What Is Law Firm SEO?

A Quick Introduction Law Firm SEO

At this point, it's impossible to deny the internet's ubiquity in our day-to-day lives. The obvious proof of this is the rising relevance of social media, electronic news, and eCommerce. So it's only natural that the rest of the world adapts to the changing times.

SEO takes advantage of that ubiquity. So if you're a law firm that has (or planning to build) a website, you'll want to maximize its main purpose of getting your name out there.

What Is SEO?

SEO is simply an acronym for Search Engine Optimization. You're optimizing your website so it ranks high in Google and other search engines.

This means that you'll have to compete with other pages on a given keyword.

For example:

If you enter "California Personal Injury Lawyer", there will be a list of blog posts, pages, articles, and PDFs that Google thinks are most relevant to the keywords.

The goal here is to make sure your blog post or website page ranks the highest out of all the results. The higher you are on the list, the more likely searchers will click to your website for a "California Personal Injury Lawyer".

What Is Lawyer SEO?

As mentioned, practicing SEO means trying to rank higher than your competition. Depending on your industry, the most desirable keywords and optimization methods are going to vary.

This means that your SEO efforts center around popular keywords used by law firms and other related services. Some industries don't work the same way, so your strategies cannot always apply to other businesses.

So many law firms practice SEO, and you can prove this by doing a simple search. You'll find pages that link back to law firm websites, all of which—if you can spot them—implement good SEO strategies.

Why shouldn't they? SEO is an excellent practice of digital marketing for lawyers and law firm agencies.

Users looking up SEO legal marketing services on Google are likely interested or are already looking for lawyers to help them. So if your site comes up on the top of the page, they'll likely click on your links first.

Why Is Google's Algorithm Important?

Search engine algorithm dictates rankings. "High quality" and "Relevant" might appear subjective, but algorithms are programmed to set definite rules on what ranks high in the search results. So when you optimize for what the algorithm deems worthy of the top ranks, the higher your chances of getting on the first page.

As to why there's an emphasis on Google and not other search engines, the answer is simple: it's popular.

You might have heard the phrase "Google It", which more or less means "to search something up on the internet." Google dominates the online sphere that most SEO practitioners adjust and tailor-fit their strategies to its search algorithm.

This is also why SEO experts pay close attention to updates. Some SEO strategies either don't work as well or are doing the complete opposite to your stats.

For example:

Google Searches initially relied on keywords as a way to gauge relevance. You can guess that some people started stuffing popular but unrelated keywords into their pages, so Google had to find a way to control the spam. These days, Google is more likely to penalize rather than reward you for spamming your pages with popular search terms.

So, yes. Practicing SEO means that you have to constantly learn and adjust your strategies. While there hasn't been a major update that overhauled current popular tactics, you should be ready when it does drop.

However, this doesn't mean that you can't optimize for other search engines. You can always mind your stats and use popular keywords for other platforms. The benefits of SEO don't come overnight, so optimizing for all search engines is very possible.

What Is "On-Page" And "Off-Page" SEO?

You can implement SEO practices in two ways: on-page and off-page. Both can affect your rankings in the searches. Here's a quick rundown of the two:

• On-Page SEO is what the algorithm finds on your website. This includes the quality of your content, site speed, user experience, keywords, and structure. So if you're spending a lot of time fixing the accessibility of your site design and improving the content you provide, you're doing on-page SEO.

• Off-Page SEO is what the algorithm finds outside of your website. This includes your social media stats, online presence, and links from other websites. If your content gets shared around on social media and gets clicks, Google's algorithm considers those stats to your rankings.

Your on-page and off-page SEO strategies contribute to your website's overall rankings. Think of it as a cumulative effort that eventually improves your stats with the algorithm.

What Makes Law Firm SEO Different?

As mentioned before, SEO is all about competing and ranking in popular search terms. So, as you start strategizing, one of the most important things you should do is decide which keywords you want to rank high for.

Unless you have a huge firm that provides legal services to every state in the US, you should be eyeing local keywords. For example, if your firm primarily works in California Laws, you should compete in relevant keywords specific to those.

The legal marketing service industry is also unsurprisingly competitive, and SEO can help you with that.

What Can LawyerLeadMachine Do For You?

Law Firm SEO is all about practicing, adapting, and improving. If this is your first time or you're hesitating on giving it a try, a little push might help. To get started on your SEO for your law firm agency website, you can review your options here.