For every law firm that wants to attract new clients via the internet, the most effective long-term strategy for doing so is using SEO to help improve the rankings of your website on Google. With Google being the biggest search engine by far, it is their algorithm and ranking factors that you must consider if you want your website on page #1 of search results, and hopefully in one of those coveted top three positions.
Anyone who knows anything about SEO will tell you that it is rarely a quick process. Google is not in the habit of operating with random whims and its algorithm is designed to reward those who follow a longer-term strategy than those who wish to take shortcuts.
As such, you must realise that using SEO to promote your law firm’s website and see it climb the rankings on Google will require patience, however, that patience will be rewarded assuming you follow tried and tested SEO tactics and actions. One of the best ways to do so is to follow a step-by-step process aided by a checklist. The checklist which follows covers ten of the most important SEO actions you must take to manifest better rankings on Google.
#1 – Plan Your SEO Campaign Strategy: Planning is required for any activity that you wish to be a success. For SEO, this strategic planning will include setting your goals, determining what resources are required, who you call in to help such as an SEO agency, and what budget you allocate.
#2 – Carry Out Keyword Analysis: Ranking is based on the keywords people searching for lawyers locally enter on Google. To discover what these keywords are, you can use one or more keyword research tools.
#3 – Conduct Competitor Analysis: In any scenario where you are trying to outperform another party, the more you know about their strategy the better. Here you assess what other local law firms do with their SEO, especially highly ranked websites.
#4 – Ensure Your Google Business Profile Is Completed Accurately: Your Google Business Profile is offered by Google to every business for free and enables you to have your law firm’s information on the internet’s biggest search engine such as map location, reviews, and some text to describe what legal services you offer.
#5 – Make Sure All Backend SEO Within Your Website Is Optimised: Many website owners do not optimise their website for SEO behind the scenes. By that, we mean back-office elements which visitors are often not aware of. Examples include alt text for images, internal linking, and metadata such as page titles and tags.
#6 – Follow Your Content Creation Plan: High-quality content is essential for SEO, so it must be given a high priority. You want to plan it well in advance and mix it up with graphics and video so that not every piece of content you publish is text.
#7 – Ensure Your Website Is Location Optimised: Your SEO must be geared towards searches that include local place names and expressions such as ‘near me’. This requires your website, and especially your content, to be identifiable as local by Google for SEO purposes.
#8 – Submit Your Website To Online Directories: The terminology used for this is ‘local citations’. It means you get your law firm listed on as many online business directories as possible, especially the major ones. A key point here is that every submission must have accurate and identical information.
#9 – Acquire Backlinks From High-Authority Websites: Backlinks are the fuel that drives rankings, but it is usually not how much fuel but the quality of it that matters. So, try to get backlinks from several high-authority legal websites rather than lots of random links from miscellaneous websites.
#10 – Test, Analyse, And Improve Your SEO Campaign: Finally, SEO is not a one-off activity. It is continuous which means you must monitor, analyse, and tweak your SEO to realise ongoing improvements in your rankings.