Tracking SEO results for Legal SEO

Optimizing your law firm website is a great way to drive clients to your law firm. After all, 96% of people looking for legal advice use a search engine. Of those who visit a law firm’s website, 74% of them take action. The competition in the law firm is fierce and competitive which is why you must invest heavily in SEO. Learning how to tweak your website can increase your search engine ranking and drive traffic. Ranking in organic search isn’t easy for your firm. With the cutthroat competition and changing algorithms, you must have solid SEO strategies to increase your rankings. 

 
Once you have solid SEO strategies, measuring their success is pivotal for your law firm. Knowing your Key Performance Indicators (KPI) not only helps you measure the success of your SEO but also allows you to adjust your strategies. KPIs are metrics that help measure and give clarity to the success of your law firm or SEO campaign.    So, what are the most important KPIs for your law firm’s SEO strategies? In this article, we will explore the metrics essential for your law firm:  

 

Organic traffic

 
Organic traffic is an important metric in measuring the success of your SEO campaign for your law firm. This is because organic traffic symbolizes all the visitors your website is generating solely from organic search. Your overall traffic numbers may give you an overview of your website’s general performance but organic traffic is a great way to measure the direct impact of your SEO plan.    
 
If your campaign is increasing, you should see a steady increase in visitors to your law firm's website. When it comes to organic search traffic, search engine algorithms constantly change that can greatly affect your SEO efforts. You can maximize your organic traffic campaign by using keyword opportunity and ranking, backlinking, and building links to enhance link popularity. More so, you need to produce valuable content that your target leads can benefit from. Make sure to insert relevant keyword phrases so that your visitors can pick up on them.   

 

Leads/conversions

 
You will want your target leads to become your customers. A lead could be a phone call or a visit to your law firm. You can set up goal funnels to see where people are leaving off in the process and adjust your strategies. An increase in leads means you attract more visitors to your website. These visitors are accomplishing your desired action. You can improve your leads by optimizing your website navigation. You should also look at your CTA and ensure it is noticeable and irresistible for your target audience. Don’t forget to write compelling content that resonates with your prospective clients.   

 

Click-Through Rate

 
CTR or click-through rate is the percentage of users who clicked on your website from the search engine results page. You can use CTR as a barometer on the effectiveness of your title tags and metadata to attract your target users' attention.    If your CTR is low, then you need to work on your metadata and URLs. Pay attention to your featured snippets to capture your prospects’ interest. Boosting your keyword ranking can also help in improving your click-through rate.   

 

Bounce Rate

 
This metric measures the percent of sessions where the user loads the page and exits immediately without performing any actions. Bounce rate is an important KPI because a great priority for search engine algorithms is matching the user’s search query. The higher your bounce rate, the worse your website performs.    
 
When a user searches a keyword, search engines like Google wants to display the most relevant and highest quality results possible. A bounce-back can indicate that the ranking page doesn’t match their queries. On the other hand, a low bounce rate means that your website is relevant and easy/rewarding to navigate. Conduct a site audit and do an A/B test to see if you can improve your bounce rate.   

 

Backlinks

 
As backlinks are the backbone of SEO, they should not be overlooked as your metric. You should work on your backlink profile to improve your search rankings. Focus on building great quality links from authoritative websites.    
 
Track the quality score of the website you plan to link to. Monitoring your backlinks gives you valuable insight into how you are building your links. Pay attention to the list of links you didn’t build as they can be potential link opportunities you can use in the future.    

 

Page speed

 
This important metric can make or break your target traffic. Page speed affects most of the other metrics. When you improve your website's speed from two seconds to one second, your dollars per page view double. Page speed affects your conversion and bounce rate. The fast your website loads, the more chance that your target audience explores your page. 
 
Having a page score of 90 and above is considered good.Work on your page speed if your score is below 90. A few things that you can work on to improve your page speed include resizing your images and videos, minifying your HTML, and using browse caching.   

 

ROI

 
You can use Return On Investment (ROI) to measure the success of all your marketing campaigns. Measuring your ROI will determine whether the net income is worthy of the money you spent on SEO. It is normal to see negative results when you are just starting. Nevertheless, with the right SEO, strategy, you can see positive results within a few months.   

 

So How do you track SEO results for legal SEO?

 
Tracking SEO results for legal SEO is important to assess the performance and success of your strategy. Pay attention to the right KPIs based on your overall goals. Furthermore, it is also essential that you use the right tracking tools to track your progress.  

 

Organic VS. Paid Ads : Does it Matter in Law Firm SEO

Increasing your online visibility is a complex task. It doesn’t happen overnight and involves a lot of strategies. Among the digital marketing strategies that your law firm can benefit from are: organic marketing and paid advertising. These strategies improve brand awareness, website traffic, leads and ultimately increase conversion. 

 
As the digital marketing market constantly involves, it is important that your law firm keeps up with the trend to improve your online presence and capture your target leads. The question is, which is way more important? Paid or organic advertising?   

 

What is paid advertising?

 
Paid advertising is where advertisers bid to participate in real-time auctions to display ads within slots on a certain platform or network. Paid advertising is also called Pay Per Click Advertising since you pay every time someone clicks on your ads. Platforms that offer paid advertising services use algorithms to conduct real-time auctions. These algorithms decide which ad to place based on the bid amount and the quality of the ads. 
 
However, it can vary depending on the platform used. Most websites favor ads that are performing well based on advertisers’ goals. Among the most famous forms of advertising include search ads and display ads. Search ads are triggered by someone actively searching for certain keywords. These ads are typically shown on SERP (Search Engine Results Page) and answer a certain question. On the other hand, display ads are displayed when someone browses the app or an app. 
 
Display ads can be disruptive and are triggered by the user's interests or demographics. Display ads and search ads can be mixed and matched depending on the platform you are using. Nevertheless, it is best to analyze the performance of each type of ad separately.  

 

What is organic marketing?

 
This type of marketing occurs naturally as you build your brand. Organic marketing involves a natural way to grow your online presence. It takes a range of forms such as Search Engine Optimization, and Social Media Marketing
 
SEO is the process of optimizing a website to increase its visibility when people search for your services. The better your online presence in search results, the more likely you get attention and generate leads. Unlike paid advertising, you can’t pay search engines to improve your website search rankings
 
This means that you have to put in the work to get your website noticed. A social media marketing provides your law firm a platform to build your reputation and interact with your existing audience.   

 

Organic Marketing vs Paid Advertising: The Benefits

 
One of the great benefits of organic marketing is that it is free, helps build trust and brand awareness, and drives permanent traffic to your law firm website. With a solid organic marketing strategy, you can give your law firm website the extra push you need to generate your target leads and save on your marketing dollars. 
 
Meanwhile, paid advertising guarantees you can reach a defined audience, gives you fast results, test and gain important audience insights, increase brand awareness and broadcast your message across different platforms.  

 

Organic Marketing vs Paid Advertising: The Drawbacks

 
Paid advertisement requires time to optimize and improve to generate your desired results. It also needs skills to set up effective campaigns. While affordable, paid advertising can rack up the cost if you aren’t monitoring and optimizing your campaigns. 
 
Additionally, clicks and visits don’t always guarantee conversion. You need to convince your target users to convert into clients once they reach your website.  

 

Organic Marketing vs Paid Advertising: Short vs. Long Term

 
You need to consider your goals before deciding whether to use PPC, SEO, or a combination of both. Do you want to increase your traffic instantly? Is your goal involved building your brand? PPC works great if you have a short-term advertising goal. 
 
You get results the minute you run your ads. However, the benefits stop as soon as your budget stop. Since SEO depends on your website content, link building and other strategies, this form of marketing delivers long term results. 
 
SEO takes time and consistency before you reap its benefits. In short, if you wish to see immediate results, go for PPC. If you want to reap long-term benefits, SEO is your friend.  

 

Organic Marketing vs Paid Advertising: Quality vs. Quantity

 
Paid advertising and organic marketing generate different leads to your law firm's website. Which type of marketing to perform depends on your goals. Are you inclined to generating short-term conversions, product sales, and or testing? 
 
Paid advertising is the best way to go. On the other hand, if you wish to build your reputation, position your law firm as the authority, establish trust with your visitor, then you need to pay more attention to your SEO efforts.  

 

Organic Marketing vs Paid Advertising: The Budget

 
Consider your advertising or marketing budget when deciding which platforms to invest in. If you have no budget to commit paid ads, you need to spend your efforts on organic marketing. However, if you have some budgets, you can allocate your dollars to paid ads to test your User Interface and traffic. 
 
PPC is also great to get the word out there about your law firm's website. SEO takes a lot of time and resources to generate the same volume of traffic from PPC.  

 

Organic Marketing vs Paid Advertising: Does it Matter?

 
When you have the right marketing team, they will know which campaigns and marketing your law firm needs to follow. Each form of marketing delivers value depending on your goals. In order to generate an effective marketing strategy for your law firm, paid advertising and organic marketing are important.
 
They complement each other and allow you to cover all your bases when you implement them together. You can also improve your customer experience and attract the right traffic to your law firm's website. Legally SEO has the experience and expertise to design a custom SEO plan to increase your online visibility, attract targeted traffic and ultimately, turn them into paying clients. Contact us to learn more.

 

Understanding RankBrain for Legal SEO

 

 

 

 

It's been established that Google constantly updates its algorithm to provide users with the ultimate experience. One of the essential algorithms that your law firm should focus on is the RankBrain. Google stated that RankBrain is its third most important ranking signal. What does this mean to your law firm and what can you do to improve your rankings? Here's what you need to know about Understanding RankBrain for legal SEO what you can do to boost your ranking.  

 

What is Google RankBrain?

 

Before Google RankBrain, 100% of the Google algorithm was done manually or hand-coded. RankBrain employs artificial intelligence and machine learning to sort the search results. Google RankBrain helps the search engine process and understand search queries by watching how people respond. This algorithm learns the meaning behind the search query and the data that people look for. Launched in October 2015, Google RankBrain was created to help the search engine process the nearly 15% of queries entered daily that Google has never encountered. 

 

Understanding RankBrain for legal SEO

 

RankBrain understands the search queries and measures how people interact with the search results. Before RankBrain, Google would have a hard time interpreting new search queries. Google would scan pages to check if the page has matching keywords that users are searching for. Since the queries (keywords) are brand new, Google doesn't know what the searchers wanted so they make a guess.    

  

For example, when you enter divorce lawyer in Metairie, Google would chop these words and return divorce, lawyer and Metairie as a result. Google relies on links and other signals to fetch the most relevant answers even if it is not the desired output of the searchers. It is for this reason that some practitioners stuff their content with plenty of keywords AKA keyword stuffing    

 

Understanding RankBrain for legal SEO involves targeting users’ intent. Google RankBrain can figure out the searcher's queries and return almost the same results. Google RankBrain matches the new keywords to queries that Google has encountered before. Consider RankBrain as a pre-screening process. When a keyword is entered into Google, the search algorithm matches this against the user intent. In short, RankBrain fetches a set of search results that they think you want based on intent.    RankBrain pays attention to the following:

  •  
  • Bounce Rate
  •  
  • Organic Click-Through-Rate
  •  
  • Dwell Time
  •  
  • Pogo-Sticking

 

 

Bounce Rate   

 

You don't convert visitors that bounce from your law firm website. A bounce rate is the percentage of all visitors that leave a webpage without taking an action such as making a purchase or clicking a link. Having a high bounce rate could mean that the users are not satisfied with the content on your webpage. Bounce rate can also be used by Google as its ranking factor. There are plenty of reasons your visitors could bounce from your website. One of these reasons could be your content. A high bounce rate signals Google that your content is not relevant to a user's query. One way to improve your bounce rate is to provide contextual content that is valuable and relevant to your target traffic search.     

 

Organic Click-Through-Rate   

 

Organic CTR refers to the percentage of searchers that click on your website as it appeared on search engine results. It is influenced by plenty of factors particularly the SERP layout. Certain search queries can fetch different types of SERP layouts. Hence, you must optimize your title tags, meta descriptions, URL, and most especially the Rich Snippet.   

 

Dwell Time

 

Dwell time is defined as the actual time a searcher spends on your web page after they've clicked your URL on a SERP Page but before returning to the SERPs. Theoretically, the more time the visitors on a page, the better it is for your law firm website. A long dwell time indicates that the users have read or consumed most of the content on a page before it gets back to the SERP or conducts another action. Besides producing quality and relevant content, a great way to improve dwell time is to use logical internal linking. It is also important to revisit your website design specially scrolling design and navigation.    

 

Pogo-Sticking  

 

Almost similar to bounce rate, Pogo-sticking is the going back and forth from SERP to a webpage. In short, pogo-sticking is when your visitors click on your URL and then immediately click the back button and then chooses another result from the SERP. You can avoid pogo-sticking by ensuring that you produce the right content for your target traffic. Don't mislead your audience.   

 

How to optimize for RankBrain

It pays to optimize your law firm website for RankBrain to help Google pick up your website when it fetches search queries. Here are great ways you can do to optimize your law firm website for Google RankBrain.

 

Establish your reputation   

 

 

What type of content would you like your target audience to read? Are you providing them? Spend your time understanding your audience’s needs and the topics they resonate with. Consider writing case studies and blogs to obtain quality links and build your reputation. You can also author content and publish it on other authoritative websites. This will widen your reach, build quality backlinks and increase your website visibility. Diversifying content is also a great way to engage your audience and boost your reputation. Considering including videos and other forms of media into your law firm website.    

 

Optimize for Medium Tail Keywords

 

Long-tail keywords may be a thing in the past with how RankBrain works. Google used to generate results based on the exact keywords used which means users may get different results for a defense attorney in Metairie and Metairie defense attorney. Pay attention to your medium-tail keywords for automatic optimization. 

 

Address your Users Intent

 

Your law firm website can easily get a great web ranking if you have good content. It's not just about relevant keywords, it is also more about contextual content. Misleading your target traffic will drop your CTR. Visitors won't come back to your law firm website, resulting in a lower RankBrain rank. Quality content should be your priority, focusing on user intent will increase your CTR.    

 

 

The Takeaway   

 

You can optimize your law firm website for RankBrain by producing quality content that matches your target audience's intent. The more positive user signals you give to RankBrain, the better your ranking becomes. 

 

 

 

 

 

Google Ranking Factors For Law firms : SEO for Lawyers

Increasing your website ranking organically can help your law firm generate new leads, foster positive client relationships and strengthen your brand. Ranking your law firm website online takes a deeper understanding of SEO and how Google ranks websites on their results page.   

 

As you understand Google Ranking Factors For Law Firms, you become more intuitive in optimizing your content and other web elements. But first, let us tackle what is law firm SEO?  

 

What is Law Firm SEO

 

Law firm SEO is the process of optimizing legal websites organically with Google Ranking Factors For Law Firms in mind to improve online visibility. SEO for law firms is a powerful marketing technique to attract more clients, improve engagement, and get ahead of the competition.   

 

Getting a good website ranking takes time, but without good SEO practices, your website may not see the light of day. Hence, it is important to invest in relevant SEO strategies to improve your chances of getting leads and improving your online visibility.   

 

Google Ranking Factors For Law Firms

 

There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to ranking your law firm in search engines such as Google. People turn to Google when looking for legal services. Google is a great source of leads for your law firm considering the number of searches it fetches every second.    

 

However, ranking in Google isn't a walk in the park. You need to consider the  Google Ranking Factors For Law Firms to customize a winning strategy.    While it is true that search engine algorithm forever changes, there are ranking factors that remained relevant.    

 

These include:   

  •  
  • Domain Authority
  • Content
  • User Experience/User Interaction
  • Offsite backlinks

 

 

Domain Authority 

 

Also known as website ranking or site authority, Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score to evaluate how "rankable" your law firm website is. DA can get as low as 1 and as high as 100. The higher the scores, the greater chance you have of getting a higher website rank.    

 

The best way to improve your DA is to optimize your website and evaluate your website health. Pay attention to the quality and quantity of external links. It is challenging to pinpoint which factors have a great impact on your domain authority since DA has multiple metrics and calculations.   

 

 

Content

 

Content is king no matter the niche. It is more important for law firms to deliver content that delivers impact to their target audience. Your potential clients are looking for legal help that could change the course of their lives. 

 

Google acknowledges this need so they put emphasis on great content that is backed by trusted experts and produced by someone recognized as an authority in their field. You can produce a quality content by answering your target audience's questions, adding value to your content, and earning trust and recognition from others. 

 

Think E-A-T - E-A-T is a term coined by Google which stands for Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness. These factors are a combination of the content, author and website. E-A-T is a way for Google to return truthful, accurate, and useful information to searchers. 

 

Google understands that a person can come up with life-changing decisions from their searches. Hence, generating a bad source of data in SERPs can have a great impact. 

 

 

  • Expertise - What makes you proficient in writing this content? Expertise refers to producing content that Google acknowledges as corresponding to the searcher’s intent.  Focus on your user query and how your service/expertise can help them. It is more than using keywords, it is also understanding your audience intent. Google uses site engagement among other factors to measure expertise. 
  •  
  • Authority - What makes you stand out from the competition? You've already proven that you're an expert in your field. You should also prove that your expertise is acknowledged. You can do this by linking to authoritative websites to improve your page authority. 
  •  
  • Trustworthiness -How can you prove your authority and expertise? Trustworthiness is about getting positive feedbacks and reviews. Great reviews build your credibility. Additionally, being a trusted website also means knowing how to manage negative feedback. 

 

User Experience/User Interaction

 

From improving site speed, clearing navigation structure to optimizing images - there are plenty of ways you can do to provide a great user experience to your audience. User experience/ user interaction refers to how your visitors interact with your content and website.     

 

As one of the Google Ranking Factors For Law Firms, it is crucial to optimize your website elements and address your audience's pain points. A website with a bad user interface leads to a high bounce rate and low dwell time. 

 

A bounce rate is the percentage of your audience that leave your website after checking a page.    Meanwhile, a dwell time refers to the time your visitors spend on certain pages.  A great UX design interacts with your audience, lets them find what they need, and takes them to the next step of their purpose without encountering any technical issues.   


 

Offsite backlinks

 

Having a healthy backlink profile signals Google that your website is authoritative and trustworthy. Backlinks are generated from linking to other websites. It is important that you link to quality and relevant websites to increase your web rankings.    

 

Consider the authority of the website or page, anchor texts, do-follow links and number of outgoing links when linking to relevant websites. Bear in mind that you should link to reputable sources to increase your chance of getting better online rankings.  

 

Local Citations

 

Law firms such as yours rely on local customers. Hence, it is best that you optimize your website on local searches. Local citations refer to any online mention of your law firms Name, Address, and Phone Number. Make sure to be consistent with your contact info when enlisting your website in local directories.

 

Accuracy signals Google and other search engines that you have trustworthy data. You also need to rank in the Local 3 Pack, the box that appears in search results when an audience searches for local businesses in their area. You need to optimize your Google My Business profile, generate online reviews and use relevant geo-targeted keywords. 

 

These are just a few  Google Ranking Factors For Law Firms. These factors share one thing in common -providing users with the best information possible. Hence, it is best to focus your energy on serving your audience to get ahead of the ranking and competition. Legally SEO can help your law firm generate leads, increase DA, and beat the competition. 

 

 

Fast Facts on SEO for Law Firms

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:

  • Generate organic leads to your website

  • Enhance your law firm website's domain authority

  • Produce positive reputation

  • Increase conversion

  • Build relationship

  • 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:

  • Repeating words or phrases unnecessarily

  • Out of context keywords insertion

  • Inserting keywords that are not relevant to the topic

  • 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.

 

 

SEO Lawyer for Lead Generation: Top Lead Generation Tactics For Lawyers

Is your law firm website driving leads? Lead generation for lawyers has significantly shifted online. Gone are the days where you advertise your law firm on the Yellow Pages in the hopes of clients buzzing in. Generating leads online posed a great challenge among lawyers considering the competition and the complexity of digital marketing.  

 
Plenty of digital marketing for lawyers such as SEO lawyer for lead generation, social media, PPC, outbound marketing, SEM, click through sessions, and more that can be overwhelming for lawyers. The question is, how can law firms generate leads online?

 

Where do online leads come from?

 
SEO lawyer for lead generation starts with a great law firm website. Your website should represent your law firm and be the focal point of all your digital marketing activities. Having a professional-looking website designed to attract and convert leads is half the battle to generate leads. 
 
The next step is to come up with a solid digital marketing plan that piques your prospects' attention. SEO lawyer for lead generation brings in a stream of prospective clients without having to sit and wait for your phone to ring. 
 
A consistent stream of clients means you can focus on handling cases and fostering client relationships without worrying about getting your next client. 
 
The right lead generation strategy can help you capture, and retain the interest of your prospective clients until you convert them into leads.

 

Tips for Successful SEO lawyer for lead generation

 
No point wasting time on strategies that don't yield the best results. Although there are plenty of ways you do to attract leads, below are fool-proof methods proven to generate prospects that convert: 

 

Upgrade your website

 
Overhauling your website design is an effective way to stir buzz around it. A website upgrade is also an incredible way to improve your website's navigation, usability, and interaction to ultimately provide the ultimate user experience. 
 
On the other hand, if your website design is already great, updating your website periodically is also a great idea to keep the content fresh. and relevant. 

 

Pay attention to your on-page elements

 
SEO lawyer for lead generation includes optimizing your on-page elements. These elements are essential in helping search engines find your law firm website in the sea of competition. 
 
Optimizing your website is also essential to provide your potential clients' better user experience. Pay attention to your metadata, images, page loads, and site map. 

 

Create Quality Content

 
Crafting quality content establishes your law firm as the authority in your practice area. Compelling content cements your reputation as an expert, builds trust, and widens your reach. Make sure you produce varied content that could include your blogs, guests posts, and case studies. 
 
Blogs are shareable and reach a wide audience. A few of the topics you can tackle when writing a blog include FAQs about your practice areas. 
 
Guest blogging is also an effective way to attract new leads from other websites. Guest blogging is where you post blogs on other relevant websites. 
 
You can write blogs about your legal opinion on certain issues or related to your practice area. Furthermore, including case studies in your website allows you to showcase your wins. 
 
Using case studies highlights your wins and attract your prospect's attention.

 

Boost your local SEO efforts

 
SEO lawyer for lead generation is more effective at a local level. People will drop by your law firm if your website appears on the local searches. Through local SEO, you can target users within your vicinity, minimizing the amount of competition. 
 
Local SEO also increases your chances of ranking your keywords locally.  It is important that you understand the distance, and proximity of your prospective leads to influence the search engine. 
 
Most of your prospective clients think that the law firms that appear on the top 3 local searches are the best law firms within their area. 
 
Make sure to take advantage of Google My Business, provide your clients with the best mobile experience, and local lawyer directories. 

 

Improve your social media presence

 
Having a strong social media presence complements your SEO lawyer for lead generation strategies. Social media marketing isn't an option anymore. Boosting your social media presence is a must if you wish to get ahead of the competition. 
 
Social media is one of the most visited platforms as many users are looking for services such as yours. Social media offers you a platform to showcase your expertise and personality. 
 
Make sure to post helpful and relevant content that attracts attention, increase awareness and drive engagement. 

 

Don't forget your landing pages

 
Your SEO lawyer for lead generation is only as good as your landing pages. Landing pages have only one purpose in your website and that is to persuade your visitors to take action i.e to hire your services, sign in to your newsletter, or contact you. 
 
Ensure that your landing pages are straightforward, intuitive and responsive. Landing pages shouldn't be complicated otherwise, you'll deter prospects. Your contact information should be visible on your landing pages. 

 

Get Professional Help from Trusted Agency 

 
SEO lawyer for lead generation is a time-consuming and complex undertaking. Hiring a professional team allows you to focus on legal matters and save you time figuring out what strategy works to capture leads. 
 
The right digital marketing agency has the lead generation tools and software along with proven expertise and experience. 
 
Legally SEO has been helping legal firms generate leads, improve search rankings, and build their reputation.   

 

The Takeaway

 
It takes a lot of strategies to capture your prospective leads' attention and even more tactics to convert them into customers. 
 
Using the proven methods above along with custom strategies can significantly increase the number of leads and potential clients for your law firm. 
 
Focus on your core competencies and let Legally SEO take care of your digital marketing needs. We can help you generate qualified traffic that needs your services and expertise. 
 
If you need help attracting quality traffic and drive leads to conversion, contact us. 
 
We can audit your website and come up with custom strategies that can help generate leads, and improve your website rankings.   

 

Why Do You Need Law Firm SEO Company

Most people these days are getting their information online. 97% use search engines to seek legal help. If your law firm isn’t online yet, you are missing out on potential leads and revenues. With a professional Law firm SEO company, you will expose your law firm to a wide audience base, helping you generate new leads. 

 
The right SEO services will rank your website on prominent pages through relevant keywords, quality backlinking, and effective content marketing. People rely on an online map to find law firms within their areas. Law Firm SEO company ensures that your firm is found on top searches. Thus, SEO services give you an edge over other law firms and generate leads for your law firm.   

 

SEO for Lawyers 

 
Law Firm SEO company must understand the buyer profile and sales cycle of your clients. Doing so allows them to use relevant keywords and develop contextual content that best represents your law firm. As Google is prioritizing quality content, it is crucial that your law firm measures up and focus on credible and excellent material. Hiring Law Firm SEO Company for your law firm offers a range of benefits including:   

 
  •     Take advantage of their expertise – Law Firm SEO Company has a team of SEO experts that already have intimate knowledge about ranking your website. SEO is a time-intensive and strategical process that constantly evolves. When you hire SEO consultants, you don’t have to invest time and resources to understand the complexity of SEO.
 
  •     Save time – Stay on top of your big cases and running your firm and let Law Firm SEO company market your law firm website online. Giving the reigns to an SEO expert frees your time and allows you to focus on your core competencies. 
 
  •     Achieves your marketing goals – With the right SEO experts, you can ensure that your law firm website follows search engine’s best practices. You can avoid penalties and the risk of having your website being taken down. 
   

 

How SEO for law firms works 

 
Law firm SEO works by ensuring your law firm is found online by your potential audience. A trusted SEO company optimizes your website for keywords that your potential clients are using on search engines. Lawyers and law firms are among the competitive niche which means competition in this niche is fierce.  
 
If you want to get ahead of the competition and get your law firm website rank on the search engine, get the professional help of a law firm SEO company.   
 
Perhaps you are starting your practice or wanted to explore new SEO strategies, hiring a professional Law firm SEO company can help you boost your rankings. As SEO is a complex discipline, here are a few of the services that SEO experts can help you with:    

 

Website Audit

 
An SEO expert conducts a site audit first before strategizing. Site audit evaluates different aspects of your website, determines its strengths and weaknesses.   

 

Website Design and Development

 
You can rely on SEO experts to upgrade your design if you feel your website needs an upgrade. SEO specialists can also suggest redesign whenever they see that your website design is affecting your website conversion.   

 

Link Building

 
Link building is the backbone of SEO. Getting a link from authoritative websites can boost your website rank.  

 

On-site SEO

 
SEO experts can work on the back end of your website to ensure elements including titles, headers, tags, and images are optimized.  

 

Local SEO

 
Showing up in the search results for your local area is important especially for law firms. Local SEO services could help you appear on the Google My Business page and local citations  

 

Content marketing

 
It is not enough that you produce content for your website, you must know when and where to place your content. SEO services can help you with that as well as optimize your content with the right keywords.   

 

Working with Law Firm SEO Company 

 
Legally SEO has been helping law firms boost their online visibility in the search engines. We have the experience and skills to improve rankings on Google in 2021. Adapting SEO for your law firm can bring leads and business to your law firm.   

 

Consider these tips before hiring professional SEO experts:

 

 

Assess your budget

 
SEO services that deliver results come with a cost. Hence, it is important to assess your budget. Bear in mind that when budgeting, some SEO experts charge hourly just like your legal services.   

 

Refer to your professional network 

 
Asking for referrals from your network ensures that the SEO company is trusted as the referrer has tried the services themselves. These people can speak on behalf of the SEO company.   

 

Don’t miss out on the red flags

 
You must put their knowledge to the test. The right legal SEO specialists understand the pain points of law firms, the role of contextual and quality content, backlinking and local SEO. Ask for references and portfolio. Also, watch out for red flags such as:   
 
Guarantee results – SEO is an evolving process and no one can guarantee the top spot on the search engine results page. 
 
Vague about their process – If the SEO company can’t or won’t explain their SEO approach, steer clear from them.  

 

 

The Takeaway

 
SEO isn’t an option anymore if you want your potential clients to find your law firm online. Hiring the professional help of law firm SEO Companies such as Legally SEO can help your law firm generate your target traffic and ultimately boost your rankings. SEO can indeed be learned but with its time-consuming and evolving nature, it is best to offshore this to the experts. 
 
Doing so saves you time and resources and allows you to focus on cases and fostering favorable relationships among clients.    Whether you are just starting your practice, want to expand your law firm online, or have been unsatisfied with SEO services before, Legally SEO can help you boost your website rankings. Are you ready to increase your online visibility? Contact us today!  

 

The Impact of Keyword Stuffing to Legal SEO

For so long, keyword stuffing has been widely condemned by search engines, where websites that breached rules are penalized. There was a time when the tactic of stuffing keywords worked on boosting a website ranking but the black hat practitioners have been abusing this method. Thus, filling your website page with keywords won’t increase your chances of ranking your page higher. 

 
It used to be that websites could rank on a range of keywords by cluttering them onto a page, despite the irrelevance of the keywords. These websites didn’t are only filled with meaningless keywords without adding value to the audience. Some have tried to be subtle about keyword stuffing by hiding the irrelevant keywords by matching the text color to the background color of the web page.    

 

The Dangers of Keyword Stuffing and Over-Optimizing

 
Many law firms have been rebranding to adhere to Google’s guidelines. With keyword stuffing being considered a strictly black-hat tactic, does it still work for your law firm? It may be true that keyword stuffing has short-term effects, but doing this practice is playing with fire.
 
If a search engine catches your law firm stuffing keywords, your page might be demoted in rankings, or your website may be taken down altogether!
 
Google dislikes black hat tactics such as keyword stuffing since those methods specialize in cheating the algorithm instead of providing an excellent user experience.   As for law firms, keyword stuffing involves including additional descriptors to your business name on your Google My Business that are not relevant to your registered business name. 
 
Your law firm may be in trouble if you add keywords that are not relevant to your practice area or law firm. Google may issue the soft or hard suspension. A soft suspension involves having your Google My Business listing disabled, where your law firm missed out on potential leads. Your listing will show up on Google and Google Maps.
 
If your website suffers a soft suspension, your law firm has become unverified. Your website ranking isn’t affected. On the other hand, hard suspension means your GMB listing is taken down from Google Maps. 
 
Here are the reasons for hard suspensions:   

  • Being known as a repeat keyword stuffing violator
  • Your law firm serves a service area but with multiple listings 
  • You use a virtual office, mailing service or PO box as your address
  • You use multiple listings for the same business or location
  • You add a listing that offers a service in a building you do not own

 

The Impact of Keyword Stuffing in Law Firm Websites

keyword research

Many law firm websites have been updating their brands to insert keywords in their law firms’ names. Doing so enhances their GMB name, improve their rankings while preventing Google suspension.
 
The trouble with this tactic is that law firms may misrepresent their business. According to GMB guidelines, businesses should consistently represent their brand in the real world including signage, stationery, etc.
 
The business name you listed in the GMB listing should match your in-office signs, website logo, business card to help a customer find your business online. Stuffing your brand name with keywords isn’t the key to crush the competition. It can negatively impact your Google ranking

 

Law firm website’s ranking power decreases when everyone is doing it

 
You lose your ranking power once law firms within your practice area incorporate keywords into their business names. Did you recently sacrifice your business name just to get higher rankings? Once you reach a point where the law firm within your practice area is adding descriptors to their name, the ranking power of those specific keywords diminishes. You are now left with a less relevant business name that doesn’t help your website ranking.

 

Keyword Stuffing vs Keyword Optimization

 
Now that we have tackled keyword stuffing in Google My Business, we can now move forward in optimizing keywords within your content. It’s essential to differentiate keyword stuffing from general keyword usage.
 
A keyword is still important so long as you know how to use them within your content. Finding the right keywords and inserting them throughout your content can boost your SEO efforts

 

How to optimize law firm keywords 

seo keywords

 
Choosing the best keywords can help your law firm reach your target audience better. Ensuring your keywords are aligned with your practice area and your audience’s search intent can help increase conversion rates and click-through rates. 
 
The goal of keyword optimization is to ensure the keywords you choose to drive the right traffic to your law firm website. More so, keyword optimization is choosing competitive keywords high enough that the right audience can find your website easily. The keywords you choose should clarify your content to search engines. 


You can start by using free keyword tools to determine relevant and highly competitive keywords to incorporate into your website and content. Once you have the keywords ready, consider conducting keyword mapping. Keyword mapping will prevent you from stuffing keywords within one web page.
 
Find out what makes each web page unique from each other and incorporate the keywords to align with the page. Besides inserting keywords throughout your content, you can also include keywords in title tags, meta descriptions, alt images, and alt texts. 
 
Meanwhile, as Google uses neural matching to determine if a page is relevant to the user’s intent from search, you can incorporate synonyms and long-tail keywords into your content.
 
Adding synonyms and long-tail keywords opens up doors of opportunities to optimize content and keywords. However, you must ensure that you use these synonyms naturally. 

 

The Takeaway

 
There is no exact answer as to the keyword density you should follow. However, you should at least use a significant number of target keywords within your content and website whenever these keywords make sense. Don’t increase keyword density on a page just for the sake of adding more keywords.
 
Doing so will just affect the quality of your content. If the keywords aren’t used effectively and the content is poorly written, the keywords don’t matter. 

 

Law Firm Website Design Tips:How SEO and Design Go Together

Your law firm website can make or break your success. With the right SEO strategies, you can make the most out of your website by attracting leads and boosting your revenue. Law firm search engine optimization revolves around carefully building and improving strategies to set your law firm apart from the competition. You can propel your law firm to success by increasing your website's visibility and credibility. 

 

Law Firm SEO Service Metairie 

 

As you increase your law firm website's visibility, you can attract new leads and big cases. Your law firm website represents your business online. You must optimize each and all elements to ensure that you attract new traffic and leads. Consider your website as building a house. Building a foundation is necessary for a solid house. Although it is important to maximize your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts, you must not forsake your website design and content. 

 

Most law firms nowadays focus on keywords and content as part of their solid SEO campaign. However, you should not put the website design on the back burner. The quality of your content wouldn't translate to leads with crappy design. Website design is crucial to propelling your law firm to success. 

 

Conducting Website Audit

 

It is not enough that you have a law firm website. You need to regularly update it too to ensure all elements are optimized. To determine whether all elements are optimized or not, you must audit your website. Assess content, back-end design, and backlinks to ensure everything is fresh and up-to-date. A website audit presents an opportunity to improve the efficiency and visibility of a website. You can improve your search ranking and site traffic by determining which areas in your website you need to improve. 

 

Some websites wait for issues and bugs before conducting an audit. A site audit is unavoidable. It is best to schedule a regular website audit to keep your website in top shape. A website audit could involve content, technical, and SEO. The technical content focuses on best practices for website visibility. The technical audit ensures that your website meets all the search engine requirements for crawling and indexing. On the other hand, a content audit reveals the quality of your content. 

 

Conducting a content audit is perfect when you're having a rebrand or getting a new law firm website. A content audit ensures that your content remains on-brand regardless of the website upgrade. An SEO audit evaluates how well your website is optimized. This will check your keywords, link profiles, goal conversions, metadata, image, and videos. 

 

 

When to conduct a website audit

 

Although it is recommended to schedule a website audit periodically, some instances prompt the audit. These include:

  •  

  • Users can't access your website properly

  • Your law firm website isn't properly optimized

  • Website is at risk of penalization 

  • Web page takes too long to load

  • Analyze the competition

 

You can conduct an annual website audit for your law firm or do it every 6 months if your website has a wider scope. You also need to conduct a website audit after your website is launched to update any immediate issues and improve your site speed when it becomes indexed.

 

SEO and Website Design Go Together

 

It is important to note that your website design shouldn't be sacrificed in favor of SEO. SEO and Website have to work together to make the most of your digital marketing campaign. The website design produces a compelling and responsive website for effective navigation. On the other, the creative and informative content attracts your audience to stay longer on your website. 

 

Maximize Your Law Firm's SEO Strategy with Effective Design

 

Keeping your law firm website design is essential not just for search engines but also for your audience. Even if your website generates great traffic, regular design upgrades and tweaks keep things running smoothly. Consider these tips when reviewing your website:

 

Prioritize your site speed

 

Research suggests that site speed influences everything including bounce rate, revenue, and conversion. If your website is slow, your visitors will abandon your website in favor of fasting loading website. 46% of people say that waiting for web pages to load is what they dislike most about web browsing. 85% of mobile users expect web pages to load faster. Your target audience has a short attention span. Consequently, search engines also consider page loading speed when ranking their search engine. The longer your website loads, the more you increase your bounce rate. A great bounce rate signals search engines that your visitors don't find your website useful, thereby affecting your ranking. 

 

Keep it simple

 

According to Hick’s Law, the more choices you have, the longer it takes you to make a decision. You can boost your conversions by limiting the choice you offer to your users. Consider reducing the number of menu items, minimize form fields, pay attention to one CTA (call-to-action). It is also best to display the social buttons that your brand is only active on. Make sure that you stick to one goal per webpage to avoid overcrowding your website and overwhelming your audience.

 

Steer Clear from Carousels, Sliders, and Tabs

 

It may be tempting to do carouses and sliders but slides and carouses don't get as much attention as their corresponding first images. Since most people merely scan web pages, it is best to focus on scrolling rather than clicks. Place everything on one long page, to improve conversion by 30%. 

 

Make your Website Mobile Friendly

 

52.2% of all website traffic is generated from mobile phones. You must cater to your mobile users. Moreso, Google prioritizes the mobile version of a website with its recent mobile-first policy. Test out each page of your website to ensure it's mobile-friendly. Bear in mind that the mobile version of your website should be cleaner and less cluttered.

 

 

The Takeaway

 

Whether it is a new website or a website upgrade, your goal should provide the best experience for your users. Content and design should go together and for your law firm website to work. It is best to work with a qualified SEO agency to optimize your website and make the most of your digital campaign. 

 

 

 

The Legality of Negative SEO: How to Protect Your Website

SEO is constantly evolving which prompts businesses to adapt its algorithm changes. Getting to the top of search results is a more challenging feat compared to before.

 

Ranking your website requires well-thought strategies in keyword research, content marketing, on-page optimization, and link building. In brief, SEO is a time-consuming process that requires a holistic approach. 

 
Nevertheless, there are those who cut the process short and resort to bad practices - negative SEO tactics. Negative SEO is aimed at tearing down the competition through questionable strategies.
 
Businesses who unwittingly engage in negative SEO practice experience a dip in their ranking, and worst, potentially increase their website being shut down. In this post, we will discuss how negative SEO can affect your business, what you can do when your business gets affected by negative SEO, and the legality of negative SEO.  

 

What is Negative SEO?

 
Negative SEO refers to the practice of employing black hat and unethical strategies to sabotage a competition in search rankings. Although most negative SEO strategies are intentional, some companies unknowingly engage in poor SEO tactics only to discover their traffic tanking.
 
These strategies involve linking to low-quality websites, stuffing content with irrelevant keywords, or generating bad links.

 

 

Types of Negative SEO Attacks

 
 
Negative SEO can take on plenty of forms such as:
  •  
  • Link Farming - A link farm is any website that is created for the sole purpose of improving another website's PageRank through linking to the website from a variety of web pages in the link farm. Since link farms are spammy and have unrelated links, search engine prohibits this practice.
  •  
  • Duplicate content - Using the same content and publishing it on multiple websites is the easiest way for search engines to penalize your website.
  •  
  • Fake Social Media Profiles- Your competition can post negative reviews on your social media accounts using fake profiles.
  •  
  • De-indexing website - This involves changing the robots.txt file from your server to remove you from search.
  •  
  • Inserting Malware - Google may warn users that your website may be hacked if malware attacks your website. This can negatively affect your traffic.
  •  
  • Forceful crawling - Crawling your website forcefully slows down your website that can lead to crashing your website. This can decrease your ranking or even de-ranking your website.

 

 

Should you worry about negative SEO?

 
Without a doubt, negative SEO should be the main cause of concern for your business. It is real and numerous websites have suffered the consequences.
 
It is best to prevent its impact instead of fixing it. Webmasters can deal with the negative SEO's impact on your website via Google's Disavow Tool but it can take time to rescind the effect.

 

 

How to Protect Your Website Against Negative SEO Attacks

 
Malicious hackers could use different tactics to attack your website. You can protect your website ranking using the following tips:

 
  • Conduct Website Audit - Regular website audit allows you to check malicious links.
  • Stay on top of Google Search Console Email notification - Enabling Google Search Console notification allows you to stay on top of your website activities. You can also incorporate more advanced strategies to such as monitoring website backlinks, or removing malicious backlinks, and protecting your website from malware/hackers.
  •  
  • Monitor your backlinks - Use tools to monitor your backlinks and weed out those that are not relevant to your website. Take note of important links and get alerts if these links are removed from your website. You can reach out to webmasters to restore the links so you don't harm your backlink profile.
  •  
  • Strengthen your website security - Increase your website's security measures by using a strong admin password, change the password regularly, employ two-step authentication, update your website, and installing security plugins. Establishing an automatic backup system. Installing automatic backup is also essential to avoid data loss.
  •  
  • Check for duplicate content - Run your content on plagiarism tools such as Grammarly to find copies of your content on other websites.
  •  
  • Stay alert on your social mentions - Always stay on top of your social media administration. Use tools to collate all the mentions from your social pages so you stay alert whenever your profile is mentioned. Address any concerns whenever you are mentioned to manage your reputation and protect your brand.
  •  
  • Spammy links won't have as much impact on your website as your backlink profile increases. However, it is always best to err on the side of caution. If you find your website is linked to a lot of low-quality links, you can consider using these actions:
  •  
  • Link removal - this also involves reaching out to webmasters to take down the link manually. While others do it free, some site owners ask for a fee. Use domain email address so the website owners can identify that you own the website. 
  •  
  • Disavow links - You can disavow links through Google Console. Google provides instructions on how to disavow links. It is best to disavow links only if you cannot reach out to the website owners.
 

 

The legality of Negative SEO

 
Is it possible to face legal charges if your website takes a financial hit from negative SEO? The answer depends on the manner in which the negative SEO has been deployed, the country's laws, the ability to determine offenders and their location, and your ability to prove your loss.
 
Pursuing legal actions towards negative SEO can be challenging considering that it is quite rare to determine the perpetrator. You also need to ensure you have resources (time and money) since litigation and dispute resolution could be time-consuming and expensive. 

You can follow the tips above to remedy the impact of negative SEO instead of pursuing legal action so you can focus on growing your businesses. You can also do a DMCA takedown request if you cannot reach out to a website owner and wanted to remove malicious and duplicate content.
 
You can avoid or manage being attacked by malicious hackers by building established and holistic SEO strategies or working with trusted SEO providers. Hiring a trusted third party legal SEO provider allows you to focus on your business while you grow your traffic online.