7 Tips on How Attorneys Can Use SEO to Generate Leads and Grow Their Practice

Growing your practice is heavily dependent on lead generation. SEO plays a surprisingly impactful role in attorney lead generation. Though SEO and lead generation involve two different strategies, they are both part of an effective marketing plan that can help your firm to grow. In this post, we’ll share seven tips for SEO lead generation that will help you grow your firm this year. 

The Relationship Between SEO and Attorney Lead Generation

SEO is the practice of adjusting, editing, and optimizing different parts of your website so that it ranks higher in search engines and gets more traffic. On the other hand, lead generation involves increasing the number of prospects for your business. 

The connection between them is based on the way that SEO impacts lead generation strategies. Essentially, SEO complements your firm’s lead generation efforts by increasing awareness of the firm through organic website traffic. The more often your website shows up on Google’s first page, the easier it is for potential clients to find you and learn more about what you offer. Better rankings (through SEO) mean more eyes on your site….more attention offers more opportunities to capture leads. Optimizing your site for SEO means you’re likely creating a better user experience, which is important for visitors as well as search efforts. 

7 SEO Tips That Can Boost Lead Generation Efforts

Boosting SEO is one of the best ways to boost your online presence, get more leads, and grow your firm. 

1. Create a Blog with Content Optimized for SEO

An active blog with content that is helpful for SEO is one of the best marketing strategies out there. A robust blog combines all of the elements necessary for great SEO. Using well-researched keywords, optimized headings, and subheadings, and plenty of external and internal links are best practices that will help grow your blog and your brand awareness. 

2. Ramp up Your Website Speed

Website speed affects search engine rankings. Keep in mind that Google’s main goal is to provide a great user experience and help searchers to find information as quickly as possible. The faster your site responds, the more likely Google is to rank it. Use a reliable web hosting provider, make your website mobile responsive, use an image-optimizer tool, and remove unnecessary scripts or plug-ins. 

3. Take the Time to Conduct Keyword Research

Optimizing for keywords is a critical element of SEO. This research will help you to find terms that people use when they search for information. Solid keyword research is the foundation of online marketing efforts and can help you with the decisions you need to make. There are lots of tools available to help with this research, but Google Analytics Keyword Planner is a good place to start. 

4. Begin Link Building

This is the practice of acquiring links from other sites to your own, and it’s surprisingly important for SEO. These links help engines to crawl between individual pages on your site, as well as between entire websites on the internet. Link building is crucial, but you need to focus on quality over quantity. Build links credibly by focusing on high-quality sources and never buying or trading links. Personally reaching out to bloggers for guest posting and link placements is still a very credible way to build links.

5. Focus on Local SEO Strategies

It’s great to rank high for content, but for firms that operate within a certain geographic area, it’s more important to rank for that area. Local SEO strategies can help you to generate more qualified leads where you do business. Claim listings in online directories, use local keyword data and work on generating positive reviews. 

6. Maintain Active Social Media Channels

Many people are confused about how social media impacts SEO. To date, social media isn’t technically a ranking factor for Google, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important. There tends to be a high correlation between ranking position and social signals, with top-ranking pages displaying many more social signals. The more social media you have, the more likely you are to collect links to your content. 

7. Obtain and Manage Client Reviews

Customer reviews strongly impact SEO, as well as people’s first impression of your firm. Reviews are a strong signal to search engines that your site is trustworthy. Plus, 83% of people trust reviews over advertising. Encourage reviews by simply asking for them at the end of an engagement. Each time someone leaves you a review – whether good or bad – take the time to respond. 

Takeaway: 

SEO is crucial for attorney lead generation, but remember that your online efforts should focus on the end-user. Create high-quality content with plenty of helpful information and credible links. You also want to make sure you’re monitoring online KPIs regularly so you can see where to improve. Not sure where to start? Sign up for a free SEO audit today in order to take this next step in using SEO to acquire leads.