- What is SEO for legal services?
- Benefits of SEO for law firms and other legal businesses
- Why is search marketing important for law firms?
- 7 SEO services for the legal sector
Organic search is responsible for more than 50% of all web traffic, meaning leveraging search engine optimisation (SEO) could drive a significant portion of quality traffic to your legal firm’s online channels.
With online competition increasing and more people using search engines to help them choose their legal representation, effectively optimising your digital channels could be the difference between success and failure.
According to a recent study by Inbound Law Marketing, 57% of people look for a lawyer on their own, many of whom search online, while 87% of legal firms confirm having a website.
However, standing out from the competition requires expertise, resources and time that most law firms and businesses within the legal industry don’t have to spare.
If your business is stretched for time and resources, you could benefit from the help of an SEO agency. Soar Online has over 30 years of experience in digital marketing and will work as an extension of your business to support your goals and deliver measurable results.
Whether you choose to employ the help of SEO professionals or execute the work in-house, carefully planning a marketing budget is a crucial component of any law firm business plan. Especially following the impact of Covid-19 as more traditional forms of business development are no longer as effective.
Legal firms need to find new ways to communicate with their customers to maintain a competitive edge. In fact, failure to prioritise SEO amid the ever-evolving growth of digital marketing and paid advertising could see your company fall behind the curve.
Law Firm SEO: What is it?
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) refers to the practice of improving your online visibility for relevant search queries to boost your ranking in search results and drive more quality traffic to your website.
Essentially, SEO is about harnessing the power of organic traffic from search engines including Google, Bing and Yahoo! Driving more high-quality traffic to your website should increase your conversions and improve your return on investment (ROI).
Effective SEO is key to generating the best possible online enquiries, as users are more likely to click through to websites that appear higher up in search engine result pages (SERPs). For example, a recent study by Backlinko shows that the top three listings in Google receive 75.1% of all clicks – that’s three-quarters of all search traffic!
SEO for Law Firms and Legal Businesses: The Benefits
As previously mentioned, an effective SEO strategy will increase your brand’s online visibility and maximise your ROI by driving high-quality traffic to your website.
The more people visit your website, the more opportunities you have to drive these users down the conversion funnel. However, as SEO consists of hundreds of elements, it might be worth outsourcing the service to specialists.
Why?
Here’s how an SEO agency could benefit your legal services company:
Leverage Expertise
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a complex, time-intensive discipline that requires a degree of expertise to master, should you wish to take your website to the next level.
Ever-evolving updates to search engine algorithms have made it even more important to keep the SEO pedal on the gas. If you’re concerned about building an algorithm-resistant SEO strategy, consider hiring a digital agency that specialises in SEO techniques and industry expertise to improve your website visibility.
Save Time and Resources
Whether you’re a lawyer, solicitor or another legal professional, you’ve probably got your hands full with other aspects of your business.
Entrusting your marketing activity to an SEO agency will free up more time and valuable resources to focus on other important areas of your business, such as client-facing business development.
Prevent Black Hat Practices
SEO can be a minefield, but the experts are equipped with the knowledge and tools to ensure your website follows Google’s SEO best practices.
Employing SEO professionals could help you avoid implementing black hat techniques and landing a penalty with search engines, which can result in dire consequences such as:
- A portion of your site being removed from the search index
- Your whole website being removed from search results
Our digital marketing team is adept in SEO, content creation, paid advertising and social media. We deliver SEO strategies tailored to your business goals and track analytics with real-time data to provide accurate, measurable results.
The steps we take to achieve success include:
- Defining your target audience
- Understanding their needs, wants and pain points
- Locating the channels your audience visit
- Cross-aligning your business objectives with analysis, insights and research
- Performing a content and website analysis
- Identifying social media opportunities
- Tracking and reporting
Why is Search Marketing Important?
Search marketing comprises two disciplines: SEO and search engine marketing (SEM).
It plays a vital role in website growth by allowing you to identify the most relevant and valuable keywords to increase website traffic. The rise in mobile and tablet search also makes search marketing a powerful route to market, with recent statistics showing that mobile dominates 60% of the market share.
Other branches of search marketing include:
- Local SEO
- Content marketing
- Paid advertising
- Email marketing
- Link building
- Technical SEO
- Social media marketing
As search engines evolve and online competition heats up, it’s essential to stay on top of your SEO to stay on the first page of search results.
SEO for Legal Firms
A purpose-designed SEO strategy built around your legal offering could provide a significant boost to your online presence and help you generate qualified leads.
Legal firms could leverage a range of SEO techniques, some of the most important ones we’ve detailed below.
Site Audit
Your website is one of your best marketing tools, and as a result, it’s essential to examine how well it is optimised for search.
A site audit analyses your entire website, running various checks to benchmark its performance, flag issues and help you identify strengths and weaknesses.
Want a free initial site audit? We’ve got you covered. Submit a legal services SEO site audit here and have an expert video analysis back in no time at all.
Content Marketing
Content marketing for law firms is a strategy that utilises blogs, articles, social media posts, ebooks and your site’s high-performing web pages to attract new clients.
Creating consistent, high-quality “E-A-T” content will be crucial to the success of your legal offerings marketing efforts, so you must follow best practices.
At a high level, the content marketing steps should go as follows:
- Research
- Create
- Promote
- Convert
- Measure
Before you even get to the writing stage, you need to figure out your target market and understand their search intent, which is key to creating content that resonates with an audience.
Audience research will inform your entire content marketing strategy, so don’t skip this step. Once you’ve identified your target market, perform keyword research to gain insight into what your audience is looking for and the competition for these keywords.
It’s always a good idea to scope out the competition to help you bridge content gaps and provide a unique insight into similar blogs you may write. First, however, make sure your content aligns with your brand’s needs and serves users at various stages of the funnel: Awareness, Consideration and Decision.
On-page SEO for the Legal Industry
Better visibility leads to increased traffic, but content alone cannot achieve this.
Legal companies must consider the website structure itself, ensuring that web pages are correctly optimised to make it easier for search engines to crawl and index content.
In addition to high-quality content, on-page SEO includes the following elements:
- Title tags
- H-tags
- Keywords
- Metadata
- Page URL
- ALT tags
- Internal links
- Structured markup
Effective on-page SEO is advantageous as it helps search bots understand your website’s context, improves local search visibility and improves the long-term value of your web pages, increasing conversion rate and earning potential.
Local SEO: ‘Law firms near me’
Local SEO is crucial to building a healthy pipeline of leads in your geographical area.
Local SEO services for law firms include Google My Business, optimising web pages for geo-specific keywords, creating localised landing pages and submitting key business information to directory pages.
Google My Business is a free tool that combines the services of Google +, Google Maps and Google Local to give you control over how your business appears in search. You can provide details and photos of your company, including:
- Address
- Opening hours
- Directions
- Events
- Contact number
- Reviews
- Social media profiles
- Products
- Questions & Answers
The review function is particularly noteworthy as building authentic client reviews can bolster your firm’s credibility and encourage prospective clients to do business with you.
Ensure that information concerning your business profile is consistent everywhere it appears online to avoid coming across as untrustworthy and disreputable.
What’s the point of doing local SEO?
Well, someone seeking legal advice in Birmingham will more than likely be reluctant to enquire with a firm located miles away. A well-established firm within the local area will be more appealing and therefore provide law firms and other legal professionals with the opportunity to capture a relevant market and generate more leads.
Link Building
Law firms can leverage several strategies to build their link profile, but it’s crucial to acquire links from high-authority websites like Clifford Chance.
However, we understand that gaining a link from legal giants is no easy feat. To get around this, use tools such as Moz, which can help you with your link-building activity by offering insight into other websites’ domain authority.
Another successful link-building tactic is connecting and networking with companies within link-building communities. People in these groups are more than likely searching for the same opportunities as you, so leveraging these networks can speed up your link-building process.
But don’t expect to see immediate results with link building. It’s a time-consuming, labor-intensive process that requires commitment. And don’t try to cheat the system by practising black-hat techniques, as you might find yourself hit with a penalty that removes your site from SERPs altogether.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO primarily refers to the usability and searchability of your legal website.
It encompasses everything from page loading speed to link building and site architecture, meaning that you can’t consider technical SEO an option – it’s a necessity.
However, effective technical SEO can be complicated, so it’s essential to follow Google’s Webmaster Guidelines to ensure you have the proper framework in place to enhance your search listings.
Improving the technical aspects of your website can require a significant amount of web development, so it might be worth passing this aspect of SEO to an agency that is equipped with the skills and knowledge to deliver the best results.
Outsourcing SEO to a Digital Marketing Agency
While insourcing the work might seem appealing, there are significant benefits to working with an outsourced SEO agency.
SEO continues to boom, and if you can’t keep up with algorithm updates, changes in consumer behaviour and the invention of new technologies, outsourcing SEO is advantageous.
#1 Cost-Effective
Contrary to popular belief, hiring an SEO company can be more cost-efficient than insourcing the work.
Hiring additional personnel and purchasing the software and tools needed to build your online presence effectively can quickly add up. On the other hand, outsourcing the work to an SEO company for a fixed monthly sum is a more cost-effective alternative.
#2 Leverage Expertise
SEO isn’t an easy skill to master, and there are a lot of elements that have to be factored into increasing your position in SERPs.
An experienced SEO company, such as Soar Online, already has the resources and tools to provide you with the expertise you need to earn your site authority and boost your rankings in search.
#3 Can Deliver The Best Results
You want to avoid leaving the success of your business to chance as the risks are too high amid increasing competition.
An SEO company with years of experience can evaluate your website and create a comprehensive marketing plan that aligns with your business goals. Look out for companies that can offer real-time insights and have a robust reporting system, as this level of transparency will reduce potential stress.
An SEO specialist will also adjust their plans accordingly to ensure your legal service’s website is on the right path to success.
