Law Firm Online Presence: Improving Law Firm SEO

Improving law firm SEO involves optimizing not only the the basics of the website, but the content of each and every page. Web pages generally have declining SEO results the farther they are from the site homepage. This hampers their performance on search results. Optimizing the SEO of each webpage helps increase the website's discoverability and increases the chances of it ranking high in search results.

Increasing Discoverability

The best way to increase a website's discoverability is to make it easy for search engines to crawl. When search engines review, or crawl, a website, they search through each webpage and look over the content. They then index the webpage, or store its information. If it helps, think of the website as a library and search engine crawlers as a librarian.

Making sure search engines can crawl and index the firm website is the first step to increasing discoverability. A good way to do this is by implementing a site map. A sitemap is a file that lives on the website and contains all of that website's relevant web addresses, or URLs. Sitemaps make it easier for search engines to look over and store the information it finds on the website. Most website providers automatically generate a site map. In general, search engines crawl the web on an ongoing basis, revisiting sites for updates or new content. 

Once a website is crawled and indexed, search engines make sure it appears on appears on relevant search queries. This is called ranking. The more relevant the website is to a person's search request, the higher it'll rank in the results.

Search engines like Google continually crawl the web. It's important to update your website on an ongoing basis. That doesn't mean it needs to be updated daily but for the best results, continuous care, refinement, and additions reflect an active site. Sites that are not updated tend to rank lower in results as the data appears stale. While some websites are built on platforms that update sitemaps automatically, some don't. For websites that don't update automatically, manually submitting the most current sitemap is the fastest way to get search engines to index your content. Keeping the sitemap updated helps search engines understand the website's content, and make sure it gets to the people the law firm's trying to reach.

Content Priorities

The content featured on the website is critical to driving SEO traffic. Think about what the firm's ideal client would search to find your firm. Consider phrases such as:

• 'immigration attorney'
• 'immigration attorney near me'
• 'employment-based immigration'
•  'immigration firm that speaks spanish'

Consider the breadth of the search - larger results for 'immigration attorney near me', with a more targeted search resulting in a smaller set of results. The less firms that create content for the specific search phrase, the less competitive the phrase and therefore a higher change the firm will rank higher.

There are multiple ways of determining what content should be pushed on the website. A few good strategies are:

• Keyword/Key phrase Search: Creating content with keywords or phrases helps webpages rank better on the search results page, increasing the chances of potential clients seeing them. Consider the keyword/key phrase that attracts the firms ideal client.

• Create Ideal Client Persona: This is exactly what it sounds like. An ideal client persona, or buyer persona, is a representation of the law firm's ideal customer based on the services the law firms provides. While keywords can have a larger scope, buyer personas help drive a more targeted market.

• Look to Competitors: Competing law firms are also a good source of inspiration. Figure out what content they're pushing that you aren't. If there are topics competitors AREN'T covering that your ideal client is interested in, build content for those phrases.

• AI as an Idea Generator: If all else fails, it's a good idea to resort to AI for inspiration. Do NOT rely on AI for content creation, as there are simply too many issues. However, AI is a great ideation generator and can possibly also be used to generate the outline.

Any website should be built around the goal of serving its visitors, and this is no less true for law firm websites. Using these strategies can help attorneys easily decide what content they should feature. Simply publishing a lot of content isn't enough, especially if it isn't relevant to what clients are looking for. The key is to balance what visitors and clients want with the realities of the firm's content.

Rich Results

The burden of content optimization falls to the firm. One of the best ways of optimizing webpage content for search engine results is by making sure it shows up as a rich result. Rich results draw information from a webpage to display on the search results page, but only certain types of information. 

There are many kinds of rich results, but a few common ones are:

• Image packs: A row of images that click through to an image search. Having descriptive file names, a readable image URL, and an optimal image size all help increase the chances of a webpage showing up on an image pack.
• Local packs: These are physical locations search engines deem relevant to a search query. Including information like an address or business hours can greatly increase the chances of a webpage showing up on an image pack. For Google specifically, having a my business profile can further increase those odds.
• Reviews: Review stars and ratings can be shown for relevant items on the search results page. Results with reviews have a higher click-through rate than those that don't. For law firms, positive reviews can even help attract new clients.
• Site Links: An expanded list of webpage links under search result. This is usually for people who search an exact domain or website. They can help improve the click through rate by helping users get to the page they're looking for, straight from the results page.

There are many other types of rich results, but the above are those that are most relevant for law firms. Identifying the areas of practice, number of physical locations, and brand recognition can change which rich results are relevant for a law firm to optimize. The key is knowing what content is the most relevant for the firm and its visitors.

Conclusion

Improving law firm SEO takes builds off the basic SEO foundation to help take a website to the next level. Law firms that take steps to improve their SEO can expect:

• Search engines to have an easier time cataloguing and ranking their websites.
• A higher click-through rate and more traffic for webpages optimized for the search results page.
• Better chances of turning visitors into potential clients.

The better a website's SEO, the more its' chances of consistently ranking well among search engine results. This is also true for individual webpages. Optimizing every webpage may seem tedious and unnecessary, but it greatly helps the law firm standout among the sea of similar search results. 

Stay tuned for further ways to optimize your law firm's online presence by taking its' SEO to the next level.