking on the first page of the search engine result page (SERP) is because of the value you render.
People trust organic search results more. That’s why organic search has 8X more click-through rates than paid search. Ranking high in the search engine indicates that you’re a reputable and hardworking law firm. Thus, potentials will trust and feel more confident assigning their cases to you.
4. SEO levels the playing field:
Ads are expensive to run and sustain all year round. You’ll also reduce your profit when you start spending huge resources on ads.
We’re not saying you can’t yield results from ads. You can when you have a specialist handling your ads campaign. However, you’ll get higher returns on your investment when you spend a fraction of what you spend to run ads on SEO.
SEO levels the playing field. It lets new and small law firms compete with established firms in an area. A new firm can even rank higher than large firms if it implements an effective SEO strategy.
Google doesn’t rank a website high in SERPs based on size, status, or financial capacity. Those aren’t part of the search engine’s ranking factors. Instead, it considers the quality of your content, user experience (UX), mobile-friendliness, backlinks, and other factors.
By implementing an effective SEO strategy, a new or small law firm can overtake an established law firm in the search engine result page. An increase in ranking means more potential clients that use your target keyword to search for law firms online will find you.
5. Sustainable traffic equals more caseloads all year round:
You want your law firm to keep getting and working on clients’ cases all year round. That’s the target of every law firm. But these things can’t just happen when you sit and fold your arms. It can only happen when you make the right marketing moves.
Search engine optimization can ensure you get cases all year round. That’s something you can’t achieve with paid advertisements. With paid adverts, funds must remain in your account to sustain your ad campaign.
In other words, if the money in your ads account finishes, your website will disappear from the search engine result page. Ads campaigns are also competitive, and CPC (cost per click) varies based on the keywords targeted.
You’ll spend an incredible amount of money running ads and maintaining your position on the search engine result page. On top of that, your website will disappear when you aren’t able to fund your account.
It is different and way better with SEO. The initial cost to kick-start an SEO campaign might be high, but it’s cheaper in the long run. When you rank high in SERPs with SEO, you won’t leave your position even if you stop working on your SEO campaign for a while.
Search engine optimization delivers sustainable results. You’ll keep getting organic traffic as long as you rank high on the search engine result page.
A Handy Tip: Remain consistent in your SEO campaign throughout the existence of your business. SEO isn’t a one-off, so don’t treat it as such. Keep analyzing your competitors, auditing your website, and refining your strategy to stay higher in the SERP.
Note that when you relax in your SEO campaign, you automatically hand your competitors some advantage. So, keep refining and implementing effective SEO strategies to rank high in the search engine.
6. SEO brings quality legal clients to your law firm:
When a potential client opens the Google search box and enters a specific keyword, “divorce law firm in [city]), that is an indication that the client is looking for information or a divorce law firm to hire. Even if the client is only looking for information, there’s a chance that the individual will return with an offer whenever the need to hire a law firm arises in the future.
Clients who use such search terms most likely want to hire a lawyer. There is a high chance that the person is serious about hiring or has concluded that it’s time to hire a legal practitioner.
When you rank high in search engines, most of the clients who will visit your website will have the intention to hire a law firm. So, when they visit, you must convince them to hire you.
How do you convince clients to hire you? Here are some helpful tips:
- Your website has to be top-notch. It has to be professional-looking and easy to navigate.
- Make your contact details visible to potential clients who are visiting your page for the first time. Make sure you don’t make it hard for visitors to find your contact details.
- Populate your website with high-quality and must-read content. Your content should provide value to readers and convince them that you’re the right person to handle their legal issues.
- Get reviews from past clients. You can incorporate an option for clients to drop reviews on your main website or display a couple of authentic reviews from your clients. The positive ones!
- Get a Google Business Profile. Your clients can drop some reviews and ratings for you on the Google Business Profile.
7. SEO improves user experience for legal firms:
Search engine optimization involves a combination of processes to improve a website’s ranking and organic traffic. However, it starts with building a functional website.
Besides having a professional-looking website, content writing is another important aspect of SEO. You need to populate your website with high-quality content.
Your content should be a breeze to read and understand. It should be as simple as possible for visitors to read. Break down complex legal terms and use shorter paragraphs.
Besides content writing, website speed is another factor that needs improvement. Google and even visitors appreciate websites that load fast.
Google wants websites to load as fast as half a second. That’s the desired load time. However, 3 seconds load time is acceptable. But keep in mind that higher load time translates to a reduction in organic traffic.
Most people don’t have the patience to wait for a slow website to load. They would rather visit the next legal firm’s website than wait for a slow website to load. After all, both are law firms. That’s how prospects see it.
A potential client has to visit your law firm to know that hiring you is the best decision they will ever make. But if your website doesn’t load fast, the chances of losing potential clients are high.
Mobile-friendliness is another ranking factor. Google personally announced mobile-friendliness as a ranking factor.
A mobile-friendly website would display its content neatly on all mobile devices. In other words, content on the website will display on any mobile device the same way it will display on a desktop.
Making your website mobile-friendly improves user experience. Your visitors will be able to navigate to every part of your website with ease.
8. Gain a local competitive edge:
If you want to win the local competition and become popular in your location, SEO is the answer. With search engine optimization, you can rank higher than other local law firms.
Here are a few tips on how to implement local SEO:
- Use location-based keywords. Your keyword should include your present business location.
- Create a professional Google Business Profile. Incorporate local keywords in your Google Business Profile. Also, add a captivating description of your business.
Conclusion
SEO for legal firms can catapult a law firm to the top. It can help your law firm get more caseloads and revenue.
Search engine optimization helps your law firm rank high on the search engine result page. It also increases organic traffic and helps your legal firm build trust.
You can implement SEO if you have the experience and knowledge of how to do proper SEO; however, if you can’t, assign your task to a Law Firm SEO expert.
Julhas Alam is a seasoned SEO strategist and the leading voice behind the insightful articles at LawFirmSEOExpert.com. With a rich background in digital marketing and a specialized focus on the legal sector, Julhas combines industry expertise with a deep understanding of SEO to deliver actionable insights and strategies tailored for law firms. Holding a passion for data-driven results and cutting-edge SEO techniques, Julhas has been instrumental in boosting online visibility and client acquisition for numerous law practices. When not dissecting search engine algorithms or exploring the latest digital marketing trends, Julhas enjoys reading success stories of other businesses, adding a personal touch to their professional acumen.