The Definitive Guide to SEO For Lawyers

Today, businesses are investing a lot of time and money into their SEO strategy and I’m here to tell you that your law firm should be no different.

Implementing a strong SEO strategy and staying up to date on the industry trends will ultimately bring more meaningful clients to your firm’s website.

Whether your law firm is new to using SEO, has been trying to improve your ranking for some time now, or has never even used this practice before, it is never too late to start improving your SEO strategy. The world of SEO is always changing, and we don’t want your law firm to be left behind!

If you have been scanning the internet for SEO tips and tricks, but still aren’t sure what is best for your firm, then look no further. With this definitive guide, we will show you how to improve your law firm’s website, start ranking on top of SERPs and get you the clients you deserve!

So, let’s get to work and talk about the strategies that your law firm can use to start ranking #1 on Google!

1. Optimize Your Website to Be User-friendly

The first step to an effective SEO strategy is to look at your website. Your website always needs to be built with your target audience in mind. 

We see it time and time again, a very strong lawyer with a very weak and outdated website. We don’t want your law firm to fall into that trope. 

Your law firm should aim to have a website that is polished, professional, and answers your clients questions, just as you would do in a face to face meeting. 

Here’s how you can take your website to the next level!

Easy Navigation Is Key

Do your clients often get lost on your website or stumble upon pages that do not answer their questions? Then, it might be time for a redesign. 

It shouldn’t be a challenge for a client to obtain the information they need from your website.

Moreover, if you are wondering whether your navigation is built for clients or is, well, lacking a bit, here are a few common mistakes people make when building their websites that could lead to difficult navigation:

• You didn’t use a standard style when building your firm’s website – Not having a horizontal search bar at the top of the page or vertical navigation down the left side.
• Your labels don’t communicate proper navigation – Generic labels, such as “clients” or “services” won’t help guide your users through your website, so opt for more specific labels.
• You designed labels with too many drop-down menus – They aren’t great for SEO, plus they annoy clients!
• You incorporated too many items in your side panel or horizontal navigation – Remember to keep it clean, having too much text and too many options can be overwhelming for website visitors. 

Effective Call-to-Actions

A call to action (CTA) is an icon on your website that calls on your audience to perform the desired next step. Don’t hide this extremely important button but rather make it clear and easy to find.

An effective call to action would look like: 

• Contact us with your questions today!
• Schedule an Appointment with….
• Would you like a consultation? 

Where on this screen does your eyes go to first? The bright red CTA at the end of the page that says “Speak With an Attorney” and that is how the CTA is done!

When picking out a color scheme for your law firm’s website, select a bold color for the CTA as it will naturally draw attention and encourage users to perform an action, such as schedule a consultation or subscribe to your email list! 

Contact forms are also an important feature that should be used on your website. Let your potential clients know that you are available to answer any questions that they may have after visiting your site. 

Use Images for Better Readability on Your Website

Even if you have a lot to say, sometimes less is more. It is best to condense your text, use bullet points for easy skimmability, and forget about those long paragraphs of text. You don’t want your website to mirror a high school English essay, APA style.

Give readers eyes a break by strategically incorporating lots of images, white spaces, and color blocking. Showcase your team, incorporate your logo, and give us a glimpse into your firm’s personality and brand.  

Images can help break up large blocks of text and give the eyes a break all while adds a pleasing aesthetics and will help to drive your point. 

HTTPS Secure Websites = Better for SEO

The year is 2020 and there are hackers all over the internet!! And they are, unfortunately, much smarter than you and me. You want your clients’ sensitive information to remain safe as they browse your site. 

What I mean by a secure website is to ensure you take the necessary steps to receive an HTTPS encryption (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) for your website.

Not only that but now, your firm’s website will rank lower if it isn’t secure. In fact, Google has indicated that having a secure website is, indeed, a ranking signal.

Still not feeling anxious to secure your website? Well, think of this: If it came down to your website and a competitor’s website that is secure, all else being considered equal, Google will favor the competition. 😶

How can you secure your website you ask? The two best ways to do so are to install an SSL certificate and, once you have installed your certificate, your website will qualify for HTTPS encryption.

Need extra help? Here are the steps broken down for you.

2. Improve Your Website’s Loading Time

Page speed is an important factor when ranking, and our friends at Google want us to know this. Faster page speed typically means overall better user experience.

There are two types of speed we are mentioning when we say site speed:

• Page load time – How long does your audience wait for your page to load.
• Time to first byte – How long it takes for your browser to receive the first byte of information from the webserver.

It is important to remember that a one-second delay in page load time yields:

• 11% fewer page views
• 16% decrease in customer satisfaction
• 40% of consumers will abandon your page if it takes 3 or more seconds to load
• 7% loss in conversions 

Worried after seeing those stats that your website speed needs a little boost? Well, put your trust in me to show your how to increase that speed!

Increase Your Law Firm’s Web Page Speed

If you took a page speed test and realized that your website’s speed is not where you want it to be, there are quite a few factors that you can change to help quickly increase it.

Here’s a short checklist that your law firm can examine to see how you can increase your website speed: 

1. Good hosting environment and a good server
2. Use a strong content delivery network
3. Limit redirects
4. Image optimization and slow images
5. Avoid blocking javascript and CSS
6. Compress into a zip file and deliver
7. Enable browser caching
8. Reduce plugins on your site

The Best Target Speed for Loading

There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question, but remember that speed is crucial for conversions. It is always safe to say that 2-second loading speed or less is best. Don’t believe me, check out these statistics from SEMrush:

• If your site loads in 5 seconds, it is faster than approximately 25% of the web
• If your site loads in 2.9 seconds, it is faster than approximately 50% of the web
• If your site loads in 1.7 seconds, it is faster than approximately 75% of the web
• If your site loads in 0.8 seconds, it is faster than approximately 94% of the web 

If you want to check out your site speed? You can always use Google’s Page Speed Insight to see how fast your site is actually loading. 

3. Keep a Healthy URL & Site Structure

URL and domain health is a key factor for your SEO strategy because having easy to read and trace website URLs can also help and improve your ranking.  

If your URL is intuitive, your users will find it easier to surf around your website and understand exactly what page they are on.

Plus, Google favors a clear URL structure.

How to Structure Proper URLs

If I provided you with the following two URLs: 

www.imagenmedia.co/blog/16-SEO-strategies-your-law-firm-can-use -today

Vs.

www.imagenmedia.co/blog/new/pathways/index.jsp?group=group&type=typea&title=SEOstrategies

Which do you think is the better option and the URL that Google will favor?

 When a URL is clean and states exactly where the user is going, it will be indexed higher on Google because a clean URL makes it easier for crawlers to make the connection between the different pages on your website.

Use Keywords in Your Domain – Keywords Are Everywhere!

You can use your URL as a great time to practice using keywords that are relevant to the reader to aid in your SEO strategy. Remember, your URL should be short, use keywords that define the context of the content, and use hyphens to separate each keyword.

Consumers like to know exactly where they are on the page and the type of content they will consume, so implement a healthy URL structure into your SEO strategy for all of your website content.

Content Can Help or Hurt Your Site Structure, Beware!

Not all content is good content, so it is important to perform content and website audits to ensure that each page of your website is relevant, useful to users, and not just stuffed with unnecessary information that will “improve” your ranking.

If you wanted to perform an SEO website audit, you might come across pages, called zombie pages, a term Brian Dean from Backlinko coined. 

If your law firm has been in the game for a long time and has been consistently pumping out content on your website for years, you might find that this content is actually hindering your website, rather than helping it. 

But have no fear, here is how you can improve the structure of your website!

It’s Time to Talk About Zombie Pages

How can you find your website’s zombie pages? By doing the following: 

First, type into Google:

site:yourwebsite.com 

into Google, as I did above, your result will be an image of how many pages Google has indexed for your site. A higher number is not necessarily a better number, but don’t stress if the number is much higher than anticipated.

Many companies may find that they are indexing more results than expected, it’s normal!

These zombie pages are lifeless and useless to your website and are, overall, negatively affecting your SEO strategy. Do a website audit and keep the pieces of content that are truly valuable to your clients.

Always remember – the more relevant the content, the more relevant your site will be to Google, but meaningless content actually hurts your ranking!

Improving Your Site Structure in 6 Steps

There are really no negative drawbacks to improving your site structure unless you hate ranking well and don’t want new clients!

Having a solid site structure is an essential part of any strong SEO strategy, plus it will enhance the user experience as well as help Google crawl your website.

Scratching your head wondering where to even begin on improving your site structure? 

Well, here are 6 steps you can use to improve your site structure: 

1. Before you develop and/or improve your website, plan out your law firm’s hierarchy beforehand to practice strong and logical internal linking. Remember when creating your site hierarchy to consider the following:
   • Keep your hierarchy logical and easy to follow – think of the journey of your audience.
   • When creating categories, keep the number between 2 to 7 for maximum ease of use.
   • Keep a strong balance between categories and subcategories.
2. When creating your URLs, make sure they match your navigation hierarchy.

3. When creating site navigation, use HTML or CSS for maximum crawling ability. Your website will look and flow beautifully!
4. Make sure your site navigation is shallow, meaning the fewer clicks to reach the users’ end result, the better. 
   • A shallow website (that is, one that requires three or fewer clicks to reach every page) is far more preferable than a deep website (which requires lengthy strings of clicks to see every page on your site). (Source: Search Engine Journal) 
5. Create page headings that show clear navigation to the main pages of your website. Keep headings clear and easy to follow for seamless user experience. 
6. Make sure you practice smart internal linking structures.

What is the Google Search Console & What Does it Tell You?

The Google Search Console is a free tool that you can use to check where web pages are indexing and how to optimize visibility on your website. This is a tool that your firm should be using to track useful metrics, such as keywords, that are bringing valuable traffic to your website.

You can search in the GSC and find the pages that are receiving the most traffic, see which keywords and pieces of content are drawing more people to your website, and go and update old content to fit the needs of your users on the pages that aren’t ranking as well.

After doing a site audit, decide which content needs to be updated and make sure it is fresh, informative, and engaging.  

4. Do Extensive Keyword Research for Your Practice 

Since we touched on the subject of keywords above, it might be nice to tell you how they fall into your SEO strategy. All I can say is – without keywords and keyword research, I probably wouldn’t be writing this blog today!

Let’s have a look at the different types of keywords your law firm can use to help your website start to climb the ranks.

What Are Effective Keywords to Target? 

As I am sure you can guess, keywords are words or phrases that are unique to your goods or service(s) that give an indication about the topic of your content. Anytime you type a question or words into Google, you are essentially using keywords!

For law firms, these can be phrases about your type of law, common verbiage (not jargon) that clients would search for, or common questions about your area of practice.

Here are some popular keywords someone could type into Google when searching for an attorney: 

• Lawyer
• Attorney
• Law firm near me
• Lawyer near me
• Personal injury lawyer Atlanta
• DUI lawyer
• Defense attorney 

From our friends at WordStream – these are 9 of the top 25 keywords used for lawyers and those in the legal profession!

Categories – What Types of Keywords Can Your Law Firm Use?  

There are several types of keywords your law firm can target with your content strategy, and here is a brief explanation of 6 types of keywords that your firm should be researching and curating into your SEO plan. 

This is the flash guide to keyword categories!

1. Short-tail keywords – Keywords that are three or fewer words. These words are very competitive for SEOs but offer high searchability. 
2. Long-tail keywords – Like the name states, these are phrases longer than 3 words. These are not as heavily searched but are not as competitive.
3. Short-term fresh keywords – What is being hyped up and popular in your industry right now? Think “Covid-19 in (insert your state).”
4. Long-term evergreen keywords – These keywords are always relevant, they will always be in style, just like jeans. They aren’t going anywhere, but there will be peaks and lows for when people search for them.
5. Customer defining keywords – Your target audience should be the types of clients your firm wants to attract, so create keywords that attract your ideal clientele.
6. Geo-targeting keywords – These keywords are great if you are a local law firm and want to generate clients in your area, think “Hartford probate law firm.”

How to Perform Keyword Research – The Quick Guide

When you begin to perform keyword research for your law firm, it may seem intimidating and difficult to know where to start. There are so many types of keywords and law firm keywords that are highly competitive while the marketing is extremely saturated.

But once you capture your users’ intent, i.e. what your target audience is typing into Google, then narrowing down keywords will be that much easier.  

Here are a few quick tips for beginning keyword research for your law firm: 

1. Start by creating a list of topic buckets that are important to your law firm. For your law firm, think of the 5 to 10 ways that you help add value to your clients’ lives, and then you will have a starting point for deciding what keywords to use.
2. Once you created your topics, now fill each topic with keywords that a user would search in Google related to your topic.
3. Find related keywords if you are struggling to fill your topic bucket! This means, simply typing a question into Google and seeing what appears at the bottom of the SERPs.

4. Remember the list of different types of keywords we talked about above? Now it is time to generate both short and long-tail keywords, as well as fresh keywords, and customer defining keywords. You want a healthy mix of keywords!
5. Now, it’s time to do a bit of competitive research and see where the other firms are ranking for the keywords your firm has selected. It is important to note that even if your competitor is ranking for a keyword, doesn’t mean that keyword will benefit your firm. This is a great chance to find a bit of weakness in your competition and discover keywords they might not be using that could help your firm rank.
6. Now that you have your topics and keywords, place them into the Google Adword Planner to help you quantify your list of keywords, and watch how they perform. 

Another great resource for you to see what people are searching for is Google Trends. With Google Trends, you will be able to gain new insights into what your target audience is searching for and help find fresh keywords. 

And ta-dah! Here is your flash guide to performing keyword research. 

5. Design a High Converting Homepage

By now, you should (hopefully) understand the importance of having a strong website, and your home page is no different. In fact, I would say your home page is the most authoritative page of your entire website, but don’t quote me. 😉

The homepage is the nucleus of your entire website and there are many important factors at play on your homepage that can help boost your SEO strategy, so let’s discover a few!

Good Content & Visuals – Photos, Awards, FAQs, & Videos

Use your homepage to show off a little! This is the time for potential clients to get to know your firm and see why you would be the best lawyer for their case. 

Good things to add to your front page include:

• Your awards you have received 
• Photos of you and your team
• FAQs in the form of written content or a video

• Customer reviews and testimonials from previous clients and colleagues in the industry
• Link to other important pages in you website

Keywords, of Course

You should think of your homepage as a public introduction to your firm. You can show your audience why you need to be their lawyer, how successful your team is, and your specific practice of law.

Since you already conducted amazing keyword research, now it is time to optimize your website for success. 

Here are some places to plug in keywords on your homepage:

• In the FAQ section – Think of the questions you receive from potential clients and turn those into keywords in your FAQ section
• Title tags and headings for each section on your homepage
• In the body of your content
• In the alt-texts for photos you use on your home page

6. Work on Your On-page SEO

You know the old saying, not everything is about looks, and that is 100% true for your website as well. 

You could have the best looking website around with all the bells and whistles, but if it doesn’t have an SEO strategy behind it, you will never receive the traffic your pretty site deserves. 

What Is a Google Friendly Page Layout? 

You want your law firm’s content to be consistently ranked on top of Google and other search engines, but how can that be possible if your web pages are not Google friendly? 

If you still aren’t sure if your law firm’s web pages are Google-friendly, then let’s discuss what does a Google-friendly website looks like?

• Pages that are audience-specific and focused
• Specifically branded for your specific area of law
• Has keyword specific content
• Your website is easily accessible 
• Work on your backlink game so that crawlers can consistently find your website

And here are some things to avoid so that your web pages aren’t Google unfriendly:

• Don’t keyword stuff your pages or place links that you don’t intent for visitor to use in an attempt to cloak your pages
• Don’t do despective SEO techniques and make sure if you hire an SEO service, that they use white-hat techniques or you can run the risk of your pages being banned
• Don’t create multiple copies of pages under different URLs and not use canonical page to identified the preferred version of the page 

Focus on Strong On-Page SEO

What is on-page SEO? On-page SEO is when you design each page with the web crawlers in mind. 

These crawlers want pages that are easy to navigate the content you have created to match the keywords you have used to attract your target audience. 

Here at Imagen Media, we love using Yoast SEO to help make on-page SEO that much easier. 

Here are some elements of on-page SEO you should be optimizing for each page of your website:

• The body – Here, you can take your keyword research and put it to good use by trying to place each of your relevant keywords a minimum of 4 times on the body of the page.
• Images – Use your alt tag and add keywords to optimize each image.
• Page Title – Create an enticing title that gives the readers on Google an idea of what content they are about to read.
• Meta Description – This is the short snippet of text that you can read under the title in the search results. You should use 156 characters, keywords included.

7. Invest in Local SEO

If you are a local law firm and the goal is to serve the community in your city, county, or state, it is crucial to include local SEO in your marketing plan.

You want your law firm to be placed in the most optimal position for visitbility of local searches, and local SEO can do just that.

What Is Local SEO?

Local SEO, as defined by our friends at Ahrefs is the process of “optimizing your online presence to attract more business from relevant local searches.”

And it’s a smart move to optimize for searches begin generated from your target audience in your city or county, seeing as 46% of all Google searches are local. 

Basically, if you want people in your community to be contacting your law firm, then you need to be investing in local SEO. 

So the first thing you need to is to set up your Google My Business page. Here’s how!

Setting Up Your Google My Business Page 

Did you know that 56% of local retailers haven’t even claimed their Google My Business listing?? I sure hope that your firm isn’t represented in that statistic. 

Once your business listing is verified and published, make sure you optimize it for local SEO with these steps:

1. All data is completed and entered correctly, especially location and contact information so that you are easy to reach for clients with a simple google search.
2. Here comes our favorite SEO phrase – keywords keyword keywords in your listing, especially rich keywords that describe your area of practice.
3. Include your hours of operation for easy access to clients.
4. Make sure your page includes images as you will generate more website traffic.
5. Utilize those positive reviews and engage with your community in the comments and review sections. 

Images are very important! 

As you can see here, if someone were to search for Suzann Beckett, they would find her law firm claimed on Google My Business. You will find photos, reviews, address, and hours of operation, which will help promote trust and social proof with her target audience. 

Remember: Businesses with photos on their listings receive 42% more requests for driving directions on Google Maps and 35% more click-throughs to their websites than businesses without photos, according to Google. 

Get Your 5 Star Reviews On! 

Google isn’t the only place you should be managing and featuring your glowing client reviews. Websites like Yelp, Avvo, and your Facebook Business Page are a great chance to engage the community.

Having more reviews also helps build trust within your community and will paint the picture that your law firm can help a potential client with their case. 

Struggling to generate reviews to feature? Don’t be afraid to ask your clients, 7 out of 10 customers will leave a review if they are asked. 

8. Use YouTube to Expand Your SEO Efforts

YouTube is a great platform to utilize when written text just isn’t enough. Your law firm should be using YouTube to interact with the community and provide useful information to potential, past, and current clients. 

Why Is YouTube So Popular for SEO?

It is estimated that over 2 billion people are active on YouTube, which means, more likely than not, potential clients could be searching on the platform for videos related to your area of law. 

Video is a chance for your audience to meet you, your team, and gauge your firm’s style all before the first consultation. 

And YouTube SEO can help set your law firm apart from the rest. 

YouTube SEO is defined as –  

The process of optimizing your videos, playlists, and channel to rank high in YouTube’s organic search results for a given search query.

If you create fully optimized videos that are popular, your videos could be featured on Google when specific keywords are searched, and this can generate more traffic to your website.

What Types of Videos Should Your Law Firm Create? 

Did you know that, in the U.S. 85% of internet users watch video content each month? 

And that 93% of marketers say that videos have brought in new customers? 

Your law firm should be creating engaging and information-rich videos that give your audience an idea of who you are as a firm and what you value. You can be seen as more relatable, a leader in the industry, and can connect with your audience on a deeper level.

The type of content you should create in your videos could be:

• Case studies
• Tours around your office and talks of company culture
• Get to know the staff
• Webinars 
• Animated video for strong visuals
• Interviews and Q&As about your specific area of law
• Breaking information in your field
• Frequently asked questions

How to Rank on YouTube

Does your law firm feel ready to dive into the world you YouTube? If so, here is a breakdown of ways to have your videos rank. 

1. Like the start of every SEO journey, you need to begin with YouTube keyword research. This can be as simple as typing in a keyword into the YouTube search bar and see what appears. 

Hot Tip! Think of the keywords you have used in your FAQ pages, type those in, and see what content comes up. Then, take your skills and expertise and make even better content.

2. Now it is time to film a high-retention video. Remember that the goal is to create content with your target audience in mind. Viewers are highly likely to close a video after the first minute when the video isn’t providing the rich content that the viewers are after. Remember, a retention rate closest to 100 is best!
3. Now comes the optimization part, which includes subtitles, video title, a keyword-rich description with keywords appearing within the first 25 words, and video tags.
4. Now, shameless promotion of your fantastic content! Post it on your social media channels, and sites such as Quora.

Always include a subscribe button at the end of your videos, a best for viewers, call to action to link to your website, and most recent videos button. 

9. Create a Winning Backlink Strategy

Backlinking is an indicator to Google that others vote your website as trustworthy and the content you produce adds real value to your industry. In other words, backlinks are especially valuable for SEO because they represent a “vote of confidence”  from one site to another.

Backlinks, get um! Let’s talk about how.

How Can Backlinks Bring More Customers? 

First of all, what is a backlink? 

Backlinks are:

Links from a page on one website to another. If someone links to your site, then you have a backlink from them. If you link to another website, then they have a backlink from you.

Here are a few ways backlinking can boost your SEO:

1. Backlinks bring new clients directly to your website that might not have originally found your content.
2. The more frequently you are with backlinking the more backlinks you will generate.
3. It is great for off-line SEO because even when you’re home for the night, backlinks are still bringing traffic to your website.
4. Backlinks help gain trust in your brand.
5. Once you receive a super high-quality backlink, for example, from The New York Times, you can show off that backlink on your website! A nice ~humble~ brag.

Backlinking Best Practices

If your law firm is just beginning to embark on a backlinking strategy, it may seem incredibly difficult to gain reputable backlinks. The competition is stiff and finding an opportunity to gain backlinks may be very daunting.

That doesn’t mean it isn’t impossible, and if your content is good and fully optimized, then the backlinks will come in time!

But, a word of advice, avoid at all costs the opportunity to take black-hat shortcuts to gain backlinks, such as buying links. While buying links can seem like a great way to gain backlinks and an easy fix to the problem, in the long run, it will do more harm than good to your website.

Buying links to manipulate PageRank will be considered part of link schemes and is a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and will negatively impact your ranking and could end up with penalties. 

That is why we suggest, no actually, insist, on using honest backlinking strategies. While it may take a bit longer to see your rank grow, it will be worth it in the end to be a high authority website and industry leader.

And any solid, honest strategy will begin with research, and backlink research is crucial to make sure you are gaining reputable backlinks.

What I mean by backlink research is:

By examining the backlink profile (the collection of pages and domains linking to a website) to a competitor that’s already ranking well for your target keywords, you can gain insight about the link building that may have helped them. 

And, as with any marketing strategy, doing extensive backlink research is an essential first step to creating a competitive backlinking strategy for SEO. 

How Your Law Firm Can Earn Backlinks

Ways that you can earn backlinks in your industry could be:

1. Guest blogging!
2. Getting your law firm listed in as many legal directories as possible.
3. Provide your expertise to others in the industry by providing interviews that others in the industry can backlink on their website.
4. Connect with your previous and current clients to gain backlinks from them (if they are in an industry that would serve your law firm well, such as bankers or corporations).
5. Create content for your specific sector of law that could get shared by colleagues or leaders in your industry, this includes case studies, blogs, and articles about trends or topics in the industry.
6. Connect with industry leaders via social media channels like Facebook and Linkedin.
7. Use the skyscraper technique to earn backlinks where you find people in your industry, see what content they linked to, if the content is out of date, recreate the content and make it better, then reach out to the industry leader and share your improved content.

Placing Links Within Your Content – White-Hat & Black-Hat

If you do not know something or found an interesting source that can add richer context to your content, it is natural that you would want to link to that source. We have done just that throughout this blog post.

But, we need to take a minute to discuss white-hat and black-hat linking practices, so that the next time you link to a website, you will know if a link worth sharing. 

White-hat techniques – These links will offer your law firm a very low risk and usually fall within the Webmaster Guidelines from Google and Bing. Some white-hat techniques include:

• Creating your own unique content that is of high quality.
• Generating an engaged community of followers that support your work.
• Promote your website to others in your industry by reaching out with a personalized message.

Where on the other hand, if your law firm uses black-hat techniques – techniques that directly violate the webmaster guidelines – your law firm can face penalties and risk falling low on the ranks.

Some examples of black-hat techniques include: 

• Cloaking your content, meaning showing different content to search engines than what users actually see when they visit your website in order to rank higher.
• Injecting hidden links into a website you do not own by exploiting a security flaw.
• Placing hidden text on a page that is keyword rich so that you rank well with search engines but provide content that is not relevant for your target audience.

10. Get Your Firm on Legal Directories & Relevant Sites

A great way to begin your backlinking strategy is to get your law firm’s name in various legal directories and use your industry experience to write guest blogs. 

By doing this, you will promote trust within your firm, and will help you gain more backlinks to your website, all by sharing your expertise!

While finding guest blogging opportunities and taking the time to get your firm listed in legal directories might seem difficult, it’s easier than you think, I promise!

Legal Directories Are Great for Backlinking

With the rise in popularity of online directories, it is no surprise that more and more people are turning to directories when conducting online research for lawyers.

 In fact, about 33 million people have used online listings and legal directories to find information about law firms and consultancy in the last two years.

For SEO purposes, legal directories are a great way for you to gain meaningful backlinks to your website. Directories such FindLaw and Avvo can be a great tool for you.

Not only will these directories link back to your website, but they will also confirm your status as a lawyer, adding value to potential client searches, and act as a second course to confirm your practice, phone number, and address. 

Legal directories can really help and boost confidence for your firm.

Don’t have time to list your firm in all of the legal directories out there? Then let us know and we can work that into your SEO strategy!

How to Break Into Guest Blogging 

Guest blogging is the practice of creating content for a third-party website or blog to generate traffic flow to your website and promote yourself as an industry leader.

 You can guest blog for websites of colleagues in your area of law, relevant law journals, or others in the industry to earn strong backlinks and gain more traction.

Guest blogging will boost exposure to your law firm’s brand and position yourself as a figure of authority in the industry. 

Here’s how you can search for guest blog opportunities:

• Google search using the keyword “guest blog” and a topic that your law firm would like to write about.
• Go to My Guest Blog for tons of guest blogging listings.
• Social searches, especially on Twitter to see who are the popular and reputable figures in your industry. 
• Find out what sites prolific guest blogs from your industry have posted on to see if there are additional opportunities for your firm to create a post.

11. Optimize Your Website for Mobile Users

There is no doubt that just as many people that are searching for your business on their laptop will also be searching on their mobile device. Ensuring that your website and content is mobile friendly and optimized is just as important as desktop.

In fact, take all of the previous steps and keep mobile in mind when creating your SEO strategy so that you can be fully optimized on all types of devices. 

Optimize for Mobile-Friendly & Responsive Usability

In order to fully optimize your site for mobile use, you need to do the following things:  

• Focus on page speed because it is even more important than desktop speed.
• Don’t block Javascript, CSS, or images so that Smartphone Googlebots can see and categorize the same content that users do.
• Optimize title and meta description.
• Optimize for local SEO.
• Remember that Google prefers responsive design but will support dynamic and separate site configuration. 

AMPs for Mobile

Accelerated mobile pages (AMPs) are a web component framework that you can use to easily create user-first websites, stories, emails, and ads.

Essentially, AMPs use a stripped down version of HTML code, resulting in faster speed for users.

You will see an AMP indication as a lightning bolt symbol on a mobile search SERPs. 

Don’t think you need AMPs for mobile? Think again:

• As always, page speed is a crucial ranking factor for Google and mobile isn’t excluded.
• Since AMP was created by Google, it is believed to be a ranking factor as well.
• Thanks to Kissmetrics and Neil Patel, A 1-second delay in web page speed can decrease conversions by as much as 7%.

Let’s Wrap It Up!

Wow, we did it! And I don’t know about you, but my head is spinning with all of this information. Implementing these SEO strategies and seeing their success will take time, but if you follow this guide, you will receive more meaningful clients and traffic to your law firm.

Still having trouble creating a strong SEO strategy? Let us help you!

If you found this blog to be filled with meaningful information, do share it with friends, colleagues, and peers! We always encourage conversation, so if you think we missed anything, drop us a comment. 🙂