Local SEO for Lawyers is defined as anything a legal firm can do to increase its visibility in search results for relevant local inquiries and convert that visibility into clients. Local SEO for lawyers focuses on local queries like ‘Michigan DUI lawyers’ or ‘lawyers near Dallas.’ Location modifiers indicate to Google that searchers desire something local to them or in a certain area. Local SEO enables legal firms to rank better in search engine results, making locating them easier for potential customers. Strong SEO, including comprehensive law firm SEO services, increases visibility, leads, and clients. Our industry page outlines how lawyers may utilize SEO to expand their practices.
What is Law Firm SEO?
Law Firm SEO, or search engine optimization for law firms, is improving a law firm’s internet presence to attract more visitors from search engines. This entails optimizing the law firm’s website and content to appear higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) for certain keywords and phrases related to legal services.
By boosting their search engine rankings, law firms can increase their visibility and trustworthiness, making it simpler for new clients to locate them. Law firm SEO is a professional sector that necessitates a thorough understanding of search engine optimization tactics and the unique challenges of the legal industry.
Benefits of SEO for lawyers
Investing in SEO provides various benefits to legal companies, including:
Increased Online Visibility and Credibility:
Higher search engine rankings make your legal company more visible to potential clients, which boosts your credibility.
Improved Search Engine Rankings:
Targeted SEO efforts will help your law firm rank better for specific keywords and phrases, bringing more relevant traffic to your website.
Increased Website Traffic and Engagement:
Optimized content attracts more visitors, which leads to greater engagement and inquiries.
Enhanced Reputation and Authority:
Consistently ranking in the top search results establishes your law company as a leader in your field.
Improved Conversion Rates and Lead Generation:
Successful SEO techniques transform website visitors into customers, increasing your lead generation efforts.
Cost-Effective Marketing Strategy:
Compared to traditional advertising tactics, SEO is a more affordable strategy for attracting new customers and expanding your brand.
By employing SEO, law firms may identify themselves as thought leaders, attract more clients, and achieve long-term company success.
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5 Top Tips – SEO for Solicitors & Other Lawyers
Google indexes your website using 200 different ranking variables. Of course, some are more vital to the construction industry than others. Implementing these top five SEO tactics should majorly impact your website’s traffic.
1. Targeting keywords
As an attorney, your website should provide useful, high-quality information that engages users.
First, define the search terms relevant to your areas of expertise, such as “mergers and acquisitions,” “conveyancing,” “wills,” or “divorces.”
Does your website provide clear information about the legal services you offer? For example, what search terms will a home buyer use if you specialize in conveyancing in London? Keyword research should assist you in identifying important legal keywords and improving your ranking.
When you begin developing content, consider the following:
Does your website clearly state the type of legal work you do and the places you cover, such as personal law in London?
Can clients find your legal services, such as conveyancing, personal, and commercial law?
Is it evident how successful you are based on your qualifications and client reviews?
Do you disclose your fee structure?
What would a client learn from viewing your website? Are you offering clear and helpful answers to your client’s questions, such as how long conveyancing takes?
Is your content current and up to date?
It can be difficult for legal websites to create diverse material around a single term. To increase your site’s visibility, your material should include as many versions of your target keywords as possible, including long-tail forms.
For example, one individual may search “house conveyancing,” while another may inquire “how to choose a solicitor for conveyancing my house.” As a result, your website should include as much content as possible to cover all potential variations for all of the legal services you provide or hope to rank highly for.
To rank for “conveyancing in London,” you must additionally target keywords such as “how to choose a conveyancer,”; “questions to ask your conveyancer,” and “conveyancing tips for London homeowners.”
Google values useful, trustworthy, and authoritative information and prioritizes sites that supply it over those that do not. The more value your material provides to potential clients, the higher your site’s ranking will be.
2. Add Keywords to your Site Meta Info and Page Content
Now that you know your target keywords, it’s time to start creating pages. To assist Google in identifying and ranking each page for those terms, you should consider two of the most critical factors to optimize:
When visitors search for your website, they see the page title first.
The meta description is a one- to two-line summary in search results.
Ensure your tags are descriptive and include information about your services and locations. So, if you specialize in conveyancing solicitors in Cornwall, your title tag may say “Conveyancing Solicitors in Cornwall.”
You must have access to your website’s content management system (CMS) to alter your meta information and page names.
Website platforms like Shopify and WordPress include simple input areas for them, but most prominent CMSs allow you to enter them quickly.
3. Make sure Technical SEO is Set up Correctly
Optimizing your website’s infrastructure is critical for both usability and SEO.
But what exactly do we mean by technical SEO? Here are some key variables to consider:
Site Structure and Speed
Broken links (404 errors)
Image Alt Tags
Site localization
Canonical tags
Structured data, like review snippets
You can approach technical SEO in various ways. The easiest method is to conduct a technical SEO audit to identify any flaws.
Free website scanning tools like Google Page Speed Insights are also available. However, if you are not a professional, it can be tough to determine how to use the data!
4. Create Relevant, Useful Content
Search searches may take time, but targeting long-tail keywords through blog material can increase traffic.
For example, 100 people every month may search for “How to choose a solicitor for house conveyancing.” That’s approximately 1200 people per year. A blog post with a title optimized for keyword search will generate traffic to your website. Additionally, you may include geographical tags such as “in London.”
Writing a broad-based post on your legal services will increase engagement, even in areas outside of your practice. As a result, this has a major beneficial influence on your engagement numbers and can lead your content to an even larger audience, including
Potential customers
Site visitors who increase your interaction metrics and share your post with others
Shares on social media that increase your digital reach.
Adding backlinks to the original content to boost your website’s authority
Providing new content creates an opportunity to grow an audience. In turn, Google will continue to crawl and index your fresh content using the relevant search terms. Focusing on keyword variations and three- to five-word long-tail forms in your blog content makes sense for the greatest SERP performance.
Always include a call to action at the end of each piece so potential clients know what to do and how to contact you if they require your legal services.
5. Supercharge your SEO with link-building
While a technically sound site and keyword targeting are critical for SEO success, link building is the most effective approach to take your SEO to the next level.
But how can you obtain backlinks from other websites?
SEO professionals employ guest blogs, directories, and press mentions.
A few backlinks from authoritative legal websites can help your rating. However, be cautious because developing low-quality links can be perceived as spammy by Google and penalized.
Why Local SEO is Important for Law Firms
AttorneySync polled 5,000 Google Consumer Survey respondents. We asked:
“If you thought you needed a lawyer, how would you find one?”
What are the top two responses?
Google has a 17.2% share, whereas Internet has 11.7%.
The most recent legal profession research that I’ve come across yields comparable findings.
According to Clio’s Legal Trends Report 2019, 57% of respondents looked for a lawyer independently rather than through a referral from a top source.
In the 2019 Hiring An Attorney survey by Martindale-Avvo, respondents were asked about search engines (17%).
“What resources did you use to find an attorney?”
If you hadn’t guessed by now, the search came up right at the top:
Google (43 percent)
Furthermore, internet review sources such as Yelp, Avvo.com, Lawyers.com, Google, and online directories scored 46.53%. And how many people visit websites like these? Yes, a Google search.
Search engines (organic search), particularly Google, are a popular stop on a legal services consumer’s path to find a lawyer. Local SEO is how you attract and convert customers through organic search.
Understanding the Local Legal Services Searcher
Understanding the local legal services searcher is critical to good local law firm SEO. Too many lawyers and legal SEO specialists do not prioritize audience research.
While most focus on bottom-of-the-funnel lawyer searches (e.g., Chicago personal injury lawyers), few target potential customers earlier in their recruiting process. Most local legal searches are for research on a life-legal issue.
For example, many people look for solutions to queries about being arrested before looking for a criminal defense lawyer in their area.
Geographic modifiers are another prevalent error among local legal services searchers. Many legal queries do not include a geolocation parameter (for example, lawyers near me). Others are tailored to each state, county, and city in the United States. Indeed, in major metropolitan regions, these searches may be influenced by neighborhoods and other local communities.
While you should undertake research for your firm, here are a few more notes from my experience:
Proximity is very important to local legal service users.
In many cases, people do legal searches outside of business hours.
Many legal services consumers will call firms without seeing their websites.
Consumers of legal services value reviews more than rankings. The ranking is vital but insufficient on its own.
Understanding the relationship between how legal services users search and how Google localizes results is critical for optimizing local SEO results.
Local Law Firm SEO
Local SEO is another critical factor in developing SEO strategies for solicitors and lawyers. Local SEO is optimizing a website to display prominently for those seeking a local service, which may include many potential clients for law firms.
Important keywords could be:
‘Solicitor in London’
“Family lawyer in the Southeast”
‘Divorce Lawyer Near Exeter’
‘Best Lawyers in London’
‘Local conveyancing solicitors’
To appear for these search phrases, you must first determine how to produce pages or content targeting these terms, which we will cover later in the guide.
Another crucial aspect of local SEO is appearing on Google Maps through Google My Business.
The greatest approach to appear prominently on Google Maps is to obtain favorable evaluations for your business. This is not always easy for law firms, but consider how to incentivize positive reviews for any previous clients.
Local Service Ads for Lawyers
Consider the first two findings. These are Local Services Ads listings (indicated by the red x and Ad). With this advertising solution, lawyers pay Google per lead. The third result (represented by the red x and Ad) is also an advertisement listing—this time from Google Ads, the company’s pay-per-click auction platform.
Lawyers are qualified to run Local Services Ads where available. Lawyers who run Local Services Ads can also apply for Google Screened status. At the time of writing, Google Screened is only available in select verticals in the United States and the United Kingdom.
Local Pack for Lawyers
Local Pack listings are derived from a business’s Google Business Profile (GBP) listings.
Google generally generates these results based on ranking parameters such as relevancy, distance, and prominence.
In my opinion, the lawyers and law firms with the most local pack visibility have the following three characteristics:
Distance (proximity) – They are close to what Google believes to be the searcher’s location or the location phrase entered into a search.
Prominence: Reviews – They receive the most positive feedback and ratings.
Prominence: Links – They have strong backlink profiles (in terms of the number of connecting root domains), particularly regarding geographic relevancy.
Whether starting, moving, or building new offices, consider the relevance of proximity to your law firm’s physical location in terms of local SEO. In my experience, you should consider the following factors:
Proximity to the target audience.
The relative level of competition near and in the area.
In my experience, you should avoid being in the same location as other law offices, particularly those with similar GBP categories to yours.
Aside from distance, prominence is the most important consideration for allocating resources. Law firms that can generate a competitive number of reviews on GBP and around the web will likely have the best local pack visibility.
Lawyers should prioritize obtaining a competitive number of GBP reviews initially. These are critical for visibility and converting local pack visibility into potential clients.
Get Reviews for Your Firm
After you’ve reviewed your own GBP, I recommend focusing on legal services review sites, sites that rank for searches on your name, and general review sites.
Of course, you should also create citations. Begin with the best citation sources for attorneys. As with links, prioritize citation sites that rank for your desired keywords. Google is already alerting you that these sites are relevant because they appear in the results of your searches.
Finally, despite recent reports of their extinction, connections are still important in my experience. However, not all linkages are equal in value. Instead of building connections from high-DA sites, look for strategies to acquire topically and locally relevant links.
Here are a few techniques to effectively create local links:
Go hyperlocal. Start your prospecting research with Google Maps. Begin with your firm location and work outward to discover more local link-building options (such as neighborhoods, blocks, and other hyper-local terminology).
Use crawlers to look for link opportunities. Many sites have difficulties providing excellent local link development possibilities (e.g., broken links, links to obsolete information, etc.). Crawlers can also help you find the path of least resistance for gaining a link (for example, they already connect to pages similar to yours).
Use competition-based prospecting. Look for sites that connect to your competitors but not to you. However, do not stress about mimicking competitor link profiles. Most links you’ll find there are unlikely to be particularly useful. You will waste time and money attempting to create links that will not move the dial.
I understand there are numerous more local search ranking considerations. I know the impact of modifying your company’s name to contain keywords, adding services, and using behavioral cues (interaction with your GBP profile). However, if I had to choose only three, I would go with distance, reviews, and links.
You may also find examples of local pack listings that lack these qualities.
These are frequently the result of spam or non-compliant Google Business Profiles (e.g., lead generation sites). Like all spam, these strategies work until they don’t. Participating in these schemes, at least in the United States, may also violate the Rules of Professional Conduct, which govern a lawyer’s conduct.
GBP Guidelines for Individual Lawyer Practitioners
Google Business Profile Help offers guidelines for individual practitioners:
An individual practitioner is a public-facing professional who typically serves their consumer base. Individual practitioners include doctors, dentists, lawyers, financial planners, and insurance/real estate agents. Practitioners’ business profiles may incorporate titles or degree certifications.
Individual practitioners should develop their dedicated business profiles if:
They have a public-facing position. Support staff should not develop their business profiles.
They can be contacted immediately at the verified location within the specified hours.
Practitioners should not use numerous Business Profiles to cover all of their skills. Corporate sales associates and lead generation agents are not individual practitioners and are ineligible for a Business Profile.
Multiple practitioners in one location.
If the practitioner is among numerous public-facing practitioners at this location:
The corporation should construct a Business Profile for this location independent of the practitioner.
The title of the practitioner’s Business Profile should only include their name and not the name of the organization.
There are various aspects to consider while considering whether to develop individual practitioner profiles.
First and foremost, the standards allow for only one listing per practitioner. According to the standards, lawyers should not create GBP ads for each practice area they cover. Multiple practice areas should be addressed using categories.
Second, Google may prefer one business listing to another for the same firm. For example, a physical office location listing may compete with an individual practitioner listing for the same search term. Individual practitioner listings with fewer ratings may be displayed instead of office listings with many reviews. This may be problematic from a branding and conversion standpoint.
Third, law firm owners should establish explicit policies regarding the ownership of individual GBP listings. Keep in mind that reviews are linked to listings. As a result, if a particular lawyer receives ratings on their individual practitioner listing, the reviews migrate with the listing and may follow the lawyer to a competitor company.
Generally speaking, solo and small enterprises that do not serve many clients might consider consolidating their “GBP equity” in fewer profiles. Creating profiles for many locations and practitioners without receiving sufficient reviews is unlikely to result in new clients. Larger businesses, on the other hand, with significant customer volumes, should be strategic about optimizing exposure across locations and practice areas.
Tactical Google Business Profile Optimizations for Lawyers
Business Name
If you conduct a bottom-of-the-funnel “lawyer lookup” search for a competitive location and practice area, you will come across at least one firm with keywords in their business name. All three listings will likely use this strategy in many competitive legal SERPs. Whether you like it or not, this works well right now.
Before altering your GBP’s business name section, consider a few things.
First, consider the potential ramifications for your brand. Including keywords may reduce or harm your brand equity.
Second, make sure that your jurisdiction authorizes the usage of trade names.
Third, if you decide to change your firm’s name, notify both your state bar and your state’s business registration. Failure to officially change your name may result in complications with your GBP listing, including suspension.
Business Category
Selecting business categories can significantly impact your company’s local pack exposure and conversion rates. Ideally, you can identify the key category most relevant to your practice. In addition, you should include as many applicable categories as possible.
While some local SEO professionals have recommended that adding many categories can “dilute” a listing’s visibility, this has not been my experience.
Keep in mind that these categories appear in local pack listings. While Google usually matches the most relevant category to the query, it does not always get it correctly. Conduct your tests and studies to determine how different category settings affect your visibility and ability to convert searchers into potential clients.
Photos & Videos
People choose to hire lawyers rather than logos. Using photographs and videos on your GBP is one of the most effective methods to encourage a searcher to interact with your listing and convert it into a possible client. Here are some samples of photos and movies that are useful for lawyers:
Client testimonials: You may turn testimonials into images and record satisfied customers singing your praises.
Community service: Emphasize local community service participation.
Leadership: Emphasize professional recognition and leadership roles.
Explainer videos: Make videos offering expertise, skills, and experience in a specific industry.
USP videos: Make videos that establish you as an authority in your field. Describe why you are uniquely qualified to meet your client’s demands.
Products & Services
Lawyers prefer to think about services rather than products. However, in the context of GBP, lawyers should consider including Products in their profiles.
GBP Products appear prominently in SERPs. They’re also very visual.
Furthermore, GBP Services has a disproportionate impact on visibility. Adding as many relevant services as feasible appears to have a larger impact on local pack exposure than it should.
Services also receive high prominence in local pack and map finder results.
Consider how different Services affect your firm’s capacity to convert searchers into potential clients.
View Claire Carlile’s Add and Manage Google Business Profile Products and Services.
Updates
GBP upgrades are excellent at increasing engagement and conversions. Law firms should test updates at different points of the legal services consumer journey. Use UTM tagging for Google Business Profile Update URLs. That way, you can see which updates generate the most engagement and clients!
Setting up your law firm’s website
Developing a professional and user-friendly website is important to establish your law firm’s online presence. Here are some important points to keep in mind.
Choosing a Reliable Web Hosting Service
A dependable web hosting provider guarantees that your law firm’s website is constantly available and accessible to prospective clients. When choosing a web hosting service, consider the following factors:
Uptime and Reliability: Select a host with a high uptime guarantee to ensure your site is always available.
Speed and performance: Faster loading times are critical for user experience and SEO.
Security and Data Protection: Ensure the host has strong security measures to protect your website and customer data.
Customer Support and Service: Look for a host who provides outstanding customer service to help with concerns.
Scalability and Flexibility: Select a host that can expand with your law firm’s requirements.
Selecting a Website Platform with a Robust CMS
A robust content management system (CMS) website platform is required for building and managing your legal firm’s website. A decent content management system should offer:
Ease of Use and Navigation: The CMS should be easy to update and maintain.
Customization and Flexibility: Look for a platform that can be customized to match your legal firm’s specific requirements.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Capabilities: The CMS should enable SEO-recommended practices, including meta tags, alt text, and clean URLs.
Integration with Social Media and Other Online Platforms: Make sure the CMS can work with social media and other tools to help you improve your online presence.
Security and Data Protection: The platform should include robust security capabilities to safeguard your website and client data.
WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal are popular web systems for legal offices. Targeted SEO recommends WordPress for its SEO-friendly features and versatility. We specialize in SEO for WordPress CMS websites, allowing you to fully utilize these possibilities. WordPress is widely used and provides significant SEO options, making it an excellent choice for legal companies. However, we also have experience optimizing SEO on other CMS platforms, so we can fulfill your company’s demands regardless of which system you use.
By carefully configuring your law firm’s website with a dependable hosting service and a powerful CMS, such as WordPress, you can lay a solid basis for your online presence and attract more potential clients.
Localized Organic for Lawyers
Now, let’s look into localized organic findings. Here are some of the localized organic results for the same sample query “lawyers near London”:
For most bottom-of-the-funnel legal keywords (such as a lawyer or law firm), localized organic results come beneath Local Services Ads, Ads, and Local Packs.
To optimize your localized organic search strategy, prioritize top-of-the-funnel research questions (e.g., how to file). These queries typically do not return LSAs or Local Packs. As a result, traditional localized organic results stand out much more.
Notice that this query is not modified, but Google returns customized results based on the searcher’s location (in this example, Michigan).
When developing your local content strategy, be important to research and analyze localized organic SERPs to see what Google returns for both regionally changed and unmodified inquiries. While these queries may not convert as many clients as bottom-of-the-funnel searches, their volume makes them highly useful.
Links impact localized organic search results more than the local pack. Large sites with numerous links typically dominate these results. These usually include:
Legal Directories
General Directories
Legal Review Sites & Law Firms
If you have a newer site with little content or a site that has struggled to build links, ranking in competitive localized organic search will be difficult. If you go hyper-local and employ niche marketing, you might succeed in the long tail. There is typically less competition in these SERPs, but there can still be a lot of value even with low volume.
Final Thoughts
Local law firm. SEO may be very competitive. Suppose you have a direct-to-consumer practice in a major metropolitan region (e.g., personal injury, criminal defense, divorce). Controlling most of the local pack market can be difficult in that case. Nonetheless, you should commit to increasing your local pack visibility long-term. It is one of the most valuable sources of online attention.