SEO Guide For Lawyers
It’s no mystery that organic traffic from a search engine can increase the number of retained clients for a law firm. In fact, an overwhelming number of Internet sessions begin at a search engine. Take Facebook for example. It’s not uncommon for someone to go to Google, type in “Facebook” and then click on the first result with the expectation of arriving at Facebook.com.
As a lawyer, if you have the time and the patience, you too can optimize your website’s pages and business listings to appear at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs). This guide is here to help you acquire those top listings. If you require the help of a search engine optimization agency for your legal practice, you can follow the guideline here to help you in auditing their work.
One thing to keep in mind is that SEO is a long-term growth strategy for many law firms. Think of it as planting seeds for future successes. Don’t expect an overnight boom in traffic and cases. The key to winning the SEO game is time on task over time. This is to say that a proper optimization campaign is won by continuous and ongoing optimizations of your website and third-party website that link to your site.
“The key to winning the SEO game is time on task over time.”
– Matthew Post
Thankfully, there are numerous outlets that a law firm takes advantage of within Google’s network of properties, and other popular traffic sources, to increase your number of retained clients through organic optimizations. Within this SEO Guide For Lawyers, I will be discussing the top optimizations that you can employ to gain a greater number of clients.
Chapter 1: SEO Audit
If you already have a website built, the first place to start is with an SEO audit. Your audit will be your blueprint to optimizations. A proper SEO audit will also help to prioritize your efforts and uncover hidden gems that will get you the most bang for your buck.
Chapter 2: Local SEO
When discussing Local SEO, we are often referring to Google Maps listings. Business data within Google Maps is populated by Google My Business (GMB). If a search is identified as having a local intent, the top three results appear in what is referred to as the “Map Pack.”
Chapter 3: Traditional Organic SEO
This is your “normal” search results. Although ranking in Google Maps is accomplished organically, these organic listings are what have been traditionally found on Google since their launch in 1996. Traditional organic listings are the ten listings with blue links.
Chapter 4: YouTube/Video SEO
An often overlooked avenue for gaining new clients is video marketing. With YouTube being the second most used search engine, your videos allow you to deliver your firm’s message to an engaged audience that is actively searching for legal advice. The competition is often lower and the time-to-rank can be hours or days instead of the months that traditional organic SEO takes.
Chapter 5: Yelp Optimization
There are those to despise Yelp, and there are those who make a TON of money from an optimized Yelp listing. With 192 million total reviews and over 138 unique visitors per month, Yelp is a behemoth of a referral website. Learn to tame this beast and you will be rewarded with an increase in retained clients.
Chapter 6: Track Your Success
Congrats! You’ve optimized your law firm’s website and are ready to pull in a steady flow of clients for years to come. But wait!!! How do you know that your efforts have not been in vain? How do you grow your campaign in the right direction? You need to track so that you know where your greatest number of new clients are coming from.
