Local SEO Tips for Lawyers & Legal Firms

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The need for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has increased with the digital transformation of businesses. Everything is available right through a click.
Organizations, including legal firms, need to be proactive and ensure that their websites appear on the top of search engine pages. It will increase website visibility and rankings. Also, it accelerates website traffic and boost conversions.

Local Search Stats

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97% of people learn about a local company online than anywhere else.

28% of local searches done by people result in purchases.

So, it makes sense for businesses to hire a local SEO company. It is even more crucial for law firms as your potential clients will be searching for your business online.

Introduction

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With the total number of lawyers reaching 1.33 million in the U.S. alone, imagine the level of competition you have!
Whether you are a lawyer practicing independently or have a giant law firm, you need to stay ahead of your competition to succeed in the long run. That is where having a strong local SEO strategy can help.
You can make your legal firm appear in the local searches by optimizing your SEO strategy.
Let's take a look at a few handy local SEO tips for your law firm that will give you an edge over competitors.

Local SEO Best Practices for Law Firms

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1. Start with a Google My Business (GMB) Page

Creating a GMB page is the first step towards initiating your legal firm's SEO campaign. With the help of GMB, you can easily promote your law firm's profile and website on Google search and Google maps.
GMB page will help you connect with your prospective clients. Also, it lets you post updates on your firm's profile.
Inside the GMB, you can see how your clients interact with your law firm on Google results.
Create a GMB page for your law firm. By doing it, you enable your prospective clients to see your firm's phone numbers, websites, and location on the Google map. It will increase your chances of being contacted by prospective clients. Here are the points you need to keep in mind while optimizing your listing in Google:

• Begin with a comprehensive description of your legal firm by listing the various kinds of legal services you provide. Make sure you include relevant keywords in the description.
• Make your GMB page visually appealing by uploading a lot of photos of your firm.
• Make it a point to select the right categories: divorce lawyer, family law attorney, immigration attorney, and more for your legal firm.
• Include your legal firm's phone number and complete address along with a link to your website.
• Provide accurate information about your legal firm and update it at regular intervals.

A GMB page gives you an insight into the website visits you get through it.
You can get an overview of the number of prospective clients who contacted you through your listed phone number. Further, you can also check the number of reviews you have received so far.

2. Work on Keyword Research

Keywords lay a strong foundation for your SEO strategy. Look for keywords that best describe your niche.
For instance, if you are a divorce lawyer, make sure to use it as your primary keyword. Once you have listed your keywords, you can go ahead and set up an account using Google's Ads platform.
The account will allow you to leverage Google's free keyword planner tool. It will help you get ideas for more relevant keywords, thereby optimizing your SEO campaign for generating rich search engine results.
Further, you must consider two broad keyword categories of legal practices:
Hiring Intent
The objective of such keywords is to show that a search is being done to take some action. You can use these keywords to optimize your website's homepage. You can leverage these keywords to describe the legal services offered by your firm as well.
Research Intent
As the name research intent indicates, you can use these keywords to find relevant information about a particular topic. These keywords can add value to your blogs and FAQ pages available on your website. In short, you can use research intent keywords for branding and creating a buzz about your legal practice.

3. Work on Website Optimization through Local Keyword Data

You need to optimize your website by adding local keywords to your web page. It will help Google to understand that your website is related to a local business.
For instance, if you are a divorce lawyer in Denver, you can use the keyword "Divorce lawyer in Denver." Further, you can incorporate similar local and relevant keyword data on your website.
Here are a few things to keep in mind while optimizing your website with local keywords:

• Make sure your website's title tag includes the name of your city along with your keyword. For E.g., you can search for "Houston Personal Injury Lawyers" and see results like this.
  
• Ensure that the pages on your website have local keywords with the H1 tag.
• Incorporate your local keywords throughout the content on your website. However, make sure to keep the flow of keywords natural. Make sure you do not force the keywords inside the content.
• Try to include your legal firm's location and keyword in the URL. For instance, a divorce lawyer in New York can come up with "www.nycdivorcelawyers.com."
• The images you include should have proper ALT tags with local keywords. For instance, the filename of the image you upload should be "Newyork-divorce-lawyers.jpg."
• The final step is to incorporate an embedded Google map on your website's contact page.
  

4. Incorporate Citations in Your Website

In this step, you can get an edge over your competition by creating a strong SEO foundation through citations. It consists of your company's Name, Address, and Phone number (NAP) on various websites across the web.
Make sure to include your NAP on your website. Include it in your contact page and the footer section. You can create citations by using listings available on various directories.
Apart from your GMB page, few other categories of directories include:
General and National Business Directories
Such directories include websites like Yellowpages, Yelp, and Better Business Bureau, among others.
You can also create a Facebook page for your legal firm.
Local Directories
You should also get your firm listed in local directories, such as your state-specific Chamber of Commerce website. Ensure your NAP is consistent through all the directories.
Industry-Related Directories
You can list your firm in law-related directories such as Findlaw and Justia. Most of the industry-related directories are free. Make sure you leverage them.
You can get your law firm listed on paid directories. However, make sure to use Google Analytics to determine if the paid directories help you get the desired traffic and conversions.

5. Include Links in Your Attorney Website

Links mainly refer to inbound links that can be placed on other websites. When a visitor clicks on a particular inbound link, he/she is directed towards your website.
As a rule of thumb, more high-quality inbound links mean better reach for your law firm. Manage to garner some inbound links from your field's reputed websites. It will increase your firm's credibility and reputation.
Here's how you can start building relevant inbound links for your legal firm:
Directories
You can use local, general, and legal directories for getting inbound links. Directories can also help you connect with your prospective clients, thereby helping you increase your business.
Leverage Offline Relationships
As a practicing lawyer or attorney, you might be having a plethora of personal affiliations. For instance, you can ask a law firm that recommends clients to you to link your website on their official website and vice versa. It will benefit both parties.
You can also sponsor local events and get a membership for various law associations. It will help to create diverse linking opportunities for your law firm.
Analyze Your Competitors
Another great way of generating inbound links is to keep a close look at the websites that your competitors are linking to. This way, you will link to those websites and expand your linking opportunities.

6. Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly

Do you know mobile devices accounted for 48.59% of web page views globally in 2020? So, it is important to have a mobile-optimized website for your legal firm. It will ensure that the prospective clients using their mobile devices to search for lawyers find out your website, thereby increasing your conversion rate.
Take a look at this mobile responsive website from an Austin based legal firm.
Further, having a mobile-friendly website optimizes your site for SEO. All in all, a mobile responsive website is a critical factor in the ranking.

7. Improve Your Website's Speed

Make sure your site loads instantly when a prospective client visits your website. Provide a smooth browsing experience to your users. You can easily check your website's speed through the Google pagespeed insight tool.
If your website's speed score is low, you can increase its speed by minimizing the image size & minifying the CSS/JS. Keeping the size to 100kb is ideal. Also, make sure you save images as JPGs rather than PNGs.
For E.g., This houston based real estate firm has optimized the websites speed in such a way that it passes all core web vitals assessment.

8. Focus on Generating Client Reviews on Google as a Lawyer

You should aim to get genuine and positive client reviews for your legal firm on Google Reviews, a best-in-class Google tool. It is a great way of improving your ranking as well as credibility in the legal field.
Start by providing impeccable legal services to your clients. After doing it, you can email them with a link to your GMB page and request them to leave a review for you.
Apart from Google, you can also use high ranking websites such as Yelp and Avvo to improve your local lawyer searches.

9. Make Way for Blogging

Create relevant blog content revolving around your legal practice. It is a great way to level up your local SEO strategy.

• It will improve your website's search engine rankings.
• It will help you to focus on keywords that people frequently search for.

For instance, your potential clients might be searching for divorce lawyers in Denver. You can provide them with the relevant information by writing an elaborate blog on the topic "how to get a divorce in Denver." It will give you access to potential clients looking for divorce lawyers in Denver.
For E.g., Take a look at this attractive blog section from Sharp Criminal Attorney.
You will also get website visits from readers interested in garnering information about divorce. They might also forward it to their acquaintances. This, in turn, will accelerate your engagement rates and increase the credibility of your website.

10. Incorporate Schema Markup in Your Website

Schema markup is structured data that helps search engines generate rich snippets of your search results.
You can add this markup code to your website. It will provide a comprehensive description of your legal practice in search results. This, in turn, will increase the visibility of your website, thereby significantly improving your click-through rates.

11. Track and Analyze Your Website Results

Now, you know all about creating a high-end SEO strategy for your legal firm. The next step is to analyze how well your website performs after SEO implementation. You need to keep track of three metrics, i.e., ranking, traffic, and conversions.
For E.g., Take a look at the insider screenshot from SEMRush - a traffic monitoring tool.
The ranking analysis will give you an overview of your optimized keywords' performance. Reviewing traffic will let you know how your SEO strategy shapes up over time. Further, you must also keep a check on your conversion metrics. It will help you find out the number of clients you are getting through your SEO campaign.

Wrap Up

A well-planned local SEO campaign can help you pave new avenues of success for your legal firm. It will increase your website's ranking and bring ample clients onboard through high conversion rates.
Incorporate the steps mentioned above and tips, and you will be good to go with a high-end SEO strategy.
If you are an independent lawyer or a legal firm looking to gain Local SEO rankings, get in touch with us now!