7 Elements That Go Into Law Website SEO

7 Elements that Go into Law Website SEO

It’s common for lawyers to hire SEO specialists to work on their sites. They do that because if the SEO agency or freelancer gets the lawyer’s site to rank higher when someone Googles particular keywords or phrases, the attorney should see more site engagement. That can translate to more clients and money.

SEO for law firms has many elements that can go into it. We will talk about a few of those right now.

Current Domain and Website Assessments

An SEO agency or freelancer that a lawyer hires to look at their site will probably start this process by looking at their current domain and website. They’ll look at the domain to see whether it’s something engaging or whether the lawyer might potentially want to change it.

Sometimes, the wrong domain can strike a sour note with potential clients. A particular name or phrase might have negative connotations. It’s a small change, but sometimes a crucial one.

As for the existing website, the SEO agency or specialist will want to look at it to see if it has the elements it needs. If anything doesn’t look right or the SEO specialist sees something missing, they’ll know to focus on that when they rework the site or report back to the lawyer about the changes they should make.

Competitor Analysis

Every law firm has competitors. You might have only a few or many. Lawyers compete for clients in every conceivable niche. Your website needs to stand out for all the right reasons if you are going to poach some clients from other attorneys in your geographic region.

An SEO specialist will look at competing websites accordingly. They will look at what’s working for each competing site and what’s getting great engagement for the law firm.

They can then recommend changes you should make to your site based on that. Competitor research and analysis isn’t about copying what another law firm’s website does. It’s about doing a better job than them and convincing potential clients you have a better reputation, superior services, more experience, etc.

Keyword Research

You need an SEO agency or freelancer who can do in-depth keyword research. That’s textbook, fundamental SEO that must happen if you have any chance of market penetration within your niche.

The agency or individual you hire should have all the latest tools available to them, and they must know how to use them. Frequently, new SEO tools come out that can help you beat out your competitors for views and website engagement. Your SEO specialist must have them ready to use when you hire them for the job.

Content Improvement

Next, your SEO specialist will probably tell you how to improve your website’s copy. They will tell you to add or remove certain content based on how individuals interact with it when they visit your site.

For instance, maybe someone who comes to your site will spend a certain amount of time on your “about us” section, or perhaps they’ll spend some time on your law firm’s blog. Maybe your FAQ section gets most of the attention.

Your SEO specialist might tell you to change some content, and they’ll give you specific details about how and why you should do that. You might hire an agency that will rewrite that copy themselves. SEO agencies who do that will charge you more than ones that only recommend the changes, but then they want you to handle that yourself.

Your SEO agency will likely look at both inbound and outbound links they find on your site. Inbound links direct someone elsewhere within your site, while outbound ones will take them outside the site.

You might wonder why you’d want someone to ever leave your site via an outbound link. It’s not that you want someone to leave. It’s that you want your site to climb the SERPs, and outbound links to credible sites can help it do that.

If you’re not getting enough engagement or clients, you might find that you’re not featuring enough inbound and outbound links on your site. An SEO agency can identify that problem and recommend some places to install links. Once you have them in the right places, you should see better numbers.

Headers, Meta Descriptions, and Title Tags

Headers, meta descriptions, and title tags all go into something called on-page SEO. On-page SEO can help your site rank if you’re meticulous about using these three features.

Headers are the large, banner-like headlines that go at the top of each web page. If you don’t have good ones, your SEO specialists can identify that problem and tell you how to correct it.

Meta descriptions are HTML elements. You can write them using language so that search engines and users can easily identify what they’ll find on each page. Title tags identify or specify a web page’s title for a search engine.

As you can imagine, you need to get all these elements right if you want your site to rank. Your SEO agency or individual can help you improve any of these that need it.

Local SEO

Lawyers need local SEO even more than a lot of other businesses. Local SEO refers to optimizing your pages, title tags, meta descriptions, headers, and so forth, with words and phrases that tie them to a specific geographic location.

In other words, someone doing SEO for you might look through all the elements we mentioned and suggest keywords or phrases you need to add so that they’ll appear location-specific. You might use words like the city or state in which you’re based.

You may also include words that identify or talk about local landmarks, neighborhoods, or even local foods if that helps. Your SEO agency can research what words or phrases will get you the best response from people browsing and looking for lawyers in your area.

All these SEO elements can help your website rank, so make sure not to neglect any of them.