It's not enough to have a pretty website as a law firm. Increasing your online presence involves more than just a website. If that website is hard to navigate, what would you do? If you can't keep your clients from leaving your website because it's boring, what are you going to do? If your website is not mobile friendly, what do you do? The way that your law firm is perceived by potential clients and the internet can be affected by all of these issues.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization. It is a critical part of a digital marketing strategy. Every occupation takes advantage of SEO. As a law firm, you need to know what SEO is and how to use it to your advantage. If not, it can affect whether your clients are even introduced to you.
Digital marketers use Search Engine Optimisation to get more traffic to their website. It is how websites are ranked. Wouldn't it be great if your law firm was the first one to show up on a search results page? That's what the internet can do for your business.
How SEO Helps Law Firms
Using SEO to your advantage can help your law firm attract the clients that you are looking for. Like any other service, your clients use search engines when it’s time to search for legal guidance.
It's easier to connect to your clients when you rank at the top of the search engines. Potential clients are more likely to click on your website if it's visible to them. You can add credibility to your law firm by ranking high on the search engine's results page. Why would you be the first suggested result if you were the top expert in your field?
You need to know how to use it effectively in order to make the most of it. There are a number of ways your law firm can use the internet.
Using The Right Keywords
If you do not remember anything else about SEO, remember the importance of keywords. Keywords are critical when it comes to search engines. When it comes to the content on your website, you want to use keywords that your potential clients typically use. Using these keywords strategically will help bring your website to the top search results.
Creating High-Quality Written Content One way to strategically use keywords is through your written content on your website. Writing legal articles and blog posts on your website can help increase its rankings in search engines.
The more relevant and personalized your written content is to your potential clients, the more likely it will rank higher on the result pages. You can maximize SEO in your articles and blog posts by using different keywords strategically throughout the content.
Increasing Your Website’s Optimization
Your written content is not the only information on your website that increases through SEO. SEO can also help you fix any optimization issues with the rest of your website. It will not matter how great your content is because if your website is not mobile-friendly, potential clients will bounce away quickly.
It's possible to fix these problems with a comprehensiveseo strategy. The user experience with your clients can be improved with the help of yourseo strategies. Slow loading times and broken links can be fixed with the help of some technical aspects of search engine Optimisation.
Using Local SEO
SEO is a broad digital marketing strategy that can affect your website online and offline. One of the most important pieces of your SEO includes your Google Business Profile. The way that you use your Google Business Profile can help increase your law firm’s visibility online. Because your clients are more likely to search for law firms online, you want to make sure that all of the information in your GBP is accurate and consistent.
A bad experience for your clients can be created if your information is incorrect. Your law firm can be in the top three search results if your clients type in your zip code.
Using Link Building
Another SEO strategy that can help bring traffic to your website is link building. Think of link building as collecting various hyperlinks and adding them to one or several of your website pages. Because you may compete with hundreds of law firms in your state, link building can help bring organic traffic to your website.
You want to make sure that the links you use are relevant to what you're doing. You don't want to be associated with low domain authority links. Lower domain-authority links won't help your search engine rankings.
Digital Marketing Next Steps
To learn more about how SEO can benefit your website, consider making an action plan for the steps that you want to take — and in what order. SEO can feel overwhelming, and it is important to take one step at a time. Start with keywording, creating great content, and then link building in order to increase your overall SEO.
Annette Choti, Esq. graduated from law school 20 years ago, and is the Founder of Law Quill, a legal digital marketing agency focused on small and solo law firms. Annette wrote the bestselling book Click Magnet: The Ultimate Digital Marketing Guide For Law Firms, and hosts the podcast Legal Marketing Lounge. She is a sought-after keynote and CLE speaker throughout the United States and Canada. Annette used to do theatre and professional comedy, which is not so different from the legal field if we are all being honest. Annette can be found on LinkedIn or at at annette@lawquill.com.