It should come as no surprise that in today’s world, nearly everything is conducted online. From scheduling consultations to providing a summary of your services, a website is almost always the pinnacle of a law firm’s connection to potential clients.
With that being said, you might be wondering what it will take to garner more traffic to your slice of the internet. Of course, you want people to find you when they’re searching for a lawyer, but how can you be sure your site will show up in their feed? And for the times when your website is presented to searchers, how can you be sure it’s being shown to people who are actually likely to invest in your services?
The answer? SEO.
SEO, or search engine optimization, is an internet marketing practice designed to increase website traffic by bumping your listing up on the ranking of results when a client enters a relevant phrase or keyword into one of the major search engines.
By targeting searchers that you know pertain to your business, traffic to your website increases. This is because the people who are presented with your listing know that your website has information relevant to their interests and queries, thus making it more likely that they’ll click on your link and invest in your services.
The concept sounds simple, and it is, to an extent. However, it will only work if you implement the right practices.
How to Implement SEO into Your Marketing Plan
First, you need to consider what kinds of searches you want to appear in. For example, lawyer SEO practices often involve keywords focused on the types of law they practice. Some common phrases you might want to consider optimizing for would include “personal injury lawyer,” “file an insurance claim,” “criminal defense,” “car accident attorney,” “wrongful death suit,” “DUI,” “family law attorney,” “divorce lawyer,” “insurance benefits,” or “law firm near me.”
Be careful not to choose terms that aren’t relevant to your practice. If you do, the traffic to your website will be for nothing. In this case, individuals who click on your link will soon realize you don’t have the services they’re looking for and will close out the site.
Next, consider your local market. You’ll want to focus your SEO efforts on local searchers, as these are individuals who are more likely to invest in your services. There are two ways you can do this. The first includes adding your town, city, or state to your desired keyword phrase. So, for example, if you’re a personal injury lawyer in Las Vegas, Nevada, and you want to attract individuals searching for representation in a slip-and-fall case, you might consider optimizing for the term “slip-and-fall attorney in Las Vegas.”
Another way to implement local SEO is to determine the competition for keywords in your area. When researching terms, set the location to your county. This will help you determine whether a phrase is worth optimizing for; if the competition is low, and the relevance to your services is high, it’s worth moving forward.
Once you know which terms you want to implement, you need to include them multiple times on your website. Try to incorporate them into headers, body copy, and alt text as naturally as possible to bolster the SEO value of your site as a whole. You can also incorporate your desired keywords in blog posts, using them as anchor texts for relevant links to reputable sources. This practice will also help bolster your page rankings on the major search engines.
Once you implement these tips, you’re bound to see an increase in traffic to your website.