Marketing for Legal Services

Legal search engine optimization, or law firm SEO, is the practice of optimizing law firm websites so that they’ll appear higher in the search results for specific keywords or key phrases.

These target keywords represent the topics that you want to rank for and build your legal content around. They should appear in specific areas of your webpage, such as in the headings and meta titles, to signal to Google what your page is all about.

So, essentially, when you use search engine optimization to increase your law firm’s website search results ranking, you’re focusing on improving the quality of your site with the goal of driving more leads and more qualified traffic to your website.

SEO for legal services gives your law firm’s website more credibility on search engines, such as Google.

While many people understand that Google is a search engine, not many understand that Google is actually an advertising platform that offers free search services to boost revenue. So, with this in mind, Google’s end goal is to provide searchers with more meaningful experiences so that advertisers can make higher margins using the platform. And, as such, over the past decade or so, Google has created algorithms that are able to differentiate between authentically helpful web pages from those that aren’t.

As Google’s search crawlers analyze websites, they look for key details and organize the websites in the search results, based on these findings. Search engines reward websites that have truly helpful content by moving them up in the search rankings.

Typically, Google rewards legal websites that have the following (at minimum):

• high-quality legal content
• relevant keywords and key phrases (even if they aren’t top-of-the-funnel keywords)
• regularly-updated legal websites
• fast load times
• mobile responsiveness
• clean coding
• secure hosting
• backlinks from relevant, high-authority websites

High-quality legal content provides value to your target audience. As we previously mentioned, search engines are becoming better and better at spotting filler keywords and fluff.

While law firm content marketing services may not increase your law firm’s ability to practice the law, it does help your law practice provide better services for your legal clients.

How?

The goal of legal content marketing is to meet your prospective clients wherever they are in their buyer’s journey– to educate the prospects and gently guide them until they’re ready to invest in your legal services. This helps generate more educated clients, once they do convert.

The more content your law firm produces, the more your online reputation will grow. The key is to focus on a very specific piece of information relevant to your practice areas and expound upon it.

Law firm content marketing is one of the best ways to generate leads online when you have the right tools at your disposal for quality keyword research.

The catch is that most law firms either:

• don’t have the tools for keyword research,
• they don’t understand the data associated with the tools they do have, or
• they simply don’t have time to conduct enough keyword research to justify blogging as part of their law firm marketing plan.

Several years ago, law firm marketing generally consisted of billboards, a few television ads, and word-of-mouth advertising. Now, studies show that these combined online marketing strategies typically only bring in a third (max) of a law firm’s clients.

So, law firms need to branch out and at least try legal content marketing to get more clients.

At Digital Logic, we get the vast majority of our clients from word-of-mouth referrals and organic website traffic. We’re confident in our law firm marketing services, especially our personal injury attorney SEO services and criminal defense SEO marketing services so we get plenty of leads from our current clients (and we’re truly grateful for this!). But, we also believe it’s important for us to provide our prospective clients with quality information, because it also generates more educated clients for us, as well.

After all, you’re here…reading our content!

The most important takeaway for law firm content is that from an SEO campaign perspective, legal content is an essential “digital currency” for your law practice.

Every single piece of high-quality legal content is just another chance for your law firm to take that coveted, top-ranking position on Google’s search engine.

Over 93% of consumers use search engines to find local businesses, just like yours.

Every lawyer investing in law firm marketing should have a strong focus on local SEO campaigns. Local SEO strategies for attorneys focus on using local keyword data to attract those looking for legal services in the local community.

So, for example, one local search engine optimization technique is to add local keyword data to your services pages. So, you’d name your service page, “Houston Personal Injury Law Firm,” instead of just “Personal Injury Law Firm.”

This gives your web page a better chance of ranking well on the search engine results pages locally.

The most important local optimization tactic, however, is to set up a Google Business listing.

Google Business listings are free business listings that provide your law firm with a direct connection to Google Maps as well as Google’s local search results for law firms in the area.

Optimizing your Google Business listing ensures that new prospective clients looking for legal services in your local community can easily find your business location on Google Maps.

Optimizing your Google Business listing means that you:

• Enter your legal firm’s location accurately on the map
• Add relevant information, such as your specialties and hours of operation
• List your official law firm website
• Make sure that your legal firm’s name, address and phone number, or NAP, is consistent across the internet (including directory listings, on your website, on social media platforms, etc.)
• Add photographs with relevant alt text
• Choose the best primary category for your firm, including as many practice areas as necessary for your secondary categories
• Gather positive online reviews from satisfied clients

This is a free but very powerful marketing tool that every law practice can use as part of their overall law firm marketing plan.

Google My Business Posts for Legal Services

You can also use Google My Business posts to help improve your law firm’s marketing efforts online. Google Business posts help share important information with your potential new clients directly from your Google My Business listing.

Your law firm can use Google My Business posts to share upcoming events and company news, highlight new service offerings, or just provide potential clients with small tidbits of legal advice.

The key to marketing your law firm via Google Business is targeting local keywords. If you don’t target local keywords associated with the services that your law firm offers, then you are missing out on the 97% of prospects searching for local businesses online.

Practice area pages or service pages are essential to reach potential clients. Your practice area pages should be optimized for local searches and include informative, long-form content that expresses your authority as a local attorney for that specific practice area.

Practice area pages help your law firm achieve four marketing goals:

1. Grows your legal business by generating more online leads at a lower cost.
2. Increases your legal website’s rankings on Google for local target keywords.
3. Demonstrates authority for those practice areas, which helps build credibility and trust with your target audience and prospective clients.
4. Increases click-through rates for your legal website.
5. Helps improve your ads’ quality scores by strengthening ad relevance.

When your firm offers long-form content for specific areas that a prospective client may search for, it increases the chances that the information you provide will convert prospects into paying clients.