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The internet has increased the competition level for every kind of businesses, and that includes law firms. Thanks to social media, search engines, and review websites, potential clients can easily research and review multiple law firms before deciding on the firm that will represent their interest.
This means that to get and stay ahead of the game, you have to look beyond your physical contacts and offline recommendations and consider how to harness the internet to your favour. A good place to start is by optimising your law firm’s website for high-level online visibility. Depending on the type of practice, it makes it really important to implement special marketing strategies in order to keep your name at top-of-mind. To do so in a really professional manner, one needs to get the services of a marketing agency specializing in law firm marketing. This law firm marketing agency will help you develop new digital channels that will maximize your return on investment and will engage more clients.
Here, we will consider a few highly rated SEO techniques you should be using for your law firm this year.
Optimise relevant keywords for search
These days, the typical buying experience starts with a web search carried on the search user’s favourite search engine, which is usually Google. But buying experiences are not all that starts with the search engine. Even people looking to hire professionals use search engines to look for the best person or company that will handle their business.
Many law firms look to just rank for the keywords rather than making their brand name visible. In other words, it is essential to use the brand name of the law firm in your keyword research. According to leading name, Deitch & Rogers Law firm, a good strategy would be to mix and match plain keywords with branded keywords. This will allow for branding, exposure and greater visibility for the firm.
Using targeted and relevant keywords in your website’s content are the fastest and most effective method of showing up in search results of relevant searches done by potential clients.
Targeted keywords in this sense refer to:
- Location-specific keyword
- Service-specific keywords
- Purchase-intent keywords
Keywords in these categories respectively cover your business location, your practise areas, and types of legal services a client may need. If you can integrate keywords that fit these categories in your website content, you will begin to enjoy an increase in search rankings.
You can either use keyword research tools to identify keywords that fit these categories for your business or hire a legal marketing company to plan and execute a professional SEO package for your law firm’s website.
Improve user experience
Anybody with even the smallest SEO experience will tell you that user experience is one of the biggest factors to SEO success. If your website does not deliver optimum user experience, it can lead to a high amount of page bounces which will damage your search page ranking.
Potential clients who visit your website want to find the information they need easily and with minimum hassle, and when they don’t, it means your site has failed to provide the necessary user experience. One of the ways to improve your user experience is to include your core practise areas in your website’s navigation. If a potential client is looking for personal injury counsel, they should be able to find the page easily.
Hiding core practises areas in difficult to find sections of your website is not just bad for human visitors. Search bots regularly crawl websites to find relevant results for search users. If your core practises areas cannot be crawled by search spiders, they will not show up in search results for related search queries, meaning that you will lose potential clients without even knowing. So don’t just list your core practise areas, include them in your main navigation.
Take advantage of social media
If you go on social media, you will find millions of fashion, beauty, entertainment, and retail businesses, all of them taking advantage of social media to reach and meet the people that matter to their business. Law firms should also do this.
Social media is possibly one of the most effective online marketing tools in this generation. Social media cuts across all known boundaries so that you can engage just about anybody you want without an introduction. It is also a place where you can reach your target audience directly, searching for them using a set of attributes from your buyer persona, and engaging them with your business message.
Also, not everyone who is on social media is there to make casual relationships. It may surprise you the number of social media users looking for legal counsel and advice, which you can provide if you can find them.
So social media an integral part of your online activities and use it to drive targeted traffic to your website and law firm this year.
Get a GMB profile
As a law firm, your primary clients are probably people in your city. If this is true for you, then the best way to reach them is to optimise your business for local search.
Every day, millions of people search for businesses in their cities and locality, including professional services like law firms. But when your business is not optimised for this high traffic local search, you will not be able to get your share of the local market. Thankfully, optimising for local search is very easy.
To optimise for local search, simply apply for and create a Google My Business (GMB) profile. Here, you can share relevant information about your law firm, share your website URL, contact information, and reviews from past clients and cases. Next time a potential client searches for services that fall within your core practise area, your business will be part of those that will show up in their search results.
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