SEO For Personal Injury Lawyers: Effective Ranking Strategies

For services such as SEO for personal injury lawyers, no one does it better than LawFirmSEOExpert, an SEO agency established to help lawyers succeed online. All personal injury attorneys need SEO. Do you know why? Check the National Law Review report. It states that 96% of legal consumers prefer to search for lawyers online.

A person that just sustained a personal injury will want to find a lawyer as soon as possible. There’s no time for such a person to start looking for a lawyer.. 

With a simple online search using a mobile phone or desktop, personal injury victims can find lawyers capable of handling their cases. All they need to do is enter their choice of keywords for “personal injury lawyer [city]” and choose the most desirable results. 

Implementing an effective SEO strategy will position your law firm website where legal consumers who are seeking personal injury lawyers can find you. 

In this article, we’re going to discuss not only the benefits of search engine optimization for personal injury law firms but also SEO strategies you can implement to succeed online. Read on! 

What Does SEO for Personal Injury Lawyers Mean?

Firstly, does your personal law firm have a website? If yes, then we can start talking about SEO. You can’t do SEO without a website. 

Personal injury law firm SEO involves using effective optimization strategies to make law firm websites unmissable in search engines, e.g. Google.

A study reveals the United States of America had 50,350 personal injury law firms in 2022. So, the competition in this legal practice area is massive. That is why personal injury attorneys that want to rank high in search engines, generate more leads, and get more cases must take personal injury SEO seriously.

Is Building A Professional-Looking Personal Injury Lawyer Website Enough For SEO?

A professional-looking personal injury lawyer website that is easy for personal injury clients to navigate will be beneficial to your law firm. Google appreciates websites with good UX (user experience).

Your website should load fast and be easy to navigate. It should also be mobile-friendly. Remember, these are among Google’s ranking factors. But then, SEO is more than having an irresistible or professional-looking website.

SEO is all you do online and offline to make your website rank high in search engine result pages. These include “on-page” and “off-page” search engine optimization activities. 

Failure to implement effective search engine optimization strategies means a professional-looking or well-built website will get lost among the thousands of personal injury firms’ websites. In other words, the website won’t appear in the search results of people actively searching for a personal injury law firm.

We will discuss strategies that personal injury firms can implement to improve search ranking, organic traffic, and get more cases. But first, let’s discuss the benefits of SEO for personal injury attorney.

How Important Is SEO For Personal Injury Attorneys?

Why SEO for personal injury lawyers is important is a topic we have discussed earlier. But I would like to share more so personal injury attorneys can understand why LawFirmSEOExpert takes personal injury law firm websites’ SEO projects seriously. 

Let’s dive in!

1: SEO can have a long-term positive impact on your business:

You can get immediate results like clicks, and traffic via paid adverts. When you place an ad on Google, your website may likely appear in the search engine result pages for the target keywords.

The only challenge people running ads face is the financial involvement. You must continue funding the ads account for Google or the search engine you’re advertising your law firm to keep promoting your website. What does this mean? It means your website will disappear from the search engine result page when the money in your ads account finishes.

Interestingly, SEO doesn’t work that way. With SEO, you might not see immediate results in most cases, but it will come when you implement an effective strategy. You may start seeing results in a few weeks or months, but you’ll continue to get traffic even when you stop funding the search engine optimization project or putting more SEO efforts for a while .

In other words, when your website starts ranking high and appearing in search result pages, it will continue even when you no longer put in the same effort you were putting at the start of the SEO project.

A Handy Tip: You won’t disappear from search result pages once your website ranks and you start appearing in legal consumers’ search engine result pages. That’s the benefit of search engine optimization compared to paid adverts and other marketing strategies.

But the fact that you’re now ranking high doesn’t mean you should relax about your website’s SEO or stop making an effort to stay on top. Remember, many personal injury attorneys are looking for the opportunity to outrank and be in the top spot in search engines. They want their websites to appear in SERPs for their target keywords.  

So, keep doing what you have been doing to rank high, get more traffic and take up more personal injury cases. Avoid any temptation to take your foot off the gas. Allowing your competitors to outrank you can be a costly mistake. You will have to work harder to claim your spot in the SERPs (search engine result pages) back.

An effective SEO strategy should yield results in the long term. In other words, your website should rank higher, improve organic traffic, awareness, online reputation and revenue. When you get more legal consumers, your revenue will grow. You can generate thousands of dollars from a single client.

On this note, I’ll advise you to hire a personal injury attorney ready to work with you long-term and go the extra mile to get results. Avoid legal SEO firms that promise results but deliver nothing but excuses.

2: SEO blends well with digital marketing strategies:

SEO and paid search uses different strategies to get visitors or prospects to click a law firm website’s link. However, you can combine both strategies to yield maximum results and ensure you don’t miss out on any business opportunity.

While paid search offers immediate results, SEO can take a while. Additionally, SEO is cost-effective and will ensure you continue getting visits and cases when the paid advert stops. Running ads is financially demanding. But that doesn’t mean you should stop running paid ads if you have the financial power. Instead, I’ll advise you to combine ads and SEO to yield maximum results.

A Handy Tip: Another reason to consider combining SEO and paid search is to see which yields the best results and generates enough revenue. This way,  you’ll know which strategy to continue funding and new strategies to try.  

 3: SEO is cost-effective:

Cold calling remains an effective marketing strategy, but generating leads this way cost more than search engine optimization. Leads generated via cold calling cost over 61% more than the ones generated via SEO.

Search engine optimization’s inbound nature is the reason it enables firms to save money. It’s what makes it more cost-effective than outbound strategies like cold calling.

SEO is also more cost-effective than PPC (pay-per-click). Unlike PPC, you don’t have to pay a dime anytime someone clicks on your link. That’s what makes SEO unique and cost-effective.

Another reason SEO is cost-effective is that you will continue to receive visitors and generate revenue with SEO, even when you stop putting huge effort for a while.

You’re not funding any advert with SEO. Additionally, your website ranking won’t decrease instantly, just like your website disappears from search engine result pages when your ads account has no funds.

With SEO, you can generate long-term website traffic and increase revenue more cost-effectively than pay-per-click. This makes SEO unique and beneficial for businesses.

4: SEO levels the playing field between small and established personal injury law firms:

Pay-per-click (paid adverts) is expensive. Not every law firm has the financial capacity to run paid ads or do so consistently yearly. It will take a substantial portion of your marketing budget to do so.

The worst part is that the leads generated via PPC are most likely unqualified. In other words, most of them aren’t seeking legal help. They probably stumbled on the website advert on the search engine result pages.

With SEO, law firms of all sizes have the same opportunity to compete for the top spot on Google search results, and it’s the same with other search engines. Google doesn’t consider how much revenue a law firm generates or how many cases the firm or lawyer has won to decide ranking.

Google considers hundreds of ranking factors to decide where to place a website on SERP. So, if your personal injury law firm deploys an effective SEO strategy, you’ll outrank your competitors. That’s why search engine optimization is beneficial to businesses interested in hitting their marketing goals and growing online.

Google isn’t biased, and so are other search engines. And note that we’re speaking more about Google search engine because it has the biggest market share. Google’s market share worldwide is 91.54%. Here are the other search engines’ market share:

• Bing – 31.19%
• Yandex – 1.78%
• Yahoo – 1.24%
• Baidu – 0.93%
• DuckDuckGo – 0.55%

5: Improves your personal law firm website’s user experience:

Search engine optimization involves all you do on and off your website to improve ranking, traffic and online reputation.

On the page, SEO involves rearranging the website’s architecture and links to make it easier for visitors to find information. Rearranging your site and making it a breeze to navigate improves user experience and makes it easier for Google crawlers to read your site and find pages.

A Handy Tip: Google appreciates websites that offer better user experience. Google wants people using its search engines to have a great time. That’s why it appreciates websites with good user experience.

What’s user experience about? It refers to the feelings people (users) experience when using a product, service, application or system. It’s a broad term that covers how well a user can navigate a product, the relevance of the content displayed, and how easy it is to use, etc.

User experience (UX) focuses on how visitors interact with a website. It is a de-facto ranking factor vital for SEO. UX is going to be an important ranking factor in the future. So, website owners need to start paying attention to it.

Learn how UX and SEO work together to ensure future algorithm changes won’t impact your website.

6: SEO improves brand awareness:

Do you want your law firm to become popular online and offline? SEO is the answer. When you implement an effective SEO strategy, your law firm’s ranking will improve.

An increase in ranking (potentially to the first page) means interested legal consumers will see your website as they search for a reputable law firm to handle their cases. Thus, people may visit your website and hire you.

Once your website starts appearing in search engine result pages, people will consider it credible and trustworthy. Most individuals believe search engines, such as Google, will only promote a website or business to the front page if it considers it credible and trustworthy.

Legal consumers are looking for capable lawyers. They want a lawyer with experience who can win their cases. Personal injury cases are quite tricky. So, legal consumers want lawyers who are credible. They want  a lawyer that can help them to get the justice they seek for the injuries sustained.

Furthermore, the chances of legal consumers viewing your Google Business Profile, reviews and location on Google Maps will increase when your website appears in their search engine result pages.

7: Makes it easier to measure results:

One thing that sets SEO apart and makes it a great marketing strategy is the ability to measure results. Unlike traditional and other forms of marketing, search engine optimization allows you to measure results and track the progress of your marketing efforts.

You can use SEO analytical tools to measure results. These include:

• Website ranking
• Organic traffic
• Conversion rate
• Bounce rate

Using SEO analytics tools, you’ll be able to track results and understand why your website receives plenty of visitors but the conversion rate is low. You’ll know steps to take to improve your website SEO and get the desired results.

The ability to track results that SEO offers makes it a great strategy for businesses looking to minimize losses when executing marketing strategies. You’ll see the strategies that aren’t yielding results and make the necessary adjustments immediately.

If a strategy isn’t producing the desirable results, you can stop them. That’s the benefit of search engine optimization. You can track results and know the strategies that yield the best ROI.

How Personal Injury Lawyer SEO Works

Personal injury clients seeking personal injury attorneys are often in haste to find the right legal representation. And this isn’t their fault, but the situation they find themselves in. Someone who has sustained a life-threatening workplace injury and is looking to sue a company will contact a “workplace injury lawyer” immediately they have the opportunity to do so.

Getting found online is what personal injury lawyer SEO is about. It makes your website appear in user search result pages. For instance, let’s assume you targeted the keyword “workplace lawyer in Houston.” If you optimize your content properly, people searching for workplace lawyers in Houston will find you.

When they do, you may get a click and they may visit your website. From there, they may hire you to handle their cases.

You can substitute the keyword “workplace injury lawyer [location]” with “car accident injury lawyer [lawyer], medical malpractice injury lawyer [location], and other related keywords.

The bottom line is to use keywords or search phrases related to your practice area. Additionally, don’t focus on one keyword. Use a variety of related keywords to avoid keyword cannibalism.

When you target the right keywords and keep putting more effort into your SEO project, your website will rank high, and organic traffic will increase. 

Is Website Important For SEO For Personal Injury Attorney?

Yes, your website is the basis of search engine optimization. Your law firm’s website is similar to your physical office. It’s your office online.

SEO’s major function is to drive traffic to your website. Your website now has to turn the visitors into paying clients.

If a person who has just sustained an injury searches for a personal injury law firm and finds two websites, assuming one of the websites looks poorly built and difficult to navigate, while another looks clean, professional and user-friendly. Which among the two law firms do you think the potential client would choose?

The potential client will go after the personal injury law firms with a clean, professional-looking and user-friendly law firm’s website. It doesn’t matter if the content on the poorly built website is great. The well-designed and user-friendly website has created a good first impression and convinced the prospects. However, note that a well-built website that has poor-quality content will not generate great results from SEO. 

So, your website is very important in SEO. It is a waste of time and effort to do SEO on a poor quality with horrible user experience.

Most people will likely quit a poor-quality personal injury attorney website immediately they land on the page, causing a high bounce rate that can negatively impact ranking.

When SEO brings visitors to your law firm’s website, it’s your website’s job to convert them into paying customers.

Tips For Successful Personal Injury Lawyers SEO 

A personal injury lawyer is a competitive niche. Accidents happen now and then in the United States and the rest of the world. People seek personal injury law firms to hire occasionally, whether for workplace accidents, car accidents, or medical malpractice.

So, if you’re a personal injury lawyer in the United States and unable to get more clients, you need to rethink your marketing efforts. Your competitors are putting more effort into their SEO projects than you are. That’s why they are getting clients that are supposed to be yours.

The United States is the busiest country in the world regarding road traffic. Reports from the authorities show there are 7.3 million car accidents each year, leading to deaths and injuries of all sorts. This works out to 19,937 accidents per day. So, there are numerous personal injury cases for lawyers to handle each year.

Here are strategies you can implement as a personal injury lawyer to make it easier for legal consumers to find you.

• Get a professional-looking website
• Keep an eye on your competitors
• Find the right keywords to use
• Build quality content
• Build a healthy backlink profile
• Implement advanced technical SEO
• Improve website speed
• Make your website mobile-friendly

1: Get a professional-looking website:

How do you feel walking into a clean, well-organized and well-designed office? Your trust for the company soars, right? That’s what happens when you build a professional-looking website for your law firm.

Your website is your law firm’s online office. It is the first place online visitors seeking a personal injury law firm will visit or interact with before contacting you.

A good website should offer a great user experience. Your visitors should be able to easily navigate from page to page and find whatever content they need.

How do you create the perfect website?

Just balance the visual elements with a clear message. Make it easier for visitors to find your contact information and learn about your law firm in a minute.

Google can identify websites with terrible user experience. A site with a high bounce rate indicates that visitors don’t find any value in the content. That’s why they only stay on the website for a short time. Most of them leave instantly after they land on the website.

A Handy Tip: You can build a website using WordPress, Wix, Ghost, Joomla, Shopify, etc. You can also hire a web developer to build a website from scratch for your law firm. The choice is yours. However, hiring a web developer to build a website via coding will cost more. Just compare the advantages and disadvantages to make the right decision.  

2: Keep an eye on your competitors:

I understand you want to avoid copying what others are doing. I don’t want you to copy either.

Keeping an eye on your competitors doesn’t imply that you’re copying them. You’re only looking at what they are doing right and wrong to draft a plan that will make your website outrank theirs.

So, if you have competitors in your local area, look at their website and content. Use a keyword tracker to find out the keywords they are ranking for.

Get all the information you need from your competitors, but don’t copy them. Look at their content, and make yours more superior. That’s how you can reposition your website to outrank them.

3: Use the right keywords:

Google’s search ranking operation is centered around keywords. People find information, products or services on the internet via keywords.

Targeting the right keywords increases your chances of appearing in legal consumers’ search engine result pages. You can target long-tail and location-based keywords. Why? This allows your website to appear in search engine results and local map packs.

Target keywords specific to your personal injury SEO agency (your legal practice) and location (where you’re operating). If you’re a personal injury lawyer in Los Angeles, you can use keywords like “personal injury lawyer in Los Angeles” or “Los Angeles personal injury lawyer.”

The keyword can be something like; “Personal injury lawyer in [city].”

The bottom line is to target the right keywords. Additionally, avoid using the same keyword repeatedly in all your content. When you do, it’s called “keyword cannibalization,” and can negatively impact your SEO.

4: Build quality content:

What will keep visitors engaged when they visit your website? It’s your content. Content is king and will forever remain so. Bill Gates had a reason for saying this.

Google will not improve your website’s ranking based on how professional it looks. It will rank it based on the quality of the content. Google wants to promote valuable content that will solve people’s problems. So your content should be educational, informative and well-optimized.

Write for search engines and potential visitors. Place your keywords strategically in your content (meta tags, headers, and body of the content), but use a different keyword in the content.

For users, ensure your content is informative, simple to read and understand. Use short sentences and more subheadings.

A Handy Tip: Endeavor to proofread and edit your content ruthlessly before publishing.

5: Build a healthy backlink profile:

Backlinks are one of Google’s ranking factors. They are still relevant. Change your link-building strategy if you have been building backlinks and can’t see the impact on your website ranking and traffic. In other words, start building a healthy backlink profile.

Get niche-specific backlinks that will impact your website massively. Ensure the site is spam-free and follows SEO best practices. The type of links you get also matters. Remember, there are “do-follow and no-follow” backlinks.

While the do-follow links allow the Google search engine to follow and pass link equity to your website, the no-follow link doesn’t.

Endeavor to create a healthy balance of no-follow and dofollow backlinks when building your link profile. Avoid focusing on do-follow links alone. When you do, Google will become suspicious of your website, and you don’t want that attention.

Here are ways to get backlinks:

• HARO
• Guest blogging
• Unlinked mentions
• Broken link building
• Statistics link building
• Skyscraper technique
• Listicles link building
• 301 redirect link building
• Podcast link building
• Stockist link building
• Membership link building
• Resource page link-building
• Business directory link building
• Internal link-building technique

You can see the various ways to build backlinks. The most important thing is building healthy backlinks that’ll impact your website the most.

Backlinks can bring qualified traffic to your website and improve search ranking. Placing your link on a high-authority website will make your website credible and trustworthy.

6: Implement advanced technical SEO:

Technical SEO involves optimizing your website to make it user-friendly and attractive for search engines. It involves making your website a breeze for search engines to find, crawl, index and rank. It entails improving elements of your website to get a higher ranking.

Below are technical SEO best practices personal injury law firms can implement to improve website ranking.

• Use HTTPS

• Ensure crawlers and users can only access one version of your website. That is, either https://www.lawfirmsite.com or https://yourlawfirmsite.com.

• Improve page speed: Your website should load as fast as 1-2 seconds. However, Google appreciates websites that load in under half a second.

• Make your website mobile-friendly: Do you know Google utilizes mobile-first indexing? Mobile searches are increasing, and search engine giants know this. Mobile search is where the bulk of your website’s organic traffic is coming from. Take a look, and you’ll see.

A Handy Tip: The mobile-first implies that Google looks at your web page’s mobile version before ranking it. This means websites that are mobile-friendly will rank higher than ones that aren’t mobile-friendly.

You can learn about your website’s mobile-friendliness via the “Mobile Utility” report in the Google search console. Here, you’ll find the number of pages affecting mobile usability and the issues.

How can you determine your website’s mobile-friendliness if you don’t have Google Search Console?

You can do so via the Google Mobile-Friendly Test Tool

Other advanced technical SEO strategies include:

• Structured data implementation
• Getting rid of duplicate content
• Identifying and rectifying broken pages
• Optimizing your website for core web vitals
• Deploy Hreflang for content in different languages

Conclusion

SEO for personal injury lawyers is important for law firms interested in succeeding online. It will place your website where potential clients can easily find and contact you online.

Search engine optimization is cost-effective and yields a high ROI. But this will depend on the legal SEO agency handling your SEO project. Thus, if you’re going to outsource your search engine optimization project, hire an expert who can deliver results, not excuses.

LawFirmSEOExpert helps law firms implement effective SEO strategies, and combines various SEO strategies to increase your law firm website’s online visibility, ranking and traffic. 

Get in touch for a proper audit of your website’s SEO to know how to make your law firm secure more cases and generate more revenue.