6 SEO Tips for Lawyers

When people think of lawyers, they think of contracts, personal injury, custody, and financial arrangements. Or potential clients muse about prosecution and defense, and if they need a good attorney for either. People seek out lawyers to use their services, to address legal problems or disputes.

Lawyers and their firms need to have a web presence. With about thirty-five thousand law students graduating and entering the American workforce in 2018, firms need to stand out from the crowd and develop a positive brand for their services. A strong online presence can help with that branding, and to find prospective clients. Goal oriented SEO services will get you at the top of the search engine results pages.

What is SEO?

SEO is search engine optimization; that is, finding the precise keywords to appear in a search engine as a relevant result for users. These keywords allow businesses to enter search engines by using Google algorithms, in contrast to paying for ads or sponsored results which have to be labeled as commercial. While sponsored results and SEO work well in tandem, SEO has an organic quality that online ads cannot replicate.

You need to show up on page one of a search result if you want users to find your page. To do that, you have to draft keywords that a search engine algorithm will pick up and boost. SEO is the answer, to optimize your keywords and know what terms will get increase your search engine rankings.

1. Create a blog that shows expertise

At least fourteen fields of law exist, all with varying specialties. While real estate may have dated policies that need challenging in court, intellectual property focuses on ownership rights and copyright. For an average American, the specifics can seem daunting because legal language is complicated. A lawyer can use their specialty to create a niche online and decode complicated concepts.
Blogs allow the writers to convey information in a clear, consistent fashion, that can reach the target audience in a matter of minutes. People read professional blogs to learn about fields and to gain knowledge that can leave the law school classroom or case briefings.

2. Make your site mobile-friendly

Many users view websites on their smartphones and mobiles, especially if a person is constantly on the move. If a website does not adjust for this smaller space, then they will lose potential clients. Google rankings also factor in mobile-friendly webpages. Keep your designs simple, your font legible, and your text succinct.
Don’t write just for the algorithm

While identifying keywords and terms are important, you are also writing to find human clients. Clients with legal problems will come to your office during business hours and discuss their affairs face-to-face, or over the phone. You have to provide information online that humans can use so that they can spread the word about your brand’s value. Make sure that you reach people with your keywords and content.

3. Don’t Repeat Yourself

Google knows when you copy-paste content. So do most search engines; they know when pages are duplicated to boost websites. That will lead to Google penalizing you, and your ranking going down in the algorithm. Make sure to eliminate redundancies by revising your ad copy, and presenting the same information in new ways.
Optimize Your Website URLs

Users need to find you. So do search engines. The best way to do both is to have website URLs that convey clarity and consistency. Make sure not to use random letters and numbers to denote pages, and use hyphens to separate words. Keep your URLs short as well so that people and search engines can remember them.

4. Reduce Loading Time

No one likes a site that takes hours to load. In fact, three seconds seems to be the limit for most users and for Google; the longer a site takes to load, the lower it ranks. At times when Internet speeds may vary based on cost, the stakes will drastically increase.

Reduce unnecessary or broken code that can hamper website loading. Keep any necessary images at a relatively low dots-per-inch (DPI) to reduce memory usage. Perform consistent code review to identify bugs and errors, which can irritate users and motivate them to seek other websites. All of these steps will prevent long loads and unhappy clients.

5. Know Your Analytics Goal

A firm cannot just say, “I want more people visiting my site” and that’s that. They also need to think about what sort of users they want, how many repeat visitors would measure success and the means by which people find their site. For lawyers especially, they need to figure out what visitors can lead them to clients, directly or through word-of-mouth. You want to be tracking every time someone does a google search for your business and you want to know if these potential clients are doing local searches.

If you are providing law-relevant blog posts, newsletter or downloads, you want to know who is reading your content, signing up for the newsletter notifications, or making downloads.

6. High-Quality Backlinks

Backlinks, or “incoming links,” are tools that search algorithms use to measure a website’s popularity. They occur when another site links to your website and refers to it. While in the past the number of backlinks would determine a website’s rank, quality matters more now with updated programs.
Law firms can use backlinks to increase online word-of-mouth and brand awareness. Users searching for information on law practices and policies will follow links that prove knowledgeable and useful. A lawyer can build their brand by reaching out to contacts that can create backlinks while providing them in turn.