Law Firm SEO Tips

If you want your law firm website to gain visibility in search engines like Google, the first thing you need is, well, a website and legal blog.

How you implement a website for your law firm can have a large impact on how well your site performs in Google. You will want to consider search engine optimization issues before you even begin building your site.

While there are many technical aspects to consider, you can avoid most major headaches by using a blogging platform or content management system. There are a lot options from which to choose, however, Wordpress.org, Blogger.com, and Joomla, are at the top of my short list. If you're looking for an excellent Joomla developer, I'd check out The Modern Firm.

If you're looking for a proprietary system (one that is not open source), you should consider Justia or LexBlog.

If you need help trying to decide what direction to travel, please feel free to contact me for some direct advice.

In order to gain search engine visibility for your law firm, you have to set target audience goals. This means establishing "the who" that you hope to attract with your website or blog. Three potential visitor targets include other legal professionals that may become referral sources, legal media professionals who might look to you for answers, interviews, or opinions, and of course, potential clients.

Here is some great information on trying to decide whether handling your own seo or hiring a professional is right for your business.

Identifying the goals of your website, articles, and blog posts before you write, can play a large role in the effectiveness that your writing has in generating these categories of new visitors.

Remembering your audience is absolutely critical to any form of communication, especially communication on the web.

Ok, now that we set some basics for preparation, let's talk about some practical advice.  The first step in really getting dirty with law firm seo is keyword discovery.

The very first step to identifying your target key phrases is brainstorming.  Start generating a list of all the different key phrases that you might think someone looking for your services would use to search for you online.

Generally, I break legal key phrases into 3 distinct "buckets".  The first of these are the geographic modifying key phrases.  These will include location words like cities, states, and counties.  For example, if I were looking to generate visitors in Chicago, i would add phrases like chicago, cook county, lincoln park, etc.

The next bucket of search terms are the practice specific search terms.  These might include phrases like personal injury, criminal defense, dwi, etc.  Try to think of practice terms from the perspective of your potential client.  Although there may be industry terms that legal professionals tend to use, it doesn't mean that your potential clients are using them.

Finally, the 3rd bucket are the general legal terms.  These terms include law, lawyer, attorney, law firm, legal professional, etc.

Once you have generated a good list (maybe 50-100) of these terms, and combinations of them, you will want to prioritize them.  But that's the subject for another tip.

One of the most vital components to increasing the visibility of your web properties within search engines is content.  This is especially true when it comes to Google.

There are a couple of main guidelines to follow when producing web content.  Obviously, you want to use target keywords in titles, headings, text, and links.  However, keep in mind that positioning and visibility in search engines is worthless if visitors aren't interested in the content of your site.  Therefore, you should always write for site visitors, but keep search engines in mind.

Another important aspect to creating web content is making sure that it is unique.  In addition to copyright issues, if your content isn't unique, it won't benefit you in search marketing.  Google is becoming very adept at sniffing out duplicate content.

Finally, make sure you are adding new content to your website/blog frequently.  We recommend that attorneys shoot for 3-5 new pieces of content per week.  That will keep your web properties fresh and current, and increase the frequency with which search engine crawlers return to your site.

Now that we've covered some basic on page factors and content, it's time to dive into the real meat of search marketing, acquiring new links to your site.  Before we start talking about the real nitty-gritty of building links, I'd like to address some more philosophical issues surrounding link building.

Most seos will agree that the best way of acquiring new links to your website is from "natural" linking.  Natural linking occurs when you put something on the Internet that other users find "link worthy" and provide a link to the content.  This is the "google-endorsed" way of obtaining links and these are the links that google is most interested in identifying through its algorithm. Google is in a constant state of evolution with its core mission to identify, weigh, and credit natural links on the web.

With a natural link building strategy, the search marketer's focus is on creating exceptional linkable content and then getting the content out in front of the right audience that is most likely to link to it.  These types of seo techniques are generally referred to as "white hat".

However, there are also many "artificial" ways to acquire links to one's site.  Some of these may include reciprocal link arrangements, paying for links, and guest blog posting just to name a few.

While these methods of link building may be referred to as "grey hat", "blue hat", and "black hat" depending on their "deviousness", I prefer not to classify these based on some subjective search ethics code.  Instead, I categorize artificial link building techniques based on risk assessment and effectiveness.  It is my belief that a client should be informed about the relative effectiveness and consequences of these various strategies and decide their own risk tolerance.

Once you have developed some quality legal content, it's time to distribute it. While posting content on your website and/or blog is important, when you're getting started, you will also want to consider posting it on the very legal content platforms.

The reason for this is two-fold. First, by publishing to higher authority and higher trafficked sites, you are more likely to get eyeballs on your content. Second, most content platforms provide the author the opportunity to include an author resource box. Within the resource box, many content platforms allow authors to link back to their websites. Thus, content distribution increases the number of people who see your content and provide links back to your website.

This strategy, commonly referred to as "article marketing" is extremely effective for increasing search engine visibility. However, there are a couple of things to consider. First, there is a duplicate content issue. Some article directories will check your content for duplication prior to publishing. In any event, you will want to vary your content across different platforms as much as is practical. Second, don't spread your content in bad neighborhoods. Stick with sites that are relevant to your practice and location.

As we have previously discussed, one of the most important components to law firm seo is publishing your content across the web in ways that create links back to your site.  One place that we have seen results is HG.org.

HG.org is a legal directory and content publication platform.  HG.org provides legal professionals both free and paid listings.  The free listing includes a basic listing with your firm information, as well as, article submission.

Placing unique and relevant articles on HG.org can increase your law firm's online exposure.  In addition, HG.org provides you the opportunity to include links back to your website.  Unfortunately, at this time, they don't allow you to adjust the anchor of the link (it just uses your firm name).  However, these are quality links and can dramatically increase your online visibility.