Legal SEO – SEO for Attorneys

Search Engine Optimization for Attorneys

When was the last time your law practice schedule was full of appointments due to clients finding your business on Google?

If your law office is struggling to increase your new client leads each month, then you’re not reaping the benefits of an effective legal SEO campaign.

Let’s look at why attorneys need SEO for their practice and how you can benefit from having a legal SEO agency on your team.

In this article, we’ll explain what SEO for lawyers is, cover the primary metrics that Google uses to evaluate your law offices online presence, and walk you through our effective legal SEO strategy to rank your law office #1 on Google.

Why?

Because there is an evergrowing market share of clients who are looking for a “family lawyer near me” or “criminal defense attorney near me,” you should be taking advantage of the opportunity that is presenting itself through search engines.

If you’re new to SEO, there may be terms that we use that you’re unfamiliar with, but dont’ worry. We’ll explain the terminology for those that are new to the subject.

At the same time, if you’ve hired an SEO for your law office in the past and haven’t seen clear results, then we’re here to help explain to you how our legal SEO campaigns are structured so that you can see real results to your revenue.

How Does SEO Work For Attorneys?

Legal SEO is the process of driving more new clients to a particular law office using local search engine optimization techniques that improve your Google Map’s and website’s position in their appropriate search engine results pages. The higher your business and website rank, the better chance of increasing the volume of potential clients to your law office.

Google Maps Ranking for Attorneys

In order to improve your rankings on Google Maps, you need to show the high-value signals that Google is looking for. This can be as simple as regular posts on your Google Business Profile page while generating reviews naturally from patients, or as complicated as developing custom graphic that have SEO’d content, hashtags, and silo’d link structures while generating reviews through patients by automatically asking them soon after they leave their appointment.

In fact, there are a lot of SEO techniques for Google My Business / Google Business Profile Manager that Google analyzes through their algorithm. Here’s a look at the Google Maps optimizations that we offer:

Google Maps Optimization for Attorneys

Google Business Profile Signals – Proximity, categories, keyword usage, consistent posting, complete service information, and accurate business information.
Link Signals – Backlink profile via website content and external sources taking into account domain and page authority of each link
On-Page Signals – Name/Address/Phone Number/Website Accuracy, proper keyword usage, Title/Description/Htags, content optimization, and blog strategy
Citation Signals – Aggregator and specific directory NAPW consistency, citation volume, citation relevancy, etc.
Review Signals – Review quantity, review acceleration, review diversity including different platforms, etc.
Behavioral Signals – Click-through rate, mobile clicks-to-call, direction requests, Facebook check-ins, bounce rate, and messaging actions.
Personalization – How your business stands out, design, wording, message, purpose, etc.
Social Signals – Google engagement, Facebook engagement, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

Website Ranking for Attorneys

When building websites for attorneys, WordPress is typically the best option to build on. Using a fast, professional theme, you can effectively optimize a dental website for both technical and on-page SEO. We recommend using Kadence or Avada for building most attorney websites and have ranked attorneys at the top of page one on both of these themes.

In order to rank #1, an attorney website is going to need a lot of powerful primary pages, in-depth and accurate supporting content, and plenty of links showing authority and trust. These factors greatly impact your rankings on Google.

For instance, if a potential client goes to Google and types in keywords related to legal services or an lawyer in a specific location like “family lawyer in fort worth tx” and “probate lawyer near me,” they will find your law office at the top of search results due to your SEO efforts within Google’s current ranking algorithm. Each client an attorney pick up is worth thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars for most cases. So, the next time a patients searches for a “lawyer near me” you can’t afford to not show up as the top ranking spot on Google Maps and Google Search.

Website Optimization for Attorneys

A web developers’ competence with SEO makes nearly all the difference in a website that looks beautiful and can drive new customers to your law office. Hiring a web designer who knows only basic SEO from a plugin setup point of view or simple techniques found on YouTube will provide very poor results when it comes time to launching a digital marketing campaign. That’s why it’s important to hire a web designer and developer that have an experienced SEO on board.

For example, while many of the signals from Google Maps can support your website ranking, the primary ranking factors for a website are found in the three pillars of SEO: Relevancy, Popularity, and Integrity. Each of these has multiple aspects require both a broad knowledge of SEO and a deep understanding on how to roll-out a proper SEO campaign. Here’s what you should know:

Relevancy involves structured on-page optimizations that maximize efficacy. This requires understanding both the attorneys current position as well as the reason for competitor success in the targeted area to properly target the right keywords that are both valuable to the dentist and relevant to the target patients. Relevancy also requires providing the best information to solve a users questions or problems quickly and accurately. For example, you wouldn’t want to waste a patients time who is looking for an emergency dentist nearby. Nor would you was to simply provide information without local options to someone suffering from missing teeth. Content marketing and strategy is a must to stay relevant.
Popularity demonstrates the success of relevancy and integrity in an SEO campaign. This comes from links, both internal linking silo’s and external backlinks from high authority websites and webpages. Volume, acceleration, and quality of the links matters and represents what other sites value your website to be.
Integrity contains more than an estimated 2,000 to 10,000 ranking factors with more than 800 confirmed by Google itself. Each of these have varying value that can be added towards optimizing your campaign, but a developer must also know when to avoid over-optimization to ensure improving rankings on Google while maintaining effective conversion rates with real clients.

Choose Nickel SEO to Rank Your Law Practice

Here at Nickel SEO, we know how to develop a complete digital marketing campaign for attorneys. We can help you reach a larger market share of new clients and even attract clients from other legal offices who are unsatisfied with their current representation by showing to both Google and the people in your city why your law office stands out from the rest.

Don’t be just another attorneys in your city. Make a name for yourself and build a brand that people know and trust. Our team at Nickel SEO can help you rank your law office in the #1 spot for hundreds of high-value keywords in your city. Simply give us a call and let’s discuss your law practice and the goals you would like to reach!

Legal SEO: Frequently Asked Questions

Attorneys can benefit from SEO by attracting new clients to their practice that they otherwise are missing out on. SEO is essential for your law practice to be visible online and reach more people looking for the best attorney near them. We have helped attorneys increase their new patient growth rate by more than 400% in a single year. SEO is the answer. An effective SEO strategy can help your law practice increase organic traffic to your website and attract more clients.

What is legal search engine optimization (SEO)? Legal SEO is the process of optimizing your online presence on Google to increase your new client intake and revenue — it’s attaining the top of the search engine result page (SERP) or Google Maps Local 3-Pack without paying for advertisement space on Google.

Today, every small business including nearly every auto mechanic, painter, foundar repair specialist, lawyer, doctor, chiropractor, dentist, or any other has a website. It’s valuable to each small business because it creates a massive thoroughfair between your business and the customer that they can access at any time. A website allows attorneys and lawyers to consistently attract new clients. But you do need a website in order to:

Display what services you offer
Provide useful information to readers, answering questions like:
- “What should I do if I receive a subpoena?”
- “How do I probate a will?”
- “What should I do if I’m being investigated?
Rank higher on Google search engines
Get more new clients booking appointments.

To get started, simply reach out to our web design and development team to get an accurate, custom quote for your SEO campaign. We’ll create a custom website and Google Business Profile so that more clients can visit your website and find the right attorney.

By using local legal SEO best practices you can attract new legal clients and help them understand their options and the solutions to any possible legal problems that they may have. This includes displaying a professional design, being active on social media to help show that you’re available to help them and organized with your law practice, and creating valuable content with a variety of related, contextual links directed to those pages with the most valuable legal services.

SEO can increase your client intake without the need to spend vast amounts of money on advertisements through Google Ads. SEO can increase your market share of new clients in your area and increase your revenue for an extended period of time.