5 SEO Tips for Lawyers

Lawyers Need SEO Too.

Are you a law firm and do you feel that now is the time to implement online marketing (SEO) for your business website? At Ratel SEO, we have a number of clients that are lawyers. There are a few items that we’ve noticed are consistently underutilized or flat out missed when we are conducting SEO for law firms.

As attorneys begin to come to grips with expanding online competitiveness, evolving buyer shopping behavior, and technological barriers associated with online marketing, the necessity for search engine optimization education and learning becomes more evident day by day.

Obviously many of the SEO strategies discussed are without a doubt being utilized by an advanced SEO Professional Consultant currently assisting the legal industry. There are some strategies that have not been mentioned in this article, and you can be assured that if a number of them are implement, the effect will make a tremendous difference to the traffic of your practice.

However, even if you aren’t a SEO Consultant that works with law firms, here are a few steps that if you were to follow, would make a tremendous difference to the internet presence of your firm’s website. More than likely, would lead in an increase in traffic and leads as early as a week from execution. Our legal clients have seen a jump anywhere from 10% to 100% of the course of a few weeks and months.

Would you prefer to leverage the internet to have potential new clients:

  • Ending up on your site before a rival law firm?
  • Depending on your subject matter as an expert point of view?
  • Offering you direct contact to find out more?

If this holds true, you’re most likely to benefit dramatically off these SEO tips. Law firm SEO expertise comes with a heavy price, however the amateur may possibly be effective with the SEO tips offered throughout this article. This information is meant for small business owners, marketers, managers, and local business who wishes to advantage free SEO as opposed to spending great numbers of dollars.

By the time you finish this particular article, you will be able to implement these SEO strategies on your website promptly in a step-by-step fashion.

These free SEO tips encompass the fundamentals of boosting page ranking, and even the experienced internet marketer will see and take advantage of the following information.

SEO for Lawyers Tip # 1: Know the Meaning of a Keyword

Novice tip: Since “keywords” are the words that people search for in Google, each page should target a set of “keywords” most relevant to their product or service

Lawyers should zero in on purchase intention keywords which in turn indicate the searcher wants to register for legal services. Those terms should also have good search total to ensure a business website will likely receive website traffic.

For instance: If you’re a local personal injury attorney, a target keyword for you may be “car accident indianapolis” – if you’re a tow truck driver in Indianapolis a target keyword may be “flatbed tow truck Indianapolis“. Every business has a set of target keywords. The website should reflect each keyword on an individual basis, dedicating an optimized page each of them.

SEO for Lawyers Tip # 2: Choosing the very best keywords that are appropriate for your legal practice.

In the SEO industry, we describe the activity described here as “keyword research” which is short for the process that best identifies the area of the website that a business will want to go after.

Here are some tips for performing “keyword analysis”:

Go to Bing and perform a search for “Keyword Tools”
After a brief brainstorm, input your suspected keywords into the tool. Avoid using geography, so if you are a small company consultant in Indianapolis, Indiana then just type “small business professional coach Indianapolis”.

The tool will return a list of related keywords and how often each is searched for on a monthly basis. A great keyword has a combination of relevancy and search volume. The volume is provided for us generously by Google. The relevancy, however, requires the human element. Select 5-10 of the keywords with the absolute most relevancy and highest search volume. You are now ready for the next step.

SEO for Lawyers Tip # 3: Finding the best place for your keywords
There are different position on each page that should include the targeted keyword. This is information that we discuss in these free SEO tips as well.

We describe these places as “SEO Points” and a few of the most critical are:

  • Page Title – Online search engine factor the page title heavily into their rankings
  • Page URL – This is another crucial location for target keywords. If your page URLS resemble YourSite.com/ services, you will wish to consider adjusting them to something along the lines of YourSite.com/ target-keyword-services.
  • Page Headline – This is a tricky part of SEO since it is crucial that the keyword be present, while concurrently remaining catchy and interesting to reader.
  • Page Meta Description – It is of moderate importance to include keywords for search engines to pick up but, like the headline, a good meta description remains catchy and relevant.
  • Page Copy – It is of extreme importance that a keyword be distributed throughout the actual viewable copy of the post.
  • Page Meta Keywords – Although Google no longer considers meta keywords in their algorithm, smaller internet search engine still credit them so it doesn’t hurt to input target keywords there as well.

SEO for Lawyers Tip # 4: Optimize Your Site for Keywords.
Once you’ve targeted keywords, don’t be in a big hurry to implement the new found keywords on your site.

First, ask yourself, “Do I have pages on my site that already contain my target keywords?” and “Do these pages concentrate on my set of target keywords on an individual basis?”.

If the response to both of these questions is “yes”, then modification of the SEO Points (titles, URLs, headlines, etc.) to include the target keywords is all that’s required.

If the response to either question posed above is “no”, then just create new ones.

Create one page per target keyword and include it in the SEO Points we’ve previously discussed. For the greatest results it is imperative that each page provides information that the reader is seeking. A short page with irrelevant information will do little to serve our purpose. Take some time and put yourself in the reader’s shoes. A new page should be 300-500 words, including the intended keyword 2-4 times throughout the page copy. Create a link from your homepage to the new page, when doing so, you’re making it easier for the search engine to find the new page. Deciding where to link the page is very important for SEO and is more of an advanced practice.

SEO for Lawyers Tip # 5: Speak to a Professional SEO Consulting Firm.

Lawyers provide services to captive regional demographics and there is typically no shortage of competitiveness, helping make local SEO important. Furthermore, Google is moving toward monetizing regional search with ads that compete for valuable local search property in Google My Business.

It is our hope that if you need SEO for your site, but a tight budget, or are more of a DIY individual, that this post gets you started in the right direction for free SEO.  But remember what Abraham Lincoln said about the lawyer that represents himself? Let Ratel SEO show you how we do SEO for Lawyers and get you on the first page of Google.