Lawyer SEO

Is SEO for Lawyers Really That Important?

Law firm SEO services aren't important at all — as long as you don't mind all your prospective clients going to your competitors for legal services because they have no idea you even exist. If you want your law practice to experience long-term, sustainable growth that will keep new and returning clients knocking on your door, search engine optimization (SEO) is the most critically important digital marketing tool you can utilize.

According to studies done by Google, 96% of people seeking legal advice will first use search engines to help with their decision-making process. This means if your business is not active online, it won't be found, and a competitor will gain the client instead. In this day and age, online marketing through search engine optimization is a necessity for law firms to maintain and increase positioning in the market.

Higher Search Engine Ranking = More Clients

These days, when people need an attorney they don't ask their friends and neighbors for recommendations or call the number they saw on the side of a city bus. Instead, they turn to Google — and if Google doesn't see your law firm's website as trusted and relevant, it won't be recommended in response to the searches of prospective clients in your local area who are looking to hire legal services.

When you search "lawyer + your city" on Google, does your name appear at the top of the search engine results page (SERP)? Or do you need to scroll... and scroll... and keep on scrolling before you find a link to your website or law firm site? Even worse, do you need to click over to the next page of search results to find your site? That's a terrible sign. Most people only click on the top few organic search results — nearly 30% of clicks go to the first result, with just 2.5% of clicks going to the fifth result — and only 0.78% of searchers will click a link on the second page.

Digital Shift has an SEO for lawyers strategy that will increase your click-through rates (CTR) and not only raise your profile, but get you attention specifically from people in your local area who need an attorney right now and are ready to hire you.

Dismiss the Competition

Are you tired of watching your competitors take all the clients while you sit around waiting for the phone to ring? It's no coincidence that your competition is ranking higher than you on search results — it's because they are leveraging search engine optimization to their advantage. Your track record and legal strategies may be much better than theirs, but that doesn't matter if new potential clients don't even see your website on their search engine results page. SEO is a long-term game with cumulative results, so the longer you wait to start utilizing search engine optimization, the worse your rankings will be. Digital Shift can help you outpace the competition by ranking above them in search results so your website is the one raking in the clicks and you're getting your fair share of new clients in your city or region.

Raise Awareness of Your Legal Service

If a prospective client has landed in hot water with the law, they obviously need your legal services right now. But people who don't need a lawyer at the moment still need to know about your law firm as well. Why? Because when they or someone they know inevitably do need a lawyer, your name should pop into their head. Using attorney SEO to raise awareness of your brand among people who aren't ready to hire a lawyer now is an effective strategy for long-term growth that will have you arguing cases in the courtroom for years to come.

Digital Shift's Methods to Improve SEO for Law Firms

At Digital Shift, we're on your team and want to see your law firm succeed. We work together with you to help you reach your search engine optimization goals, increase your clientele, and bring in more revenue. We have been a content marketing SEO provider since 2007, and have spent years developing and fine-tuning a proven legal SEO strategy that really works for lawyers like you.

Local Results, Local Clients

It is important for a business to first start its search engine optimization strategy by targeting locals. This is especially true if the business' online presence is new. Local SEO is done by using smart keyword research to uncover local target keywords and incorporate them into your law firm website. That lets search engines know that your law business serves your specific area. Local targeting is great because you are only competing with the law firms in your area (whereas with generic keywords, you'd be up against all law firms)! Local SEO for lawyers is also very beneficial because it generates local traffic, which means potential clients will be from your city or surrounding locations. That clearly matters, because most people are interested in hiring local lawyers who are familiar with practicing law in their region. It is important to understand that SEO for lawyers may be very competitive, depending on your location. You'll benefit from the trusted services of SEO professionals that can help you navigate the complexities of search engines.

Social Media Presence

As you know, social media is very prevalent today. Businesses of all types have a social media presence and law firms are no exception. Investing in social media marketing helps your firm increase its awareness, reach your target market, bring traffic to your website, interact with clients, and build relationships. Social Media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn are exceptional formats to help boost awareness of your services as they consist of millions of users and enable sharing of a business post to all their friends with just the click of a button.

Directory Listings

Business directory listings are very important for law firms. They provide additional ways for your firm to be found. They also provide important SERP benefits and backlinks. Adding your business to top legal directories will also improve your website's credibility through association. It is important that all listings provide up-to-date information about your business to ensure visitors understand your current offerings and are able to contact you. Our team will help ensure that you're maximizing this benefit to your website.

Improve User Experience

Attracting more traffic to your website is great, but that is usually not enough. Work must be done to keep users on your website and to convert them into clients. If your website isn't impressive and easy to navigate, visitors will leave and head to another website. To avoid abandonment, your website must be easy to navigate, load quickly, and have an impressive user experience. Most of the time, your website is your potential client's first point of contact with your law firm. To encourage conversions, you'll want to ensure that this first experience with your brand is professional and builds a trustworthy relationship between your firm and the potential client.

Blogging and Publishing Helpful Articles

Publishing blog posts, articles, and other parts of high-quality content strategy are a great way to provide engaging and informative legal content to potential clients. This is especially great for your SEO for lawyers practices as these articles inform the search engine that you are an authority on the subject, and greater domain authority translates into higher keyword rankings for the search terms that you are optimizing. Providing fresh content about law firms and the services you offer will also bring more traffic to your website. This additional organic traffic can then be converted to clients if they see the value you bring.

Why Choose Digital Shift for Law Firm SEO?

Digital Shift has helped many law firms and legal services just like yours with SEO services that have been honed by years of experience and adaptations. We don't just jump in without taking care of our due diligence, which is why we first take the time to understand your pain points and revenue goals. We then consult with you on your costs per client and the number of calls you receive before a client hires you. With that information, we can determine how many leads you need to reach your targets and create the idea SEO strategy for your business. Our clients earn new leads, win clients, and increase profits. Lawyers like to partner with our law firm SEO company because we offer:

• FREE no-obligation assessments
• Easy to understand, up-front pricing
• Timely, professional service
• 100% uptime reporting portal

Work Directly with Digital Marketing Experts

When you call Digital Shift for support, you'll never have to go through a gauntlet of salespeople or be shuffled around from person to person. Your dedicated account manager, a lawyer SEO pro, will take your calls and give you the support you need. You'll also have access to other specialists on our team, so you can get comprehensive services from knowledgeable professionals who are passionate about seeing your business thrive. Our in-house team of experts includes:

• Graphic designers
• Social media professionals
• SEO copywriters
• Content marketers
• Search engine optimization specialists
• Google Maps specialists

Transparent, Honest Reporting

It can be frustrating to pay for SEO services and feel like you're not getting the full story on how well it's working — or whether it's even working at all. You never have to worry about that with Digital Shift. We are committed to regular, easy-to-understand reports that include all relevant information on the impact of our SEO efforts. We'll update you as often or as little as you please, but you'll always have the comfort of knowing that you have full access to your reports and information anytime you like. We pride ourselves on our full transparency.

Frequently Asked Questions about SEO for Lawyers

Want to know more about attorney SEO or just SEO in general? No problem! Book a free assessment to chat with a legal marketing expert and find out what we've got planned for your business. Or, check out our answers to common lawyer SEO questions below.

What Are the Best Keywords for Law Firm SEO?

Here is a list of 10 generally popular and keywords related to SEO for lawyers:

• Personal injury attorney
• Divorce lawyer
• Personal injury lawyer
• Criminal lawyer
• Family law firm
• Bankruptcy lawyer
• Immigration lawyer
• Divorce lawyers near me
• Business law
• Medical malpractice lawyer

However, it's important to keep in mind that you'll have far greater success by targeting the local keywords that local people in your area are using. The keywords "criminal lawyer," for example, are highly competitive because it's a broad category that could apply to anywhere in the world. But "criminal lawyer + your city" will be a lot more useful for you because it'll cause your website to show up in local search results for people who live in your region.

Want to get the top 1o keywords for your specialty within your service area? Book a complimentary strategy session with one of our experts today!

How Long Does SEO for Lawyers Take?

SEO is a long-term game. It's like swimming against the current — you have to keep up your efforts, or you'll drift back downstream. But on the upside, the results of SEO are cumulative. That means your 12-month results will be an improvement over your 6-month results, and your success will build year after year, making SEO the best strategy for sustainable business growth. If you're wondering how long it will be until you start seeing a noticeable difference, you can expect to see a change in about 3 to 6 months, depending on factors such as your current rankings and the level of competition in your area.

How Do You Measure the Success of an SEO for Lawyers Campaign?

The best measures of SEO success are the increases in sales and call volumes that lead to actual clients hiring you. We also monitor Google Analytics, conversion rate, keyword rankings, organic traffic, backlinks, bounce rate, online visibility, and a number of other important metrics and report them back to you so we can see what's working and identify opportunities for improvement.

What's the Difference Between On-Page and Off-Page SEO for Lawyers?

Both are important parts of a successful, SEO-based attorney marketing strategy. On-page SEO refers to optimization efforts on your site for stuff you are able to directly control. That could be optimized content such as blog posts and location pages, a technical SEO campaign to optimize HTML elements such as title tags, meta descriptions, and image tags, and other SEO strategies. Off-site SEO, as the name suggests, refers to stuff that is not on your website, such as a guest post containing a backlink, broken link building, or social networking.

Is SEO or PPC Better for Lawyers?

For long-term, sustainable growth in law firm marketing, SEO offers a better return on investment (ROI) than pay-per-click (PPC) ads. You can spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on Google Ads, but the advantage disappears the moment the ad stops running. But with SEO, the higher your site ranks in search engine results, the more clicks you'll get to your site. More clicks indicate to Google that your site is relevant and authoritative, so your rankings are increased further, creating a positive feedback loop that keeps building and building. That being said, PPC does have a role to play in a successful marketing strategy. PPC ads are particularly useful for building brand awareness among people who may not need an attorney right now, but will remember your name when the time comes to hire a lawyer.

Should Law Firms Have a Google My Business Listing?

Absolutely! Google My Business (GMB) has managed to evolve into the world's largest business citation, so it's a critical tool for any service-based business. But you can't just set it and forget it — your listing needs to be optimized and constantly refreshed with fascinating new content. It's also important to respond to online reviews and queries on your GMB to promote further engagement. Don't have time to spend managing Google My Business every day? Digital Shift offers done-for-you GMB management. We'll post to your GMB daily and respond to all reviews and queries by thanking positive reviews for their contribution. If you get any negative reviews, we'll consult with you on the best way to handle them to create a positive outcome for both you and the client.

Do You Only Do Lawyer SEO for Google? What About Other Search Engines?

Our SEO strategies will help you rank higher on all English-language search engines. The reason we talk so much about Google is that we are living in a Google-dominated search environment. Google controls a staggering 92.5% of the search engine market share worldwide, with Bing and Yahoo in second and third place at 2.3% and 1.5% respectively. So, it's safe to say that Google is where your potential clients are searching, and that's where you need to be.

Do Your Law Firm SEO Strategies Violate Google's Policies?

While an SEO marketing agency will sometimes use underhanded, black hat SEO strategies to impress you with big gains early on, that advantage will quickly dry up and your site could be penalized or even suspended by Google, which is difficult to recover from. Digital Shift only uses accepted white hat SEO practices that are in line with Google webmaster guidelines and SEO policies.

Another SEO Agency Guaranteed They Could Get My Website to Rank #1 on Google, Can You Do That?

No we can't, and digital marketing agencies who offer that guarantee are not being honest with you. You won't find a legitimate SEO company who is willing to guarantee you the number one ranking, because there are simply too many constantly shifting factors at play. Nobody knows how often Google updates their search algorithm, but it's about 500 to 600 times per year — so SEO goals are moving targets that take a lot of effort and ingenuity to achieve and maintain. That being said, we are very confident that we can improve your online visibility in your local market and increase your revenue by bringing you new clients.

Ready to Partner with Digital Shift and Find Lawyer SEO Success?

We're ready too! We have a plan to increase your clientele and build long-term growth at your law firm — just give us a call to chat with a law firm SEO expert and request a complimentary SEO for lawyers assessment. The best time to get started on SEO was yesterday, and the second best time is right now!