Everything keeps changing with the evolution of technology. Nowadays, marketing doesn’t happen like it used to a long time ago and if you want to be successful, you need to have a well-established online presence.
You’ve probably read the SEO acronym more than a thousand times, especially if you run a law firm. This acronym stands for search engine optimization, and it’s the main reason people who are surfing the internet are able to find you and become potential clients.
Beyond improving visibility, SEO for law firms includes creating informative and authoritative content, implementing local SEO tactics for geographic targeting, and fostering a positive online reputation. By embracing SEO strategies, law firms can not only enhance their visibility but also establish trust, credibility, and competitiveness in the digital realm, ultimately attracting and converting potential clients.
This is even more important if you run a local law firm, as people who look for an attorney online will obviously search for someone near them. SEO improves your visibility by making your website rank higher on a search engine result page, or SERP. When you rank higher, your website and your services will be among the first results to show up when someone is looking for a lawyer, which is especially important if you consider that an overwhelming majority of people who navigate the internet never click on the results at the bottom of the first page, much less anything beyond the first page.
This entire process might sound confusing and time-consuming at first, but it’s worth the effort. Besides, optimizing your website for local SEO is also easier when compared to a global SEO campaign, as you’ll be facing a smaller amount of competition.
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Ranking Factors for Your Law Firm
By now, the general concept of SEO and local SEO should be clear. But there are more factors to consider. When you find yourself searching for a local business, you’ll see nearby businesses along with their phone numbers and websites show up as the first results. This is where your law firm wants to be, as it’s the best place to find potential clients.
If you want to be there, you need to have a Google My Business page which will have a specific ranking according to the relevance, distance, and prominence factors. Relevance is incredibly important because a search engine will look for how well your business page matches the terms used by a potential client.
A commonly used tactic is choosing a category that will represent your law firm specifically. If your law firm takes care of personal injuries, you should choose a specific option as your category, like personal injury attorney instead of choosing a generic one like attorney. You can also describe your area of expertise in the appropriate section of your Google My Business page.
Distance is obviously out of your control, as a search engine won’t show a law firm that’s in another state when someone is searching for a local business, even if it’s a very good one. One of the most difficult aspects of legal local SEO is the prominence factor. This factor is dictated by your competition and you need to be on top of your game if you want to be easily seen and appear in the first results.
There are many things you can do for your prominence, like having more images than your competitors which will influence rankings in a positive manner, showing everyone your high ranking reviews with a specific reviews section, making sure all the information related to name, address, phone numbers and opening hours are correct and so on.
If this looks like too much, speaking with an expert is also an option for your law firm. Specifically, a law firm SEO expert will be able to help you locally and on a wider scale when you want to expand your business, so keep that in mind if you don’t have the time to worry about your ranking.