Law Firm SEO 2023: The Complete Guide to SEO for Lawyers

Nearly?26% of law firms ?worked in 2020 to improve their technology and another 8% worked towards improving their law firm SEO and social media presence.

But why does the legal industry need to invest in law firm SEO in the first place?

SEO is one of the best ways to get discovered online. Typically, law firms are local businesses that operate in a limited geographical area.

And a lot of people start with an online search to find local businesses and this applies to legal firms too.

So, it’s essential that you ensure that your law firm’s visibility remains great on search engines such as Google. And for this, you need to leverage the power of law firm SEO.

Want to learn how?

Let’s dive right into the intricacies of SEO for your law firm.

What is Law Firm SEO?

Law firm SEO or attorney SEO (for individuals) is a form of SEO that involves various techniques and strategies that are targeted towards increasing the visibility of law firms on search engines.

These law firm SEO marketing strategies involve things like designing and optimizing your site, creating high-quality content, and conducting keyword research, among other things.

The idea behind law firm SEO is to ensure that your site ranks higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant search requests. This improves the chances of people noticing your website and can drive more traffic to your site.

And why is that?

That’s because nearly?43% of all clicks ?go to the website that is displayed at the top of the SERPs. On the other hand, if your law firm lists on the 10th position, the CTR is only about 3.11%.

Now that you know about the importance of law firm SEO and ranking higher in local search results, let’s try to get a deeper understanding of how you can ace your law firm SEO.

Law Firm SEO: Your Guide to Optimization

This guide to law firm SEO can be divided into three main sections:

We’ll cover all of the major law firm SEO strategies for each of these parts to help you understand how to optimize your law firm website and content, and?improve your search engine rankings .

So, let’s dive right into the world of law firm SEO.

Part 1: On-Page SEO for your Law Firm

On-page law firm SEO or on-site SEO for law firm refers to all the optimizations that you can carry out on your site. These include both the front-end and back-end (technical SEO) optimizations.

But why should you do on-page law firm SEO?

The idea behind on-site SEO for your law firm is to make the entire browsing experience of your site more enriching and smooth for the visitors.

The goal of search engines is to send their users to websites that provide accurate information and also provide a good browsing experience. If your site is able to achieve this goal, you’ll be on your way to the top of the SERPs.

Whether you’re an attorney or an entire law firm, you should strive hard to follow these law firm SEO strategies to increase your brand’s search visibility.

So, let’s take a look at the most important on-page law firm SEO strategies for your law firm that you should be leveraging now.

1. Website Design

When it comes to on-page SEO, the way you design and develop your site has great effects on ranking your site. Here are the various things you should keep in mind while designing your site to improve your law firm SEO.

1.1. Leverage a Mobile-Friendly Website Design

About?51% of all web traffic ?now originates from mobile devices. However, these screens are smaller. As a result, the sizes of all of the web elements need to be such that they fit in those screens. This should be done to improve the overall browsing experience of your law firm’s website.

To make sure that your law firm website is mobile-friendly, you should go for the mobile-first design approach. You should choose a responsive theme when?start designing a website ?for your business.

A responsive web design uses responsive web elements that will automatically resize themselves based on the screen size. As a result, your site will appear clean on screens of every size.

But user experience isn’t the only reason why you should be designing mobile-friendly websites. Google is rolling out their?mobile-first indexing update , which states that websites that load and appear better on mobile devices will rank higher on search results pages than those that don’t. In other words, having a mobile-friendly website is vital for boosting the SEO of your law firm’s website.

Tools We Recommend:?Google Mobile-Friendly Test

1.2. Improve Your Website Loading Speed

Your website’s loading speed is another important law firm SEO ranking factor. A slow-loading site can frustrate your visitors and spoil their browsing experience.

And guess what?

It could also lead to them bouncing off your website, which would mean that you might lose a potential client. This is especially true for mobile users as data speeds could fluctuate and this can lead to longer loading times for your site if it’s heavy.

In fact, page loading speed is so important that even a 0.1-second improvement in it can increase the number of page views. That’s why optimizing your site for loading speed is one of the major law firm SEO services offered by SEO companies.

Google realizes the importance of page speed when it comes to the browsing experience, which is why it’s rolling out the?Core Web Vitals update . This update will make it important to optimize your site for three Core Web Vitals, which include:

• First Input Delay (FID)
• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

You need to ensure that your website adheres to these requirements to improve the chances of ranking higher in search results. If your website’s performance is poor, it might lose the chance to rank higher in a relevant google search.

Tools We Recommend:?Google PageSpeed Insights ,?web.dev

1.3. Do Internal Linking Properly

Internal links are those links that link to another page on your website. These links play an important role when it comes to law firm SEO and user experience. You should try to add a good number of relevant internal links to all of your web pages.

But why?

When it comes to visitors, internal links redirect them to other informative content on your website. This may act as a deterrent to them bouncing away from your website. As a result, it can increase the average time users spend on your site.

This, in turn, positively affects your law firm SEO as search engines would deem your site to be a useful resource for your audience because they’re spending more time on it.

But that’s not the only benefit of adding internal links.

These links also make it easier for search engine robots to find new content pages on your site to index. When you add links to an existing indexed page, the robots may scrape through it again and discover the new pages and index them. This speeds up the indexing process and can help you get more pages listed in the SERPs. Now, you know how internal links are one of the most important SEO ranking factors, especially for a law firm.

For example, note how Clifford Chance has added internal links to their blog posts.

1.4. Create Landing Pages for the Services You Offer

Landing pages can play an instrumental role in improving your law firm SEO. You should consider creating a separate landing page for each service you offer to your clients. Be it corporate legal services or litigation services, you should create a page for each of your services.

But why?

The idea is to get your law firm site ranked for as many relevant keywords as possible. Also, you can?optimize every landing page ?for the specific keyword related to it. This will boost your law firm SEO efforts by increasing your site’s chance of getting ranked higher in the organic search results for that keyword.

What’s more?

Each landing page is designed to achieve a particular goal. In most cases, this goal is lead generation where the copy and web forms are designed to get the visitors to share their contact information with you.

These dual advantages of getting more traffic to your site and?boosting lead generation ?make landing pages an integral part of law firm SEO.

For example, note how Simpson Thacher & Bartlett have focused on Law firm SEO by creating a special landing page to cater to clients from the Energy – Power & Renewables industry.

You can also create separate landing pages to target keywords related to each practice area that your law firm covers.

Tools We Recommend:?Unbounce ,?Leadpages ,?ShortStack

1.5. Build an SEO-Friendly Website Structure

Your website’s structure also influences your law firm SEO success. A well-structured site is easier for search engine robots to crawl, which means that the crawlers can find new pages of your site with ease. This, in turn, can speed up the indexation process of your site on search engines.

And guess what?

The site structure also affects the browsing experience of your visitors. A poorly structured website will not be easy to navigate. As a result, it may lead to a poor user experience, which can put off your visitors and negatively impact the SEO efforts for your law firm.

So, how can you?design a website ?with a good structure?

You should start by creating a navigation tree for it. Your goal should be to reduce the number of clicks it would take visitors to reach their target page. Try to ensure that they can reach their desired destination in less than three clicks.

This tree should determine the way you develop your website’s navigation.

What’s more?

Along with the website structure, you should also pay attention to the page structure. You should develop your content such that it can be divided into bite-sized sections. The idea is to ensure that your visitors don’t face a wall of text.

Instead, they should be able to skim through your web and blog content with ease and remain engaged. For this, you should break your pages into sections using header tags.

For instance, note how Fortis Law Partners have broken down their homepage using header tags and made their content easy to read to maximize the SEO for your law firm website.

1.6. Optimize the URLs

URLs also have a role to play in law firm SEO. By default, your URLs may include a mix of numbers, special characters, and alphabets. However, such URLs can be difficult for your visitors to understand.

That’s why it’s a good idea to go for custom URLs that can be designed such that they’re easy to understand.

And how can you do that?

You should include your target keywords in the URLs to help your visitors and search engine robots understand what the page they’re visiting is all about.

For example, note how Latham & Watkins, LLP has added the target keyword, “reduce carbon emissions,” in the URL and title. This is an easy way to boost your law firm SEO.

2. Website Content

Is content one of important SEO ranking factors for a law firm?

Yes! While your website’s design matters, the content you add to it matters even more. After all, content forms the base of your website. Nobody’s going to visit your website just for its design. Instead, most people are likely to reach your website through search engines.

And they’ll do so by looking for things, answers, and services. Your website’s content needs to be able to answer the questions of your potential clients if you want to grow your firm and improve your law firm SEO results.

Content has a major role to play when it comes to law firm SEO.

Continue reading this blog at?Attrock.com .