In this time and age where everything is digital, it's essential that your law firm website is found online by your prospective customers. It is enough that you have a website that represents your law firm, you must market it too.
Ranking your website online is challenging to generate leads and establish your authority online. Research suggests that 96 per cent of people used search engines to seek legal advice. Most searchers don't have a particular lawyer in mind, they're more of needing legal help and want to find the best legal service locally.
Hence, it is important that these searchers find your law firm website first before other websites. Search engines such as Google will help searchers discover your law firm and convert them to leads.
Is SEO legal or illegal?
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of increasing website ranking organically. Through SEO, law firms can achieve better website ranking, generate leads, position your law firm as the authority in your practice area and foster relationship with clients.
SEO is legal so long as you observe White Hat SEO strategies. White hat SEO is the use of strategies and techniques that adheres to the rules of search engines. White hat SEO is targeted towards providing users and audiences with the ultimate user experience.
Typically, white hat SEO involves using keywords, metadata, content marketing, backlinking, and social media to make websites more relevant and targeted to your audience's search terms. Practising white hat SEO generates long term results. Meanwhile, Black hat SEO is the process of manipulating the search engines to rank a website. Black hat SEO practitioners violate search engines rules to increase a site's page rank.
How do lawyers do SEO?
The higher your website ranks, the more clicks you get and the more chance you have to generate leads. Only about 3 per cent of users visit the second page of SERPs and if your website isn't ranking well, you may not get as many leads as you hope. Websites that have greater ranks have an average click-through rate (CTR) of anywhere of 30%.
Your website should work for you 24/7 to generate leads and attract an audience round the clock. You can improve your law firm's chances of getting found by your target audience with the right SEO strategies.
With SEO, your website is easier to "understand" and "read" by search engine algorithms. You are helping search algorithms to scan and read your website content, display it on the Search Engine's Results Page and show the right page to the right user at the right time.
Effective white hat SEO strategies employ a range of methods and tactics such as using relevant keywords, optimizing your website, building high-quality backlinks, maximizing local citations, and generating positive reviews. This is why it is needed to build an extensive SEO strategy to capture traffic and convert them.
How does SEO help law firms?
Most lawyers are determined to increase their web rankings organically once they understand the benefits of SEO. Besides improving the web rankings, SEO can increase your law firm's brand authority and reputation. SEO for your law firm can also:
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Generate organic leads to your website
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Enhance your law firm website's domain authority
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Produce positive reputation
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Increase conversion
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Build relationship
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Expand relationship
SEO for lawyers has been proven to be a cost-effective way to market your law firm online. Legal SEO may sound too complicated and overwhelming. However, once you understand the fundamentals, you can get things started or hire the help of professionals.
Is Blackhat SEO illegal?
Black hat SEO is not illegal per se but it breaches the search engine guidelines. In short, it is against the rules and the consequence could be as grave as having your website taken down. The unethical practices don't help searches and often end in a penalty.
Appearing on SERPs is essential for law firms but there is the right and wrong way of marketing online. The wrong way is employing the black hat techniques such as keyword stuffing, cloaking, duplicate content, and using private link networks.
Instead of improving your ranking, black hat SEO can cost your website rank to go down, damaging your online presence. Getting a penalty from Google triggers an update to its algorithm, decreasing your website performance, and worst, de-listing your website. Are you uncertain whether your website performs White Hat practices? Ask yourself whether you are serving
Is keyword stuffing illegal?
It used to be that SEO practitioners have been stuffing website content with keywords to stay relevant and increase ranking online. It can be tempting to take shortcuts to optimize your website but doing so can affect your website. Filling your website with irrelevant keywords could lead to a penalty since this is widely condemned by search engines. Keyword stuffing could be:
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Repeating words or phrases unnecessarily
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Out of context keywords insertion
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Inserting keywords that are not relevant to the topic
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Hiding keywords in plain sight so users can't read them but search engines crawl
You may think that stuffing your web content with unnecessary keywords can help your rankings. However, it does more harm than good to your website. Your content should educate, engage, entertain and provide value to your readers.
Make sure to always deliver value and relevance to your readers when crafting content. The goal is to always provide your users with a favorable experience for your audience to increase bounce rate, page views, and conversions.
Employ keyword optimization techniques to ensure that your target keywords are in all the right places without comprising the quality of your content and website. Focus on producing useful, compelling, and rich content that maximizes the keywords.
The bottom line
Doing SEO for your law firm isn't an option anymore. You must invest in white hat SEO practices to generate leads, establish your authority, expand your network and foster lasting relationships with your prospective clients.
Legally SEO can help optimize your law firm website, build your reputation, and rank your website on relevant keywords. We have the expertise and experience to craft custom white hat SEO strategies that drive traffic to your website. Contact us to learn more.