In today’s highly competitive digital world of acquiring new law firm clients, the answer of whether to blog is yes – absolutely – you must. Blogs are an essential part of the original content every law firm’s website must have for prospective clients to read. But… if you don’t do it right, there’s no point in doing it at all.
If you write your blog as a relevant piece of legal material and as an expression of your expertise, that’s fine, but the chance it will be read is slim. You will have spent valuable time writing the blog but to what end? It will not help to acquire new clients or beat out your competition for new business.
Complement Your Overall Law Firm SEO Strategy
Your blog is one part of what should be a broad strategic digital marketing plan for your firm. You must look at your blog as one cog in the gears of the digital motor that drives your law firm’s site high up in the Google search engine. On the surface – to website visitors – you are writing for them. The reality, however, is a well-written blog is primarily written to be read by Google.
Google constantly reads billions of pieces of content on the web, applies a score, and then ranks the content. Think of Google ranking like this: you and all your competitors are standing in line hoping that a potential client clicks on your firm’s search engine result. You want to be first in line when they conduct an online search. How do you get there? How does your blog help? It all comes down to Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
10 Search Engine Optimization Tips For Law Firm’s Website
SEO for law firms is only effective when all the gears on your website – including your blog – are seamlessly meshing to increase the power of your site to stay ahead of the competition. If the gears are grinding, your website’s engine will fail, and you will lose your ranking and fall to the back of the line.
Good SEO is a complicated expertise and involves many different actions:
1. Research Relevant Keywords
One of the most important things to consider when improving the search engine optimization of your law firm’s blogs is performing keyword research. This involves researching keywords that are relevant to the topics you will be discussing in your blog posts and focusing on user intent. It is essential to use keywords that are related to what potential legal clients may be searching for when looking for legal services. You should focus on keywords that have high search volume, but low competition.
While researching keywords, focus on long-tail keywords. These are phrases that are more specific and targeted, as opposed to single-word keywords. Long-tail keywords will help draw qualified leads to your law firm website since they are more likely to be searching for something specific.
2. Create a Compelling Title and Meta Description
Once you have identified the perfect keywords for your blog post, it’s time to create compelling titles and meta descriptions. The title of your blog post should be eye-catching and include one or two keywords from your research. It should also give readers an idea of what to expect in the post itself. When crafting meta descriptions, make sure that they accurately reflect the content of your post but also entice readers to click through.
When writing titles and meta descriptions for your blog posts, it’s important to keep them concise yet informative. Titles should be between 50-60 characters, while meta descriptions should be no more than 160 characters. These character limits are essential to ensure that your titles and descriptions don’t get cut off in search engine results pages (SERPs). Additionally, make sure that you include one or two keywords from your research in the titles and meta descriptions to let search engines know what topics you’re discussing in the post. This will help improve the SEO of your content as well as increasing click-through rates on SERPs.
3. Optimize For Local Search Results
For law firms, localization or local SEO is especially important. You want to ensure that your content reaches potential clients in your geographic area. To do this, include location-specific keywords throughout your posts. For example, if you’re a law firm in New York City, you should use keywords such as “New York City” and “NYC” throughout your blogs.
You can also add location-specific content such as local events or news stories in your blog posts to further optimize them for local keywords. This will help increase the visibility of your law firm’s blog and draw potential clients from your target geographic area.
4. Add Relevant Images and Optimize
Including images in your blog posts is an essential part of creating engaging content. Not only do they break up large blocks of text, but they can also help to illustrate a point or concept more clearly. Images are also powerful tools for SEO as they can attract organic search traffic and increase click-through rates on SERPs.
When optimizing images for SEO, it’s important to use descriptive and relevant filenames and include alt tags that explain what the image is depicting. This will help search engines crawl and index your images which can lead to more organic traffic. Additionally, make sure you compress your images so that they load quickly on web pages without sacrificing quality. Optimizing the size of your images will improve user experience by reducing page loading times, which in turn will boost search engine keyword rankings due to Google’s focus on mobile-first indexing.
5. Optimize for Mobile
In addition to optimizing the content of your blog posts, it is essential that you also optimize for mobile. With more and more people accessing the internet on their phones and tablets, it’s important that your law firm’s blog is optimized to accommodate these users.
Make sure that the design of your law firm website is responsive so that when viewed on a mobile device all of the text still looks legible and all images display properly. Additionally, make sure that any links or calls to action are easily clickable by mobile users as well.
6. Link Internally & Externally
Linking internally and externally in your law firm’s blogs is an important part of SEO optimization. Linking to other pages on your law firm website helps search engines crawl and index all of the content on your site. This also helps improve user experience as readers will be able to quickly find more information related to what they’re reading without having to leave the page.
Additionally, linking out to credible websites from outside of your site can help you build credibility and authority in the eyes of search engines. However, make sure that you’re only linking to sources that are relevant and trustworthy as this will have a positive impact on your SEO rankings.
7. Add a Call-to-Action (CTA)
At the end of each blog post, be sure to include a call-to-action that encourages readers to take the next step. This could be anything from signing up for your newsletter, requesting a consultation, or trying out one of your services. Adding CTAs at the end of each post, it can help boost conversions by encouraging readers to take action rather than just consuming content without any further interaction.
Common CTAs for law firms can include:
- Asking readers to book a free consultation
- Sign up for email newsletters
- Take advantage of limited-time offers
Additionally, they may encourage readers to contact the firm directly with questions or follow them on social media. CTAs should invoke a sense of urgency and provide readers with an incentive to act quickly. This could be in the form of discounts or exclusive access to resources related to their legal needs. To ensure maximum engagement from readers, it is also important that CTAs are visually appealing and placed prominently at the end of blog posts so as not to be missed. Furthermore, make sure that any CTAs linked to external sites are secure and trustworthy as this will help protect your law firm’s reputation online.
8. Use Structured Data Markup
Structured data markup is the process of adding structured data to HTML on a page. This helps search engines understand what the page is about and how it should be displayed in organic search results. For example, if you have a blog post about Intellectual Property Law, you can use structured data markup on the post so that when people search for “intellectual property law”, your blog post is more likely to show up in the SERPs.
Structured data markup also helps search engines better understand the context of a web page, as well as providing additional information that can be used in Google search results. This means that when someone searches for “intellectual property law”, they are more likely to find your blog post because it is more accurately represented. Structured data markup can also help improve the click-through rate (CTR) of your blog posts by making them appear more prominently on SERPs. Additionally, structured data markup can provide additional information such as reviews and ratings which helps to further inform potential clients about the quality of content available on your website.
9. Promote Your Content
Once your blog post is published, it’s important to promote it to ensure that it reaches the right audience. There are several ways to do this such as utilizing social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, or through email marketing campaigns.
Additionally, creating an SEO-friendly URL for your post can help improve its ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs). By promoting your content online, you’ll be able to reach more people who may be interested in learning more about the services offered by your law firm.
10. Hire a Law Firm SEO Company
Finally, for the best results, it is always recommended to hire a professional SEO expert. SEO can be complicated and time-consuming, so working with someone who knows what they are doing and has experience in the area of law firm marketing will help you maximize your rankings on SERPs.
A qualified SEO specialist will be able to quickly identify any potential issues with your content or website, as well as develop an effective strategy that takes into account all of the above tips. If you’re looking for quality law firm SEO services tailored specifically to your firm’s needs, then look no further than Advisory Concepts Evolvers (ACE). Our team of SEO experts understands the importance of high-quality content and effective strategies when it comes to boosting organic rankings.
Contact ACE To Handle Your Law Firm’s Digital Marketing Strategy
By following the tips outlined above, your law firm’s blog can be better optimized for SEO and begin to rank higher on SERPs. However, achieving top rankings requires consistent effort and attention over time. If you don’t have the capacity or resources to manage SEO optimization in-house, the effective marketing experts at Advisory Concept Evolvers (ACE) are here to help.
At Advisory Concepts Evolvers, we specialize in SEO services for law firms. Our in-house lawyer and our team of marketing experts have years of experience in optimizing blogs and law firm websites to increase visibility on SERPs and drive more organic website traffic. We can help your website rank higher for specific keywords so that it appears at the top of search results more often.
