10 tips to improve your law firm’s SEO in 2023

Your company does not appear in search results? We help you to optimise the SEO of your website

In the legal sector, client service and proximity to clients are fundamental to the strategy, differentiation and positioning of law firms. Lawyers need to streamline their business model to adapt to these new circumstances. An indispensable element in any business, communication and marketing strategy is SEO optimisation for lawyers.

Therefore, we bring you 10 tips that are going to help you boost your web traffic and SEO positioning in this year 2023. Let’s go for it!

Improve loading speed

This factor is important because the loading speed has a direct impact on the bounce rate. That is, the percentage of people who enter the page and leave without interacting with it. 40% of users will abandon a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.

Image extracted from Genwords

One way to optimise this is by compressing the size of the images, as they are the ones that represent the largest amount of data when downloading the page. Another method is to reduce the server response time (recommended to be below 200ms). Ping is a diagnostic tool for network connection. Its unit of measurement is milliseconds (ms). The higher the ping, the worse the response time and therefore the slower the connection speed.

If the server hosting your site is slow, it doesn’t matter how optimised it is. One of the easiest ways to improve this response time is in the WordPress configuration itself: using a lighter theme or template.

There are many templates in WordPress that are design and customisation oriented but are not the best in terms of performance. The problem is that these colourful and customised templates require more code, which translates into more data to be sent from the server and, therefore, longer response time, less usability and worse user experience.

In this sense, three good websites to check how fast your website is, are Page Speed Insights, GT Metrix and Pingdom. These websites, in addition to telling you the loading speed on desktop and mobile versions, also tell you which elements of your website are slowing it down. In this way, you can improve your speed with certainty if you correct those errors. As previously mentioned, loading speed is an indispensable element in SEO for lawyers.

Include Featured Snippets

Featured Snippets are short text extracts that appear at the top of the search results in order to speed up the process of finding the answer the user is looking for. This text extract from the website is actually above position 1 of the organic results so you could say that the Featured Snippets occupy position 0 of the Google ranking.

Image extracted from Backlinko

However, these snippets do not appear for every search, but for specific types of searches. The most common snippets are:

• Definitions
• Tables
• Steps
• Lists

How can you rank for Featured Snippets?

The first step is to find search results for which these snippets appear. In other words, track snippet opportunities. This way, you will know what Google wants to show as Featured Snippet and what type it is. Once you locate those keywords necessary for these snippets to appear, you need to optimise your content to appear in that format.

In the case of the definition snippet, you need to show Google a text extract of 40-60 characters by placing it on your page. Also, if you put a subtitle asking for the meaning, the chances of getting the Featured Snippet are higher. For example: “What is a keyword? A keyword is…”

Increase session time or retention time

This refers to the amount of time a user stays on a website. The longer this is, the more Google will understand that the content of the page is of quality and worthy of being seen by more people. Therefore, it will rank you higher.

How to improve retention time

• Understand user search intent. By knowing your target audience as well as their needs, questions and concerns, you can create a solid content strategy. Therefore, the first step is to conduct a thorough analysis of your target and do keyword research to identify those keywords that are most relevant to users. As a result, you will be able t
• Capture your visitors’ attention from the start with a good introduction. According to a survey conducted by HubSpot, 43% of users skim read blog posts, while only 29% actually stop to read the content. These figures highlight the importance of creating an engaging introduction.

One way to optimise the user experience is to create a table of contents. This tool allows the visitor to access the section of the post that interests them and, therefore, to easily find the information they were looking for.

• Prioritise readability. The process of reading between the lines must be simple, clear and enjoyable for the reader. To achieve this:

• • Use active voice instead of passive voice.
  • Use a conversational and dynamic tone.
  • Use connectors to make transitions between ideas and improve the cohesion of your texts.

Insert Sitelinks

Sitelinks are additional links that appear below the web result. These links are intended to help users navigate directly to a specific section of the website or area of interest. In addition, the simple fact of having sitelinks is a factor that Google will reward with a better positioning in the SERPs.

However, sitelinks are not manual; Google only displays them when it considers the website to be relevant and useful for users. Likewise, it is Google that chooses which pages to display. However, the good news is that SEO experts can take different actions to encourage the search engine to display these links.

Use the broken Link Strategy to do Link Building

Broken Link Building is a process of finding links in your niche that are not active, recreating a version of that content and contacting the webmaster of that page to replace the broken link with your new link.

This strategy has been used for years and is completely legal, effective and scalable. Your firm benefits from the good content you have created to replace abandoned or lost content.

The first thing to do is to identify your competitors. Then, analyse each of their sites for broken links. Tools like Ahrefs, Screaming Frog or W3C Link Checker will help you to see external links or backlinks on a page.

You will have to analyse the links of each website one by one to find pages that give errors. You will also be able to see how many broken links each of these pages contains. All these pages are windows of opportunity for SEO. Once you have found them, choose the ones that are most relevant to your firm or the ones that you think you can improve in terms of content.

Add pictures

The expression “a picture is worth a thousand words” is not too far off the mark here. A key factor is that instead of using stock images, use your own images.

It has been proven that websites with their own images (which can be normal photos with the company logo in one corner) rank better because if Google finds that your office is using an image that others are using, it can penalise you in terms of positioning.

Also, remember that depending on the image format you choose, it will weigh more or less. It is not only a question of image compression, but also of format:

Imagen extracted from Ahrefs

Now, once we add the images it is important to tag them for Google and this is done through the ALT attribute. This is a short description that tells Google what the image is about. This text is a fundamental aspect that helps to rank higher in search results. Therefore, it is important that the main keyword of that page appears in the ALT text.

Apart from the positive points of images in relation to better ranking in Google, it is also worth mentioning that images capture the user’s attention.

Finally, don’t forget to resize images to achieve a responsive design on the mobile version of your website. This is essential, as Google currently analyses mainly your mobile version, not your desktop version.

Include videos

Audiovisual content has always been important to humans as it engages the audience more with textual content and allows them to retain information for a longer period of time. Therefore, complementing our texts with images and videos will provide a better user experience, which is paramount for Google.

As for videos, several studies have shown that websites that contain videos have a longer retention time, which improves SEO positioning. At the same time, if the retention time increases, the bounce rate also decreases. You can kill two birds with one stone.

Imagen extracted from Backlinko

Boost local SEO

Local SEO is the set of digital marketing activities whose purpose is to promote your physical business. This type of SEO also allows you to focus on the socio-demographic characteristics of the target audience in your area. These marketing activities allow you to put your law firm in front of potential clients in your area and make them aware of your legal services in more detail.

In the image below it is evident that those results from the map listing get 33% more clicks than the rest of the search results.

Imagen extracted from Brick Digital

A great way to do local SEO is by using the Google My Business tool.

What is Google My Business?

Google My Business is a free tool created by Google to help businesses manage their online presence. It allows you to add additional information such as reviews, contact information, location, opening hours and more.

In relation to the above, it is necessary to understand that the Google My Business profile will allow users and customers to leave reviews about your business. This is of vital relevance in SEO for lawyers, as a large part of potential clients looking for a lawyer consider to a large extent the opinions and ratings of former clients.

Imagen extracted from Novicell

How to register in Google My Business (GMB)?

Simply register on the GMB website and follow the required steps, such as the name of the company, its professional category, geographical location, etc.

On the other hand, another key tool for SEO for lawyers is Google Maps. Google Maps is the second place where clients go to hire a lawyer. Moreover, the intentionality, in this case, is much more direct and transactional because the user is predisposed to go to the location of the law firm.

Use keywords relevant to your industry

Keyword research is a vital factor for law firms. You need to understand exactly how the user searches to know how to bid for them and how to get them to find you on Google. Logically, your keywords will be in tune with the legal services you offer. They need to be relevant to your niche, with good levels of monthly traffic and not too general.

To start gaining positioning, if you are a small or medium-sized law firm, it is advisable to start by positioning for long-tail keywords, i.e. long tail keywords. These keywords have less competition, so it will be more affordable to start gaining web traffic using these search terms.

Some free tools that can help you find new keywords are:

• Google Ads Keyword Planner
• KWFinder
• Ubersuggest
• Io
• Answer the Public
• Google Trends
• Keyword Surfer

Create more blog content

Having a blog is important for SEO for lawyers. Google has a policy of “freshness” by which it always rewards with a better positioning those websites that upload updated and frequent content. In addition, blog posts allow you to include keywords with a more informative or informative intention. Subsequently, when the user enters your blog and reads the information they are looking for, it is very likely that they will enter the home page to see what your company has to offer.

People look to Google for answers to legal questions that affect them. Thanks to a good Content Marketing strategy it is possible to attract them to our blog through posts that solve their concerns, thus becoming a legal reference for them.

Another consideration regarding the blog is that Google rewards long content more than short content. In other words, a post that is 2000 words long and covers the whole spectrum of doubts that the user has on that subject has a high probability of appearing in a better ranking in the search results.

This is because Google considers you to be an expert on that subject and, therefore, the best option to solve the user’s needs for that topic.

On top of that, users tend to show a higher engagement with this post extension. They link and share it more, so that blog post will get more external links pointing to it. Consequently, it will get a better positioning in Google.

Conclusion

All in all, there are different options to optimise the SEO of your website. Logically, the more of these ideas you implement, the higher your chances of appearing in the first results. Despite all of the above, don’t forget that the most important factor of all is to give the user the best possible experience and generate a great deal of value with your website. Don’t forget that!

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Gerico Associates is the first legal marketing and legal communications consulting firm in Europe and Latin America. If you would like to be informed about future events or participate in one of them, you can contact us by sending an email to info@gericoassociates.com or by clicking here.

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