SEO Strategy for Lawyers

Shoutout to all my lawyers who want to not just show up on page 1 of Google, but make sure those visits and traffic convert to real clients who you are deeply passionate about helping.

Whether you practice law in a specific state or have clients internally, this blog post is going to help you identify what areas of your SEO strategy you want to focus on to get the most traction on your Search Marketing.


Ready to get started! Let’s go! 

This is 10-min video that outlines the basics of your SEO Strategy as a Lawyer. The rest of the blog post is below.

 
 

Needing some hands on help with your SEO journey? Fill out our Discovery form here to discuss the opportunity of working together: https://digitalbloomiq.com/discovery

 

So, what is SEO?



If you are new to SEO, that’s okay - you are in the right place. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and helps humans and Google find your website online. 



There are five pillars to an effective SEO strategy (you can also click on each pilar to skip to that section):

  • Directories + Ratings and Review - this is also known as Local SEO.

  • Keywords and Content - is the content on your website connected with what your clients are searching and is it valuable? 

  • Optimized Website - is the overall website experience helpful? Do you have a neon green navigation bar that burns people’s eyeballs? And how fast is your website speed? Having a good SEO and/or Web Developer can be key here.

  • Track and Measure Results - keeping track of your website’s growth can improve the effectiveness of your SEO campaigns, learning what is working and what isn’t.

  • Unifying your marketing - having your SEO work in tandem with the rest of your marketing can speed up your results big time.  

 

We will be getting into all of these in this article.

Let’s go!

Local SEO for Lawyers ( Your Directories + Ratings/Reviews)



Showing up locally in Google Maps and any other directories is an important part of your business.


If your legal services aren’t bound by a specific geographic area, then you can skip to the next section. 


Having a good website that targets local searches like “tax lawyer in tucson” is important, but there are a few other areas of your Local SEO strategy.

This includes:

  • Utilizing all areas of your Google Business Profile profile. Your Google Business Profile (or GMP) profile is one of the most important factors in local SEO. Make sure your profile is complete and accurate, and that you include as much relevant information as possible. You should also encourage your customers to leave reviews on your GMB profile - we will talk more about this later in this blog post. 

  • Get listed in local directories. Getting listed in local directories (like Yelp) is another great way to improve your local SEO. When you get listed in a directory, make sure to include all of your relevant information, such as your address, phone number, and hours of operation. Staying up to date with this can be tricky (more on how to get help on this here) 

  • Have a consistent strategy for asking for rating and reviews from your clients. So many times I see my clients leave their ratings and review to last minute or when they remember to ask. This is definitely not going to work. What I suggest instead is having parts of this process automated - for example, having an automatic email that goes out after someone has a call with you that asks them to leave a rating on your Google Business Profile. Of course you can also ask for a client to leave you a review verbally, but again, automating certain parts of this process can make a big difference. 

This video / blog posts break down in depth how to get found on Google Maps: 

Full details + blog post here: https://digitalbloomiq.com/seo/get-ranked-google-maps


Looking for more help with your Local SEO needs? Click here to check out our Local SEO services here: https://digitalbloomiq.com/aim


And if you are struggling to get ratings and reviews from your clients, this podcast is for you:

 

Keyword Research for Legal Services 

Understanding your keywords (or what words and phrases your ideal clients are searching for you online) makes a big difference in the content you create and how you are connecting with their needs.

Maybe they have some specific questions about how you can help them, depending on your expertise.

Here are some specific searches that you can draw inspiration from. Not all of these will be relevant to your legal services, but they give you an idea of what to look for: 

  • How to file a lawsuit: This search term is broad, so I would make it more specific since there are many different types of lawsuits.

  • How to get a restraining order: This kind of search may be for a family law or personal injury lawyer. Obviously, someone searching for this is being harassed or threatened and when your website shows up, they are ready to hire you. 

  • How to adopt a child: This is great for an adoption lawyer. This child adoption process can be complex and lengthy, this is a great opportunity to share your insights and expertise, as well as what it feels like to work with you during this process. Maybe parents will feel anxious about the process and you can make it a whole other experience.

  • How to start a business: If you are a business or tax lawyer, you are passionate about helping entrepreneurs start and run their businesses correctly. This keyword on its own is a bit vague, so maybe specifying the type of business or what stage of the business building they are at. 



These are just a few ideas on the keywords you can target that your ideal clients are using before hiring you.

So how to get started with your own keyword research process? 


You have a few options:

  • Hire an SEO agency to research and set up keywords for you. Keep in mind that even after you find the right keywords for your business, it’s also important to make sure you are using them correctly on your website. That is why hiring an SEO agency can make a big difference in your SEO results. Click here to find out more information about our Local SEO services. 


If you are doing your keyword research, here are some tips to keep in mind:


  • You don’t always have to go for the high-volume keywords. It can be a medium or even low-searched keyword and still be impactful for your business. 

  • Keeping an eye on the competition can make a big difference in how you approach each keyword and your expectations around results. Highly competitive keywords can be effective but it will probably take longer to get there. 

  • Once you’ve created content around keywords, remember to track your results. Without keeping track of the results, you won’t know if what you did was effective. You can use Google Analytics and the Google Search Console to see how your SEO is performing overall. 



More keyword research resources here: 

Now that you have your keywords…what’s next? 


Looking for hand on support with your SEO? Apply for our SEO retainers and get started here: https://digitalbloomiq.com/discovery


How to use your keywords (for Lawyers)

Using your keyword correctly on your website can make a big difference in how clients are finding you.


Here is a quick video that walks through all the areas you can use your keywords:

You can also watch it directly on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/reel/BmypWBcl4JG/

Remember that this isn’t about randomly forcing keywords on a page but meaningfully and strategically working them into it. Focus on how that page is valuable instead of necessarily including that keyword. 

Last tip: once you create a new page with your beautiful keywords, make sure that you are linking to that page as well as linking from that page. 

For example:

  • What other relevant blog posts and pages would your visitor find it helpful to visit next?

  • Are there any related services you’d recommend your visitor after reading this information?

  • Including a link from the home page and services pages to the new blog post.


Doing internal linking helps with your overall Google rankings and speeds up your results. 

Go back to top of guide

Optimized Websites for Lawyers


Since our websites are built out of code, we must ensure that the code does its job to the best of its abilities. You can target all the right keywords and create incredible content, but if your website loads correctly (for example), it will be hard to get traction with your rankings. 


This part of doing SEO is also called Technical SEO. But I promise the information in this blog post can be used by anyone!

Here are some areas of Technical SEO you want to understand:

Click the above outline to skip to any of these sections.

Site Speed and Website Performance

Making sure you have a fast website can speed up your SEO results. This podcast episode explains how to speed up your website:

Core Web Vitals are new metrics that Google uses to understand how your website is performing.

This podcast explains them in more detail:

404 errors and redirects

A 404 error is when a visitor goes to a page on your website that no longer exists and then gets a 404 error. 

It is normal to have 404 errors on your website but it is important to stay on top of them so they don’t get out of control. 

First, you want to make sure your 404 page is customized so that when a visitor comes across a 404 error, they are invited to stay on the website. You can include your most popular content on that page and also a link to their home page. 


The way that 404 errors get produced is because of incorrect links (or broken links) on your website. Again, these are normal. 

You can find all your broken links using a tool like this: https://www.brokenlinkcheck.com/


This will help you find the links and fix them on each page.

If you changed a page URL, you might also want to set up a redirect from one page to another to bring down the number of 404 errors.



For example, let’s say you changed the URL of your “about us” page to “our mission”:

https://yourdomain.com/about-us 

Changed to: https://yourdomain.com/our-mission


In this case, setting up a redirect can be helpful because you will probably still get a lot of traffic to the original page.


Most websites (like Wordpress) have tools to help you set up redirects.



You also want to be careful because sometimes setting up unnecessary redirects can hurt your rankings. Here is a podcast episode that talks about this: 

Website Structure 

How your website is organized will change how Google and humans see it. Here is a podcast episode that covers the basics of website structure: 


This podcast episode runs through essential website elements that will help you rank:

There are many components to Technical SEO and the above is a great starting point.



Need more help with your Technical SEO? Check out our SEO audit service that will give you clarity on how your website is performing technically and if it’s impacting your rankings. More information here.



Back to the top of the guide





Tracking and Measuring SEO Results

One of the most exciting parts about SEO is being able to track and measure results. Here are results from one of the clients we worked with in the Google Search Console. 

More DBIQ SEO results here: https://digitalbloomiq.com/results

If the above looks like gibberish, don’t worry; by the end of this section, you will be able to understand a bit more about what we are looking at.


But first, let’s set up your tools!

SEO Tools for Lawyers

The two most important tools you want to have to track your SEO results are:

  • Google Analytics

  • Search Console

Both of these are free and will allow you to understand the ROI on your SEO efforts, as well as the rest of your digital marketing - cool, right?


I teach you how to set these up correctly in the Homegrown Traffic SEO course, which you can check out here: https://digitalbloomiq.com/diy-seo-course


Once you have these two tools set up, you’ll be ready to go in terms of tracking results.

SEO Metrics for Lawyers


There are a few essential metrics you want to keep an eye on when you are looking at the Search Console.

  • Clicks - this tells you how many times someone clicked on your website from the Google Search results.

  • Impressions - this metric reflects how often your website was loaded in the Google Search results. I like to think of this metric as visibility or opportunity.

  • Position - this metric tells you where you are in the Google Search results, on page 50 or page 1. It is exciting to see your website slowly go up in the search results. 


Understanding these gives you clarity and confidence that your SEO efforts are working. 


Let’s analyze a Search Console report together! 

I filtered my search console using the Query filter (next to the date filter at the top) to only look at this keyword “content seo vs. technical seo”. This is connected with my Technical vs. Content SEO guide (https://digitalbloomiq.com/seo/technical-vs-content-seo)


I can see that in the last 28 days, I’ve had 14 clicks in total (blue number at the top) and 218 impressions (purpose number). Average position has been 3.8, which is page 1 of Google.

I can even see that on October 24th, I got 2 clicks and 15 impressions.

All this seems nice but some of you may be wondering, now what? 


Well, over time, these numbers will grow more and more. And when you see a blog post that is doing well, you can take further actions:

  • Improve the CTA (or Call to Action) to have more sign ups and sales

  • Review what you think is working on this page and replicate its success on other pages

  • Include more internal links on this blog post to other resources

  • Continue to share this blog post on all your marketing platforms 



Another approach you can take is identifying keywords on page 2 of Google (by filtering in Search Console - screenshot below) and brainstorm how you can improve those pages to get them to page 1.

Filter using the inverted pyramid, and select “Position”.

Then enter “Greater than” 11 and click “Done”. This would be anything beyond the top of page 2 approximately.

Then you click on “Position” and this will show you keywords that are at the top of page 2 and onwards.

This is another approach that allows you to focus on keywords that are “low hanging” fruit. 



Back to the top of the guide



Unifying your Marketing

This is one of the biggest areas of their SEO plan that I see my lawyer clients get wrong - isolating their SEO efforts from the rest of their marketing.


Not only does this slow down your results, it also creates more work for you and your team.


If your SEO is working with the rest of your digital marketing campaigns, this will free up your time and get you better results.



So, what does this look like exactly?



All your marketing needs to be aligned and in sync.


For example, if you publish on your social media every day, here are some questions to ask yourself:

  • Are you sharing your blog content on social media? 

  • Are you taking parts of your blog post and making them social posts?

  • Are you taking parts of your social posts (that aren’t blog posts) and making them content on your website?

  • When you launch a new blog post, do you tell your audience on social media? 



See how there is a massive opportunity to reuse and recycle content?



But how do you go about organizing and creating your unique marketing ecosystem.


First, you need to identify your source content. Where is the first place you go to when creating content? That’s where your content is “birthed” in a way and that is where content gets recycles and reused for your other marketing channel.

For me, it’s my podcast. I create an episode first (in most cases), which then gets made a blog post, social media post, etc. etc.



This is a handy graphic that will give you a visual of what my marketing ecosystem looks like:

The first step is identifying your source marketing channel and mapping out the rest of your marketing. 

If you are doing SEO for your blogging first, you have the advantage of doing keyword research from the beginning.

If your SEO comes as a secondary marketing channel, you may want to go back and do keyword research to align those with the search terms being used. Refer to the Keyword Research for Legal Services section to understand how keywords work. 



Again, unifying your marketing aims to simplify everything so you don’t have to go back and create unique content for each channel - instead, you get to tweak for each platform slightly. 


Final Thoughts



We’ve covered a lot in the SEO for Lawyers guide! I hope that the information in this blog post not only gives you some clear action items but also motivation to stay consistent and keep going on your SEO strategy.


Looking for extra inspiration and support? Here are some ways to stay in the Digital Bloom IQ world:


Can’t wait to see all you can take action on when it comes to your SEO!