The legal industry is one of the hardest and most competitive spaces to truly pack a punch on search engines. In fact, in a single Google search for attorneys and law firms, the first page of results consisted of 25% paid results, and 50% aggregator and review sites, leaving 25% of results to organic results. So how do you get your website into the top search results?
Attorneys must learn how to master the world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to truly optimize their presence on search engine sites, which will ultimately drive more traffic to your firm. Here are some of Smarty Pantz Marketing’s top tips for SEO for Lawyers:
- Choose Your Keywords. Review what keywords you’re using with your law firm, and which ones will make you more competitive among search results. The more specific and targeted words you choose, the more likely you are to come up first and attract more traffic to your website. Consider your main areas of practice and service, rather than vague or general words. Then, pick words that are related to those specific practices. Once you’ve picked your keywords, customize your website to include those keywords. Create individual links on your website to include those keywords, such as blogs or separate pages to elaborate on those keywords as they relate to your firm. For example, if you specialize in personal injury law, create a separate page for that, with many of the keywords you have chosen.
- Beat the Competition. After picking your keywords, take it to Google and see how you’re ranking on the results page. Who is coming up before you, or with you? Those websites are your competition. Review their sites and see how they’re using their keywords to attract more traffic: do they have a weekly blog? How often are they using their keywords? What kind of content are they posting on their website? While looking at this, take note of how user-friendly their website is, and how quickly things load. If their website has a better user experience than yours, that’s something you’ll want to look into.
- Optimize Your Website. With both keywords and competition in mind, use what you’ve learned to improve and optimize your website. Create more general and niche content for your website, and use your keywords as much as possible in headlines, subheaders, and in the body of the content. Organize and group that content, and create easy ways to navigate your website. You may also want to review your URL structure and consider making it more specific, shorter, or contain a keyword. Or, get specific and choose an Exact Match Domain name (EMD). You may also consider making your site mobile-friendly.
- Review Your Search Results. Search your firm on Google, and you’ll see a Title Tag and MetaData. Your title tag is likely the title of your firm/website and tells the search engine algorithm what your page is about. The meta description gives a short synopsis of your firm and likely includes a few keywords. Consider updating these tags to include more keywords and your location/city.
- Track Results and Data. Applying these tips to your website is great, but it means nothing if you don’t track the results. Track your keyword rankings, which will tell you where you are in a search engine result, and will ultimately help you improve your ranking. There are many free keyword ranking tools that you can use for this. Just remember, improvement takes time and you may not see too much change for a few months. It’s great that you want to grow, but be patient!
At Smarty Pantz Marketing, we have helped our clients generate leads, exposure, video views, engagement, followers, and most importantly, ROI. Our experienced team of digital advertising specialists understands how to best use digital marketing tools to maximize results for your specific needs. We deliver tangible results, not just likes, shares, clicks, and followers. Contact us to see how Smarty Pantz Marketing can help you work smarter!
