What Is Law Firm SEO?

Law firm SEO is the process of optimizing a law firm’s website for search engines in order to improve its organic search ranking and increase its visibility to potential clients. This process involves optimizing various elements of the website, such as the content, metadata, and technical structure, to make it more appealing to search engines and improve its chances of ranking highly for relevant keywords. The goal of law firm SEO is to attract more high-quality cases and drive more traffic to the website, ultimately leading to increased revenue for the firm.

It’s important to note that SEO is an ongoing process that requires regular attention and updates in order to be effective. As such, many law firms choose to work with a Law Firm SEO agency or specialists to help manage their SEO efforts.

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There are several benefits to implementing a law firm (SEO) search engine optimization strategy:

  1. Increased visibility: A well-optimized website is more likely to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs), making it more visible to potential clients searching for legal services.
  2. More high-quality cases: By appearing at the top of search results, a law firm is more likely to attract qualified leads who are looking for legal services in their area.
  3. Increased credibility: Ranking highly in search results can increase a law firm’s credibility and perceived authority in its area of expertise.
  4. Cost-effective: SEO is a cost-effective marketing strategy compared to traditional forms of advertising, as it allows a law firm to reach potential clients who are actively searching for legal services.
  5. Long-term results: Unlike paid advertising, which stops as soon as the budget is depleted, the results of a well-implemented SEO strategy can last for a long time.

Overall, implementing a law firm SEO strategy can help increase the visibility, credibility, and revenue of a law firm by attracting more high-quality cases through search engines.

What Does This Guide Cover

This guide is meant to give Lawyers a birds-eye view of their organic marketing. It will teach the basics of relevant lawyer SEO marketing topics for your firm, however, it will not take you through the step-by-step process of “how to take on your organic marketing DIY style.” That being said, if the latter is what you’re after, this guide will certainly give you a solid foundation. Each chapter is meant to cover what you need to know to understand and even run a successful organic search engine campaign for your firm.

  1. In the first chapter of the guide, you will learn about the search engine ranking factors for lawyers to take into account when building pages.
  2. Chapter two will go over what other lawyers do, with competitor & keyword research, and what to look for to create strong, rank-worthy content.
  3. In the third chapter, we will guide you through the best practices in technical SEO for law firms and the steps to creating a winning site and converting landing pages.
  4. We will go over on-site and on-page SEO practices to achieve better organic results in the legal sector.
  5. In the fourth chapter of our guide, we will go over one of the most important sections for firms looking to rank in their surrounding area, Local search engine optimizations.
  6. One of the trickiest chapters, our the 6th one is on off-site SEO for lawyers. It goes over complex topics like backlinks and citations but in simple terms.
  7. To wrap everything up, in our last chapter we will go over how Law Firms can measure your organic results.

How Legal SEO Works

“How long until we see results?” It’s a rather common question that law firms ask when considering a new search engine optimization (SEO) campaign. This simple question has so many variables that are always changing and evolving. It is nearly impossible to answer with one definitive answer.

To start a new campaign requires a ton of upfront research just to assess a firm’s current situation, determine what goals they want to achieve, and plan out an initial strategy. That alone can take several months. Once the technical work has actually begun, it can take a while for the campaign to get any traction and for the firm to start seeing results. While organic search results are very powerful, they do take time to obtain. This is not set in stone, great content will always have traffic as long as it is fresh, relevant, and useful to the user.

Multichannel approaches that include pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, content development and promotion, and other online and offline activities can provide results while a firm’s website is in the process of obtaining organic rankings. In a competitive industry, like legal marketing, this can sometimes be a lengthy process, but there should be a noticeable change within a year.

We have created a list with the goal of providing you with a resource to help hold your web marketing vendor accountable.

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Why Is Search Engine Optimization Effective for Lawyers?

Search engines provide ratings for businesses and organizations that clients and customers review using their platform. Consumers and clients perform a large volume of searches that yield local results on smartphones and other mobile devices. Reviews are strongly aligned with ratings for local searches, making them increasingly important to all businesses, including law firms.

In terms of volume, Google is the largest search engine. It’s also the most popular, making Google My Business and Google Reviews extremely important to law firms. In fact, Google has captured between 87 and 93 percent of the market share across all platforms, depending on whether you examine the numbers monthly or yearly. They have more than 95 percent of the search market share on mobile devices.

Appearing at or near the top of search engine results or “local pack” for specific searches can increase website visits and provide more contacts with potential clients. It’s a numbers game. The more times you can discuss a case with a potential client, the more opportunities you have for new business with your law firm.

Optimizing for other search engines is also important. Overall when you optimize for Google other search engines follow suit. These search engines have varying quantities of traffic, and different niches of users, and overall there is less competition. Examples: Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, Reddit, Youtube ect.

Bing for example is the second largest search engine on the web outside of Google ownership. A lot of its user base is of the older demographic group (They don’t change their browser, so they keep the default OS Browser Safari or Edge for Windows) , which also means they have more purchasing power with the caveat of longer turnaround times. Bing is more straightforward about its ranking factors, and the process is more straightforward and simpler than Google’s.

Difference Between SEO and PPC

Search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising are two different methods to reach your target audience when they search for relevant keywords. The main difference between each approach is that you pay to appear in front of your target audience with  PPC  and SEO organically places you in front of your audience. When using PPC advertising, you pay the search engine where you want to advertise, for example, Google, when a potential client clicks on your ads (text, display, video…).

A simpler way to explain the difference between SEO and PPC is by comparing them to real estate. When you own a home you invest in improving the value of the asset you own and control (like with SEO for your website, you own the asset, and the value increases over time).  Pay Per Click or renting (Google SERPS real estate), you lose the benefits if stop paying rent – like with PPC you are only renting the ad space so you lose the benefits if you stop paying for the search engine to show your ads.

If you are wondering what the benefits of a PPC campaign are compared to organic SEO, the simple answer is speed to reach your potential clients. However,  reaching your target audience quickly and directly comes with a price. The best alternative for new and well-established law firms is a healthy balance between strong SEO practices and PPC campaigns, but also social media marketing is a must and email marketing campaigns are needed to nurture leads into clients. A mix of everything is necessary to succeed.

What Is the First Step in SEO for Law Firms?

Digital marketing is exciting and comparatively new to traditional marketing techniques. Rapid changes in methods and innovation sometimes overwhelm attorneys. This makes it seem as if lawyers can never catch up to the newest methods.

Famous baseball legend, Yogi Berra, is quoted as saying; “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else”. Your first step to engaging in the best SEO practices for your law firm is understanding how SEO works. Specifically, you need to know what things Google algorithms look at to push search results to the top.

The next chapter provides a broad overview of the factors that Google uses to rank website pages, giving you the knowledge you need to build your digital marketing strategically in a way that gives you the best chance for success.

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