The times when your good reputation was everything you needed to attract new customers are over.
Of course, the reputation still plays an important role but only after they hear about you.
And today the most important thing is to be just one click away from the eyes of your customers.
The online competition and lawyer seo marketing is a vast one and it seems impossible to stand out, but not everybody knows how to tailor SEO strategies for the legal industry.
There are many optimization tactics that can be applied to a variety of industries, but when it comes to the legal vertical of marketing things are a bit more ‛touchy’ due to certain regulations.
That’s why lawyers need to be very careful when they represent their firms online.
We have put together 4 Key SEO tips for lawyers that are used by Law Firm SEO Experts.
These key steps, along with bit of hard work on your part, should get you on the first page of search results without the violation of advertising guidelines and a chance for penalties.
1. Intention & Fingertips
Before you start optimizing your lawyer’s firm website, you need to do your keyword research as the first step. The main thing you need to concentrate on is the intention of the potential buyers.
You need to find the words that clearly indicate that the person searching is ready to sign up for legal services. The second thing is at the searcher’s fingertips – some terms have higher search volume and they will get you much more traffic.
The key is to figure out how most of the people name certain things. We could also be calling your profession ‛attorneys’ but we still use ‛lawyers’, don’t we? So, the terms have to be related to the area of your practice and you need to find out how people call these terms in their own way.
Basically, it is the search for synonyms that everyone will understand.
2. Ready for Action
Today there isn’t a single website without the call to action buttons. But very few of them position them in the right places.
They pop-up everywhere you scroll, become violent and repulsive. On the other hand, without them, you won’t seem like someone that is eager to solve your client’s problems.
In order to make visitors want to take immediate action, your CTAs must shout ‛Let’s do it together and let’s do it now!’ without being too pushy.
You should follow the lead of family lawyers Sydney area offers who have positioned their call to action above the fold and their phone number is in the header of every page.
That way they give you the CTAs right away and let you scroll down in peace.
It’s like they’re saying ‛We are here for you and we’re ready’. No exclamation mark, but it sounds familiar, right? Remember our talk about the synonyms?
3. Writing for machines & people
When it comes to making the content machine-understandable, your main tool is the HTML code called the Schema.
This is how search engines ‛understand’ the relationship between the different parts of the content, so this code must be applied to biographies and names of lawyers, addresses, emails, phone numbers, and reviews.
The legal industry has its own set of this code and because of the certain regulations mentioned at the beginning, it must be used. But these regulations also apply to the content written for humans.
A large number of websites hire content writers with unique voices and creative styles in order to make the content for people more personal, but when it comes to legal professions content writers must come from the profession or they need to have a wide knowledge of it.
There is much less creative freedom because the content must be drafted by JDs, paralegals or lawyers. There are some strict guidelines when it comes to publishing your legal advice online, so you must be very careful who you’re gonna hire for the job.
4. Sort it out
Given the fact that your content is indexed by the machines it suffices to say this will be done in a systematic and methodical way. In order to allow Google to make this organization of information right, you need to sort it out in a logical manner.
And this is not just for the sake of crawling machines, but it will also help people to find the content they’re looking for much easier. That’s why you should have the page for each area of your practice.
The first step is to establish an overall theme as the focus of the entire website and then to divide it to subtopics that should be arranged one per every page. If you follow these easy two steps there is no doubt that search engines will organize it in a way that will allow your visitors to find everything they’re looking for.
In order to attract customers and to make them take an immediate action, you need to recognize their intention and how to speak their language. You need to let them know you’re ready when they are, but you mustn’t push them. If every piece of information is in its place they’re gonna find it in no time.
That’s why SEO marketing is not an option anymore, it’s a matter of survival.