SEO may seem like just another marketing buzzword, but it can also significantly help law firms increase their website traffic, and ultimately bring in new business. Let’s get into the details of SEO at a law firm.
First things first, what is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. And essentially it’s the process of using unpaid, or organic, strategies to increase the amount of web traffic you get from search engines like Google.
Why is this important for Law Firms?
Well, like all businesses, law firms are always looking to grow and gain new business. And according to a 2019 legal trends report, 17% of people seeking legal services made their decision using a web search engine alone.
And having your website exist is not cutting it anymore. If you want your firm to be found through a search, you need to be properly optimized. This is how you increase your firm’s awareness and gain new business and clients.
But how can you boost your SEO?
Well to put it simply – there’s a lot you can do. But let me help you break it down into a couple steps.
First, you’re going to want to determine your SEO budget or resources. Now you might be saying “But, wait! You just said SEO was a way of gaining unpaid traffic?”.
Which is true, you’re not paying Google to rank higher in their searches. But you will need to update your existing web pages, create new content for your website and even consider getting backlinks from other websites. And sometimes, you might even want to hire an SEO professional or SEO firm to help you accomplish these goals.
So you want to determine if SEO is something you can do in-house, what time commitment you expect from your team or if you have the budget to outsource it.
Next, you will run an SEO audit. Luckily, there are a lot of tools out there that can run this audit for you. Sites like… Spyfu, SEMrush, MOZ, etc.
This audit will give you a good analysis of your starting point. What areas of SEO you will need to focus on improving, what aspects of your website are harming your SEO, and more.
From there you can make a SEO “to-do list” of sorts.
Now it’s time to create content. Once you have made the initial fixes to your website, you can start creating SEO friendly content. This is where the budget comes in.
Do you have the time and experience in house to have someone write optimized content? If not, you might want to consider outsourcing the job and hiring something with accurate experience.
For smaller law firms, it’s also important to write content about your local city or area, as it can help you organically rank higher for local searches. This strategy is called local SEO.
What else can you do to boost local SEO? Well on top of writing locally-focused content, you can also ensure that you have all your local search features set up properly.
One example of locally-based content is writing about local law changes, recognized lawyers or legal cases.
This includes an up to date Google my Business page, using local keywords in your pages, and setting up other profiles in local directories or websites. Which fortunately, is another form of link building.
So what is link building and why should you care… well it’s one thing search engines like Google consider when ranking search results. How many other websites link back to your website.
There are a couple different legal directory sites that can easily give you a listing and direct people to your website as an easy way to start link building.
And of course if you were mentioned on reputable and well known websites like Thomson Reuters or Chambers that would show Google that your website is a good result to show users.
Now it’s just time to get started!
Looking for other ways to bring in new business for your firm? a world-class experience management platform for the legal industry. Find out more or start a free trial today!
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