Is SEO important for law firms?
25 April 2023
Some B2C firms generate high-value client work through third-party referrals and some B2B law firms generate their work through referrals. So, although we live in a digital age, it’s no wonder that many lawyers ask the question ‘Is SEO important for law firms?’.
The answer is simple… Yes!
In this article, we’ll explain what SEO is, and why it’s important for law firms.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimisation. It’s the practice of driving people to your website by increasing your organic position on search engines like Google.
When you search for something on Google, you’ll get a number of search results. These are known as SERPs (search engine results pages). For the majority of search terms, at the top of the page, you’ll see ‘Sponsored’ results, which are the paid search results. Companies have paid for these results to appear at the top of the page.
Below the paid search results are where you’ll find organic search results. These results, which drive organic search traffic to websites, are pages that have been ranked by the search engine provider. The better your website and content SEO is, the higher up Google will rank your organic content on the page.
The majority of legal service clients won’t look beyond the first page of their search results. It’s therefore important that you implement an SEO practice for your content, to enable potential clients to see it.
Why look at SEO with Google Search Engine in mind?
Google Search Engine has the largest market share of any search engine provider. (Statcounter – March 2023)
Worldwide, Google has 93.18% of the market share across all platforms, followed by Bing with a 2.87% market share.
Breaking this down, Google’s market share on desktop is 85.53%, followed by Bing with an 8.24% market share.
On tablets, Google dominates the market with a 91.97% market share, again followed by Bing with 4.73%.
Finally, Google again dominates the mobile market share with a huge 96.6%. This is followed by YANDEX which has a market share of 0.85%.
With an estimated 5.16 billion internet users worldwide (Statista – January 2023), it’s, therefore, no surprise that when optimising our websites and content, we should do this with Google in mind.
How easy is it for SEO to work for law firms?
If your content doesn’t appear on the first page of Google’s search results, it’s unlikely that it will be seen. That’s why SEO is important. However, getting ranked highly on Google can take time and there are no guarantees. The legal sector is a very competitive industry which means many law firms are trying to rank for the same keywords. That being said, there are ways to improve your chances of being ranked on the first page, if SEO is done right.
Google has billions of stored pages in its index. When users type in a search term such as ‘How much does a divorce solicitor cost?’, Google bots will then match that keyword phrase against its pages. It ranks the matching pages on over 200 signals. These are things like relevance, popularity, and how other people are using the content.
Although it can be difficult, can take some time and there are no guarantees, you basically have to be in it to win it. So, the quicker you implement an SEO strategy, the better.
What should be included in an SEO strategy for law firms?
When working on an SEO strategy, there are 3 main areas to work on.
1. Technical SEO
Many lawyers don’t realise that it’s not just your content that needs optimising, it’s also your website. A significant factor that Google considers when ranking your website content is the user experience.
The health of your website has a huge impact on user experience. Problems and issues on your website can slow it down and any broken links will result in 404 messages. These things result in a poor user experience. A good place to start when reviewing the health of your website is Google Search Console. It will confirm if there are any issues on your website that need addressing.
Your site structure is also important. As well as understanding the priority pages, Google likes to see how page content connects and provides a good and clear navigational journey for the users. Having a good site structure can also help you prevent clutter, and keep on top of your pages as your site continues to grow.
Something of huge importance is the metadata. Each page of your website should have a title tag and meta description. These descriptive codes help search engines like Google understand what the content is. It’s these descriptions that show up in SERPs.
2. Backlinks
The more authority your website has, the more likely Google is to rank it. When external websites refer to and link back to your content, Google sees your content as credible. It’s almost like other companies giving your site a vote of confidence. It can therefore be a significant influence on Google to rank your content more favourably.
3. Content SEO
Google wants users to have a great user experience, so creating ‘people first’, quality content is key. If you’re creating ‘search engine first’ content, and trying to attract visits from search engines, it’s likely that Google will view this negatively. So, focus on ‘people first’ content instead.
When creating ‘people first’ quality content for a good user experience, there are a number of points to consider which include:
- Ensuring your content is up to date
- Creating content that’s original
- Formatting with plenty of bullet points, headings, and images to break up the walls of text
- Ensuring sentences are not too long and are easy to read
- Ensuring the fonts and their size are easy to read and accessible
- Keeping sidebar and pop-up distractions to a minimum
- Ensuring your content fulfils search intent, answering search questions thoroughly
Although you may produce a fantastic ‘people first’ piece of content, it still needs to be found. When Google evaluates a website for ranking, the bots read the content to understand what each page is about. This is where your keywords come in, as both the users and the bots need to know which keywords are targeted. To make sure you get this right, you need to carry out thorough keyword research and include keywords in:
- The metadata
- The headings and subheadings
- Throughout the paragraphs
There’s no hard and fast rule on how many times a keyword should appear within the content. However, they shouldn’t be overused. Experts suggest that keywords should appear once for every 200 words. Keywords should also combine with topical intent.
Why is SEO important for law firms?
When law firms are preparing their strategy, investing in organic search traffic is often a channel that gets overlooked. However, they’re missing out on a huge opportunity. Here are the top 5 reasons why SEO is important for law firms.
1. Cost-effective and sustainable
Organic search traffic is one of the most cost-effective forms of marketing. Unlike PPC, Google won’t charge you to appear on SERPs. If you instruct a creative content agency to carry out keyword research and prepare quality ‘people first’ content on your behalf, there will be a cost involved.
However, once created that content can continue to generate organic search traffic to your website without any additional costs. Therefore, unlike PPC which will disappear from SERPs once payment is stopped, organic search traffic has the potential for long-term success.
2. Enquiries
Whether you’re a B2B or B2C business, your clients will use online searches with specific intent. Whether it’s to find the answer to a legal question or find a law firm that can help them, if your firm is ranked on the first page of Google, you’re more likely to generate an enquiry.
If your firm generates the majority of enquiries through referrals, you may wonder why SEO is important. However, if your focus is only on referrals, you could be losing out on a lot of additional business, as well as building new relationships.
3. Conversions
According to a report by Ruler Analytics (Dec 22), although offline conversions dominate the legal sector, organic search also helps drive conversions. It states “If you’ve got good SEO, then, well, you’ve pretty much made it”, as the conversion rate for organic search came out at 4%.
This was significantly higher than the average of all marketing channels analysed which came out at 2.6. Paid search came out bottom with a 1.8% conversion rate.
4. Brand awareness
If you’ve done your client analysis as part of your content strategy, and your keyword research, you’ll understand your prospective clients’ search habits and keyword phrases. The more your content appears in your prospective clients’ search results, the more they’ll get to know your brand.
The more prospective clients see your brand, the more credibility it will have and the more they’ll trust it. However, if your content isn’t appearing on page #1, it’s unlikely it will be seen.
This is the case for both B2C and B2B law firms. It’s also the case for B2C firms trying to build third-party referral relationships. For example, if you’ve tendered to be on a legal panel, the adjudicators are likely to research you and your authority in your niche.
5. Market share
If your competitors are not competing for organic search traffic, or they’re not doing well, by implementing an SEO strategy, you can take the competitive edge.
It may be that your competitors don’t see organic search traffic as the right channel for them, so don’t see the point of SEO. If this is the case, there’s an opportunity for you to take a large proportion of the market share.
Let's talk
If your content isn’t generating organic search traffic and you need help, contact our experts. We can implement an SEO practice and create fully optimised, quality content to increase awareness of your brand and your legal services. Contact us today for a no-obligation conversation.
All content in this article was correct at the time of publication.
