Internet Search For Legal Representation
In today’s day and age, if someone is looking for a lawyer, there’s a high probability that they’ll conduct an internet search online to find one. A survey by the National Law Review found that about 96% of people in need of legal advice or representation do an online search.
The survey reports that when most people sit down to do an online search, they choose Google over other search engines. Moreover, every day almost 3.5 billion Google searches are being conducted.
If you want to rank up in Google’s search results – and show up high enough to get clicks – then you need to care about SEO for lawyers or attorneys. Below we’ve briefly outlined important factors for your Law Firm’s SEO success – everything you need to know about getting your law firm to rank.
What is Attorney SEO?
Attorney search engine optimization entails a set of action plans, such improving the quality of your law firm’s website so that it becomes more attractive to Google and its algorithms.
Google is a powerful tool for lawyers and their law practice. The more you get the search engine to notice your website and view your website as trustworthy, reputable and authoritative, then the better the chances that your website will have be ranking highly in search results.
Importance Of Attorney SEO
The higher your website rank on a search engine results page (SERP), the more clicks you’re going to get. In addition, most people only contact one attorney, so you’ll want to make sure that you’re visible when they’re looking.
Nearly 2 to 3 percent of people visit the second page of Google’s search results. Less than one percent click through to a site once they get there. So if you’re on the 2nd page of Google (or further back) then you’re essentially invisible online to your target audience.
Therefore, if you want your law firm website to get clicks – meaning visits from potential clients – you really want to make sure that you rank on the first page for your practice areas in your service locations (city/cities).
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is one of the most impactful changing key factors for almost every online law firm or attorney service. Like no other factor, technical SEO can be a major contributor to your SEO success.
It’s also a bit hardest to get right—especially if you aren’t an SEO expert. Technical SEO, basically the measure of how “Google-friendly” your law firm’s website is. Whilst similar to user-friendliness, technical SEO also covers the other things like on-page optimization, website security and sitemaps.
However, as a newbie you may find that it is complicated to execute by yourself. Normally law firms decide to hire an SEO consultant specializing in SEO for law offices.
Here are some key things to keep in mind about technical SEO:
Ensure Your Website Follows All Of Google’s Guidelines of
Google is quite unclouded about the things you can do to improve your law firm’s technical SEO. Get yourself accustomed with the Webmaster Guidelines for tips on technical SEO.
Make sure your law firm website is fast and mobile-friendly
Two main and important factors for technical SEO include ensuring your website loads fast ( 2.5 seconds – the minimum time lapse) and renders well across a variety of screen sizes, especially mobile phones.
Ensure your law firm website is easy to navigate
If your law firm’s website is pretty much easy for a person to navigate, then chances are that a robot sent by Google to read and crawl your law firm’s website will be able to (1) Locate all your pages, and (2) understand what those pages are about and how helpful they are to website visitors. Give your website simple and easy-to-use menus, and link to other important pages on your website frequently.
Get everything set up properly
An interesting thing about technical SEO is that you just have to make sure you are set up with strong technical SEO from the beginning.
About Hiring SEO Experts
SEO is definitely a rewarding but time-intensive task. Moreover, the bitter truth regarding the reality of the situation is that many lawyers simply don’t have the time or flexibility to learn a new discipline.
At the very least, you can hire SEO experts. And they should have sound knowledge of the foundations that we described in this guide, as a prerequisite. Ask them about the importance of content, backlinks, and technical SEO, and go through the portfolio of their work thoroughly.
Lastly, make sure to check their references (reviews, case studies, etc) particularly from regarding other law firm campaigns. They must understand your industry very well and how to rank your site in an efficient manner. SEO for lawyers is a long-term journey. So, don’t expect to see your law firm’s search engine rankings improve right away. Be patient and weary of any promises that your rankings will go to the first page overnight. If you ever have any questions or would like to find out more how the Cyrusson team can help, feel free to book a call – we’re more than happy to chat and learn about your law firm’s situation!