SEO For Law Firms
SEO for law firms is when a legal firm applies search engine optimization to their businesses website, with the goal of improving their online position for relevant keywords to their industry.
What is SEO for law firms?
One of the main things a law firm can do to improve their SEO is upgrading the content on their website to give their clients a better understanding of what their firm does, the services they provide and so on. Upgrading the content also helps search engines understand in more detail what the firm does, and help improve their position in the SERP accordingly.
Also important for the SEO is having good backlinks done so the law firm increases their level of online authority. When doing backlinks, it’s imperative that only high quality, relevant and legitimate backlinks to their website are done.
As a law firm, some of the first links that you could have done would include local business directories, under the lawyer or solicitor section. These do not provide that much ‘’link juice’’, but it does help Google and other search engines show that the firm is linked into the community well.
Other great backlink opportunities for a law firm would be ones from universities or other tertiary education organisations. A law firm that provides work experience opportunities to a university or tertiary education organizational students can ask the education body if they are able to provide a link back to the firms website from theirs. University and .edu websites can provide very high quality backlinks, which can set a local legal firm apart from their competitors, as it shows that even the universities give this particular firm authority on the subject of legal studies.
Why is SEO important for law firms?
It is a well known fact that The best source of new customers for law firms is by far referrals from happy clients. The existing happy customer that is referring their friends and family (or business associates) to your law firm is literally doing all of the work when in comes to selling your services. Now, what is the next best source of customers? That’s an easy one, SEO.
SEO places your law firm in front of potential clients who are actively seeking your services. With advertising on the other hand, people are being bombarded with adverts for your firm, when they are busy searching online for other things. This is one of the reasons that SEO for legal practitioners is extremely important if they want to maintain a healthy client base.
Law is also an extremely competitive industry in Australia. With a law firm having both individuals and businesses as clients, the industry can be quite lucrative. For example, if a law firm does a great job on a court case for an individual, they are going to return to that firm every time they have a legal issue. As for a business, if they decide to use a particular law firm for litigation and ongoing legal work, this means long term income for the firm. This is another reason that SEO is extremely important for law firms to have good positions in the SERP for relevant keyword searches so they can receive a steady flow of inbound client enquiries.
The Stages of SEO Done For Law Firms
Doing SEO for a law firm can be quite complex, however we have broken it down into 4 main steps. They are as follows:
Website Audit
Before any SEO work can be done, an audit of the law firms website needs to be done. This audit consists of:
Technical audit: The technical audit will consist of having the website put through a tool such as Ahrefs or Semrush, and having technical factors analysed such as H tags, redirects, indexability, link profile and so on to see if there are any technical issues that need to be fixed that will hinder SEO efforts.
On Page Audit: The on page audit consists of analysing the actual content of the website to see if there is enough content to satisfy readers and search engines, analysing the meta descriptions to see if they are attracting potential legal clients, title tags, images and more. Basically, the on page audit relates to the parts of the website that potential customers can see.
Determining whether as a law firm you are targeting a local or national demographic
Before keywords can be selected for the SEO plan for the law firm, it first needs to be determined if it will be a local SEO campaign, or something with a bigger footprint. For example, if the law firm is in a small town like Townsville QLD, and only services customers in that area, then we know for the next step of planning that the keywords need to include ‘’Townsville’’ in them. However if the law firm services the entire country, then the following step is a lot more complex, as there could be many hundreds of keywords used to reach the target demographic.
Choosing appropriate keywords for your law firms website’s SEO plan
Knowing the target demographic, it’s extremely important that the correct keywords are selected for the law firm’s SEO plan. As mentioned before, if the firm is servicing a local town such as Townsville, then the keyword selection can be quite simple.
However if there are multiple service areas, such as cities like Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and so on, then multiple landing pages would need to be created, and relevant keywords would be grouped together to be on the same page. This is done so that each landing page can target a certain area, along with smaller suburbs within that area.
For a law firm that services multiple capital cities, this is very important as they would want to capture as much organic search traffic as possible, to bring in as many new customers as they can. Below is an example of keywords that would be grouped together on a landing page. For this example, the law firm has an office in Melbourne, and therefore a landing page has been made for the Melbourne office:
Main Keywords: These are the short tail keywords that are the most broad and relate to the term law firm and the main city, Melbourne.
“Law Firm Melbourne”
“Melbourne Law Firm”
Secondary Keywords: These keywords relate to the main city Melbourne, law firm, and also sub services that the firm provides.
“Criminal Lawyer Melbourne”
“Corporate Lawyer Melbourne”
“Family Lawyer Melbourne”
Auxiliary Keywords: These keywords relate to smaller suburbs within the main city of Melbourne that people also search for, that the firm services.
“Law Firm Dandenong”
“Law Firm Box Hill”
“Law Firm Brighton”
“Law Firm Docklands”
By incorporating all of the relevant keywords into the content of the landing page, the law firm is essentially telling Google that when people search for a lawyer in all of the areas listed, that it is a good idea to serve the law firms website in the search results.
Listing your law firm on Google My Business
It is crucial that all businesses, especially law firms, list their business on Google My Business. This essentially means that when a person searched for a lawyer in any given city, the law firm will be displayed on the map section of the search results. This section of the search results is the first thing people see when searching on Google for a lawyer, so if a firm can be listen here, they can get a very large amount of traffic.
Being listed correctly in GMB, a law firm can also be found on Google Maps when searching an area for a lawyer. Also, the law firm reviews are displayed underneath the business name, so potential clients can see instantly if they have good reviews or not.
What other industries outside of law firms does Extension Group help businesses in Australia with?
Extension Group provide SEO for Australian businesses in virtually all industries. If you have a website and your competitors are ranking higher than you in the SERP, then we can help. Some of the industries that we commonly work with though include (but are not limited to):
Child Care Centres
Restaurants
Ready to take the next step?
Contact Extension Group to have an obligation free analysis of your website, and start the journey to more customers and more sales!
How To Get Started on SEO with Extension Group
We have a simple 4 step process which we go through with our customers to get set up to help with their SEO. First, we will have a quick 5 to 10 minute chat about your business and what you are looking to achieve with SEO. Then, we will work out a strategy to be able to achieve these results for your business. From there, depending on the product that you have chosen with us, we will assist with the following steps whether it be build you a new website or update your existing one, and then finally once you are making money from your SEO, you can decide whether or not you want to stay with us.
For more information, click here to view how our process works.
Our SEO Locations
Wollongong