Search engine optimization (SEO) is an indispensable way for law firms to generate traffic and leads. SEO involves optimizing and promoting your firm’s website and local listings so they rank highly in search engine results pages.
Undergoing keyword research to identify the most applicable search terms and phrases related to your legal practice is key for creating successful SEO techniques, helping to achieve top rankings and grow clientele. In this article we cover attorney SEO techniques which will enable you to expand clientele.
Blogging
Blogging is an integral component of attorney SEO as it creates visibility, builds brand recognition and establishes linkable assets. Unfortunately, writing engaging blog posts that optimize for search engines requires significant time investment; for maximum benefit it’s best to target a particular audience while staying abreast of news in your legal niche.
Repurposing content to maximize its value is also recommended, and Epstein Lawyers – a law firm offering divorce and separation services – created an infographic to promote their recent blog post about filing for divorce in each state.
Avoid bad SEO practices like participating in content farms or purchasing links; these actions could damage your SEO and even incur penalties from Google. Instead, focus on producing quality information that provides value to potential clients and use various promotion techniques to spread word of it.
Keyword Research
Keyword research involves discovering which search terms your target audience uses to find solutions to their problems online. Search terms may consist of single words or multiple-word combinations as well as phrases or questions; in general, though, you want to identify high search volume but low competition for these “good” keywords.
User search intent is also an integral component of keyword research. It can be divided into informational searches and intent-to-hire searches; users searching informational keywords seek answers to specific inquiries while those searching intent-to-hire have made up their minds about hiring a lawyer.
Word count does not directly impact organic search engine rankings; however, it can have an effect on other ranking factors like authority, relevance and citations. To get an accurate idea of word counts for any given page on a legal firm website, visit top-ranked pages for your keyword and analyse their content – this will give you an indication of what to expect when creating content of your own.
On-Page Optimization
On-page optimization is one of the cornerstones of attorney SEO. This involves making changes to content and tags on your website in order to increase search engine visibility. Furthermore, on-page optimization also addresses any website errors such as broken links or slow server response time.
One of the key on-page factors of attorney SEO is using keyword research to optimize your title and header tags. Your H1 tag should feature your target keywords as it should be the main piece of content on a page; then use H2 and H3 tags for less essential words/phrases/complex phrases on each page.
Another key element for SEO success on-page is having an intuitive URL structure. A site with clear pages like ‘/snowboards/sizes/’ will help Google understand exactly what each page covers and its relation to other pages on the site.
Link Building
Backlinks are one of the best ways to improve attorney SEO. In addition to serving as an important ranking factor, backlinks help search engines understand your content’s quality and relevance.
Google uses an algorithmic evaluation process to assess websites based on multiple criteria, including backlink analysis. They do this by measuring quality, relevance, and quantity of links connected with each website.
For optimal attorney SEO results, link building should only come from high-quality sites relevant to your niche and create links from those which won’t risk penalization by search engines. Link Prospector or Broken Link Builder tools can help identify potential link opportunities.
An effective link building strategy begins by understanding who your target audience is and the questions they pose, giving you a better sense of which topics and keywords should be written about and included in content creation. You could even use tools to see which websites your audience visits – this way you know where best to reach out with content pitch.