Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a mainstay of legal marketing in the digital age. Your business website is the most valuable digital asset you own. Most searches today start with Google, and SEO helps get your website found on the search giant and other search engines. Getting SEO right can increase the amount of people visiting your website, greatly expanding your potential customer base. Like a great oak tree, SEO can have many branches, but it needs a healthy foundation to flourish. At LISI, we believe a good foundation starts with connection, content creation and local SEO
connection
It’s important to “Connect” to useful analytics tools, as we noted in our recent post, 5 steps to get started with search engine optimization, because you need to measure your efforts to know if they are working. To that end, we recommend setting up two tools before starting your SEO efforts: Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
Google Analytics (H3)
Google Analytics (GA) is the most popular web analytics tool on the web. GA allows you to measure most user interactions on your law firm website. For example, let’s say you have an “About Company” video on your About page, and you want to track how many people are watching it, how long they’re watching it, where they went on the site after watching it, etc. . . Google Analytics can help you answer all these questions. If you don’t know how to install Google Analytics, check out our guide to install Google Analytics 4.
Google Search Console (H3)
While GA alone is a good start, to have a 5-star setup out of the gate, we recommend that you also install Google Search Console (GSC). Google Search Console is like taking the hood off your website to see how the engine works. It might be a bit technical, but some of the things we like about using Google Search Console include:
Make sure sitemaps are submitted correctly. GSC will let us know if we’ve submitted the sitemap successfully and also let us know if there are any warnings or errors when Google crawls and indexes the website. With GSC, you can discover search queries that have activated your site in Google’s SERPs. This report is called Search Results Performance. This is especially useful for determining which queries led to which pages on your site. You can also see which queries might get high impressions (ie your site showed up in the SERPs) but users don’t seem to be clicking on them.
Content creation
SEO isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it tactic, it’s a long-term strategy that requires constant effort – content is a vital part of that effort. As indicated in our recent blog on SEO you need to produce valuable content for SEO success Not only do you need to make sure your practice area pages are optimized for the right keywords, but you should also be crafting content that users are searching for.
When users do a search on Google, they are looking for information. The advent of Google has opened up a portal that humans around the world converse with daily, at a clip of 5.6 billion times a day. Prospects ask questions, and producing new content helps your business answer those questions.
Let’s say Example & Martin is a company that serves entrepreneurs. The company could produce content aimed at common startup challenges such as “Should I incorporate as an LLC or C Corp?” or “How to file a trademark or obtain a copyright.” Prospects ask these questions, and you want them to come to you for the answers. Content production allows you to address these questions and expand your keyword profile outside of your established practice areas. Example & Martin may have a trademark practice area page targeting terms like “trademark attorney” and “trademark attorneys”, but there are many terms related to this topic, and content production also helps you target these keywords.
Content also helps you get backlinks – links from other websites to yours. Backlinks are like votes of confidence. Think about all the times you’ve recommended something to a friend. Maybe you have a mechanic that you have a lifelong relationship with, they are fair and they do a great job. Would you recommend this mechanic to a friend at the nearest shop, right? Backlinks work on the same premise. You want to get links from reputable sites that indicate to Google that you are a reliable source of this information.
For example, you can produce content about a change in employment law. If a CNN article links to this piece, that’s a high-quality backlink to your site. These are the types of links you want. In this case, CNN says it relies on the law firm Example & Martin as a thought leader on this particular issue. Backlink building is one of those branches that we alluded to earlier and rightly deserves its own post. For now, just know that they’re important and that producing content consistently can greatly increase your chances of landing them.
Local SEO Law Firm
Our last point hits close to home, literally. You know you should claim yours Google Business Profile. But why? Earlier, we talked about the sheer volume of searches that come to Google every day. The volume has increased over the years and the way Google presents results has changed dramatically. Google has become extremely sophisticated in its quest to better serve its users. The search engine results page (SERP) is no longer a list of blue links. There are maps, shopping, images, ads, etc.
Claiming and optimizing your local listings on Google Search will allow you to optimize your office locations so that you can appear on the map and in traditional Google Search results. There are many other location citation providers as well, and we recommend claiming and optimizing for them. There are tools to achieve this, or we can help you.
SEO is not a one-size-fits-all tactic. Rather, you should regularly cultivate SEO on your website. As search trends change and you continue to produce new content, you need to make sure you’re always optimizing for SEO Even a few hours a week dedicated to the activities listed in this blog post can go a long way to your SEO success.
