Why Law Firm SEO Is Essential for Long-Term Success
Does law firm SEO work?
There’s a lot of contradicting information online – while SEO for law firms is certainly popular, some consider it not an effective strategy, but rather a fad without any tangible results.
And the truth is that sometimes that’s the case.
Many law firms allocate a big chunk of their marketing budget towards SEO only to get marginal, if any, results.
But does this mean that law firm search engine optimisation is not effective?
Not necessarily.
SEO is simply as effective a strategy as the company that’s behind it. There are many self-acclaimed SEO experts that promise to quickly get a website ranked, but end up taking many months to deliver even marginal results.
And while some of this can be attributed to the steep competition for certain high-reward keywords, most of the time the fault lies behind outdated approaches, lack of consistency and misguided efforts, that ultimately turn an SEO campaign into a failure.
Ultimately, even a marketing company for dentists, for instance, can be effective in many fields, including legal practices, if they follow the fundamental principles of sound SEO strategies.
Why SEO for Lawyers Can Be Effective
Despite the mixed opinions regarding SEO for attorneys, it can be very beneficial to law firms that manage to get in front of their audience online.
In fact, according to stats published by JurisPage, three out of four consumers looking for an attorney used online recourses. This means that the large majority of your audience is already online, hoping to find solutions to their problems.
If you can rank high for relevant keywords in Google rankings, that can bring in the majority of traffic from that keyword to your website. The same report by JurisPage claims that the top result in the rankings get 27% of traffic, the second one gets 20% and the third one gets 13%.
So while the competition for certain keywords can be steep, the rewards for ranking high are also huge. As shown by the stats, the top few results share a big chunk of the traffic, with lower results getting significantly less visitors.
Pillars of Successful SEO for Lawyers
As with any competitive market, ranking on search engines requires following the best practices and making sure that long-term results are always a priority, instead of chasing quick-fix solutions that are always popular among novice marketers.
All serious SEO services providers use Google Webmaster Guidelines, and that is a good starting point to look for when beginning your search for an SEO company.
With that in mind, here are a few essential parts of a sound SEO strategy for lawyers:
1. Research
The first and perhaps most important step of a comprehensive attorney SEO strategy is doing the research of the local market. Understanding which keywords are the most important to rank for, as well as gauging the difficulty of ranking for them, is what becomes the fundamental pillar of the entire marketing strategy.
Finding out what the competition is ranking for can also give a great inkling on which keywords yield the best results.
Also, it’s important to realise that with law firm SEO, it is usually a numbers game – while the goal should be to rank as highly as possible for the most important keywords, it’s equally important to target multiple keywords so that all segments of the market are reached.
2. Website Optimisation
Any off-site SEO efforts will be meaningless if the website isn’t optimised according to the guidelines of Google and other search engines.
It helps search engines understand and match website pages with relevant keywords, ensuring that users get relevant results on search engines, and you get targeted traffic to your website.
While website optimisation might seem like a difficult process, it can be handled efficiently by an experienced legal SEO service provider. Usually, but not necessarily, a big part of the optimisation process can be done during the law firm website design process.
3. Location Targeting
Since law firms usually operate in specific area, the keyword targeting process should also consider location as an important factor.
Most bigger law firms in Australia operate in the larger cities of Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and Melbourne, as well as their surrounding areas, but while these areas are great places to reach large audiences, targeting some smaller town keywords, if they are within vicinity of where your practice operates, can make it easier to quickly rise to the top of the rankings.
Putting It All Together
Lawyers SEO can bring a consistent flow of new customers to your law firm, but in order to be effective, the SEO marketing strategy needs to be done professionally and by an experienced SEO company.
So if you’re ready to take your online marketing to the next level and start enjoying a steady stream of hyper-targeted visitors to your website, call 1300 899 123 NOW or fill out a form here and let us set you up with the complete law firm SEO package.