Law Firm SEO: The Complete Guide of SEO for Lawyers

What Is Law Firm SEO?

Law Firm Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a strategy that involves calculated techniques and digital marketing practices designed to bring in more organic and qualified traffic to your law firm website through top-ranked positions in Google. By targeting a combination of industry and geographical specific keywords visitors use to find an attorney or law firm. Whether your area of expertise is personal injury, criminal defense, family, estate planning, or business law, each specific sector of law has tremendous potential to draw in new clients through Google if you deploy a strategic SEO plan. For example, a custom and well-designed personal injury SEO strategy can help grow your firm and expand your reach with accident victims and SEO for family law can help you obtain more divorce and child custody cases.

The Google CTR (Click-through rate, or click rate) shows you how many people click on each position, represented by a percentage of all clicks. According to Sistrix, the position in which your law firm website ranks on Google is critical. The #1 position on Google attracts almost 30% of all clicks, and every position below it drastically drops in popularity. What’s even more eye-opening is that the 10 results on page 1 account for nearly 90% of all clicks for any given search. Meaning if your law firm is not showing on page 1, you won’t see any organic traffic coming to your site. If you’re not actively tracking and implementing an SEO strategy for your law firm, then chances are your current content isn’t ranking well. A common (and corny) SEO joke is that the best place to hide a dead body is on page 2 of Google because no one ever looks there. The truth about law firm SEO is that if you’re not appearing in the top 5 results for your most valuable keywords, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity for your firm. Luckily, that’s where Law Firm SEO comes into play.

It’s already pretty clear that for most people, Google search is their go-to choice for finding legal services. In fact, according to The National Law review, 94% of people seeking legal advice or action use a search engine to do so in 2020.  Social and word of mouth certainly play key roles, but online search dominates the research phase. If you want to capture those potential clients, you must begin incorporating law firm SEO into your marketing plan. Search not only lets you reach a high volume of people, but it also lets you target specific groups of people who may specifically be looking for your expertise. For example, targeting the keyword “personal injury lawyer in Philadelphia” will help your website appear in search results and let those who need a personal injury lawyer be able to find you. Not to mention, optimizing for specific search queries that are common in your area of law. For example, potential clients aren’t always searching for “personal injury lawyer”, instead, they often search for more specific queries like “back pain after car accident” or “how to deal with an insurance adjuster”. Yes, these queries may serve less organic traffic compared to other queries, but these queries serve much higher quality leads and can be a great way to capture the attention of clients who are looking for a lawyer right now and then. I’ll break down a proven 5 stage SEO game plan that will help you take your website and your law firm to the next level. 

Law Firm Digital Statistics

The time to invest in your law firm's digital presence is today. Research shows the search patterns of potential clients and how they heavily rely on Google to help them find an attorney.

94%
Discovery

of people seeking legal advice or action use a search engine

74%
Action

of consumers visit a law firm’s website to take action

62%
Search

of legal searches are general ("Philadelphia DUI attorney")

86%
Conversion

of people seeking legal advice contact 1 attorney before hiring

1. Analysis & Digital Strategy

Discovery

Auditing your website

A sit down meeting to learn about your firm's core values, target marketing, and digital goals
Perform a comprehensive site audit to understand your current strengths and how to improve any weaknesses
Conduct a thorough competitve analysis on other law firms in your area. Highlighting opportunities that we can capitalize on
Create a local optimization strategy for your website that will target traffic in your law firm's geographical area

Once I have a clear picture of everything affecting your current SEO we’ll create a strategy together that addresses your challenges and sets clear goals by which we can measure success.

2. Technical Website Optimization

Performance

Tune-up your website's performance

Keyword optimization of meta elements and content to utilize the law firm keywords with the highest traffic volume
Website speed and performance optimization
Analyzing and improving user interface and user experience (UX/UI)
Perform a technical crawl to identify and resolve 404 errors, broken links, missing alt tags, etc.
Internal linking optimization

Once we have a strategy in place I’ll begin the technical optimization of your site. This will be the foundation of your site and the source to which we build many SEO elements from.

3. Local Citations & Optimization

Local SEO

Dominate your local market

Google My Business page optimization to increase your law firms online visibility and reputation
Local citation building to improve your law firm website's authority and trust
Review generation strategy and implementation to gain more positive reviews and improve your law firm's reputation
Geographical optimization focused on authority, relevance and proximity to your law firm

Next, I’ll begin building local citations for your law firm and improving your website’s expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. Off-page SEO is just as important as on-page SEO.

4. Evergreen Content Production

Content

Create content that ranks

Keyword optimization of meta elements and content to utilize the law firm keywords with the highest traffic volume
Website speed and performance optimization
Analyzing and improving user interface and user experience (UX/UI)
Perform a technical crawl to identify and resolve 404 errors, broken links, missing alt tags, etc.
Internal linking optimization

Creating and optimizing evergreen content that continues to rank months and years after it’s been published. Together we’ll create high-quality content that engages your target audience.

5. Report & Measure

Analytics

Tracking progress and growth

Details of all SEO initiatives and areas of focus for the coming month
Reporting of all content marketing including new content published and the optimization that's included
Weekly and monthly analytics reports showing growth from current period compared to last
Organic keywords report detailing new keywords gained from SEO and the traffic that comes with it

Finally, and most importantly, we’ll routinely measure your law firm’s organic growth through monthly reporting. Identify where your SEO is succeeding and opportunities that we can target next.

Start Growing Your Law Firm Today

There's no way around it; if you want to scale your law firm's business organically, you must incorporate some kind of SEO strategy. SEO is an investment. Forming a game plan and targeting your specific market leads to increased traffic month over month. Simply gaining 2 or 3 clients as a result of SEO and improved online visibility will likely produce a positive ROI from your SEO investment. The best time to plant a tree is yesterday; start planning for your Law Firm's future today.

1286 Wanda Drive Hanover, PA 17331