The acronym SEO stands for “search engine optimization” and refers to a marketing strategy that aims to generate traffic from the internet by increasing the visibility of a given website in search results.
A lawyer—or any business can set up a website or blog, but if it doesn’t appear on Google on relevant searches, people looking for legal help simply won’t find it. About 90% of all online experiences start with a search engine, according to Forbes.
As such, lawyers who don’t take advantage of this powerful marketing tool will miss out on an opportunity to reach potential clients where they already are: typing their legal problems into Google.
Why attorneys should invest in their online presence
Simply setting up a website or blog isn’t enough, though. To truly be successful, a lawyer will have to invest in their SEO to boost his/her rankings and ensure the website appears high on search engine results pages (SERPs).
According to Search Engine Watch, “SEO helps companies achieve higher visibility on search engines results pages (SERPs), increasing the likelihood of attracting new visitors.” Lawyers can accomplish this by using keywords that searchers are entering into Google.
The first step is to determine what keywords potential clients might use when looking for help—perhaps these people want an attorney who specializes in employment law, bankruptcy law, personal injury claims, business formation, and contract review services. The next step is for lawyers to incorporate those terms into their website or blog content.
For example, someone looking for an employment law attorney might type this phrase into Google.
Using the terms above as a guide, lawyers would ensure that these words appear on their websites and blogs so that they rank highly when someone searches for them online.
The importance of keywords for your website
Lawyers who want to appear near the top of SERPs have to use the specific keywords people are searching for, but not so much that it would be considered keyword stuffing (inserting this phrase into content multiple times in an unnatural way).
For example, someone performing a search for “employment law attorney New York” might see website content like this below.
As you can tell, there are several instances of the word “employment” and “law,” but overall it doesn’t seem like lawyers are trying too hard to include these keywords in their posts.
Ways to optimize your website for search engines
Law Firm SEO takes time, but there are other ways lawyers can optimize their websites or blogs that cost nothing. For instance, one way to optimize a website for search engines is by making sure the site uses clean coding and clearly-labeled folders and files.
This makes it easier for Google bots to crawl through the site and determine what its content is about. Lawyers should also make sure to create titles, subtitles, and meta descriptions for each webpage on their websites or blogs; this will help pages rank better in SERPs.
