A Recipe To Fix Your Law Firm's Website
The most common learning resources regarding SEO emphasize making your content more attractive to search engine algorithm; hence, keywords, location, and SERPs.
While you should definitely do that, you should also consider the other factors contributing to that: site interaction.
As soon as a visitor clicks to your page, the algorithm starts counting. How long do people stay on your site? Do they click around your site map?
Do they get redirected to internal links after reading something? Google's algorithm keeps tabs on even these, and they subsequently contribute to your overall search rankings.
In this guide, we'll walk you through a few tips to fix your law firm's website, which in turn improves your overall SEO practice.
Tip #1: Plan for Everything
Good planning begets design and content consistency. You don't want to have your "personal injury" page to be filled with unrelated legal topics like divorce and labor law. You don't want your blog posts to be tonally different from each other.
You don't want to use random, clashing colors on your site aesthetic. It will be terribly confusing and might turn off a lot of site visitors on the first look.
Not to mention, the lack of planning might lead you to make common SEO mistakes (like duplicating pages and keyword stuffing). Remember that user experience (UX) is one of the primary measures of SEO practice.
Create bad content, and people won't read; make it harder to access your site, and people will click off; publish low-quality pages, and Google's algorithm will catch on.
It would help if you already decide what to do with your site before it even goes live—and plan for things to do in the future.
Think of it like you're drafting a marketing plan. What types of content should you put out? Are you focusing on one area of law? If not, how do you manage your tags so it's all easy to access?
Most users will come into legal content looking for answers (as they usually would when they're on a search engine), making sure the most informative content is easy to find.
The easier it is for users to find answers on your site, the less likely they'll click out and find something better.
Tip #2: Do Away With Distracting Animations
Making your site look good doesn't mean stuffing it with all the graphics and widgets you can think of.
The last thing you want is to slow down or cause problems loading your website by adding too many gimmicky animations.
Pop-ups are okay for the most part, but if they're impossible to close, you're simply blocking your content from otherwise interested users.
Still discussing along the lines of user experience, simpler and faster designs will make it easier for a user to browse.
Adding far too many features that ultimately makes it hard for your visitors to navigate isn't going to do your law firm's website any good.
This isn't to say that you should stick with a boring site. Nice aesthetics can be pleasant to scroll through, but aesthetics should not come before loading speed and accessibility.
No matter how good your site's content is, users can just easily click off and find another alternative if it's hard to access.
Tip #3: Use Calls-To-Action
Calls-to-actions (CTAs) come in different forms. If you've ever been on optimized sites before, you'll often see phrases like "subscribe to our newsletter now!" and "Find an affordable lawyer near you!".
CTAs are an excellent way to remind your users of the services you offer.
Users who have been searching for lawyers on Google are likely to be in need of legal services. However, some of them are not sure whether to call a lawyer up and hire them. CTAs are a great, nondisruptive way of reminding them of your availability.
You can try using these CTAs as anchor texts that link directly to your contact information.
Tip #4: Social Proof
Let's face it, a lot of people are still skeptical about what they see on the internet. When you're searching for some affordable products on Amazon, you might start wondering if the products do as they say they do, and not just clever photos and misleading descriptions.
No matter how high you may rank on Google, some people will still prefer some proof of your effectiveness.
You can try listing your firm's achievements, past successful lawsuits you've handled (preferably ones that users can confirm through a quick internet search), and years of experience.
You can also add photos of you and your colleagues and photos of your office or building.
You can establish your presence on social media, attend community activities or events, and—most importantly—get reviews. However way you can show your legitimacy to a first-time or skeptic user, do it.
Tip #5: Choose the Right Stock Images
Images can add to informative articles. Not a lot of people will want to read walls of text—plus, it makes your blogs look attractive.
You should use appropriate images, though. You don't want to have something unrelated plastered at the beginning of a great article.
Avoid using the same image for two pages or blogs, too. There are so many royalty-free images out there; all you need to do is look for them.
Some SEO specialists even encourage using your own photos. It doesn't have to be complicated—a shot of your work desk or library can be useful—and Google will sometimes favor them more.
As always, remember to never post copyrighted material. Sites like Unsplash have a good selection of stock images you can choose from.
Tip #6: Scrolling Function
One of the main reasons you're making high-quality content is for users to stay on your page as long as possible.
What better way to keep them on your site than allow them to scroll and browse through a long list of available content?
Some users read on after reading an article, so it's nice to have something come up after it. You can do this by making your homepage easy to scroll.
Make it so it encourages users to poke around when they're checking the site out.
This can work perfectly for sites that regularly produce blog posts. Put them on the homepage so your visitors can skim through them.
Notice how most social media sites people consider addictive (like Twitter or TikTok) make it easy for users to scroll through content? You can take some inspiration from that.
Tip #7: Make Your Contact and Appointment Information Easy to Find
When a site visitor finally decides to hire you for your legal services, it's crucial that they know what to do to get in contact with you.
Whether it's a phone number, an address, or an online submission form, it has to be easy for users to jump from the page they're currently on to one that directly puts them in contact with you.
You can try this by either adding a "Contact us" or "Set an Appointment" link on all your pages or organizing your site map in such a way that it doesn't get buried among other internal links.
Tip#8: Regularly Test and Debug
You can use SEO tools to make sure your stats are fine. If you see your click-through rate or search rankings drop, find a possible solution.
If you see users leave your site after ten seconds of being in it, look for potential problems with your content or site design. Always keep up with your stats. It's one of the first things to do in SEO practice.
You should also test for broken links, error pages, and site bugs. You might be doing all you can to make the user experience better, but sometimes things happen.
Sometimes hosting sites run into problems, sometimes your developer gets a code wrong, sometimes you'll run into problems yourself and decide how to go about it.
Ready to Redesign?
Taking steps to implement these tips on your website will significantly improve efficiency, usability, and consumer conversion rates.
However, once you've implemented some of these tips, you may think that the bigger project at hand is to redesign your website.
So, always plan for those changes with user experience in mind.
The more users stay on your site, the more time you have to convince them to hire you.