You want your website to be top-ranking. The bottom line is you need to master SEO to do so. How do we do it? Here are some of the fundamentals of SEO you need to factor into your overall digital marketing strategy.
Ranking Factors
Search engine rankings have a basis on a wide range of information, not just the search terms used on a website. These are called ranking factors. They are what search engines like Google and Bing use to determine where a business will appear in search engine results.
Google doesn’t provide all of its ranking factors to the public. That helps to minimize the risk of unscrupulous websites manipulating their algorithm. However, they do provide a good amount of information about what matters to help boost SEO ranking. There are five categories of ranking factors considered:
- Meaning
- Relevance
- Usability
- Context
- Quality
To determine if landing pages and the overall website of an attorney is a quality website, one that it wants to direct searchers to, Google will use E-E-A-T: experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.
These are very important for law firm websites because Google classifies these websites as YMYL (your money, your life) content. That means that these websites have a significant ability to impact the user’s well-being and finances. As a result, Google holds YMYL websites to a higher standard of scrutiny than it would on a craft or hobby website. That’s because the consequences of misinformation are much higher.
In chapter two, we’ll go into more detail about how to optimize your site for search engine ranking factors and how to measure your rankings.
Keyword research
The next important component of SEO is keywords. Any SEO company will tell you keywords matter, but SEO success does not come from placing dozens of keywords on your website and hoping something sticks.
Keyword research occurs to determine which keywords people are using to search for the services you offer. It helps to provide information on the volume of searches that happen for that particular keyword as well as just how difficult it will be to rank for that keyword.
Here’s how this works. SEO ranking uses keywords to determine where to position websites on the search engine results pages. However, if a website is targeting a very competitive keyword, which means its competitors are using that keyword heavily as well, that means there’s a lot of competition. High-volume searches like these have a lower conversion rate for those who are ranking first.
Even if you try to focus on target keywords that have search volumes that are in the thousands, they are overall less likely to generate revenue for your law firm.
How do we know what keywords to target, then, that will be beneficial to Google rankings? To understand this, we have to consider keyword intent.
Here’s a simple explanation to get started. Let’s say you are a criminal defense attorney. When someone goes to Google to find an attorney, you do not want Google to send those looking for a personal injury attorney to your site.
Now, consider user intent a bit more in-depth. By understanding search intent — or why people are searching particular queries — we want to ensure that the related content actually satisfies the goal of the query. Consider this example next.
Let’s say a person opens a law firm called “Nike Law Offices.” The term “Nike” is certainly going to be used on the website if that’s the name of the company. However, that term gets tens of thousands of searches every month. That sounds great, right? Not so much.
People who are searching for “Nike” are not searching for your law firm. They’re searching for apparel. It is ultimately a waste of money to go after a keyword like this that is going to bring the wrong people to your website. There are three stages to what is known as the customer’s journey (and this applies to your clients, too).
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Decision
When we fully understand the client’s journey, we can better understand what they are searching for. Why are they using this keyword in the first place? By understanding this, we can then create high-quality content that resonates with them and satisfies their search.
We’ll dive deeper into keyword research in chapter three. Remember, it’s not just about picking words but researching the right words to get conversions.
Content marketing
After doing your keyword research, the next step is to create content for your website. This component of lawyer SEO is not something to take lightly. It’s important to provide high-quality content that provides your readers (real people) with the information they need. At the same time, we need to write content that’s designed with legal SEO in mind.
The goal of your content is to build topical authority. If a website has topical authority, it is a source recognized as a reliable resource of information on that particular topic. That’s what you want and what most SEO experts will target.
As a law firm, the topical authority you’re after will be your practice area, such as personal injury lawsuits, estate planning, criminal defense, and so on. Sites that have developed their topical authority can appear in search results snippets for “People Also Ask” queries and can increase your firm’s brand awareness with readers. Take a moment to Google your practice area. Do you see the section of the results page that’s labeled “People Also Ask?” If a person is looking for a question that’s positioned here and read the answer from your website listed here, they are going to head to your site to learn more.
More so, high-quality content also helps with building your brand image. You want to be sure your brand is fully understood by anyone that is searching for the legal services you offer.
How do we do this? Focus on the site’s E-E-A-T and build your site’s topical authority by creating well-researched articles in your area of expertise. You want to be sure that information is supported by quality references and updated on a consistent, routine basis.
Search engine algorithms reward original content like this. That’s going to help your business to stand out from the crowd.
For more information on content marketing, read chapter four.
On-Site SEO
On-site SEO is the process of optimizing your website’s internal structure and content with the goal of ranking higher in search engine results. One of the ways that Google determines who will be on the first page (or the top 10 listings) is through user experience. If your website isn’t easy to navigate, that’s going to impact how successful visitors are to it.
Combine optimized user experience along with best SEO practices. When do you, your site ranks more visibly in Google results. That means people are able to find your website, and once they get there, they are more likely to stick around on it, hopefully converting into a client.
There are a number of ways we can improve this, including:
- Changing title tags
- Updating meta descriptions
- Improving page speed
- Applying schemas to your site, which is a type of structured data that helps Google to generate rich results A good deal of this is behind-the-scenes type of work, but it is very important to achieving the best SEO possible for your site.
Local SEO
Legal marketing can be confusing — how do you get people to find you who are looking for the service within the area you operate? Local SEO can help with that. In later chapters, you’ll learn more about the depth of this type of tool, but let’s provide some basic information here.
Local SEO focuses on optimizing your business to appear in “near me” searches. For example, someone may be looking for a personal injury lawyer, but they need one close to home, not in another state. Local SEO helps to make sure your firm is visible to the people who are within your operational or desirable area and who are looking for just what you offer, even if they do not use a city name in their query.
There are various local SEO strategies that can work with Google’s algorithm to create this type of highly targeted result. One of the most critical is claiming and filling out your Google Business Profile (GBP), once known as Google My Business (GMB). This is a business listing that shows up when searchers are looking for someone that can solve their problems within their local area, and you appear in Google Maps within that space.
Your GBP should include the following:
- Your practice area
- Hours of operation
- Phone number
- Some FAQs, in some cases
- Images of your business and team
There are other local SEO strategies to include as well, including local quality backlinks, creating geo-targeted content, and managing your online reviews (positive reviews are just one component of that!) For more information on local SEO, check out our 2023 Ultimate Guide for Local SEO for Law Firms. It’s so important we have a complete guide for you to apply to this area of your legal marketing.
Link building
We’ve mentioned link building a few times, but what is it, and why does it matter? Link building is the process of gaining links from outside of your website that point people back to your website. These are called external links or backlinks. Link building is a signal to Google that your website, and by extension, your law firm, is reputable and authoritative. Other parties trust it. A backlink is a vote of confidence from an outside source that Google values.
Effective Link-Building Strategies for Law Firms
You can start your law firm’s link-building strategy by finding links you can build yourself, including your GBP. You can also incorporate links to your firm’s site from business listings on legal directories, including Justia, Avvo, and FindLaw.
Remember, the quality of backlinks far outweighs quantity; a few links from highly respected sources are more beneficial than numerous links from lesser-known sites. We find that some of the best places to aim for links, then, are Forbes, university websites with .edu URLs, and major news outlets. One way we encourage clients to gain .edu backlinks is to reach out to their alma mater to join their online list of successful alumni (with a link to your firm’s website) or create a scholarship that links your firm to the university.
You cannot control the success of your firm’s link-building fully, but there are SEO services and strategies you can employ that help you gain high-quality backlinks that directly impact your domain authority and help bring more traffic to your website.
In chapter six, we dive deeper into high-quality link building and the methods you can use to build quality connections that boost domain authority, improve search rankings, and attract more potential clients through enhanced online visibility.
SEO metrics
So far, we’ve talked about a lot of methods an SEO agency (or you) may use to help you to rank in the search engine. But how do we know it’s working?
To better understand how effective your SEO strategy is, you need to understand the various metrics used to measure SEO success. SEO metrics measure different data points from your website, including:
- Any changes to your ranking
- Volume of new and returning users
- Web conversions and more
These metrics are called KPIs or key performance indicators. They measure the success of your strategy based on the goals you set. Some of the KPIs most important for monitoring law firm websites include:
- The average number of pages viewed
- Cost per lead
- Conversion rate
For example, we measure cost per lead as a way to see how many leads you are getting based on your marketing budget. We can then use that information to determine which marketing strategy — PPC, SEO for organic traffic, social media, etc. — is providing you with the best, most cost-effective method of marketing.
We’ll break down more information on this topic in chapter seven.
Budget
- It can be difficult to know how much to budget for SEO marketing efforts for your law firm’s website. To determine this, we need to first think about the following:The current state of your website: Does it need a significant amount of updating and modernization?
- The current state of your SEO efforts: Are you ranking for your target audience keywords at all? Do you need a fresh SEO path forward?
- How competitive your market is: If you are in a dense market with plenty of competition, it takes more to reach your target audience
- How quickly you want to see results: Organic search does not offer immediate results, but you can start to see leads coming in sooner than you realize.
The lower your budget, the longer your strategy will take. If you have an aggressive budget right now, you can use it to execute your strategy faster, which creates faster results in most cases, especially when you include paid search methods.
SEO takes time to start producing results. That timeline is affected by numerous factors, but most law firms can expect to see positive results from their SEO campaign within six months to a year. This varies widely depending on your location, which impacts just how competitive specific keywords are for your law firm.
Create a budget that you can afford to spend monthly for at least a year.
Consider your SEO budget a long-term investment in your business. The money you put into your marketing now will eventually provide a solid return on investment in the form of new clients. It also continues to work for you with little upkeep — this is not a simple ad that you have to pay for over and over again, but a constant work in progress that continues to improve.
