The internet has a colossal number of websites, close to 1.72 billion. Standing out in such fierce competition can be arduous for any business, including law firms. You must adopt cost-effective and result-driven marketing strategies and methodologies and build a strong internet profile to attract organic clients and increase conversion rates. One way to do it is to implement local search engine optimisation (SEO). Before we jump to the tips, let’s quickly understand what local SEO is and why your law firm needs it.
What is Local SEO for Legal Practice?
Local SEO for lawyers is a strategy to improve a law firm’s web presence in a specific region. To maximise local SEO’s full potential:
- Claim and optimise the Google Business Profile (GBP) and Google Maps Listing
- Use local keywords and phrases to optimise area-specific service pages
- Build and ensure consistency in Name, Address, Phone number, Website (NAPW) information across all digital directories
- Ask clients to leave reviews on Google
- Make web pages user-friendly and mobile-friendly
- Use Google Analytics to monitor SEO performance
Make the Local SEO Shift with These Proven Hacks
Local SEO doesn’t show its magic overnight. Continuous effort, optimisation, and analysis are required to achieve the target results for your law firm. Here’s what you should do to ensure the best results:
Focus on Geo-Specific Keywords
Most law firms tend to target keywords with high search volume or high keyword difficulty that are not location-specific. For example, targeting “criminal law firm” generally increases the competition as all law firms target that term. Instead, try localising the search by “criminal law firm in Sydney.” Identify geo-specific keywords for your service areas to reduce competition and gain more local leads.
Fix Your On-Page SEO
Optimising your on-page means incorporating both target and geo-specific keywords in the key components of your site, including:
- Title Tags: Create compelling, keyword-rich titles describing the area-specific page’s content in 60 characters or less.
- Meta Descriptions: Craft engaging meta descriptions summarising the page’s content in 160 characters and encouraging users to click.
- Headers: Follow a proper structure, mark the primary keyword as the H1 tag, and insert keywords in H2, H3, etc.
- Body Content: Organically incorporate the keywords in the text without stuffing
- Internal Links: Link other service pages to maintain content hierarchy.
- URL Structure: Create readable URLs with one or two relevant keywords suggesting the content of your service page.
Optimise Your GBP
GBP is an online directory that contains details of your law firm, including the name, address, contact number(s), hours of operation, website URL, and practice categories. To optimise your GBP:
- Make a unique business description with relevant keywords showcasing your legal services.
- Add business hours by day, especially if the working hours vary.
- Enable calling and messaging for seamless communication.
- Add high-quality images of your brick-and-mortar office and your team of attorneys and paralegals.
- Add additional details of your practice areas
- Request reviews from old clients
Additionally, submit your business to online directories like Yellow Pages, Yelp, and Lawyer.com to generate more leads.
Improve Your Technical SEO
Technical SEO means optimising the technical components of your website, which includes:
- Website Security
- Crawlability
- 404 Error Pages
- Website Speed
- Mobile-friendly Design
- Hreflang Tags
- XML Sitemaps
- Page Speed Optimisation
- Alt Text for Images
Fixing these components requires specialised technical expertise. We recommend hiring a professional developer over a DIY approach for effective results.
Build Backlinks
Earning backlinks from high-authority sites can make your site credible. But before building backlinks, create high-quality, informative content like case studies, blog posts, legal guides and news to demonstrate your expertise. Next, reach out to authoritative legal sites, publications and blogs to contribute guest articles and request a backlink to your website. Successful backlink acquisition will add value to your website and increase traffic.
To conclude, implementing local SEO creates buzz around your business, attracts location-specific clients, and monetises geo-specific searches. With continuous effort and timely content updates, local SEO also improves Google ranking and makes your website readily available to the targeted audience. Hence, include local SEO in your marketing plan to gain organic traffic and profits.
Source: https://www.lawyer-monthly.com/
