Podcast Ep. 3: The Four SEO Techniques for Law Firms

Few things cause more confusion or frustration in digital marketing than search engine optimization (SEO).

In the latest episode of the Legal Marketing 2.0 podcast, we clear up some of the confusion by identifying four techniques: Technical, On Page, Of Page, and Local, with some actionable takeaways. 

For more insights, check out our upcoming webinar: SEO Basics in an Hour for Lawyers and Legal Marketers, and bring your questions.

Show notes for the Legal Marketing 2.0 podcast, episode 3: The Four SEO Techniques for Law Firms

Technical SEO – This is how the search engines crawl and index your website and blog. You have to think about SEO when you’re building your website. It’s not enough to make your site look pretty and functional, you need a good back-end or coding structure that the robots crawling your site can recognize and register.

Other elements to consider are site speed and responsive design (mobile) to improve your ranking.

• Tip: Submit your site to Google Search Console, including your sitemap. This allows the search engines to index your website. You will get feedback on errors on your site.

On-Page SEO – Are the pages on your website properly optimized for the keywords you’re trying to rank for? This can be a page or blog post.

• Tip 1: Do your keyword research. Keywords should be client-focused and have enough search volume.
• Tip 2: Make sure the keyword is in your title, the meta description (which appear in the search results below your title), and repeated a few times on the page.
• Tip 3: Make sure each page or blog post has at least 300 words and then write for as long as it takes to tell your story.

Off Page SEO – This is the authority of your domain which can rank from 1-100. The higher the domain authority, the easier it is to rank for your keywords. Anywhere for 40 and up is good for a law firm website.

How do you build your domain authority? By the number of sites that link to your website. Note that not every link is created equally.

• Tip: Be careful of black hat SEO tactics. Some agencies or vendors will promise to link from dubious sites, trying to trick the system. Even if it works for a short time, Google will catch on to you and your site could incur a severe penalty making it very difficult to be found in search. In other words, don’t try to game the system. See: Why Lawyers Should Avoid Black Hat SEO.

Local SEO – This is important for finding firms or businesses within a specific geographic location. Where you’re located impacts Google search results.

This is especially important if your practice is local rather than national. Though even for national firms, local SEO is important when people are searching for an office location nearby.

Local SEO is all about citations: your firm’s name, address, and phone numbers. The more citations or listings you have, the stronger the signal to Google that you are located in the address you specify.

• Tip: Make sure your name, address, and phone number (NAP) is consistent across all online directories, of which there are around 70 Google looks at to confirm you NAP. Use yext.com to lock down your NAP so that they’re consistent across all directories.