Search engine optimisation (SEO) has myriad benefits for businesses across all industries and sectors. Surprisingly, however, many law firms and solicitors are simply failing to invest time, money and resources into the development of a powerful SEO strategy that will help them to enhance their online visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs) for key words and phrases, drive additional high-quality traffic, and increase their client base.
Although it is certainly true that a strong reputation within the industry, positive recommendations and word of mouth are three cornerstone elements of effectively driving business for many law firms across the country, those that are also sitting at the forefront of the digital revolution are starting to leverage powerful legal service search engine optimisation strategies to get ahead of their competition.
Let’s explore in a little more depth how SEO can help your law firm to remain adaptable to the changeable nature of search algorithms and contribute to the continued growth of your practice both now and long into the future.
Specialist SEO for law firms can enhance the visibility of your business in SERPs
Put simply, by improving your search engine visibility for all relevant search terms and phrases, your SEO strategy will help your site to secure increased streams of highly-qualified, highly convertible traffic. Without a comprehensive approach to SEO, your law firm will find it difficult to secure a strong return on investment (ROI) from your marketing spend and struggle to gain the traction you need to increase your reach and grow your client base.
The legal sector is highly competitive and as more solicitors start to try and capture the attention of your potential clients, it is becoming more important than ever before to take tangible steps towards differentiating yourself from your competition in positive and sustainable ways.
Effective SEO for solicitors should be designed with the unique needs of your business in mind. Securing the highest possible ranking position will ensure that your practice maintains maximum visibility in SERPs and outranks your closest competitors in the process. Successful strategies will therefore make it significantly simpler for your potential future clients to locate your firm online and quickly learn about the services you provide. Ensuring that your ideal audience knows where to find you is the first step towards building levels of growth and revenue that will help you to sustain your business moving forwards.
Legal service search engine optimisation strategies will drive additional business
Revenue growth will be facilitated by ranking well for the keywords and services your firm provides. By targeting a very specific set of keywords, the additional visitors clicking through to your site will be at a point in their customer journey where they are actively looking for legal representation or would like to take steps to actively retain the services of a legal professional. This is important because although your potential clients might have an idea of the services they require, they might not yet be aware of the existence of your firm. To ensure that they come to you and not a competitor firm, ranking well is vital.
It is entirely natural to be somewhat wary of the parameters of SEO. While it would be a mistake to present it as something that will immediately address every digital need of your business, it would also be wrong to underestimate the potential results a powerful, tailor-made SEO strategy can deliver.
Why?
Well, the importance of the tailor-made aspect of SEO cannot be emphasised enough because every law firm is unique. Let’s say, for example, that your firm specialises in family law and personal injury. If you want to effectively widen your client base, you aren’t going to want to start running a campaign that will appeal to potential clients looking for conveyancing services or advice regarding wills and probate. As with all things digital, understanding your audience is an essential part of connecting with the right people, in the right place, at the right time.
SEO for solicitors will help you drive a solid ROI from your marketing spend
From capturing the attention of people who weren’t even entirely aware that they could benefit from the services your legal firm provides to successfully out-performing your closest rival firm, a comprehensive approach to SEO will help you to place your business in the best possible position to leverage the most value from your investment.
Ensuring that you are monitoring the most valuable metrics is imperative to accurately determining the results your SEO efforts are driving for your business. It is one thing, for example, to secure 10x the amount of traffic you had a month ago, but it is another thing entirely to make sure that those additional visitors actually require your professional services or advice on a subject closely related to your area of legal expertise. If visitors to your site are satisfied with the information they find after clicking through from SERPs, the positive brand associations that will often result from this will help you to establish your business as a leading authoritative voice within your niche. In turn, this will start allowing you to establish a level of trust and confidence in your firm that will encourage your potential clients to employ your services over those offered by a competitor firm.
Now that we’ve looked at why SEO is so important, let’s explore a few ways in which partnering with a digital team specialising in tailored SEO for law firms can provide your business with the forward momentum you need to lay the solid foundational groundwork required to ensure all future optimisation efforts are fully supported to drive tangible, increasingly impressive results.
1. Target the correct keywords
Optimising for keywords that no one is searching for simply won’t deliver the results you want to see. The process of identifying relevant keywords can be complex and a period of research will be required to ensure you are focusing your optimisation efforts in the right places.
It is worth noting here that the legal sector has a significant volume of complex legal terms that might prove to be inaccessible for a large percentage of your ideal audience. Your SEO strategy might, therefore, be enhanced by avoiding complicated jargon while instead maintaining a focus on creating optimised content that everyone can easily understand and engage with.
2. Optimise meta descriptions
As your meta description will be visible in SERPs below the clickable link to your website, these few short sentences should succinctly provide your audience with an idea of what they can expect to find should they click through to engage with your content. Optimising this content with a relevant keyword and ensuring it is enticing enough to encourage people to click through can have a significant impact on how well your website performs in search.
3. Don’t neglect aesthetics
Search engines only want to recommend websites to searchers that will deliver a seamless and enjoyable user experience. Websites with an aesthetically pleasing layout and a carefully considered navigational structure will perform far more positively in search rankings because they will follow through on their promise to take the complexity out of obtaining legal representation.
4. The consistent importance of local SEO
In the legal field, local searches are really prevalent. Although the internet is undeniably a useful research tool, most potential clients will want to engage the services of a local legal firm that they can visit in person to discuss their needs in more detail.
As such, one of the core elements of your SEO strategy should be shaped to appeal directly to your local community. From getting involved with as many community initiatives as possible to updating your audience on the latest industry developments, there are myriad ways that SEO can help you to demonstrate that you are a trustworthy and dependable business. When targeting third-party sites such as Google My Business and promoting the locality of your firm, it is imperative to ensure your contact information is accurate and consistent to avoid missing out on any important client connections.
SEO is undeniably complex and if you are feeling overwhelmed or unsure as to where to begin, our dedicated team of optimisation professionals are ready to partner with your law firm to devise a strategy that will help you to increase your reach, maximise your client base, and make a positive and lasting impact on your niche.
