Regardless of the field that one works in, finding more clients can be tricky at times. As a prosecutor, there are several ways to enhance the flow of clients for your firm. One of the best ways to go about it is with the help of SEO. Search engine optimization, or what is more popularly known as SEO, is a simple way of attracting more audiences to your website.
Law firm SEO, however, might be a little different from traditional e-commerce SEO. Paying digital marketing agencies who do not understand this niche’s basics will do you no good. If you want to learn more about SEO that could benefit your legal practice or firm, keep reading.
The Basics:
Before you can learn the SEO world’s nitty-gritty details, you must be familiar with the basics. These include the essential components that one needs to look after while dealing with SEO. From the audience’s perception of your site to the authority that it holds, there is a lot to keep in mind here.
Content:
To win at SEO, you need good search engine rankings. The easiest and the most efficient way to earn good rankings is through the content on your site. The simple thread of words you post on your site can significantly impact the number of clients you receive. Your content must be relevant to the services that your law firm provides. Make sure that you do thorough research for the keywords. Add as many law-frim-associated keywords as you can without compromising the quality of your content.
Did you know some of the most popular law-related keywords include ‘criminal law,’ ‘civil law,’ ‘personal injury lawyer,’ and ‘divorce law?’ That’s right. Knowing popular keywords is essential for creating content that is relevant to the internet user’s search intent. If your law firm provides legal services pertaining to a particular type of crime, research and uses keywords appropriate for that niche.
User Experience:
The user experience is more of a practical component. An objective web design that attracts the users visiting your site is of great importance. Understanding the role of user experience in SEO can be a little tricky, but this marketing guide for law firms websites can make it a little easier for you. The key is to keep an objective approach to acquiring clients. The audience visiting your website is most likely looking for legal aid. Make sure they find your website’s experience to be satisfactory by keeping other complexities at a minimum.
Website Structure:
While your website’s structure may not initially seem of great importance, the reality is quite the opposite. The website structure for your law firm is one of the most critical SEO success factors. The design of your site must be responsive and automatically adjustable to mobile devices. These features would make the site mobile-friendly, allowing access to more users. Users must find it easy to navigate to the legal aid that they need. Adding a call to action button where they can immediately interact and receive legal advice could be helpful.
Compliance:
Google is very strict with its guidelines when it comes to SEO. It only rewards sites that present with top-quality content that is original and void of any manipulation. For maintaining high search engine rankings, it is essential to play by the rules and comply with the Googe guidelines. The necessary compliance makes it a fair competition for all the pragmatic prosecutors and esteemed law firms. If you are a newly established law firm looking to develop a loyal clientele online, then playing by the rules can give you an equal chance at success. While following the rules, achieving success with SEO may seem like a prolonged process. However, it is almost always guaranteed down the road.
Authority:
To get more clients, you need better search engine rankings than your competition. Acquiring these rankings will be possible only when your site has more authority than theirs. A few things that you can do to increase your domain authority include:
- Create useful content with useful legal information that a crime victim or a person seeking legal counseling will find beneficial
- Ensure a web design with a CTA button for immediate legal services
- Use fairly earned inbound links from other trustworthy firms or relevant legal sites that lead online traffic to your page
While achieving authority in the ways mentioned above, you must remember to optimize the content and earn inbound links, not purchase or solicit them.
Choosing The Right Options:
You can enhance law firm SEO by utilizing one of the three available models. These models’ main aim may be the same, but each model comes with its unique advantages and drawbacks. You need to choose the right one for yourself that meets all your needs. The three models are as follows.
The Agency Model:
With the agency model, you can put the responsibility of your website’s online ranking on an agency. While it requires some financial investment, this model may prove very useful since it allows experts to handle the matter. You can choose to invest in a low-budget agency or a more expensive one. But it would be best if you kept in mind that low-budget agencies may not be familiar with marketing legal services. It is a highly specialized niche with its technicalities and sensibilities, after all. This lack of knowledge may result in substandard efforts and may not get you the results you desire.
Hiring a more reputable agency may require a more significant investment, but it will also increase your chances of success. Therefore, with the agency model, it comes down to the money that you invest. If you are an established law firm that can afford to expand your budget for SEO, the agency model could be the one for you.
The DIY Model:
If you find that you possess sufficient resources such as time, and expertise yourself, spending money on an agency wouldn’t be necessary. As a tech-savvy lawyer, you can work on and build your website. Understanding SEO for someone who has technical knowledge of website building and how SERPs work wouldn’t be hard at all. The most significant advantage of this model is that it allows you to control your website and create your content accordingly. For instance, if you specialize in corporate law, it would be easier for you to create content because you would know the niche’s ins and outs and your target audience better.
The DIY model allows you to do things your way. If you find yourself nitpicking at small details, then the DIY model is what you need. You can add or remove any details that you like or do not like. Using the DIY model, you will find that your site and SEO mirror what you wanted. This model’s main advantage is that it would allow you to add precise details of your law firm exactly how you want to.
The Website Software Model:
If you think you can’t build a site on your own and do not want to invest a lot of money into it, this model is the one for you. There are many website software available that can help you enhance your site’s user interface and ensure compliance with all the Google guidelines. The financial investment required for this model is considerably less, but it also lacks the details that the other two models provide.
This model is a cost-effective method for achieving SEO; however, it may not yield optimal results. It is an ideal option for those starting a new law firm. If you want to gain clients through your site but have a restricted budget, the website software model can save your day. It not only designs a law firm SEO compatible website but also allows better budgeting. Once you have earned enough to invest in a reputable agency, you can upgrade your model.
What Not To Do:
Until now, we have mostly focused on all the things you need to do to succeed with law firm SEO. But there are a few things that you, as a law firm or independent lawyer, need to avoid at all costs. Here are a few things bound to do more damage than good for lawyers trying to increase their website’s online ranking. Please do note; we do not encourage doing this at all!
Conducting A Press Release Just For SEO:
Yes, attention from the media can be great for your law firm, especially if it is a publicly-traded company. However, there is not much that it can do for your SEO. Doing too many press releases may also take away from your credibility. Google’s algorithm does not consider press releases as quality content. In fact, backlinks generated via press releases do not contribute to your website’s online authority and are often slapped with a penalty. We don’t recommend using press releases for SEO purposes.
Associating With Link Farms:
As the name might suggest, a link farm is just a site that serves the sole purpose of driving bulk traffic towards other websites with paid and subpar content. The content link farms create has little to no value since their aim isn’t to achieve high ranking but to provide clients with bulk links to increase online traffic. Given that people seeking legal advice require accurate and credible information, link farms will never be able to meet those standards.
Additionally, Google carefully monitors websites that indulge in this malpractice of producing low-quality links in bulk. Google also penalizes websites that work with link farms to generate backlinks. This non-compliance may significantly reduce search engine ranking, nullifying the benefits you gain from the association.
Enlisting In Link Directories:
Link directories are similar to link farms. While link farms try to incorporate the links within some content, link directories enlist the websites that submit their links. Using link directories was a popular trend in the early 2000s. Today, it is regarded as being counterproductive and goes against Google guidelines. Just like link farms, they will result in you losing your hard-earned search engine rankings.
Getting Paid Blog Posts:
Inbound links for your web page work the best when you earn them the right way. Another way of getting inbound links is to pay for them. It is effortless to pay different blogs to post a guest post to discuss your page and leave an inbound link. But these inbound links are not compliant with the Google guidelines. Inexperienced SEO agencies often pay different blogs to talk about your page, with or without your knowledge. This is just more low misinformation for people seeking legal counseling. To prevent this from happening, you should try to keep strict tabs on all the on-site and off-site activities they perform for your page.
Conclusion:
the whole point of legal SEO is to provide internet users with meaningful information. This includes proper legal counseling, information on laws, rules and regulations, and solutions to legal problems. If your website and content do not fulfill the needs of its target audience, you’re doing it wrong and need to reconsider some of your SEO practices.
