Lawyers provide a valuable service to clients seeking honest and effective legal counsel. Whether it’s a family dispute, a DUI, or a personal injury case, law firms must assist clients in achieving justice for themselves and their families.
With such a high demand for lawyers, you may wonder if digital marketing is necessary to grow your firm. Is word of mouth just enough? Do you need to invest in SEO services?
Yes, lawyers and law firms require SEO to grow organically and reach more clients online. However, there are numerous benefits to law firm SEO that goes beyond traffic and leads.
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a type of digital marketing that drives organic (unpaid) traffic to one’s website and online profiles through search engines, specifically Google. SEO enables law firms to drive long-term targeted traffic to their website, directory listings, or blog.
Because of the nature of their services, many lawyers rely on SEO as their primary marketing source. Rather than searching on social media, potential clients frequently use Google to find lawyers.
As a result, SEO has become the preferred method of law firm marketing.
5 Benefits of SEO for Law Firms
SEO for law firms has numerous benefits. Your firm should have a presence in the search results, as clients use Google to find local lawyers. This does not always happen naturally but rather requires an intentional SEO strategy.
Here are some of the reasons why SEO is important for law firms.
Reach Clients Who Are Searching For Your Services In Your Area
Few marketing methods can provide you with the precision of reaching users who are actively searching for your services in your service areas. Most methods (such as social media) allow you to post and gain targeted followers.
SEO enables you to target the terms (“keywords”) that users use to find law firms like yours. Finally, you can rank in Google for terms such as “Houston, TX attorney,” “TX job attorney,” or whatever is relevant to your business.
Drive Organic Traffic For Weeks, Months, or Even Years
Once your website ranks in Google Search, it may continue to get organic traffic for weeks or even years to come. This is because as long as people continue to search – and as long as you continue to rank – your presence will attract new users.
SEO is an “organic” method because many of the strategies can be implemented without the use of paid advertisements. Of course, working with a professional is recommended for the best results, but you can frequently start driving traffic on your own.
Increase Your Law Firm’s Brand Visibility
Unlike other marketing methods (such as social media or email), SEO allows you to reach people who have never heard of you before. This is done by ranking for unbranded keywords.
Say, for instance, you work as a family lawyer in Houston, Texas. With the right SEO strategy, you can rank for terms like “Houston, Texas family law,” “family lawyer Houston,” “Houston, Texas family attorney,” “divorce attorney Houston, Texas,” and so on, even for people who have never heard of your law firm before.
SEO can help you get found by users looking for your services every day, no matter how long you’ve been in business.
Attract Authority-Boosting Backlinks
Backlinks (links to your site from other sites) are votes of confidence that your website is legitimate and provides value to users. And the greater the number of high-quality backlinks you have, the greater your website’s authority.
SEO enables you to produce content and website experiences that attract backlinks. These backlinks can improve your SEO, which can improve your Google rankings. Furthermore, links from other websites can potentially drive more traffic to your website.
Provide a Better and More Interactive Website Experience
There are numerous aspects to SEO, but the three most important are On-Page, Off-Page, and Technical SEO. And technical SEO is all about optimizing your website’s speed, user experience, and infrastructure to give your potential clients a better experience.
SEO will help you improve your website’s load speed, URL structure, internal linking strategy, site security, and more. These factors have an SEO impact, but they also ensure that users view your site as fast, safe, and professional.
When it comes to SEO, you’ll want to work with a reputable web developer to implement these technical optimizations so that your site looks good and has a strong SEO foundation.
The Results of SEO for Lawyers
According to a 2022 research study, SEO is the most effective marketing channel for 79% of law firms. This is not surprising, given that Google is the primary source of organic traffic for legal businesses.
In fact, SEO can result in a variety of outcomes for law firms, including:
- increased organic traffic
- increased conversions on site
- more backlinks
- improved content marketing
- improved site speed
- earned website authority
- increased referral traffic
- increased directory traffic
- increased local traffics
In short, law firms can’t afford to miss out on the many benefits that SEO can bring. While there are numerous law firm marketing strategies, SEO remains the most effective.
Important Factors of Lawyer SEO Marketing
These are three easily customizable areas to consider for law firm SEO marketing.
On-Site Optimizations
Most of these changes happen behind the scenes and won’t change your site’s appearance. But they will help you rank better on Google. Google knows how to index your site based on your header, content, URL, image, title tags, and meta attributions. This shows Google how to make your website easy to find for the people you want to reach.
Navigability
First impressions are important. People will not stay on your website long enough to consider becoming a client if it is difficult to navigate. This has an impact on your SEO ranking as well. The amount of time people spend on your site, on each page, and how many times they click your website only to immediately click the “back” button all impact your SEO. These factors influence what is known as your bounce rate. The higher your bounce rate, the less time people spend on your website, and the faster they leave it. Making it as simple as possible for visitors to find the information they seek will increase your bounce rate and ranking.
Content
Although it is easy to believe that keyword stuffing is the best way to create content, this is not true. People will come to your site if it has relevant, informative content that is updated regularly. It will also show Google that you are active and doing something worthwhile. This is also the most effective way to generate backlinks to your website.
Grow Your Law Firm with Search Engine Optimization
Law firms require SEO to increase their visibility in Google Search – the primary place users will look for legal services in their area. Lawyers who do not use SEO risk being trumped and outranked by their competitors.
While a comprehensive marketing strategy is always recommended, SEO is one channel you should not overlook. Following SEO best practices can improve your site’s content, foundation, security, and other factors that Google considers when ranking your site high in search results.
Call Us
Our digital marketing company can help you if you need SEO services for a law firm. We help lawyers connect with people who need their help the most. And we do it right when and where these potential clients are looking for an attorney: Google. Our digital marketing company has helped many law firms get to the top of search engine results pages (SERPs) like Google’s.
We’re ready to help you in the same way. Contact us today to schedule a free consultation with one of our SEO consultants. We will evaluate your legal marketing needs and tell you what we can do to meet them.
Call us at 832 694 1145 to learn more about our services and how SEO for lawyers can help your law firm get the leads it deserves.
