SEO for Solicitors

A strong SEO strategy offers excellent benefits for your solicitors, including –

• Increased exposure for your law firm, ranking your web page above your competitors
• Increased organic traffic and clicks to your website
• More targeted and qualified leads
• A healthy boost to your brand awareness, locally, regionally and nationally

There are many advantages of solicitors SEO for your law firm, including –

• Improves your ranking and grows your organic traffic
• Establishes trust and credibility with your customers
• Boosts your website’s user experience
• Enjoy higher engagement and conversion rates
• Good SEO is cost-effective, with quantifiable results
• An affordable long-term strategy with excellent ROI

Competitor Analysis

A key part of SEO for your solicitors is identifying and analysing your competitors; once you understand how they run their digital marketing, this will direct your SEO strategy.

LOCALiQ’s analysis will provide guidance on SEO techniques, from content ideas and successful keywords to their targeted backlink strategies and link opportunities.

Technical SEO Audit

Technical SEO analyses the technical elements which sit behind the scenes of your website, ensuring your website runs at peak performance for online visitors to your law firm.

By partnering with our solicitors SEO agency, we will improve your site speed so your page loads quicker than anyone else across desktop, mobile and tablet.

We will also review your indexing, sitemaps, redirects, broken links, internal link structures, crawl errors, HTTPS and more.

1. Audit your website – audit your website for free with LOCALiQ’s SEO Audit Tool.
2. Check your health score – score your online presence (website, advertising and analytics, social media and more) and receive actionable areas for improvement.
3. Investigate and fix any technical issues – easily make changes and achieve great results online for your solicitors.

Download your free report today: LOCALiQ’s SEO Audit Tool

Keyword Research

Keyword research enables us to find suitable keywords for your website, showing us the content your audience is searching for and the specific search queries related to your website.

These search queries will guide the content creation for your website, optimising your content using the selected keywords so you rank highly within the search engines for your target audience.

Discover solicitor-related services and popular-related topics your customers are searching for with SEMRush’s Keyword Magic Tool. Generate keyword ideas, estimated monthly search volumes and many SEO metrics from their comprehensive keyword database.

1. Enter your industry-related phrases into the keyword magic tool – solicitor, solicitors, law solicitors, legal services.
2. Choose “broad match” keywords – this will show you keywords and questions containing your selected phrases.
3. View your keywords & their metrics – analyse different keywords by their monthly search volume and difficulty (KD %).
4. Save your keywords – save your selected legal keywords into a SEMRush project so you can view them quickly and easily.

Optimising your GBP Listing

Updating your Google Business Profile (previously Google My Business) is crucial for your solicitors.

Using local SEO techniques, we will attract local customers to your business by ensuring your contact information, categories, images, and videos are up to date, displaying the unique aspects of your law firm.

We will also encourage your customers to leave positive reviews on your profile.

Give your Google Business Profile a head start on Google by ranking in the organic search results and “map pack”. To do this, you’ll need to optimise your website, but to rank in the “map pack”, you’ll need to optimise your Google Business Profile – we explain how below.

1. Set up your free Google Business Profile.
2. Optimise your profile – complete as much as possible, including the types of legal services you offer to client testimonials.
3. Get reviews – reviews will help you rank higher, so ask customers to review your solicitors.

Learn more with our free resource: A Guide to Local SEO

Optimising your content

Content is king, as we say. Your copy influences the success of your solicitors online; hand in hand with keyword research, your content will attract potential clients and high-quality leads when working with LOCALiQ.

But that’s not all; the content on your law firm’s website should be able to provide preliminary answers to the questions a potential client might have.

We recommend you make your legal topics easy to understand by breaking them down into clear, concise copy that connects with your audience. Use subheadings (H1, H2s, and H3s) and bullet points to prompt readers to delve deeper.

Search engines are constantly looking to send users to the best place possible for answers to their questions. So, if Google thinks your site will fulfil the user’s intent, it is more likely to feature your website higher in its search engine results pages.

1. Keep your website up-to-date

Searching for your services has never been easier, your website will need to rank well to stand out from your competition. View our quick tips below for a head start:

• Aim for (at least) 500 words on your homepage
• Include your address and contact details on each web page (the footer is a place to start), updating these for your location-based pages
• Include a title tag, H1 header, meta description, and image alt text and title on each web page
• Add a search bar (if applicable) and links to your social media channels

2. Promote your services

SEO or not, you will need to provide your clients with a list of your services – some of these will have a higher search demand than others; however, by using effective keyword research, you’ll be able to differentiate these according to their popularity.

An effective tactic is to utilise your blog with internal links to your service pages; for example, a dedicated pillar page can promote your legal expertise and, at the same time, link to subpages covering each of your services.

3. Optimise your content

Since we’ve highlighted potential topics for your specialist content, you must ensure this content is optimised. We recommend:

• Your blog posts are at least 800 words
• Each post includes a primary keyword in the title, headers and copy
• Each post contains your contact details (address, phone number and email)
• You add internal links to other pages within your site
• High-quality images and videos are included, with relevant alt texts, titles & descriptions
• You embed your Google Business Profile map, displaying where customers can find you

Remember to optimise each post, including your contact details, title tags, meta descriptions, and high-quality images and videos with relevant alt texts. It’s good practice to include an embedded Google Business Profile map, displaying where customers can find your solicitors.

Learn more with our free resource: Best Practices for Optimising Anchor Text for SEO

4. Create video content

Video content is another tool for improving the SEO of your solicitors – video enables your customers to learn about your products and services in an engaging, easy-to-follow format.

The SEO benefit is your customers will stay on your site for longer as they watch your content, indicating to search engines they are enjoying a positive experience on your website, promoting you as a trustworthy law firm with valuable content.

5. Claim your Google Business Profile

As we mentioned earlier, your Google Business Profile is hugely important for your solicitors and – if you’ve not done so already – you will need to claim your business listing online.

Your Google Business Profile will help your organic traffic and make your business easier to find for any customers who wish to view your legal services.

When setting up your profile, ensure your contact details, categories, opening times, images, business description, and client testimonials are advertised correctly. We also recommend you use the same NAP (name, address and phone number) format across your profile and website and encourage your customers to leave reviews.

6. Implement schema

Another tip is to implement schema into your website. Unsure what schema is? Schema mark-up is an additional website code which helps the search engines and site crawlers better understand your content. Schema will tell the search engines what your data says and what it means.

For example, schema mark-up can help search engines understand the number listed on your website is a phone number or identify your customer reviews and their rating of your solicitors.

Google will view your schema positively and rank you higher than competitors who don’t include schema mark-up, improving your click-through rates. Often overlooked, this is a quick win for your website to help boost visibility.

Learn more with our free resource: What Is Schema Markup and How Does It Help SEO?

7. Join the online directories

Online directories are a great way to boost your backlinks and search engine ranking. Gaining backlinks is widely encouraged within SEO as they build Google’s trust in your site and offer an alternative way for customers to find you online.

We recommend targeting legal directories specific to your industry, helping you connect with customers searching for solicitors. There are many online, with several paid-for and free sites available for your business, including The Law Society, Chambers and Partners and The Legal 500.

Like before, include your address and contact details and ensure the information is consistent with your Google Business Profile.

Learn more with our free resource: What Are Local Listings and How Can You Use Them to Market Your Business?

8. Increase the number of backlinks linking to your website

As we explained in our previous top tip, receiving backlinks from trusted websites is crucial to improve your website’s ranking. Gaining links from local businesses is an excellent way to increase your ranking for location-based searches.

To help generate these links locally, we recommend publishing press releases on your latest work, the breaking news on current law-related events, searching for guest blogging opportunities and answering local journalist requests for expert commentary on legal matters.

Learn more with our free resource: What Is a Backlink? And How to Gain Them to Improve SEO

9. Ask for Google reviews from your customers

Most of your customers will read online reviews, and many will form an opinion of your solicitors based on the experience your previous customers received. To help enhance and safeguard your reputation, we recommend inviting your existing customers to provide feedback on your business.

Then, after each sale, it’s worth contacting the customer to see if they are satisfied with their service. If their feedback is positive, ask them to leave a review on your Google Business Profile to boost your star rating within the search engine and entice more leads.

Learn more with our free resource: 10 Ways to Generate More Online Reviews for Your Business

10. Ensure your website is mobile-friendly

Mobile devices have revolutionised how we search for products and services online, especially for location-based searches.

A mobile-friendly website will help you stand out from competitors and improve the user experience for anyone who visits your website via mobile and tablet.

Learn more with our free resource: 7 Tips to Improve Your Mobile-Friendly Marketing Strategy

11. Create location-based pages

If you have many law firms, regionally and nationally, creating location-based pages for local searches in their area is an excellent way to boost your brand exposure. These pages can include popular keywords, local sponsorships/news and up-to-date contact information for each solicitor.

Once published, list your physical locations within Google Profile Manager to boost your local SEO for each area.

Need more help with SEO for your solicitors? Our award-winning team are waiting to hear from you. Visit our SEO page to find out more and discover our many SEO services.