Law firms face a lot of online competition when it comes to standing out and attracting clients. A big part of marketing as a law firm is following SEO best practices. For example, SEO for family law means you’re in a very competitive niche, and you have to plan your digital marketing strategies accordingly.
When you need to rank for keywords relevant to your area of law, it becomes challenging.
There might be hundreds of other family law attorneys in your area to revisit the initial example.
This highlights part of why you need to focus on SEO, but below, we go into more detail about the value of optimizing your site and content for organic search in the legal industry.
Lead Generation
If you’re a local business, which of course, most law firms are, meaning you get clients within a specific geographic location, you need to target users in this location.
Most lawyers are working with clients in their county or city or at least their state, so local SEO is going to help them stay competitive.
With local SEO, as an attorney, you’re able to target users in a particular location, reducing the competition you would face if you were targeting people on a national level.
You’re going to have a better chance to generate leads when you’re using location-driven keywords. For example, it’s going to be less competitive if you’re targeting “family lawyers in Houston” compared to targeting “family lawyers.”
When you focus on local SEO, you can grab the attention of potential clients in your area, looking for the services you can provide.
This ability to use local SEO and leverage it is one of the best ways to acquire clients.
You want to put most of your attention on outranking local competitors.
Your goal is to be in the top three results and, at a minimum, on page one so that your presence in local search is strong.
Getting Leads from Google My Business
For law firms, Google My Business is also important in terms of SEO and lead generation. Google My Business optimized profiles will help you appear in the top search results.
If people are searching for a personal injury attorney using a localized keyword, it might be that your Google My Business profile ranks. Then, users click on your link, or they call the number you’ve listed in your profile.
Organic Traffic
Whether you’re in the legal industry or not, the biggest overarching goal of SEO is to drive organic traffic. You’re driving that free traffic by improving your rankings on Google.
Organic marketing doesn’t require you to spend on ads, and rather than the benefits being one-and-done like they are with paid ads, the benefits are long-term and tend to build on each other over time.
In simplest terms, more web traffic is likely going to translate to better conversion rates and more clients.
In studies, 74% of leads that visit the website of a law firm are ready to take some type of action, so you want them to come to your site with that intention.
Your Competitors Are Doing It
If nothing else, as a lawyer or law firm, you need to be putting your attention on SEO because your competitors are doing it.
Based on research, there are ten organic results on the first page of a search engine, and the clicks for the firms that are in the first position are twice that of the ones in the second position. Seventy-five percent of users of search engines don’t go beyond the first page.
If you are in the top 10 for results, you have a 25% or potentially an even lower chance of getting the attention of the clients you’re targeting.
With SEO, you’re implementing a well-rounded marketing strategy that’s boosting your digital presence overall. Any time you have more of a digital presence, you’re getting more opportunities to attract new clients.
Position Yourself As An Authority
When you’re ranking well in search engines for a lot of varying terms, then you’re establishing that you’re an authority in your industry. You’re more visible online. Therefore people are going to recall your name or the name of your firm when they’re thinking about the services you offer.
For example, if you’re consistently blogging on family law topics and you’re ranking well, then you’re going to be top-of-mind for more people, not only when they need an attorney but in your industry in general. You might get higher-paying clients when you’re seen as an authority and thought leader or be asked to speak at events. You might be included in legal publications, and you’re opening yourself up to new opportunities and partnerships.
You Can Put Your Lead Generation on Autopilot
SEO does require a lot of work, and you can’t completely set it and forget it since you have to keep up with changes in algorithms and best practices, but overall, if your SEO is strong, you’re going to be able to generate traffic with minimal effort.
This is going to help you drive a stream of steady traffic and leads over the long term. This is better than having to keep reinvesting in paid ads. It’s like a compounding investment, which we talked about a bit above.
If you have an SEO agency managing it for you, your lead generation is actually entirely on autopilot.
Better User Experience
Finally, Google and search engines prioritize the delivery of a good user experience when ranking pages and content.
That means that when you’re thinking about SEO in your content creation, you’re simultaneously going to be working to optimize your user experience when people visit your site. Your goal with SEO is to create compelling, useful, engaging content in a user-friendly way, and these are also what will give your users a reason to stay on your page and keep coming back.
User experience is part of Google’s known ranking factors, with things like speed, accessibility, and how interactive your site is all playing a role.
