When it comes to your law practice attorney SEO (search engine optimization) is one of the best marketing practices you can employ. This is because your prospective clients will start looking for your services by consulting search engines. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of competition when it comes to law firm SEO but you still need to be listed at the top of the SERPs (search engine results pages) if you want to attract new clientele.
Defining Local SEO
Local SEO involves optimizing your website for geo-specific searches. This allows people in your area who are looking for your service to find you better. It’s an important part of law firm SEO because you’ll typically serve clients who are located near your office so you’ll only be interested in those leads. Fortunately, you’ll find that there’s a lot less competition here but there are also fewer law firms trying to rank for these keywords so you still need to ramp up your “game.”
Important Tips for Law Firm SEO
Now that you know why you should invest in attorney SEO it’s time to do so. For this, there are several things you should do.
Optimizing Your Website
Start off attorney SEO right: by ensuring that your website is fast and functional. To do this you’ll need to follow the best practices for on-page and technical law firm SEO. Spend some time fixing your broken links, optimizing your page load speed, using targeted keywords, and making sure that everything is user-friendly.
Optimizing User Experience Metrics
About 60% of Google’s visitors are using mobile devices (e.g. smartphones, tablets). You want to make sure they can quickly reach and clearly see your website. It’s also important to ensure that you have a straightforward call-to-action there. Not only will these things keep your visitors around longer but they’ll also improve your attorney SEO.
Creating Content to Improve Attorney SEO
Website content doesn’t only tell your visitors how you can help them but it should also tell them what to do if they need your services. Furthermore, this content also helps with your local SEO. This is why you want to use keywords that are relevant to your community and your services.
Using Google My Business
This is essentially Google’s online business directory. You can submit your practice’s information (e.g. operational hours, services, address, phone number, URL, photos) here for free so you rank in Google Maps. Taking the time to completely fill this out will benefit your local SEO. You’ll also be able to accumulate reviews from clients which can help boost your local SEO even further.
Concerning Yourself with Reputation and Reviews
When clients leave you positive reviews they’ll help increase your law firm’s reputation, authority, and law firm SEO. For instance, when a prospective client searches for a lawyer near them and sees that your firm has the highest number of positive reviews they may choose you instead of your competitor.
It’s to your benefit to have your clients leave you reviews on directory listings (e.g. Google My Business, Facebook). By having a lot of positive reviews you won’t only make your law firm stand out from your competition but you’ll also be helping improve your attorney SEO too.
Engage in Link Building and Citation Work
While link building is listed here as the last component of law firm SEO it doesn’t make it any less important to your attorney SEO strategy. This strategy involves having other websites link to yours. This is known as a “backlink.” The reason why it’s so important to your law firm SEO is that Google sees this as a vote of confidence that you have a reputable website that offers great information. Therefore, to improve your local SEO you’ll want to attract as many of these backlinks from reputable, industry-related sites as possible.
The best strategy to use here is to submit your firm’s information to directories. You can also write guest posts for websites, get interviewed by industry publications, create high-value content, and created ebooks that you market to other blogs in your industry. To really give your local SEO the boost it deserves you’ll want to try a variety of these strategies. However, your main concern should be quality, not quantity as high-quality links are what will really give you a boost.
Why Your Law Firm Needs Local SEO
If you don’t have a strong paid advertising strategy you need to invest in attorney SEO. Otherwise, you’ll find that you’re being beaten by your competition and you’re probably missing out on clients. This is why it’s so important to implement the aforementioned law firm SEO tips. To do so you should hire the professionals at Local SEO Tampa in Tampa Bay, FL. They’ll help you attract more clients, improve your reputation, and become a powerhouse in your niche.