Writing Geotargeted Pages For Top Local Lawyer Marketing

September 20 , 2023 | BY Matthew Stark

Geo Targeting Pages

For local law firms, geotargeted landing pages are critical. However, too many law firms and their marketing companies may spend too much time and money on national keywords and not location-based landing pages. If geotargeted pages are focused on lawyer marketing, it can be a gold mine for your law office. This article will explain how you can write geotargeted landing pages that convert legal prospects into clients and rank highly in search engines. 

If you have questions about geotargeted pages, local lawyer marketing, or other legal marketing topics after reading this article, Forward Legal Marketing is ready to help.

What Is A Geotargeted Page?

A legal geotargeted landing page is a detailed, informative page that is written and designed for prospective legal clients who need a local attorney. Geotargeted pages are precious for all sorts of lawyers and law firms. After all, most people looking for an attorney need one who lives in their community or state. So, a geotargeted page will focus on a specific legal specialty or topic and mention the local city or community.

For example, if you need a car accident attorney in Phoenix, doing a Google search for ‘car accident lawyer’ will probably give you results from all over the country. Most of us with an Arizona car accident do not need an attorney licensed to practice in Florida. So, you might search for ‘best Phoenix car accident attorney.’ This locally-focused search term will provide leading attorneys in that city.

As with more generic searches, Google also wants to offer as much value to the person doing a local search. So, the search engine will include information, including reviews, ratings, and expert commentary. If you create a geotargeted content page that offers these elements and more value to the local searcher, Google will display your content more prominently and give the site a higher ranking. Remember, the better you satisfy the local legal prospect’s intent, the higher the geotargeted page will rank.

What Is The Major Value Of Location-Based Content?

The crucial aspect of creating effective geotargeted landing pages is the same with any top-quality SEO content: providing the most helpful answer to the searcher’s question. If your law firm offers the best answer to the search the person is looking for and uses the keyword in the geotargeted page’s meta title tag, it will probably rank highly. However, there is a right and wrong way to do this.

Many SEO professionals may think that the ‘right way’ is to create a geotargeted landing page and stuff the keyword repeatedly on the page. Keyword stuffing does not work because it resembles spam, and Google takes a dim view of it. Getting a landing page to rank highly is not about tricking Google; it is just about writing the most helpful and detailed content for the site visitor. While the geotargeted page content should include the relevant keyword a few times, do not overdo it.

Suppose someone getting a divorce in Maryland searches for ‘best family law attorney in Annapolis.’ Your law firm might write a geotargeted page with that keyword and describe many things that that person should know about Maryland divorces. The keyword might be included naturally in the content once or twice, but if you stuff it in there a dozen times, it is awkward for the reader, and Google does not like that.

How Do You Write Effective Geotargeted Pages?

Considering the type of landing page that will best meet the local searcher’s needs, you need to develop a feel for what you would find most helpful if you were them. Understanding the intention behind every keyword your firm targets takes some practice and attention. For example, suppose your law firm specializes in truck accidents in San Francisco, so your keyword list would probably include ‘truck accident lawyer San Francisco’ and ‘truck accident law firms in SF.’ These keywords are similar, but the intent behind each is different.

With ‘truck accident lawyer San Francisco,’ the person is a prospect searching for a San Franciso law firm in that specialty. But ‘motor vehicle accident law firms in SF’ is more likely a researcher wanting to compare several law firms and decide after doing more research.

Also, the person searching for a truck accident lawyer in San Francisco is a consumer and prospect but possibly more serious about hiring a lawyer today. That is because they were more specific in what they were looking for – a truck accident attorney. They also specified an attorney and not just a law firm, so they may have a more urgent need. You might create geotargeted pages for both of these keywords, but because the intent of each search was different, you would write the content a bit differently.

Remember, you will need to do a lot of keyword research, and tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs will help you find the most frequently searched and relevant keywords to target for each geopage. Remember, if you do not put enough time into keyword research, you could discover you are creating geopages for keywords that do not drive the traffic you want. After all, you probably do not want workers’ comp-related legal traffic if you only handle personal injury lawsuits.

Remember To Optimize Your Landing Page URL

The next step with geotargeted landing pages is to optimize the URL. Make the URL as concise as possible, and include the keyword or legal service you want to rank for, including the city or area you want to rank for. Refrain from overloading the URL with many keywords if they do not exist in your root domain.

Do Not Forget The Landing Page Title

Next on the geopage is to ensure that page titles and meta descriptions are optimized. As with your URL, be sure that the description features the keyword and location you want to target. This will help Google understand why your page is relevant to the search and boost the chances of showing in a relevant search, too.

Internal And External Linking

The last tip with geopages is building links. Once you have designed the local landing page with excellent content, title metadata, and good internal linking, build links back to that page. Links from related businesses and organizations in the community can improve a legal website’s SEO performance. You should look for chances to work with other legal-related organizations in your area, perhaps by sponsoring local charities and events. You also should reach out to community news sites and bloggers and ask for a link to your page.

How To Scale A Lot Of Geo Pages

Creating dozens or more of location pages for your legal website can seem daunting. But working in phases can help you accomplish your goal and drive legal clients to your site. If you need assistance with building out your geopages, Forward Legal Marketing has extensive experience and success in this area:

Phase 1

First, your law firm should focus on creating main location pages for the largest market in each location. Use past data and analytics to understand which legal services have been requested the most in each community. Make this page as unique as you can and specialized for each community.

For example, suppose you are an Atlanta car accident attorney. In that case, you should build geotargeted car accident landing pages for Buckhead, Sandy Springs, Alpharetta, Roswell, and Peachtree City communities. You can write car accident landing pages for each community and include specific landmarks, streets, and intersections in those areas to provide more detailed legal content. This information will be helpful to the local searcher and also will help with Google rank.

Phase 2

Work on building more location pages for smaller communities in your market that would be the next level down from the Atlanta communities mentioned above. Each one of those suburbs probably has subparts that have different names. 

For instance, the Buckhead community of Atlanta has smaller subareas, such as Argonne Forest, Brandon, and Castlewood. You need to write subpages for those if you believe targeting them for legal prospects will result in revenue. For example, you can use the main marketing page for Atlanta as a template and replace the Atlanta-specific content with commentary more specific to the smaller communities. 

You need to ensure the content is original on each page, but the information and messaging can be the same. The task becomes less daunting when you use the original marketing pages as templates to write the subpages. Remember, these pages should rank well in Google and help drive targeted legal traffic to your site.

Contact Forward Lawyer Marketing Today

For many Internet searches, consumers seek local information, especially regarding services. If you live in Baltimore, you probably do not need legal assistance from an attorney in California or Florida. Writing effective geo-targeted pages is a highly effective way to reach people looking for local services in your area and to build your legal client base. 

But what if you have your hands full with your current legal clients? Forward Lawyer Marketing can take over some or all of your firm’s marketing efforts, including content writing, SEO, PPC, social media, and more, to get you more legal clients. Call today for a consultation at (888) 590-9687.