Law firms must compete intensely with other practices for their clients. This is especially true with SEO. However, if you only focus on the most common keywords, you could waste time and money. An effective way to spend your marketing dollars is to focus on local SEO for law firms. This article details how your law firm can improve its local SEO for better search results. If you have questions about local SEO, contact Forward Lawyer Marketing for more information.
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Local SEO is targeted at local search results such as the Local Pack. These appear at the top of the results, usually with a local map, when Google decides the search is looking for results in a certain area. Local SEO is vital for law firms because most attorneys only serve clients in a limited geographic area. Unless your law firm handles clients nationwide, you may want to focus your marketing efforts on leads in your city or county.
Another reason to focus on local SEO is that ranking for keywords in a city is less competitive than the entire country. For example, SEO for personal injury lawyers will cost less for ‘best car accident lawyer in Milwaukee’ than for the entire United States. Again, this is because a smaller pool of people is searching for lawyers for a specific area than the entire country.
Are you ready to spend money on one of the best ways to improve your marketing leads for lawyers? Then you need to get better at local SEO. Below are the critical aspects of local SEO for attorneys and how to use them with your website so you can get more legal leads.
Did you know that more than 50% of site visits in the US come from cell phones today? So, people use smartphones and tablets to look for goods and services. They browse websites at work, the gym, store and school, and more.
As a law firm, you will want your website to be as mobile-friendly as possible so searchers can easily click through your site on a small screen. So, you should focus on making your site as mobile-friendly as possible. This means the text should read easily on mobile devices, load quickly, and include a call to action that is easy to see.
When your site works well on cell phones, your local SEO results will improve. It will be easier for people looking for legal services in your city to find what they want. Also, mobile friendliness is a ranking factor for Google. Plus, ensuring users have an excellent mobile experience will keep them on your site longer, and length of the visit also is an important ranking factor.
Website design for lawyers and website optimization is another critical factor for improving local SEO results, so you get more legal clients. You need your website to be functional, fast-loading, and SEO-friendly to be a magnet for local organic traffic.
If your law firm already has a site, you must follow best practices on the front and back end of the site to improve SEO results. For instance, your marketing team might need to fix broken links, speed up the site’s loading time, better target local keywords with improved content and page titles, and construct a site structure that is easier for users to understand and navigate.
If you need a new legal website, it is vital that the web developer has extensive experience with local SEO and designs the site for both Google and humans. When a site loads fast, is a breeze to navigate, and is indexed for your local area, you will rank higher in the search results. This will send more people looking for legal services to your site.
Your law firm’s content tells prospects and clients about your legal specialties and how you are the best law firm for them. It also tells them how to get in touch with you. When you infuse the writing with localized keywords, site content is a magnet for organic site visitors. This should be done in the body text, titles, and meta descriptions.
As you perform local keyword research for your law firm site’s content, experts recommend using keyword tools like Google Search Console and Semrush. These free tools will help you find the most relevant terms in your area.
For instance, if you specialize in truck accidents in Miami, it may be wise to target local keywords like ‘top truck accident attorney in Miami’ or ‘best truck crash lawyer in Miami.’
Further, your marketing staff can write legal content that would appeal to your potential clients. For example, write blog posts such as ‘Best Ways To Get A Large Truck Accident Settlement in Miami’ or ‘What To Do If I Break My Hip In A Miami Truck Accident.’
This is where a local SEO strategy can get you more legal leads. People who want legal information probably will not turn to Local Pack search results. Instead, they are more likely to scroll through the top local lawyer search results for articles they want to read.
After discovering the local legal keywords, you want to target based on your law firm’s expertise, write the best legal content you can. Then, naturally, weave your local keywords into the content so the page will rank for them. However, do not engage in ‘keyword stuffing,’ which is jamming the content with too many keywords. Google takes a dim view of this strategy and will penalize you. For a 1,000-word blog post, mention your desired local keyword twice or thrice in the content body.
Link building is another critical component of local SEO for lawyers. Link building means attracting desirable links from authoritative websites. A link from another quality website tells Google you have a worthwhile site. Also, it shows your firm has a good reputation and is a legitimate source of legal information. Thus, getting more good links on your site will boost your local SEO results.
The critical thing here is to focus on links from the most reputable websites in your industry or somehow related to the legal field. One effective way is to submit your law firm’s website to online directories. Another is to write guest posts for associated websites and obtain interviews in legal publications. The goal is to create outstanding, informative content that legal prospects crave. When you do that, your content will naturally attract high-quality links.
You get a Google My Business listing for free. Use it to your maximum advantage for the best local SEO results for lawyers. Your Google My Business listing should include the following information:
You should never keyword stuff your business listing; Google will not be impressed, and your audience will be turned off. However, always be sure that you complete your Google My Business listing. Many businesses must fill it out, which is a significant missed opportunity. Also, remember to add a photo to your business listing. Research suggests that companies that include images get 35% more clicks to their site and 40% more requests for driving directions.
Legal reviews are another critical way to improve local SEO for your law firm. When you have plenty of positive reviews online, your site will get better local visibility in Google and better rankings. But the benefits of lots of good reviews are more than just to impress Google: One of the first things that searchers want to see before purchasing anything is many positive reviews. This is even more critical in the legal field; few of us would like to rely on a lawyer for legal assistance if they have few positive reviews in Google Reviews and related sites.
How do you get more good reviews to get better local search results? The most important thing to do is offer your clients the best legal services possible. You are often seen as a hero when you satisfy your client’s legal needs. You got them out of a legal jam that has probably bothered them. Therefore, they will most likely be happy to post a strongly positive legal review. You can improve the chances of getting positive online feedback by asking satisfied clients to post a review.
Having a solid social media presence does not directly boost local SEO results. But having a prominent presence on major social media sites will increase your local visibility and supports your local legal SEO efforts. For example, when you write about recent personal injury settlements on your website, you should post the same information on Facebook and Instagram.
Focusing on local SEO for more legal clients is one of the most cost-effective marketing techniques. If you need more clients for your law firm, Forward Lawyer Marketing has proven results in every aspect of law firm marketing, including local SEO. Contact Forward Lawyer Marketing for help with SEO for law firms and more at (888) 590-9687.