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In today's digital age, visibility is everything for businesses. This couldn't be more true for Lawyers and Law Firms. You want your website to be the first thing people seeking legal advice or services see. SEO for Lawyers is a great way to get your firm in front of potential clients' eyes and into the golden first page of Google's organic search results; this is one of the most rewarding marketing initiatives in 2023.
So how can you do it? How can you push through the extreme competition and get your law firm's pages to rank? In this article, we take a deep dive into the statistics, benefits, processes, and ranking factors that need to be considered to get on the search engine results pages (SERPs).
*Please note that this article is meant to provide a comprehensive overview, not a custom SEO plan for your law firm. Every SEO project is unique and can be influenced by location, goals, website condition, and so much more. If you want a custom plan for your Law Firm SEO you can get started with our free trial.
Search Engine Optimization Statistics (Why your Law Firm Needs It)
-88% of local mobile searches lead to a store visit within one week’s time (“Local search to store visits statistics”, n.d.).
-46% of consumers say they’re more likely to buy from a company after reading its content.
-93% of the lawyers agreed that legal education and legal literacy content would help them reach and convert untapped markets and individuals who have never dealt with a law firm before.
-82% of the lawyers agreed that legal service marketing would help consumers know which firm is better at the different areas of law; with SEO and high-quality content, your firm could stand out amongst the sea of competition.
Why is SEO important for law firms?
With the right strategy, law firms can increase their visibility, attract more website visitors, and ultimately generate more business. SEO is also important because it can help you stand out from your competitors, build trust and credibility, and establish your brand in the industry.
By optimizing their website for relevant keywords and creating high-quality content, law firms can reach a wider audience, and have a higher return on their marketing investment.
The most successful SEO campaigns focus on long-form content; this means that the first impression your visitors get is one of authority, helpfulness and trust, which in turn caused the conversion rate to rise. This simple approach is extremely effective because people find you, reach out and convert almost on their own.
In today's world, prospective clients get bombarded with advertisements on a daily basis (think PPC, Social Media Ads and TV). This causes a few problems for those that want to reach those clients.
- Advertising costs go up on a yearly basis because people become immune to the constant barrage of information that is thrown at them.
- Even if people click on and take action through traditional advertisements, they don't always convert. This can be due to a number of factors, including wrong client fit, budget issues, or tire kickers.
- Advertisement methods like Social Media Ads and PPC are great, but more often than not they are a hungry money pit for your law firm's budgets. Once you remove the funding, your lead flow stops unless you are taking the organic approach via social media.
SEO for lawyers tackles all those problems head-on because people find you organically. SEO ranking has a compounding effect, meaning your traffic grows consistently on a monthly basis. Leads that come through SEO are much warmer because they have already engaged with your content, and realize that they require your services.
What does SEO for law firms involve?
Search engine optimization is a long-term process and involves a number of different areas and tasks that must all work in unison to achieve any significant impact. For your website to achieve a successful Google ranking, it must conform to Google’s constantly evolving needs and provide clients and prospective clients with a user-friendly website. We will dive into the specifics further on in this article, but your legal SEO campaign has the following basic components:
Content Creation
It is now a necessary requirement that all lawyers have great content to rank well on Google. How much content, what type of content, and the frequency at which you upload that content will depend on the size of your firm and your keyword research.
Your main law firm website must have the standard home page, and your practice area pages. In order to add more content, you can either add a blog page or a news feature page. You can attract clients through this content, and give you more Domain Authority (So you can rank)
"Showcase your expertise by giving away your best information. Sounds backward, but the truth is that if you demonstrate to the world that you know what you’re doing by giving them information that helps them, most people will come back around to you when they need your expertise." Megan Zavieh
On-Site SEO And Off-site Website Optimization
Site optimization involves a thorough and detailed process that aims to fix any errors on your website. This includes the page title, image optimization, internal linking, high-quality backlinks, core web vitals, meta descriptions and more. To identify the on and off site seo tasks, you can either audit your website online or get a consultant to do it for you.
Page speed has always been ranked among the factors for desktop and mobile searches and is now ranked in the rankings chart. According to Google, pages with slower user experience are deemed as potentially damaging.
Law Firm Website Structure
The organization and layout of your website are key to having search engine-ready pages. The structure of our site should make finding information easier and also make it simple for people to contact your law firm. Whether you promote your law firm's website via blog posts, or service pages, having clear calls to action is extremely important. If people don't see how they can take action on your website, or if it's difficult to use, then they will leave.
Measuring Your SEO success
Throughout the course of your search engine optimization journey, you will need the best possible data for comparing your results and the performance of your seo tactics. It can be measured by how much traffic you receive and how many visitors you get from incoming visitors to your website.
Understanding Google Ranking Factors For Law Firm Websites
There are a number of rules and factors that Google (Algorithms) and other major search engines use in order to determine a website's search engine rankings. We will cover a few of the most applicable factors that have helped law firms get great organic results.
The factors are covered by category and then niche down into relevant items that need to be considered. If you want to read through all 200 ranking factors that Google has for 2023, click here.
Domain Factors
1-2: Domain Age AND NAME
Older domains have long been seen as more trustworthy, but unfortunately, this is not the case. Google's John Mueller has said that domain age helps nothing, so there is hardly any significance in terms of law firm SEO.
That being said, it's still important to ensure that your domain name is as relevant as possible. A well-chosen domain name can help with search engine rankings and can also help your law firm's site to stand out from the competition.
Additionally, it's important to ensure that your domain name is memorable and easy to spell, as this will make it easier for customers to find your website and will help to build trust. No one wants to click on a search result for "Car accident lawyers" with a url that says "coolest law facts. info". So, while domain age isn't as important as it once was, it's still important to choose a good domain name for your business; if in doubt, just use your law firm's name.
10: Country TLD Extension - For Local SEO And COUNTRY-SPECIFIC Law Firm's
If you are looking to increase your law firm's website visibility in a specific country, domain extensions can be a great tool to help you accomplish your goal. Country-specific extensions provide a great way to acquire links from local sources, which can be a tremendous help when it comes to improving your website's rank in local search results and your law firm's visibility.
Acquiring these links can be as easy as adding your site to local directories (Yellow Pages, Google Maps, Facebook) and other online sources. Not only does this give you an opportunity to reach out to potential customers in a given region, but it also helps increase website traffic and rank higher with local keywords.
Local SEO also offers a unique benefit on Googles search results, which is known as the "Local Pack" which is featured on the first page, and showcases positive reviews (And social media reviews) which is great for social proof.
Furthermore, having your site associated with a local domain extension is a great way to show potential customers that you are who you say you are, with the added bonus of increasing exposure. So if you want your local business website to rank higher in a specific country, be sure to take advantage of country-specific domain extensions.
Special Google Algorithm Rules
18. “YMYL” Keywords
Google has raised the bar for Your Money Your Life (YMYL) pages. These pages are sites that feature content that can affect the health, safety, and financial stability of the people who view it.
This includes pages on finance, health, law, and other sensitive topics. YMYL pages must abide by Google's Quality Raters' Guidelines, which can be complex and time-consuming.
To be successful, YMYL pages must have high-quality and accurate content, have a secure and reliable website, use appropriate YMYL keywords, and use appropriate lawyer keywords (other Lawyers may be competing for these too)
Google is constantly monitoring YMYL pages to ensure they are providing quality content and a safe, reliable experience for its users. If your website features YMYL content, it is essential to ensure your content is accurate and up-to-date and that your website is secure and reliable.
21. Transactional, Informational and Investigation Search
When it comes to optimizing your website for search engine purposes, it's important to understand the different types of keywords that you should be targeting. Generally speaking, there are transaction-based keywords and informational keywords.
Transaction-based keywords are used in searches that have the intention of buying.
These types of keywords typically have higher search volumes and higher competition, but they also have the highest conversion rates. For example, "Criminal defense attorney" Or "personal injury lawyer" would be a transaction-based search phrase.
On the other hand, informational keywords are used in searches that have the intention of gathering information rather than making a purchase.
These types of keywords typically have lower search volumes and lower competition, but they still have the potential to bring in web traffic. Additionally, there are other types of keywords, such as lawyer keywords which are specific to the legal industry. In order to make the most of your law firm seo budget, you can create valuable content for each type of search term.
No matter which type of keywords you're targeting, it's important to make sure your website content covers them. This will ensure that your website is being seen by the people who are looking for it. By understanding the different types of keywords and optimizing your website for them, you can increase your chances of appearing in search engine results and gaining more web traffic.
26. Image Results
When optimizing your web page for search engines, it's easy to overlook one important aspect – image SEO.
With Google now showing images in its organic search results, it's important to make sure your images are properly optimized so they can be found by potential customers. One of the most important aspects of image SEO is alt text.
Alt text is a description of an image, and it's used by search engines to understand the content of the image. For example, if you are a lawyer and you have an image on your page, you should include an appropriate image alt text like "Lawyers Image Alt Text" so Google will understand what the image represents.
Additionally, you should also use descriptive file names for your images, such as "lawyer_image.jpg" instead of "image1.jpg". Doing this will help Google to better understand the content of your images and rank your page accordingly. Some people may find images from desktop searches, or might stumble upon your image through a random related search.
The more opportunities and content that you create, the more people search, which in turn helps your law firm's seo journey.
Page-Level Factors
41. Keywords in Title Tag
Specific keywords in the title tag of a website play an important role in driving organic traffic. Placing your keywords in the title tags not only increases your website’s SEO value but also improves your click-through rate, which brings more traffic to your website.
For example, if a lawyer wants to rank for “Divorce Lawyers” or "Car Accident Lawyer", he should include these keywords in the title tags of his website. This will help him rank higher in the search engine results pages, resulting in more organic traffic to his website. Seo for law firms and attorneys will vary, depending on goals and budgets.
It's also important to note that the title tags should be kept simple and should contain only relevant search terms. You can also combine a few specific terms to make long tail keywords, which allows you to organically rank for more keywords.
This will not only help in SEO but also make it easier for users to quickly identify the content of the page. Placing keywords in the title tag is an important step in improving your website’s SEO performance and bringing more traffic to your website.
46. Content Length
When it comes to content length, longer is better. Long-form content provides more information and covers topics in-depth, making it more interesting and engaging for readers. Studies have also shown that longer content tends to have higher google rankings.
You should avoid keyword stuffing and keep a close eye on the keywords that perform the best so you can create more content around them and make sure more content appears in search.
Additionally, longer pieces of content offer more opportunities for keyword placement and more chances for link building. When you create something valuable, people will want to build links and share your content. This can help boost your website rankings and make it easier for customers to find your content.
For lawyers, this is especially important, as SEO law content must be detailed and thorough in order to be effective. Content marketing helps lawyers establish their authority in the field and show their expertise. Whether you have a small law firm or a large one, you should add high-quality and valuable content to your law firm's website.
56. Google Hummingbird
Google Hummingbird is an algorithm update that was released in 2013 and helped the search engine look beyond just keywords. With this algorithm update, Google could decode the topic of a web page with improved precision.
This meant that webpages that produced relevant content were rewarded by Google. This was a major shift in the way that Google ranked webpages. Before Hummingbird, content was often written with keyword stuffing in mind, while after, it was written with readers in mind. This meant that lawyers, who wrote content with their audience in mind, were rewarded with better rankings.
The Hummingbird update was a major step forward for Law Firm SEO. It allows lawyers to write content that is tailored to their clients and target population, which in turn allows them to rank higher.
User Interaction
99. RankBrainTime
RankBrainTime is a machine-learning algorithm that Google uses to process and organize search results. It is believed that RankBrain measures how users interact with search results. One of its primary focuses is Time on Page (ToP), or how long a user stays on a page from the search results. For lawyers, this is especially important since it can be an indication of how engaged the user is with the content.
Law firm seo should focus on creating engaging and informative content; this is where user intent and online search strategy comes into play.
A high ToP can show that the user found the information they were looking for and is likely to take action, such as contacting the lawyer. On the other hand, a low ToP can indicate that the content is not applicable to their query and that they clicked away.
Understanding the ToP of your website is important for SEO strategies and optimizing your website to better appeal to your target audience. To get the most out of RankBrainTime, lawyers should focus on creating content that is relevant, accurate, and easy to understand.
Listing useful information that answers questions from potential customers is crucial, but you also need to consider what is expected in search engines for the product. Google uses its algorithm Rankbrain to understand user intentions.
It scans the internet to find keywords and content such as 'Tampa personal injury attorney'. It uses that information to determine what a person is seeking and how it is a useful resource. Therefore, the website should clearly identify its target keywords in order users to know how the site works. If you want to measure the average Time On Page, you can use Google analytics.
100. Organic Click-Through Rate for A KeywordTime
Increasing your organic click-through rate (CTR) for a keyword is an important part of law firm seo. Google indicates that organic CTR and SERP rank are closely linked. So if you can increase the click-through rate for a keyword, it will lead to an improved SERP rank, and help your seo efforts pay off. To do this, you need to make sure your keywords appear in prominent locations on your web page, such as the title tags and meta description.
Additionally, including your keywords in the body of your content can help as well. You should also make sure that your page is formatted in a way that makes it easy for users to find what they're looking for.
If you can make your content more engaging, informative, and visually appealing, you can increase the organic CTR of your keywords and rise in SERP rankings. This will bring more visitors to your law firm's website, helping you to grow your law firm and reach new clients.
157. Mobile-Optimized/friendly
Google states that a mobile-friendly website is essential for providing an optimal user experience. With the majority of web traffic now coming from mobile devices, it's essential for any business to have a website that is mobile-optimized and responsive. Google's Mobile-friendly test is the perfect way to test if a webpage works well on a mobile device or tablet. With this test, you can ensure your lawyer's website is up to par.
From small text to images and other elements, a good website must adjust to any device. When consumers visit your site they expect quick loading times and smooth navigation. This way you can ensure your website is providing the best user experience possible.
Mobile optimization is also essential for SEO, this means higher search results and more organic traffic. Since most users find your page on their phone, it is an important ranking factor.
Backlink Factors
172. Links from “Expected” Websites
Quality backlinks from authoritative and expected sites are essential for a successful lawyer SEO strategy. Google makes sure that your website is trustworthy and authoritative, before showing it to other people. Link building to relevant, authoritative third party websites in your niche is a great way to show Google that your website is credible.
This includes websites like other law firms, governmental bodies, industry experts, legal marketing industry specialists or the American Bar Association (Or your local governing body).
It is important to be careful, though, as linking to too many of these sites could be seen as suspicious, especially in a short time frame. On the other hand, having a few backlinks from reliable sources can be beneficial for your website's credibility. So more links isn't always better. Ultimately, it is important to make sure you are linking to the right sites in order to improve your lawyer SEO success.
Quality content is key when it comes to SEO. You need to create content that is informative, accurate, and engaging. Make sure to have fresh content, that has the correct content structure. This will help you get more high-quality links from reliable websites.
How To Create Your Law Firm SEO Strategy
Search engine optimization strategy, especially for a law firm, is essential to attract and retain the right clients.
1. Identify Your Target Audience:
Before you can create an SEO plan, you need to identify your audience. Who are your ideal clients? What type of legal services do they need? Search engines exist to fulfill the needs of people searching for them. If you can correctly identify your searcher's intent, your law firm website will show up in more search results, saving you thousands in paid search spend. Law firm and attorney search engine optimization should always focus on the audience.
2. Keyword Research:
After you’ve identified your audience, you need to identify keywords. This involves finding out what terms potential clients are searching for when looking for legal services. You can use tools such as Google Keyword Planner, Google Search Console, and others to find relevant keywords.
Keyword research involves using professional tools to determine a number of factors including research phase and intent, the most popular keywords in Google search and other search engines. For example, prospective clients might search for "Criminal defense lawyers", "Personal injury lawyers" or just "Law Practice near me".
You can choose a single higher quality primary keyword or focus on broader reaching long tail keywords and topic clusters that will still get you keyword rankings but for a smaller budget. can be highly targeted with stable to excellent traffic and with reasonable competition.
3. Content Development:
Now that you know what keywords to target, it’s time to create website content. This can involve creating blog posts, web pages, and other content that is tailored to the keywords you’ve identified. It should be informative, engaging and provide the reader with value.
Additionally, the content should be optimized for the target keyword with the use of relevant headings and meta tags. Finally, it is important to ensure that the content is well-structured and easy to read. Content development is not just about optimizing for the right keywords, but is about content marketing the best best aspects of your law firm expertise and building trust and credibility with your audience.
Make sure you avoid duplicate content because quality is more important than quantity. There are plenty of law firm seo services that offer content marketing, but it is important to weigh up whether you want to delegate content production to legal professionals or rely on your own business's expertise.
4. Optimizing for Local SEO:
If you’re a local law firm, you need to optimize your website for local SEO. This involves optimizing your website for local search terms and ensuring that your contact information is listed correctly on your law firm's website and in directories such as Google Business Profile, legal directories, and all the marketing channels you use.
Local legal seo is mainly focused on adding client reviews, making your site google friendly and promoting your most important pages.
5. Building Links:
Link building is an important part of SEO for law firms. This involves creating backlinks from other websites to yours. This can help boost your business website’s visibility and rankings in search engine results. All of your top competitors are spending a significant amount of their budget on links. This is becoming increasingly important to achieve higher rankings.
There are lots of ways to acquire links, but they should always have relevant anchor text, convey information to Google that your page is valuable (Do-follow instead of no-follow links)
Google considers do follow links to be of higher quality, and a legal sector link (With high domain authority) will impact rankings more than a random link, remember that purchasing links from the wrong sources can also lead to your site penalized.
6. Ongoing SEO Tasks:
SEO is an ongoing process. To ensure that your website is properly optimized for search engines, you need to perform regular SEO tasks such as monitoring analytics, optimizing content, and creating new content. A common mistake people make is making one seo campaign, maybe adding a few meta descriptions here and there, and then expecting to improve search engine rankings and get on the first page in a few months.
While this is definitely the dream, it is not yet a reality. As with any marketing strategy, seo efforts take time, more often than not, 6-12+ months time. But the benefit is the amazing compounding returns that can enable you to stop paying for other marketing channels like pay-per-click (Google Ads) and social media marketing.
7. Law Firm SEO Services:
If you don’t have the time or the expertise to create an effective SEO plan, you can hire a professional law firm SEO agency to do it for you. Law firm SEO experts are experienced in creating effective SEO strategies for law firms, executing technical seo tasks, fixing internal links, and organizing site structure/URL structure, which will help drive qualified traffic and generate leads for your law firm.
Lawyers Guide To The Best SEO tools
Now that you’ve learned a bit more about SEO and how it can benefit your law firm, it’s time to start using SEO tools to your advantage. There are many different SEO tools you can use to track your progress and stay on track with your strategy. (A law firm seo company may use a combination of these tools)
- Google Trends/Google Search Console
Google Trends and the search console can show you how many people are searching for certain keywords, the google search results and so much more. This is a great way to validate new keywords for your strategy and track your progress. With Google Trends, you can identify which keywords are most popular in your area over a span of time, giving you insight into what kind of services people are searching for.
You can also track how often certain keywords are used, so you can adjust your strategy accordingly. Plus, you can compare the search volume of different keywords over time, allowing you to identify trends and stay ahead of the competition. With Google's free software, lawyers can gain invaluable insight into what their potential clients are looking for and make sure their services are visible and easily accessible.
- Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner is another great tool for finding new keywords to include in your SEO strategy. It also helps you track your progress and gives you an estimate of how many people are searching for each word. This can help you understand which words or phrases are the most popular with potential clients and then use those terms to create content that can reach the right people.
You can also use Google Keyword Planner to compare different keywords, so you can see which ones are the most profitable for your business. The planner can also show how competitive certain Google rankings are.
As a lawyer, you know how competitive the market is, so having the right keywords can make all the difference when it comes to driving traffic to your website. And with Google Keyword Planner, you have the data to back you up. So if you're looking for a new tool to improve your SEO strategy, Google Keyword Planner is a perfect choice.
- SEMrush
SEMrush is a great tool that allows you to see your competition’s keywords and track your law firm seo progress. It also provides an estimate of how many people are searching for certain keywords. With SEMrush, you can analyze your competitors’ strategies and create a comprehensive list of keywords that apply to your practice.
You can also use the tool to monitor your competitors’ activities, such as their backlinks, keyword usage, technical seo and content, and even get specific tips so you can stay ahead of the competition.
SEMrush also provides detailed reports that can help you identify potential opportunities for improvement and track your progress. Whatever practice area, whether you are a criminal defense lawyer or specialize in something else, Semrush is an awesome tool that can help make your marketing efforts more efficient and get those results.
-Moz
Moz Pro is the perfect tool for lawyers looking to optimize their websites for SEO. With Moz Pro, you can target the right keywords to ensure that your site is visible in search engine results. Similarly to SEMrush, Moz can also provide details on Google Serps, help you make a seo marketing strategy to move your website's position upward in the search engines.
You can also create custom reports to track the performance of your SEO efforts and measure the impact of your SEO strategy. And with the Moz Crawl Diagnostics Tool, you can identify any issues with your website and resolve them quickly, including page speed (see if your page loads quickly), keyword stuffing, and any other important seo ranking factor.
Moz Pro helps to remove the complexity of SEO and makes it easy to understand how search engine optimization works. It's a great tool to maximize online visibility and ensure that your website is optimized for success.
-Ahrefs
Ahrefs is an invaluable tool for lawyers looking to optimize their SEO. It is basically your own SEO agency in your laptop. With its all-in-one toolset, you can easily track your rankings on search engines, improve technical seo, monitor your backlinks, and analyze your competition's SEO strategies.
The Ahrefs crawler scans the web and stores a vast amount of data, which can be accessed through an easy-to-use dashboard. This makes it easy to conduct keyword research, stay up to date on changes in your market, and track the performance of your SEO campaigns.
Most law firms also use Ahrefs to monitor their backlinks, to identify any potential issues and take action to correct them. And with its competitive analysis feature, you can compare your website's performance against that of your competitors. With Ahrefs, lawyers can have peace of mind that their SEO marketing is on track and that they're staying ahead of their competition.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does SEO for lawyers cost?
The cost of SEO for lawyers depends on a few factors, including the size of your law firm, the services you need, and the competition in your area. Generally speaking, you can expect to pay anywhere from a few hundred dollars to 6+ thousand dollars a month for SEO services.
However, the cost of SEO is often offset by the increased number of leads and clients that come from having a strong online presence. In short, the cost of SEO for lawyers is worth it if you're looking to increase visibility and get more clients.
How competitive is SEO for lawyers?
Lawyer SEO is highly competitive, as there are a lot of law firms vying for attention online. Each one is trying to stand out and rank higher than the others, and they all want the same thing: more clients.
Every day, more law firms are turning to SEO to make sure they stay at the top of the results page. And with so many law firms competing for clicks and rankings, it can be hard to stand out from the crowd. That's why it's important for law firms to have a comprehensive SEO strategy.
This includes creating content that resonates with their audience, optimizing their website for search engine visibility, and building a strong link portfolio. These are all essential elements of a successful SEO campaign, and they can ensure that your law firm stands out from the competition.
How long does it take to start ranking higher?
When it comes to lawyer SEO, it can take some time before you start to see results. Depending on your particular situation, it can take anywhere from 4-5 months before you start to rank on the search results pages you focus on.
Factors such as location, competition, and budget all play a role in how long it takes for you to start seeing results. For example, if you are a lawyer located in a busy city, the competition for SEO ranking is likely to be more intense than in a smaller town.
Similarly, if you have a bigger budget to invest in SEO, it will help boost your ranking more quicker. However, regardless of the situation, it's important to remember that SEO takes time and you should stay patient while you wait for your lawyer SEO to improve. With the proper strategy and resources, you should eventually see your start to climb to the top.
Does Your Law Firm's Website Design Play A Role In Ranking?
Having your own site is a critical component in getting more leads (Especially qualified leads). Website design allows your website's architecture to be laid out correctly, including having landing pages, supporting pages and services pages in order to add the most value to your prospective clients first visit.
You can convert visitors through a blog post (Usually the best resource to create) or a free consultation that makes sense (based on your average user's intent and where they are in their journey.
