SEO tips for law firms

In today’s digital age, online presence has become a key factor in any business’ profitability. Online presence is the most effective form of marketing today and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) has become vital to the success of a business. Since it’s a true skill, experts are sometimes needed to achieve the desired results. Monopolists is one such expert which focuses on law firm SEO, helping law firms increase their online visibility and, by extension, their business.

This process can improve the visibility of your website in search engine results. The better your SEO rating, the higher the chances you’ll appear at the top of the results page. While this process takes time and effort, and a balance must be achieved, the positive impact it can have on your law firm’s business is immeasurable. Not only do you have the ability to target a specific audience, but you are also able to constantly assess performance and make improvements.

Today, we’ll be sharing three law firm SEO tips which will help you optimise your SEO rating and have you on the path to the first search result on a Google search.

Use the right keywords

SEO depends heavily on keywords. These are words or phrases which are included in your website’s content that Google picks up on when someone carries out a search. For example, if someone searches for “corporate lawyer in New York”, Google carries a search and assesses content (hence, content is king) and looks for keywords that are identical, similar, or relevant to the search terms. The higher the relevance, the more chances that your firm’s website will display on the first page, and maybe even at the top, of the results.

Therefore, you need to pay attention to the keywords you’re using and have them be as relevant and wide-covering as possible. However, you need to be careful not to stuff your content with all the relevant keywords you can find and think of. There is a delicate balance involved in this process and having too many keywords, or too many irrelevant keywords, could have a negative impact on SEO rating.

There are many factors to take into account when determining your keywords. First and foremost, identify your target audience based on your firm’s expertise and services and find relevant keywords and phrases. Try using keywords that have a high volume of usage, which you can figure out by using tools like “Keywords Everywhere” or Google’s very own “Google Keyword Planner”.

You should also use words that are more commercially inclined. Examples of this include “corporate lawyer near me”, “top law firms in the city” or “lawyer on a budget”. If you use keywords like “do I need a lawyer” this will drive down your rating and negatively affect your ranking.  

Analyse your competition

Understanding your competitor is vital to this entire process. Visit your competitor websites to assess what methods they’ve used to optimise their website. If you visit the top five ranked law firm websites on Google, you’ll be able to assess the benchmark to achieve to get the highest rating.

The number of factors to take into account are numerous! Some of these include whether the website is secure (HTTPS), if it’s mobile-friendly, the speed at which web pages load, the length of pages, quality backlinks, social media links, the number of optimised pages. You’ll need to make notes for all of these factors and add how you would improve on your competitor’s content and methods.

Also, draw a comparison with your own website and see where you come out on top and where you’re lacking. While you may not be able to get inside information on your competitor’s website, if you implement whatever you can assess, it will go a long way in improving your SEO rating. Google’s algorithms could even pick up on the implementation of similar methods between you and your competitor (who has a top-ranking website) which would add more authenticity to your website.

Optimise all of your existing web pages

Optimisation essentially means you’re formatting and editing your web pages in a manner that allows search engines to pick them up more easily. The first step to doing this is to make sure that each page on your website has a title tag and meta-description which includes your selected keywords (discussed above). Not only is the title important for displaying on results, but it also makes an impact on a search engine’s algorithm to be able to pick up your page.

Make sure that each page addresses the subject of that page ONLY. Any irrelevant material or content would affect your page’s SEO rating, which is why it is important to have relevant content. The more relevant content you have, the longer users will stay on your page, which is a green signal for Google’s algorithms. Furthermore, for a law firm, as a business practice, your pages should have thorough and detailed information.

Finally, ensure that your keywords and key phrases also appear in the content of your site pages. This does not mean you fill your page with every relevant word known to man, and a subtle approach can go a long way to improving the quality of your content. This, in turn, would lead to a higher SEO rating and ranking in search engine results.

In conclusion, we would like to emphasise that while all the above are vital to improving your law firm’s SEO rating, the one factor that towers above all is content. You must ensure that your content is original, organic and natural. Manufactured and low-quality content is easily flagged by search engine algorithms and will do a lot more damage than desired. The fallout would be more to deal with than actually optimising the website. If you’re going to hire or outsource this job, then you must at least ensure that this outside vendor is providing you with content that will actually contribute to your SEO rating and not take from it.

The editorial unit