SEO & Local SEO Tips For Law Firms

An important part of websites is search engine optimisation (SEO). SEO helps to boost your rankings and website traffic. SEO is also important for law firm websites.

Nearly 46% of Google searches seek local information thus implementing local SEO is important. If you improve your website traffic through local SEO then you are more likely to get more website traffic overall.

Local SEO is important for small to medium-sized law firms and firms that operate regionally. Bigger and national law firms can rank for broader keywords and get traffic from relevant audiences.

SEO tips

• The longer the users stay on your website Google will understand that the page has quality content and is worth being seen by more people. You should try to increase this retention time.

• The loading speed of your website can directly impact your bounce rate. The users will abandon your website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. You can improve the speed of your website by compressing your images, reducing your server response time and more.

• Google extracts text and shows it at the top of search results as ‘Features Snippets’. The website from which the text is extracted is considered above position 1 in the search results. The various types of featured snippets are definitions, lists, steps and tables. You should track snippet opportunities.

• Sitelinks are the additional links that appear below the search results and are used to help users navigate to a particular section of the website. However, Google decides which pages to display.

• Find the link in your niche which is not active, these are called ‘Broken’ links. You can rewrite a new version of the content and ask the owner if you can replace the broken link with your new link.

• Websites that use their own photos than the stock photos are ranked better by Google. If Google finds that you are using a photo that others are also using then it may penalise you in terms of positioning.

• Audiovisual content engages the users better than textual content. Adding images and videos to your text will offer a better user experience.

• Keyword research is an important part of SEO and also for law firms. You should find out how the users search for your services. You should find keywords in your niche with a good level of traffic. You can use tools like Google Ads Keyword Planner and Google Trends for keyword research.

• Google rewards websites that update their content regularly under the ‘freshness’ policy. Creating blogs is important for SEO therefore you should create and regularly update your blogs. Your posts should solve your users' concerns and problems. You should use a good content marketing strategy.

Local SEO tips

• For local SEO you have to use local keywords for your website. Use tools like Ahrefs or Semrush to find the keywords based on location. Optimise your web pages and metadata for local keywords.

• Your firm’s profile on Google My Business is the local listing that appears in the local search results, Google Maps and the right side of the Knowledge panel on Google Search. By optimising your listing you can appear higher in the local search results.

• Your important web pages should refer to your location in meta tags, body copy, headings and title tags. You can also add your location in the URL where relevant.

• Use schema markup to help the search engines better understand the location-based information. This will lead to richer search results.

• Voice search is becoming popular therefore you should optimise your website for it. You should keep in mind that people ask questions using voice search therefore you should consider long-tail keywords.

• You should try to gain online reviews by asking your clients to leave reviews about your firm. You should monitor and respond to all your reviews whether good or bad.

• You can create a location-specific ‘About Us’ page and include all your local information like address, local news and events and more.

• You can do local link-building by reaching out to the local organisation in your area. Building valuable backlinks sends a signal to Google that your website is credible for this location.

Once you have implemented SEO you should do regular SEO audits to find any issues. To make your website up-to-date you can hire attorney SEO services.