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Search engine optimization is the backbone of an online presence, but that does not make it something you can “solve” with a few quick changes. As an ongoing part of your marketing and online identity, SEO can be difficult to manage, especially for a specialized field such as law.
Whether you represent a law firm or are an SEO specialist who has recently been hired to help one, it is important to understand the basics behind a law firm bolstering its SEO. The better-equipped you are in the early stages of SEO work, the easier it becomes to snowball the firm’s search presence to capture an even wider customer base.
Use Hard Data for Targeting
SEO should always be data-driven. Performing accurate research into a range of trends, audiences, and SEO strategies is important if you want to see success. The first step in any law firm’s SEO strategy should be to use hard data to identify where and how SEO would be most effective.
The key here is to consider what a law firm’s potential customers are looking for. What are the keywords that they are typing into search engines? Are there certain phrases or terminology that get much more traffic than others? Can you steal certain keywords from competitors, or will you have to focus your SEO on those keywords they have overlooked?
This is the foundation of SEO, but it can still be easily overlooked if you are not careful. It is important to use real data when making major SEO decisions rather than making assumptions or relying on outdated information that may no longer be relevant.
Remember to Consider Inexperienced Customers
Law is a complex subject that requires a thorough understanding of legal procedures, terminology, and processes. This does not just apply to the content you create but also to the things that an audience may be searching for – which means that it can be important to balance articles directed at knowledgeable customers alongside those meant for customers with limited legal experience.
For every person searching for a certain legal service by name, there will be plenty more who have to search using longer phrases based on the context of what they need. The usual keyword variety you see in SEO can be much wider for legal firms, especially those offering a wide range of legal services.
This makes it all the more important to use a variety of SEO keywords and content types targeted at different audiences. Not every potential customer is going to know what they are looking for, or understand how to find a specific service by name.
Build a Solid Law Firm SEO Strategy
Individual SEO tweaks and changes can be effective in their own right, but the biggest SEO benefits come from a targeted and well-planned strategy. If you do not have any kind of plan to follow, your SEO efforts are going to feel fragmented and disjointed.
The best law firm SEO guide and strategies should focus on a wide variety of content and keyword types. This can include everything from informative articles and blog posts to video content and even podcasts. Ideally, you want to create SEO content that targets the audiences that are worth the most to your business.
How you plan out a strategy depends on your goals and the kind of audiences that you choose to target. However, it is always important to look at the long term and not just focus on the immediate results – and to explore what your competitors are doing if you want an idea of where you could focus your SEO next.
Stay Up-to-Date with Law Firm SEO Techniques and Trends
The world of SEO is constantly evolving, so your SEO tactics need to evolve with it. Last year’s strategies could be useless this year, and even month-to-month changes might dramatically alter the way that your SEO is performing.
It is important to stay up to date with the latest trends and techniques. This includes not just the content you create, but the technology and software that you use to analyze and manage your SEO. Make sure that your SEO strategies and tools are current, especially if you are in a highly competitive law niche.
Beyond that, you want to know the current trends relating to law firm services, too. It is easy to get sidetracked with the day-to-day content production and miss out on some major changes in what the market wants, which can be especially painful if you are late to a short-lived burst of interest in a specific legal service.
For example, a legal firm that helps clients get compensation for mis-sold products or scams can capitalize on a major scam or sales scandal appearing in the news. This can be a prime opportunity to bolster your SEO, as well as brand awareness and potentially even a boost to your immediate pool of customers.
Keep Your SEO Varied
Experimentation and variety is a massive part of how you can make the most of your SEO. Even if you find one specific tactic that works really well, you want to supplement it with other SEO options and strategies that might provide a broader and more varied SEO reach.
Considering how often both SEO and law firm market trends will change, it never hurts to produce a wide variety of content, whether that is a single content type (i.e., writing) across a range of topics or multiple entirely separate SEO content types in their own campaigns.
Prioritizing the content that works is still important, but you never want to base your entire SEO strategy on a single technique or topic that could fall out of popularity at any moment. By staying flexible and willing to branch out, you can keep up with the latest trends and adapt quickly to changing SEO priorities and goals.
Whatever you do, it is important to recognize that SEO for law firms in 2024 is going to be just as unique and complex as it was in 2014 or even 2004. Sticking with a single strategy can only make things harder – make sure that you are prepared to experiment, conduct key research, and find an overarching SEO strategy that gives your law firm the best possible results with the resources that you have available.
