SEO for Lawyers: Complete Guide for 2022 (with Tips and Examples)

SEO for lawyers doesn’t have to be as complicated as you might think. But where should you start if you’re a law firm looking to rank higher on Google and other search engines? That’s the tricky part.

Keep reading for everything you need to know about SEO for lawyers and how our experts at Maple Cloud SEO Agency can help.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for search engine optimisation and it refers to the process of improving your position on search engine results pages, also known as SERPs.

In other words, SEO is a digital marketing strategy that helps your website rank higher in organic search results on search engines like Google and Bing without paying for ads.

How SEO Works

When you type something into a search engine, its algorithm “crawls” through everything on the internet to deliver the most relevant results to the user.

Using an index based on hundreds of ranking factors, these bots use the links between websites to decide how to rank search results for particular keywords.

There are countless SEO strategies out there and since search engine algorithms are changing all the time, so are SEO tactics.

Some SEO strategies include content marketing, improving the usability of your website, correcting any technical issues and amplifying backlinks within your site.

Long story short, search engines want to serve their users with high-quality, relevant content. So, SEO works by optimising your website for search engine ranking systems to ensure your web content shows up for relevant searches.

Why is SEO important for lawyers?

SEO is important for any business that can find leads through search engines by using organic traffic. In other words, you don’t have to pay for ads to show up in search engines results if you create a solid SEO strategy.

Showing up in these search results is important because most online searches start in a search engine.

Google alone is the starting point for almost 70% of all online searches, getting about 3.5 billion searches every day. Law firms are missing a huge opportunity when they don’t optimise their websites for these search engines.

Plus, when you implement SEO, especially through a content marketing approach, you’re simultaneously building brand authority by providing high-quality, educational resources to potential clients.

Earn More Clients

There are hundreds of people out there looking for a quality law firm. These days, many people search for products and services, especially something as important as a lawyer, on search engines. SEO is important because it can earn your law firm more clients.

Local SEO for lawyers can be particularly powerful. Local SEO simply means targeting your SEO strategy to specific geographic locations. After all, if you’re a law firm in Sydney, you won’t want to show up on SERPs for law firms in Melbourne, right?

If you’re struggling to find new clients, it’s time to up your SEO game. Give it a try yourself and check out the first page of search results for law firms in your area. Who comes up?

Those law firms websites are going to get more clicks. Most people aren’t going to read through pages and pages of search results before they set up a consultation. In short, you’ll almost certainly earn more clients with proper SEO for lawyers.

Build Authority

A byproduct of strong SEO for lawyers is the chance to build authority in your industry. Your website says a lot about who you are as a business and it’s key that you’re presenting a professional, high-quality image to the world through your website.

Search engine algorithms are simply trying to find the best solutions available for their users. After all, Google’s goal is to give its users the most relevant and best search results possible.

So, if you’re optimising your website for search engines, you’re also, in turn, going to be creating the best website possible – from the design to the content to the functionality.

When you have a high-quality website with informational content that’s well-written and search engine optimised, potential clients tend to trust you more and are more likely to enquire about your services.

Plus, when you rank higher on search results pages (without paying for ads) you’re instantly building authority in the legal field. All in all, SEO for lawyers is a win-win.

How to Do SEO for Lawyers

So, now that you know why you’d want to optimise your website for search engines as a law firm, let’s get into the how.

Here are a few key aspects of SEO for lawyers that you’ll need to know before you get started.

• Keyword research
• SEO website content
• Link building
• On-site optimisation
• Google Analytics
• SEO agencies

Keyword Research

One of the pillars of strong SEO is nailing down your keyword research. Keywords are words or phrases that you can incorporate into your website content that reflect what people are searching for on search engines.

For example, when doing SEO for lawyers, you might do research on keywords like “law firms in Brisbane” or “traffic offences”.

Keyword research is important because it helps you integrate keywords into your content that people are actually searching for. Plus, there are countless tools out there to help you do keyword research including:

• SEMRush
• Ahrefs
• UberSuggest

Not only will keyword research include search volume (how many people are searching that keyword) and competition (how many websites are currently competing for that keyword), but some tools even give you content ideas, competitor analysis and more.

When figuring out which keywords to use, you want to look for keywords with high search volume and low competition. However, it’s always best to aim to rank your website for any relevant keyword you can think of.

Pro Tip: Make sure you’re only incorporating relevant keywords into your website content. Just because a keyword is trending doesn’t mean you should try to rank for that keyword. The keywords you should target are those where you can actually answer the search query.

SEO Website Content

High-quality SEO website content incorporates keywords and solves user search queries. SEO website content includes:

• Blog posts
• Articles
• Whitepapers
• Web pages

By using specific techniques like writing in small paragraphs, using lists and bullet points, incorporating keywords and integrating inbound and outbound hyperlinks, your SEO website content is the main pillar of optimisation.

There are also strategies for how to post SEO website content and how to add links within your content to offer the best results.

Again, SEO website content is key to any solid SEO strategy but especially when doing SEO for lawyers, it’s a fantastic way to build authority in the digital space for your law firm and educate future clients on their legal rights and responsibilities.

People tend to trust businesses when their website is well-rounded and complete with high-quality content which is probably why it’s one of the pillars for getting ranked on search engine results pages.

Link Building

The internet is essentially one big web of links. Search engine algorithms rank web pages based on both the websites they link to as well as how many other websites link to them.

In other words, if your law firm creates a few incredible blog posts about how to peacefully manage the legalities of divorce and countless psychology websites link to it, search engines are going to assume that it’s a high-quality blog post and rank it higher in its search results.

Link building is the process of building high-quality inbound links to pages on your website to improve your rankings on search engine results pages.

However, it’s important to keep in mind that there are a lot of scammy tactics to build inbound links. But, there are also ways to do white hat link-building SEO for lawyers to ensure trustworthiness remains intact.

A great way to build quality likes is by writing guest blog posts and linking to your website. You can also create relationships with other brands that might naturally link to your products and services.

Of course, nothing beats high-quality SEO website content that others naturally link to.

On-Site Optimisation

The way your site works also has a huge influence on search engine rankings. In other words, if your website is slow to load, contains errors or is simply difficult to use, it can negatively affect how you’ll rank on search engines like Google.

In terms of SEO for lawyers, it’s easy for law firm websites to be slightly underwhelming. After all, most law firms don’t have expertise in the digital space. You’re busy with complex legal cases and reading the fine print.

Still, you could be losing potential clients due to your on-site experience. In that case, on-site optimisation includes:

• Fixing broken links
• Corrected outdated content
• Improving the design and flow of your website
• Compressing files for quicker load speeds
• Improving the readability of your website
• Deleting duplicate content
• Incorporating keywords into website content
• Optimising meta descriptions and URLs

In short, anything that makes your website easier to navigate and keeps users on your website longer will increase your chances of ranking higher on SERPs. On-site optimisation, therefore, is another important aspect of SEO for lawyers.

Google Analytics

Another tool that’s useful when doing SEO for lawyers is Google Analytics. You’ll get to know this platform inside and out when optimising your website for Google and other search engines.

Since Google is the largest and most widely used search engine, you’ll get powerful data on who your users are, which pages they’re seeing the most, which pages they immediately close out of and which ones they stay on the longest.

Understanding Google Analytics (or any website data and analytics tool for that matter) is easy to overlook. We often put loads of work into our SEO strategies without truly analysing what’s working and what’s not.

And while it’s important to understand that SEO isn’t a quick fix and it takes at least a few months to start seeing traction from any SEO plan, checking out your website’s data every week or every month is key to staying on track.

Work with an SEO Agency

SEO for lawyers is tricky. Not only are lawyers famously busy with lots on their plate, but SEO’s reputation for being scammy or less than trustworthy can make it difficult to feel like SEO for lawyers is worth it at all.

That’s where an SEO agency comes in.

SEO agencies do everything for you from keyword research to content creation. You can hire a high-quality SEO agency to help your website rank higher on search engine results pages and in the meantime, you can continue to do what you do best in your law practice.

So, whether you’re overwhelmed with SEO or you simply don’t have the time or the interest to do it yourself, the best way to do SEO for lawyers is by hiring an SEO agency to get expert digital marketing help from white hat SEO strategists.

Best SEO Agency for Lawyers

Let’s face it… SEO for lawyers is best when it’s in the hands of an experienced SEO agency. Here, we’re going over what to look for in an SEO agency for law firms and what makes Maple Cloud SEO Agency in Sydney stand out from the crowd.

What to Look For

When deciding between SEO agencies to do SEO for lawyers, some of the main things you’ll want to look for include:

• Proven track record
• Trustworthiness
• Understanding of the legal niche
• Data-driven results

Proven Track Record

When looking for the best SEO agency in your area, start by checking out who else they’ve previously worked with. You’ll want to see that they have a proven track record of doing SEO for lawyers and other local businesses.

During your initial consultation, ask about other SEO campaigns they’ve worked on and check out any testimonials they might have on their website.

You might also see how well they themselves are ranking on search engine results pages. After all, they’re likely to use SEO strategies on their own websites. So, you can get an understanding of their track record by noting their own website results.

Trustworthiness

Next, you’ll definitely want to choose an SEO agency that’s trustworthy. Obviously, this goes without saying, but how exactly do you gauge the trustworthiness of an SEO agency?
Of course, you can do your due diligence and seek out testimonials and client reviews. But you can also get a feel for an agency’s trustworthiness by seeing what they promise.
If you see that an SEO agency is making huge guarantees that seem a little far-fetched, that might give you an inkling that they’re potentially using some scammy strategies. In other words, it’s not wise to trust the SEO gurus that promise to get you ranked #1 on Google.
After all, search engine algorithms are always changing and it’s impossible to predict how well a page will do in search results. So, if an SEO agent is honest about what’s realistic and avoids making empty promises, it’s a good sign that they’re more trustworthy than others.

Understanding of the Legal Niche

SEO for lawyers can be complicated. The law is a complex topic with a lot of implications. You can’t just say whatever you want when it comes to promoting a law firm or optimising your law firm’s website.
So, if you’re a law firm looking for an SEO agency to help you with your search engine optimisation, it’s important to go with an agency that has an understanding of the legal niche.
Most SEO agencies will have a wide range of clients but others focus on specific types of businesses. So, check out the other companies they’ve worked with and ask how much of an understanding they have of your practice.

Data-Driven Results

Last but not least, it’s important to follow the numbers. Good SEO agencies will always have the data to back up their results. If they don’t have measurable analytics to show you, they’re probably not the best at what they do.
During your initial consultation, ask about the numbers and see what their ROI on SEO for lawyers truly looks like. How many clicks do their other clients receive? How many search results do they show up in?
Again, beware of empty promises and guarantees. Still, it’s important to see whether your SEO agency offers data-driven results for other clients to get an understanding of what exactly they can do for you.

The Maple Cloud Difference

Maple Cloud is a premium SEO agency in Sydney and we stand out in more ways than one, especially when it comes to SEO for lawyers. The Maple Cloud Difference includes:

• Experience with lawyers and law firms
• SEO professionals on staff
• White hat tactics

Experience with Lawyers and Law Firms

Maple Cloud is the best choice for your law firm because we already have experience doing SEO for lawyers in Sydney with clients like Aperion Law and BSM Lawyers.
We understand that the legal niche is nothing to mess around with and we can ensure that all of our SEO strategies are to the book and safe from a legal perspective.

SEO Professionals

While you might assume that all SEO agencies have a staff full of SEO pros, in reality, many of them aren’t seasoned experts. Although Maple Cloud officially started in 2020, everyone on our team has years of SEO knowledge under their belts.

White Hat Tactics

Last but not least, we use white hat SEO for lawyers to make sure you can trust that what we’re doing is legit.
We won’t buy links or pack your content with keywords until it’s unrecognisable. Sure, doing things the right way may take a little longer, but it’s worth it to earn you organic traffic without doing anything scammy.

Final Thoughts

All in all, SEO for lawyers can be tricky but it’s certainly not impossible. Once you understand the importance of good SEO, it makes sense to throw every strategy possible towards ranking higher on search engine results pages.
Need help with SEO for lawyers? Get in touch with our SEO pros at Maple Cloud. Book your free consultation today!