Essential Ranking Factors for Law Firms

January 25 , 2018 | BY admin

Targeting Your Audience

The best way to do effective marketing is to target the audience. The way to reach the target audience for your lawyer website is to have a structured, customized approach to SEO. If your website is not getting the traffic as desired, then it’s time to seek professional help from an online marketing agency that specializes in lawyer marketing.

Moving a website up the rankings on any search engine is essential to attract new clients. Marketing a law firm online and through social media provides a solid foundation for new clients on an ongoing basis. Organic search results account for about 54% of all website traffic, and most (68%) start with an online search.

To get websites off to a good start, here’s a look at major ranking factors for local small and mid-sized law firms:

Keywords & Website Content Strategy

Using the right keywords can do a lot to optimize pages for both website and social media search engine optimization (SEO). If you’ve been doing zero keyword research or simply putting in keywords with little thought or regard for SEO, then you are missing out on a valuable opportunity to reach out to your market.

The use of SEO to maximize traffic to a legal website needs to include high quality, relevant, and evergreen content. Keywords can be used in article or blog titles, in subheadings, and throughout the article. The critical factors are original content, quality writing, and careful and strategic use of keywords rather than simply sprinkling terms throughout the content. These articles and blogs can also be used on social media platforms, and become highly effective as a combined strategy to drive traffic to the website.

EAT Signals (Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness)

A simple way to remember this is that SEO needs EAT. EAT stands for expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. Writing content that offers accurate insight and addresses a topic in-depth rather than offering a repeat of general information is an essential part of any keyword and search engine optimization strategy.

Specifically, choosing strategies that utilize SEO for attorneys can mean the difference between limited site traffic and a steady stream of potential clients to your pages.

Take Advantage of Google My Business (GMB)

Google loves small to medium-size enterprises, and they offer all sorts of perks and free services to these businesses. SEORankingsHowever, few business owners are aware of these perks, or if they are, they don’t know how to make the most of them.

Hiring a team of experienced digital marketing professionals who specialize in local SEO for lawyers can help increase relevant organic traffic to your website, resulting in more inbound leads to your firm.

Google My Business or GMB is one of the programs that a top provider of SEO for attorneys can utilize. This includes the ability for voice search or typed search requests for “attorneys near me” or “lawyers close to me.” Including the geographic location in SEO strategies ensures an attorney or law firm rises up through the SERP rankings when specific geographic locations are indicated. This also works when potential clients use their mobile devices to search in an area.

Google search pages now have a Map Pack or a Local Pack for local searches. This is a local Google map result with three businesses pinpointed on the map and their contact information below. This information, known as NAP or name, address, and phone number, highlights your business through any local search. This is used by a wide variety of search engines, including Yelp, Citysearch.com, BBB, and other similar types of sites.

Optimize Your Website For Mobile Visitors

The use of mobile SEO means your website has a high ranking from mobile devices, and if the geographic name is used in the search term. Two important strategies to implement are the use of local SEO services for law firms and to update and optimize your current web design.

Both of these strategies generate interest in your website and keep viewers clicking through pages rather than hitting the landing page and bouncing off. Traffic through the website improves SERP (search engine results pages) rankings, placing the website closer to the top when potential clients use specific keywords in their search.

Pay Attention to GMB Signals

While website signals spring from the use of the right keywords, GMB signals happen within the GMB page itself.

  • These are often the result of reviews and photos and account for about 24 percent of site traffic. In fact, local SEO services for law firms in the last year underpinned the rising popularity of consumer-generated reviews. If you want to rank your pages high, ask pros to help you gain positive feedback and reviews.
  • Having the page associated with an Owner Verified profile is also one way to spike those signals. It’s easier to gain consumer confidence and trust when they know your firm is legitimate.
  • Adding keywords also helped improve rankings. Careful keyword placement in the GMB listing is easy enough when you have experts in SEO services for lawyers to take care of your content and manage your keywords.

Never Underestimate Quality Links

Links remain a key competitive differentiator when it comes to page rankings. They are responsible for about 29 percent of organic traffic. That means you will need to continue to ensure the quality of your links is maintained. High-quality links to recognized websites are a benefit in Google search engine algorithms, and it helps to boost SERP rankings.

This can be difficult to accomplish if you do not have a dedicated team of professionals to take care of your link-building efforts. That’s a worry you can cross off your list when you hire a digital marketing service.

Local Citation Building

It is also critical for a small to mid-sized law firm to use local links as much as possible. These links are from other local data aggregators and link back to the law firm web pages. They create more of a focus on a local target audience, which is the most relevant for a law firm. The advantage of local links is also to connect to trusted businesses and websites in your community, the place where your potential clients live and work.

Personalize Your Pages

It’s getting harder to reach through the clutter. Personalizing your pages can help your brand and business, but only if it is done right. That is why engaging the services of a digital marketing team with experience in local SEO for attorneys is a smart move to make. With help from us, you can:

  • Stand out from the competition
  • Better connect with your audience
  • Build up brand awareness and recognition

If you want to start leveraging your website to increase your law firm caseload, call FORWARD Lawyer Marketing today at (888)  590-9687 to find out how.