Test Your Knowledge of SEO for Lawyers

If you’re an attorney with a website, you already know that there are certain things you should be doing to get – or stay – on top of the search engine results pages.

Knowing exactly what those things are is an entirely different matter, though.

What Do You Know about Lawyer SEO?

If you’re like most lawyers, you know that SEO includes something about keywords, and you know that you need effective content on your site. You probably also know that you should have a blog (the ABA Journal even recommends it), because that will encourage search engine crawlers to find and evaluate your site.

But what else is there?

3 Reasons Lawyers Need SEO

Search engine optimization isn’t about sticking keywords into the content you write on your website. That’s a very, very tiny part of it, but there’s an art to that, as well.

It’s about numbers, backlinks and so much more. Regardless of how much you know about the actual application of SEO for lawyers, here’s why you need it:

1. The right SEO strategy will push you to the top position on Google searches for the terms that bring you revenue.
2. A solid SEO strategy designed just for law firms can provide you with a layer of protection against Google algorithm updates.
3. Lawyer SEO is different from other types of SEO because you’re up against some pretty stiff competition – and you need to win, this time and every time.

You Don’t Have to Know Lawyer SEO to Benefit from It

There’s a bit of old legal wisdom that says, “You don’t have to know all of the answers. You just have to know where to find them.”

That’s particularly true with lawyer-focused SEO.

Look, you don’t have time to sit around and sift through thousands of pages of advice – some very bad advice, at that – on the Internet about how to get your firm’s website to rank highly in the search engine results pages, or SERPs. You probably don’t have time to sit around and write multiple 1,000-word articles every week, and you certainly don’t have the time to get valuable backlinks all over the web.

Knowing where to find the answers (in this case, the answers are with a lawyer SEO firm that’s completely capable of giving your website the push it needs) is more than half the battle.

Becoming the Authority Through Laser-Focused SEO

When you have a good SEO strategy, you’re going to come out on top of the SERPs. That means clients are going to come to you ready to trust in your abilities. After all, there’s a reason you’re on top – and once they get to your site, the content you have there will clinch the deal.

Part of a solid lawyer SEO program is to have high quality content. When you give your readers something valuable – in this case, confidence in your ability and your knowledge of legal matters –you’ve already met them halfway.

Link Building and a Successful Lawyer SEO Strategy

Link building is one of the tested-and-true methods to improve (and protect) your site’s ranking on the SERPs.

When Google discovers that other sites – sites like yours, only better – are linking in to your site, they look more favorably upon your site. They think that if high quality sites are linking in, you must have something valuable to offer (and they’re usually right).

That means your site gets stronger and stronger each time another high quality site gives you a backlink. When we say high quality, we mean a site that’s full of worthwhile contentand that’s relevant to your site. You won’t gain much if a site about tropical fish is linking into yours (what, exactly, do tropical fish have to do with law?), but if the ABA is linking to you, that’s another story.

The point? There’s more to lawyer SEO than keywords, great content and social media strategy, but at the core, we’re mainly interested in numbers. Creating a balance with the right links, the right anchor text and the right landing pages, you’re poised to take over the top spot on Google – and that’s exactly where you want to be if you want to pull in high-value clients.