Your law firm’s client base may be small, medium, or large but when it comes to ranking, every business needs REACH. You as lawyers know the fact that you provide great legal advice, seamless legal services, and experienced expertise to clients. But do you know what? You need the right clients to find you and come to your law firm’s doorsteps, too. For this, you need a plan, proper strategic planning, and great web development expertise.
Before learning how to do it, let’s first understand that Google has prioritized high rankings on the basis of four factors – Relevance, Geographical Distance & prominence, and value.
Relevance is a part of your quality count which Google uses to measure how relevant you are to match with the clients searching the same. For eg- a person facing a car accident would need a personal injury lawyer which is your law firm’s specialization. As soon as he types a query related to that, Google understands the relevancy of your law firm’s ad with the person and pops your ad in the search results. Distance is related to the physical distance between your law firm and the location used in the search bar. In case you’re willing to dislocate, there’s not much you can do to affect physical distance.
Prominence is an estimation of your visibility in Google’s vision. It includes each and every piece of information that Google can find about your law firm across the web which contains links to your site, blogs, and even some of the directories.
Value comes with the ultimate factor, as it makes sure to ensure that the intention of the searcher is able to match in return with the correct result for the question or query placed.
So after knowing how Google analyzes the key factors before ranking a page, now let’s get started with how to implement these factors by keeping them in mind and improve your law firm’s rankings:
1. Fix Upon Your Law Firm’s Target Keywords
Determining your keywords is the first step in optimizing your firm’s website. The more specific and targeted your keywords are, the more likely you’ll attract qualitative website traffic and leads for your business.
In the first place, start thinking about exactly what kind of searches you want your law firm to rank for. Consider your key areas of law practice as a starting point. Jot down the keywords which you think are associated directly or indirectly with your practice area.
Next part, do a bit of research related to your search terms which you jotted down earlier by going to Google and taking a look at the results when you enter your keywords. Now consider whether the results are aligned with your practice or not. Now make a plan well in advance on how to get them aligned if they are not.
Place the keywords on the right pages of your website. Like using it on the headings, page titles, subheadings, and URLs, because everything matters. If you want to rank on multiple keywords you have to make separate pages for each of them and then work so that they do not cluster and ultimately be a dump. Remember, low-quality type URLs are crawled less by GoogleBot.
2. Invest Time And Money Into Online Business Listings
Having your law firm included amongst the listings beyond the legal realm can help you reach those who may not be habitual with the traditional associations. It is probable that a regular business listing site that gets lots of traffic will rank higher on the Google search engine than a law firm listing site that is less busy. These sites also have add-on features that can help potential clients notice you and an option best suited.
For example, Google My Business allows you to add visually pleasing and intuitive buttons to let clients contact you, get directions to your office, or even rate how their experience was. And because it’s connected to the Google search engine, it is an invaluable tool for any law firm looking to boost its search ranking. It is easily manageable as well as best when it comes to having a first impression.
3. Website Optimization Is A Must To Stand Out Of The Crowd
Sometimes as seen in the past, businesses basically fail to target and grow in the responsive environment when the web design of your page isn’t according to the bars raised by Google. Having a responsive website with proper site design and easy navigation is what your rankings stand out. Attracting a wider audience and giving them the ease to access your website with any of the devices. Time on page is what Google recognizes as a fundamental indicator of a website’s value for a given query on the search bar.
4. Enhance Your Profiles On Avvo, Justia, Find Law, and Legal Zoom
Off-site SEO, or off-page SEO, is the practice of enhancing your online presence on websites other than your own. For example, as a lawyer, you have profiles on your local state Bar Association website, Avvo, Justia, Super Lawyers, Legal Zoom, FindLaw, etc.
These profiles can be optimized for your legal specialty and the state or city you practice law in. This will help your website rank higher in the search results because the content on these sites is consistent and targeted with the content on your own website.
5. Blog Page For Your Website
Having a blog page on your website is an important part of any law firm when it comes to an SEO strategy. Google has an originality ranking signal that rewards higher rankings to sites with periodically updated content. Blog posts allow you to propose search terms that are more research-based in focus. These search terms normally have a lot of traffic and, while the service pages on your website won’t qualify to rank for these search-related queries, they’re perfect for a blog post. Blogging and posting regular and relevant content is an incredible tool to increase the proportion of driven traffic to your website.
For example, the search phrase “Can I sue a person for driving on the wrong side” currently has 56 searches a month. So for this, you can target this search term by writing a blog post with the title, “How to Sue a Person if he’s Driving on the Wrong Side of a Road,” with the first how-to on the list being the recommendation to hire an attorney as a CTA.
6. Monitor Your Reviews
In our opinion reviews matter a lot, so having a check on your reviews on a daily basis is a must. Getting your law firm’s reviews on Google Lawyer reviews, Yelp, Nolo, etc. is a fabulous way to get more traffic to your website as the reviews are the first and foremost thing that a client goes through before hiring a lawyer. Going on relevant review sites and getting positive reviews about your firm is what you need to generate more clients for your website. Do not forget to reply to the people who visit these sites just to review your services as it defines how quick and responsive you are towards your clients and your law firm.
So with this, we are at the end of the discussion, see the checklist above and get your law firm rank higher and increase profitability with ease. For better legal practice, do not forget to check out our website for the most premium features and most affordable pricing.
Conclusion
CaseFox Inc. is a cloud-based legal billing and case management software for Law Firms, Attorneys, Chartered Accountants, Freelancers, and Other Professionals to manage time tracking and billing aspects of their practices. We provide services to solo, small, medium, virtual law/accounting/consulting firms. Key features of CaseFox include case, notes, trust accounts management, expense tracking, tasks & calendaring, and legal billing.