New business is the lifeblood of every thriving enterprise. Your law firm should be no different. On the internet, the best way to get new business is through web searches. This is no secret, with a huge chunk of law firm marketing spend increasingly going into search engine optimization (SEO). Maybe your firm is no different or maybe your firm is not yet into the SEO business. The good news is that there is a lot that you can do internally to improve your law firm’s SEO prospects. These SEO tips efficiently hit on the three main areas of SEO:
Please keep in mind that this brief list is designed to help you in the do-it-yourself vein. These SEO tips are by no means a way to the top of page 1 in Google for major search terms. If you wish to rank for a lawyer/attorney search term, you might want to consider hiring an in-house SEO team member or going with an agency that specializes in this form of marketing. This will, however, help increase your overall incoming traffic totals from the search engines and, therefore, increase leads from your website. This I promise you!
Now that we’ve got all the disclaimers out of the way (you know you love those), let’s get down to business.
Google likes healthy websites, and rewards them with higher rankings in the search engines. So what exactly is a healthy website? For starters, it’s a website that links only to live web pages. It’s a website that has many of Google accepted best-practices checked off. It’s a website that loads quickly. Have your webmaster look into the following common website health errors:
Let us know if you need any help with these implementations, especially if you do not have an experienced webmaster managing the health of your website.
One of the biggest developments in search engine optimization over the last half decade has been the emergence of voice search. Voice search has transformed search in a way that makes it mimic more of a natural language than keyword-based searches. This means people are asking specific questions, and the search engines will serve up content that best solves that query.
Who knows more about the needs, wants, and frequently asked questions from your clients better than you? Let’s face it, you know better than anyone what your potential clients are concerned about when they come into your law office. If you’ve smoothed things over in person, why not let your website do the same for clients that walk into your office via the internet on your website. This means writing content that is designed to solve problems and answer frequently asked questions.
If you are new to your practice and need any help coming up with topics, let us know. We have extensive keyword research on the various specialties of our clients. We have encountered thousands of questions that potential clients have searched on Google in all types of law. This will ensure that your topics are optimized for SEO by focusing on real searches by real users.
Is your law firm on social media? It should be, if you want to help your SEO prospects. So how does social media help search engine optimization? Likes, shares, and links to your website from social media are signals to the search engine that your content is valuable. These social signals act as votes for your website. The more votes you get, the more Google will value your website.
Use your social media connections — especially those influencers with good follower counts — to repost your content to their audiences. This will not happen overnight, as you need to cultivate these influencers relationships over time. After all, they will need to know they’re going to gain something from this exchange — or else they won’t be interested in helping you.
If you are passionate about Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn (or even Google+) then use that to your advantage. Engage your fellow industry members online. Talk to them. Share their worthy content. Join the party. Just don’t forget to plug your high quality content that answers questions that your real clients have.
Obviously, not all law firms have the time to effectively manage and grow their social media presence. Once again, do not hesitate to contact us for help in this regard. We utilize this strategy to promote our posts on social media (perhaps this is how you found us), and we can do the same for your firm. Let us know!
Just like you wouldn’t recommend anyone get legal advice from a novice or non-expert, search engine optimization is continuously evolving and highly competitive. Law firm SEO in particular is among the most competitive niches in the entire field of search engine optimization. You know this better than most! So don’t let your site fall behind in the race for market share in the search engines. Take care of these three key areas and you’ll put yourself in the race. Give yourself a chance to win the race by letting the SEO pros at ONE400 professionally optimize your website!