SEO – or search engine optimisation – is a method of increasing the volume and quality of traffic to your website through unpaid search engine results. In recent years, a great many business transactions have shifted online and law firm marketing has taken a similar turn as a result. But how can you use SEO for solicitors?
Your website and other online profiles are now very likely to be the primary source of information for prospective clients, which is why SEO for solicitors is such a valuable tool. We’ve lots of experience in dealing with law firm marketing and people, including law firms and barristers.
As such, we’re pretty clued up in this area. Here’s why you’re going to want to use SEO as a law firm, and some of our top law firm SEO tips.
Why Use SEO As A Solicitor?
You can harness specialist SEO for law firms to drive traffic to your site and engage with a larger number of potential clients. Your organisation needs to compete in this field to avoid being left behind amid the rife competition in the legal industry.
An effective SEO strategy for legal firms achieves three major goals for your business. These are:
- Generating relevant traffic to your website
- Building trust
- Generating leads
1. “Generating relevant traffic”
This refers to the law firm marketing techniques you can use to drive the right users to your website. Successful SEO for law firms is highly likely to result in more visits to your site, as this method will render it more visible than others. One particularly powerful tool is the keyword optimisation of your website’s content, which makes it easier for you to be discovered via a search engine. You’ll see more about that later.
Displaying links to your website and contact information as regularly as possible is a very good approach, as is making sure that you are as active as possible online. You should keep blog posts and social media updated, and ensure that everything you share with the public is engaging and relevant to your practice. After all, you only want to attract visitors who are likely to use your services.
Link building is another useful technique. It involves contacting the owners of other relevant web pages to request that they display a link back to yours. Links displayed on the pages of companies that are relevant and trusted will improve your chances of attracting more traffic.
2. “Building trust”
This is a more complex matter and tends to take time. If your website sits at the top of the search results and its profile on Google is clear, informative, detailed and engaging, visitors are more likely to accept that you are a successful and active organisation, facets that are appealing to a prospective client. This is easy to achieve through well-executed SEO for law firms.
Once the first two elements are achieved, the third will follow. , but also because it works to persuade visitors that your firm has reached this level of popularity and visibility through being trustworthy.
3. “Generating leads”
This means ensuring that users who have been attracted to your brand through the above techniques are likely to use your services. To do this, you need to ensure that your site and its content are engaging, user-friendly and unique. You should also ensure that you employ a consistent tone of voice that instils trust in the reader, and that you take the time to regularly update your content to keep it fresh and interesting.
Clarity and ease of navigation are also important. If you offer a free consultation or similar service, for example, displaying a contact form or another clear call to action on your main web page will reduce any hesitation a visitor may feel about getting in touch. Further calls to action on each page will increase the likelihood of engagement.
Our Top Recommendations For Using SEO For Legal Firms
1. Optimise Your Site Structure
A well-optimised website structure is critical for search engines to find and index your web pages. If you want to truly execute a great strategy for using SEO for legal firms, then there are certain elements such as sitemaps you can put in place to help search engines crawlers navigate your website.
Additionally, the information on your website is clear and concise with a consistent tone of voice throughout.
Including relevant keywords is equally important. You can use tools such as Google Adwords or Wordstream to determine the most popular keywords and then add them naturally into your content. Any keyword inclusion that sounds “forced, phoney or unnatural” is likely to put a visitor off.
2. Publish Relevant Content
Keep your online presence streamlined by only sharing content that applies to your services. As tempting as it can be to use your blog or social media streams to comment on developments in the wider world, SEO for solicitors is intended to attract the right people to your practice. Take your time to decide what you should include and ensure that any language used is honed for your purposes and keyword optimised.
However, you should feel free to occasionally share your impressions of an ongoing case or new legal precedent that lies firmly within your firm’s disciplines. Entering a wider conversation will showcase your expertise to potential clients and build their trust further.
3. Create A Google My Business Profile
One of our very top recommendations for using SEO for legal firms is to set up a Google My Business account and make sure it is filled out as completely as possible. It will help you to manage your profile on Google and Google Maps and add engaging features and additional information.
You can include opening hours, a detailed and optimised description, images, events and even display reviews, testimonials and star ratings you’ve received.
SEO for solicitors opens up a whole new platform on which to attract potential clients.
It’s important to take your time when planning your strategy, being sure to always keep your key approaches and aims in mind. These should be to:
- Keep all content relevant, up to date and user-friendly
- Stay active online
- Maintain a consistent tone of voice
- Use keyword optimisation as regularly and naturally as possible
- Ensure that your contact details are always visible
- Make engagement easy
If you can strike a powerful balance between these steps, your approach to SEO for law firms will see you quickly attracting a greater number of valuable clients.
TEGMARK delivers effective online marketing campaigns for law firms and individual solicitors. Get in touch to see how we can help.
