According to the State Bar of California there were 196,777 active attorneys in the State of California in December 2023. With a population slightly over 39M, there are 43 lawyers per 10,000 California residents. Broken down further that accounts for one attorney for every 232 Californian residents.
In a market as saturated and competitive as the legal industry, attorneys must stand out from their competition. One of the best strategies to stand out and improve conversions is implementing SEO strategies specifically catered for attorneys and law firms. SEO for attorneys and law firms helps stay competitive in this highly skilled and competitive industry.
As attorneys know, experience and knowledge in a given industry is paramount to the success of a campaign. That’s why you see veteran contracts and senior employees making higher wages compared to their junior – less experienced counterparts. A well organized and orchestrated SEO campaign can be the difference between being hired for the next case or missing the opportunity altogether. Implementation of the proper campaign that targets keywords important to SEO for attorneys help increase organic rankings and grow a law firm’s web presence.
At aha SEO, we have tens of thousands of hours working with law firms over the better part of a decade. We pinpoint the exact needs, issues and opportunities existing to increase SEO for law firms. With so many attorneys in the market, it’s imperative that lawyers and attorneys differentiate themselves from their competition and drive relevant traffic, and ultimately leads, to their site and office. Increase your law firm’s organic rankings with SEO services that are specifically catered to the legal industry!
Legal SEO FAQs & Resources:
- How Long Does Legal SEO Take?
- Can My Website Experience Impact Rankings on Google?
- How To Get a Website to Rank in the Legal Industry?
- Is Pay Per Click (PPC) Worth It In Legal Industries?
- How Can SEO Help Attorneys?
- What Factors Impact Organic Rankings for Lawyers?
- Why Are Backlinks Important for Attorneys?
- How Much Do SEO Services Cost For Lawyers
- Contact Us
How Long Does Legal SEO Take?
SEO has a relatively long lead time to see results. A nice analogy to make is to think of SEO as a financial investment. Like a financial portfolio, if the website content is properly generated the end user will begin to see natural results between three and six months.
This gradual growth in organic rankings is comparable to a portfolio gaining 7% annually. However – in SEO – traffic, impressions and conversions frequently increase far more than 7% year over year. If a marketing agency claims that their agency can boost your organic rankings to the #1 SERP position for competitive keywords in weeks or months, this is an immediate red flag for most short tail keywords. Although Google has cracked down on black hat SEO techniques, there are still plenty of SEO “agencies” out there that use spammy techniques and tactics in an attempt to trick the Google Bots. This can lead to a manual action against a sight and cause significant SERP volatility
At aha SEO, we provide a content plan at the beginning of the process and provide our recommendations for attorneys and law firms. The content plan helps identify and outline on page and off page strengths and weaknesses.
From there opportunities are identified and factual, fact checked content is created.
Unique research with data visualizations and schema markup leads to great user experiences. These content pieces provide long-term benefits from naturally obtained backlinks that use the content as a source.
Can My Website Experience Impact Rankings on Google?
Simply put – YES!
But like most things in life, it is not entirely that simple or intuitive.
Google has verified that page experience and a page’s site speed, is a ranking factor in organic rankings. If a target page loads slowly, users will get impatient and go to a competitor’s site that loads promptly.
Individuals in the 21st century have very short attention spans. The average person has an attention span of 8 seconds. People have shorter attention spans than most goldfish. To capture their attention, a website needs to load as quickly as possible and capture the target audience’s attention immediately.
The slower a site or a page loads, the more likely a user will return to the SERP and click on a competitor. Search engines, like Google, are tracking astounding amounts of data that many individuals do not fully recognize. Some of these variables that are tracked in Google Analytics are entrance rate, exit rate and bounce rate. These variables help tell a story to the algorithm which the algorithm then weighs in ranking fluctuations.
Site speed is an important factor in SEO in 2022 and onward. Websites that load quickly and are optimized for mobile first indexing tend to appear higher in organic rankings compared to those that lack these important qualities.
How To Get a Website to Rank in the Legal Industry?
A person asks the question – why is my legal website not ranking?
The answer may be complicated and involve numerous circumstances.
Below are some reasons why a website may not rank in the legal industry. If sites fail to utilize EAT, provide poor user experiences, lack technical SEO component, opportunity for content improvement and/or nuances about a market can impact organic rankings.
What is EAT?
EAT is an acronym for expertise, authority and trustworthiness (EAT). This is an important ranking factor for content on any website for any targeted keyword.
The best way to establish EAT, is via content. The old adage goes – content is king – but in the 21st century – what kind of content is king?
A diverse multi-channel marketing plan helps push leads to a website. Video content, infographics, podcasts, images, charts, data visualizations and social media engagement helps increase an authoritative score for a website.
What is EEAT?
In 2022, Google added another “E” to “EAT”. This added “E” stands for experience. Google uses EEAT to identify and evaluate the quality, credibility and relevance of trillions of pieces of content that are indexed by Google Bots. This updated search guideline helps the search engine understand information that is helpful, and credible, to satisfy search intent.
Google now puts a larger amount of emphasis and prioritize websites that demonstrate experience, expertise authority and trustworthiness (EATT).
Provide a Great User Experience for a Legal Website
Google wants the users of their platforms and services to have a good user experience (UX). Positive UX involves a number of variables that creates a positive user experience for a user of a Google platform. These variables can include site load speed, click through rate, bounce rates and numerous other components.
If users of a website get frustrated and go to a competitor (bounce rate), this metric is taken into account and a legal website with a higher bounce rate may rank lower than a competitor with a lower bounce rate.
Google tracks thousands of data points on interaction and user behavior. If the data leads Google Bots to believe that Website “A” has a better UX than Website “B”, odds are Google will place Website “A” in a higher position in the organic SERP rankings.
Understand Search Intent
What is your target audience’s search intent for a target page? Is it informative, commercial or transactional?
Within the legal industry, some high volume queries may be phrased in question forms similar to what is outlined below:
- Informative – Is it Legal to …
- Commercial – Best injury attorneys in {target market}
- Transactional – Hire {target market} injury attorney
While some Google users may only be interested in gathering information, other users may be further down the sales funnel and are looking to complete a transaction or submit a lead form.
What Is Informative Intent?
While informative content may not immediately lead to a form submission or a new case, it does help establish authority and answer queries by subject matter experts.
These informative queries led to brand awareness, and can create a positive experience for a potential lead. With the proper implementation of an internal linking strategy, an informative query can lead to a transaction.
What Is Commercial Intent?
Those searching for queries that involve commercial intent, tend to be earlier in the life cycle of a funnel. These searches include the word “best”, which can be aggregated by a myriad of data points including customer reviews, third party reviews, backlink profiles, authoritative score and much more.
What Is Transactional Intent?
Transactional intent is when a searcher is ready to complete a transaction. In the legal industry, a transaction involves a potential case holder submitting a form for a case or claim.
Pages need to be properly optimized for the type of intent and have a good UX that involves internal links to other pages for transactions, commercial and informative intent.
Is Pay Per Click (PPC) Worth It In Legal Industries?
The cost for Pay Per Click (also known as google ads or PPC), in the legal industry can be seriously astounding. In certain markets for competitive keywords, these keywords exceed four figures per click!
A good analogy is renting (PPC) vs. buying (SEO).
Think of pay per click as leasing the space in the SERP for a target keyword or a variation of that keyword.
In exchange for a nominal fee, Google – or other search engines – will place your ad above the local pack and organic results on a search engine result page.
The digital real estate cost can vary substantially from one query to the next, companies outline a bid range and Google then places these companies above organic rankings. These paid results will show “ad” or similar language that outlines that the result is an advertisement.
Whenever an advertisement is clicked on, the company of the advertisement is charged for the click. Regardless if the lead converts or not the company that has provided the advertisement will foot the bill for the click.
PPC can help drive traffic and increase form submissions. However, this can be very expensive in the short term. This is even more true if no cases are acquired through a PPC campaign.
PPC campaigns can be beneficial in the early life cycle of a law firm. However, the biggest drawback is the price associated with the advertisements.
Instead of spending thousands of dollars or more a month on a PPC campaign, invest in yourself and hire one of the best SEO companies for law firms in the United States.
Think of PPC as the short game and SEO as the long game for your digital marketing strategy.
How Can SEO Help Attorneys?
The legal industry is one of the most competitive sectors in the United States. Service based industries are highly competitive in large markets and SEO helps websites keep up with the competition.
If you’ve ever wondered why a competitor’s website is outranking your own companies, it’s because the competition on the first page of Google, have focused their marketing budget towards an SEO marketing campaign with an experienced agency that understands the legal industry.
In 2022, there was an average of 3,500,000,000 (3.5 Billion) searchers per day in Google. The vast majority of leads are generated via Google, and leveraging a legal website is the best and most effective way of generating leads and acquiring cases.
What Factors Impact Organic Rankings for Lawyers?
There is a plethora of ranking factors and metrics that impact rankings for attorneys. Content, technical, UX, backlinks, media and other variables impact the organic rankings for lawyers.
Is Content Important for Attorneys?
Yes! The old adage in marketing goes – content is king. It is not all encompassing but it is one of the best ways to establish authoritativeness, win position zero, rank for competitive keywords, rank for long-tail queries and ultimately drive traffic and increase leads to a website.
A good legal content strategy is imperative to any website. This is especially true in a sector as competitive as the legal industry. Pertinent content that answers search intent and queries, while providing a good user experience (UX), is imperative.
Too little content could be an issue, and conversely, too many pages targeting the same keyword can also cause issues and make it difficult for algorithms to understand what page to rank for a given query.
Content is important, but more content does not always equate to higher rankings – and agencies that tell you otherwise may be telling you that to increase their own revenue. The goal is to obtain the right kind of content and site organization that helps Google understand the purpose of a given page.
Is Word Count Important in Organic Rankings for Lawyers?
Word count is a variable to Google, however the answer to this question is more nebulous in nature.
There are a number of variables that are weighed. Just because a page has a higher word count than a competitor, does not mean that Google will rank the page with a higher word count over a competitor.
While word count is a ranking factor, content quality is more important than content word count quantity.
There are pages that rank for highly competitive keywords with roughly 500 words. If Google understands the page’s intended audience, has easily understandable headers, media and a good backlink profile, Google can value these pages much higher than those with redundant pages of content.
Why Are Backlinks Important for Attorneys?
A web page and SEO is a lot like an iceberg. You only see 10% of the work, while 90% of the work is below the surface and hidden.
This iceberg analogy helps identify all of the important work, research, networking, writing, guest posts and local outreach that goes into an SEO campaign that includes link building. Much of it however is not visible to the untrained eye.
Backlinks are an important variable for artificial intelligence. Search engines with the largest amounts of daily users use artificial intelligence to uprank and downrank listings in a SERP. These search bots view backlinks as an upvote from another site.
If another website links to your website, that sends a signal to the search engine algorithm that Site “A” finds Site “B” to be trustworthy enough to send traffic away from its own site and to another site. Search engines view external links as a vote of confidence from the sender to the recipient. Backlinks are an important ranking factor in legal SEO.
Are all Backlinks Created Equal?
Simply put the answer to the question of “are all backlinks created equal” is no.
Backlinks that have a very high DA/DS score that possess a high level of expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness will carry far more weight than a directory listing that is easy to obtain.
While highly authoritative links that point to your site are important, it is also best practice to ensure that profiles are created on platforms important to attorneys, and the directories that drive leads and traffic to your site.
Relevance and backlinks from local entities and organizations are critical.
A mention and a link from a news outlet or reputable site, tends to carry more weight than a directory that anyone with a keyword can submit. Backlinks that are editorial and directorial in nature carry importance in their own right.
At aha SEO, our experienced team understands the importance and benefit of obtaining pertinent and relevant backlinks. The team uses PR, outreach and numerous other strategies to help generate exciting content that drives traffic and attracts organic links!
What are Important Factors for Backlinks?
There are numerous important factors for legal backlinks. The URL of the backlink, authoritativeness, the site’s own backlinks, what the site links to, the spam score of a site and other variables are weighed.
Many digital agencies will build any backlink for the sake of building a backlink. However, these techniques can be harmful to a site’s well-being.
Can Backlinks Be Harmful to My Legal Website?
Spam got its name from a popular Monty Python sketch in the 1970s in which every item on a menu has Spam in it. It was unavoidable and gained use in the age of the internet with things that are unavoidable.
Large search engines understand that there are internet bots that link out to websites without the permission of another site. Unfortunately, there is not a lot a website can do to stop spammy websites from sending links to your site. While a disavow file submitted to GSC, can remove links from a target’s backlink profile, this should only be done by those that are familiar with disavow files.
Submitting a disavow file that includes beneficial links can be devastating to a website’s rankings.
Google has done a better job as of late understanding spammy techniques and discounting these links. Frequently, Google will not count backlinks that are incredibly spammy in nature that they have already identified. However, some that slip through the cracks can be harmful to a legal website.
What Directories & Citations Are Important for Attorneys?
Like most everything in life, there are things that are directories that you want to target and have a listing on. Conversely, there are those that you absolutely want to avoid.
The large platforms like GBP, Bing, Facebook and other social media outlets are no-brainer backlinks. But there are dozens of additional legal directories and platforms that a law firm or an attorney will want to target.
How Much Do SEO Services Cost For Lawyers?
There is no one size fits all answer to this question.
A site audit and a number of variables need to be calculated before any responsible agency would be able to provide a quote.
Depending on the size of the target market, monthly content, research and time requirements, SEO services can range from $500+ to more than $20,000 a month.
Law firms that want to pursue highly competitive keywords for injury keywords and nationwide class action suits will require more resources compared to smaller markets that target less competitive keywords.
Contact an SEO agency to request a quote.
Contact aha SEO | Specializes in Marketing for Lawyers
Contact our experienced marketers to discuss the marketing needs for your law firm. We offer free site audits and have helped law firms reach the first result of Google for competitive keywords!