Ask the Expert: Special SEO for Law Firms

As a leading attorney marketing agency, we spend a lot of time talking to legal professionals about SEO. Some elements of SEO are easier to explain, such as why good, comprehensive content is important to your site visitors and why it’s a key factor for search engines. However, some elements of SEO – such as website and server optimization – are more unfamiliar, but just as important to your success.

At Omnizant, we are fortunate to have a diverse group of SEO professionals who love to share their knowledge and distill even the most complex topics for our clients. One of them is Eric Warncke, Director of SEO at Omnizant. For over 15 years, Eric has developed and optimized hundreds of websites and been part of the rapidly evolving SEO landscape.

Below, he discusses some of the most common questions we get from attorneys about “technical SEO” and what you need to do to ensure your business site is optimized for success.

1. What is technical SEO?

Technical SEO refers to website and server optimization that helps search engines like Google crawl and index a website more efficiently. Unlike regular SEO, technical SEO has little to do with writing content or earning links from third-party sites. Instead, it focuses more on performance-based issues that can negatively impact your site’s rankings. these include (but are not limited to):

All of the above, and technical SEO in general, requires a deep understanding of how websites work and how search engines crawl and ultimately make sense of those websites.

2. What are the top three things you look at when assessing a site’s technical SEO?

When I audit a website’s technical SEO, the three main things I look at are:

If you go to Google and do a search with the prefix “site:” (site colon) followed by the URL of the website in question (for example: site:example.com), Google will return a list of all the pages of that website that are indexed by Google. If no results are found, it indicates that Google is unable to find or crawl the website.

Site structure should make sense on a website. For example, if you’re looking at a law firm’s website, you’d expect the home page to link to service pages for their legal area(s), and those service pages would then link to specific case types. For example, a reasonable URL structure for a child custody page might look something like this:

https://examplefirm.com/family-law/custody/

However, if your website’s URL structure is disorganized and confusing, it will make it significantly harder for Google to index and crawl your website. An example of poor site structure for the same URL example above might be:

https://examplefirm.com/45/whatwedo/c45545

You can use the tool http://www.visualsitemapper.com/ to quickly see how any website is structured.

Google Search Console is a free tool for webmasters that lets you know how Google’s crawlers interact with your website and how often your website appears for searches and clicks. It’s a very valuable tool, but its most valuable feature is the coverage report. This tool will quickly let you know if any page on your website contains errors that prevent pages from being indexed correctly. It even tells you the reason why the pages weren’t indexed so you can quickly fix the cause of the problem. This tool is critical to ensuring that 100% of your website is found and indexed correctly by Google.

3. Can attorneys manage their site’s technical SEO alone or is it important to hire professional help?

It is possible for a lawyer to handle the technical SEO of their website on their own, but it requires a lot of knowledge about how websites, servers and search engines work and interact with each other. We know that these subjects are not taught in law school and in reality take months or even years to acquire and apply effectively. And of course, as with all things tech, technical SEO is always evolving. For this reason, we generally recommend that attorneys seek professional help from a qualified SEO agency. The advantage of working with an SEO agency is having a team of professionals dedicated to your success. By outsourcing this time-consuming task, you can focus on running your business and let us deliver the leads to you.

4. In vetting agencies, what should law firms look for to make sure they’re hiring the right team?

Reference checking is still the best way to determine if a digital marketing agency is right for you. Never be afraid to ask the agency for references of similar law firms they have worked with in the past to ensure their work and communication style. Additionally, you should check out the agency’s portfolio of websites to make sure you like the work they do.

5. What resources do you use to keep your technical SEO skills sharp?

SEO professionals gather in many places to talk and share information. One of those places is Reddit communities like https://www.reddit.com/r/TechSEO/ and https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/. There are also discord servers with very active user bases. Slack is another chat program with several large SEO communities like BigSEO and Online Geniuses.

Additionally, there are many great websites dedicated to sharing SEO news and educational content, such as Moz’s Whiteboard Fridays series, Search Engine Land, and the SEO Roundtable. Finally, there are several SEO training courses available online that are regularly updated with new materials, such as SEMRush Academy, Yoast SEO Academy, Moz Academy (you’ve noticed that SEO websites love the word “academy”) and many others.

6. Thinking ahead to 2023, any trends you think attorneys should be thinking about?

The first thing I tell all my clients to think about moving forward is Expertise, Authority and Trust (E-A-T). Google only wants to show searchers websites that clearly show that the content writer is an expert in their field. To do this, lawyers should make every effort to demonstrate their knowledge and expertise. This should be done by adding attribution for all attorneys (and paralegals and paralegals who are involved with clients), adding attribution to the bottom of blogs on and off the firm’s website, adding educational materials to the site, guest posting on other sites, appearing on podcasts, making video content, etc. Time spent identifying your company’s professionals as thought leaders in your community will pay off big down the road.

Why is SEO necessary?

In short, SEO is crucial because it makes your website more visible, which means more traffic and opportunities to convert potential customers into customers. Check out the SEO tools you can use to get optimal rankings.

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Why is SEO important for law firms?

Speaking of advertising, law related keywords can be quite expensive in the law niche. SEO allows you to capitalize on their popularity without an advertising budget. Basically, the reason law firms, lawyers, and attorneys need SEO is the same reason they need a website: people are looking for legal services online.

How can law firms benefit from SEO? Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of attracting more visitors to your law firm’s website by increasing your website’s position on search engine results pages: the links that appear after you enter Google, Bing or another search engine.

Do lawyers need SEO?

Lawyer SEO remains one of the most effective ways for law firms to attract quality clients. Consider this legal statistic: 96% of people looking for legal advice use a search engine. 74% of consumers visit a law firm’s website to take action.

How does SEO help law firms?

Lawyer search engine optimization (SEO) refers to strategies used to improve the quality of your law firm’s website in order to improve search engine rankings. A law firm’s higher-quality site will rank higher in search results when potential clients perform a relevant search.

Does Google ads work for lawyers?

Google Ads works well for most businesses, including law firms. But it’s complicated for beginners and can get very expensive, very quickly. Although you only pay for clicks, those clicks can cost over $50 in some cases. “Lawyer” is one of the most expensive keywords.

Does SEO work for law firms?

With SEO, law firms gain organic search rankings (unpaid) and are more likely to receive more quality cases because they are more visible on search engines like Google, Bing, Youtube or smaller search engines like Duck Duck Go.

Why Local SEO is important for law firms?

Local SEO is essential for law firms as most law firms serve clients in a specific geographic area. If you don’t serve clients nationally, you probably only want leads from people in your county, city, or state.

Does SEO score matter?

Your SEO score shows how well your site is performing, which contributes to your website’s organic ranking and crawlability. A high SEO score is likely to indicate a higher position. Sites that do not rank well are likely to have low SEO scores. Your SEO score is determined on a scale of 100.

How important is an SEO score? In addition to ensuring that your search engine optimization is effective, it is also important that you constantly check your SEO score and know what to look for. Your SEO score can provide a lot of information about your website and find out what you need to improve in order to develop.

Does SEO score matter YouTube?

YouTube is the largest video platform on the Internet and is also considered one of the largest search engines. So it’s important to know how to optimize your content for the platform. Brands are increasingly using YouTube SEO strategies.

What is a good SEO YouTube?

Get better rankings with these YouTube SEO tips. Choose your keywords wisely. Add video title keywords. Include keywords in the video file. Optimize your description.

How can I improve my SEO score on YouTube?

YouTube SEO Tips

• Rename your video file using the target keyword.
• Put your keyword in the title of the video of course.
• Optimize your video description.
• Tag your video with popular keywords related to your topic.
• Categorize your video.
• Upload a custom thumbnail for your video result link.

Which SEO score is most important?

Top 15 SEO Metrics to Track

• New referring domains. Backlinks are one of the most important Google ranking factors. …
• Domain Authority / Domain Rating. …
• On-page optimization scores. …
• SEO metrics for text readability. …
• Impressions. …
• Click through rate (CTR) …
• Keyword ranking. …
• Organic Visibility (Organic Market Share)

Does TubeBuddy SEO score matter?

Yes! A higher TubeBuddy SEO score means better video optimization, which in turn increases your ranking in search results. This leads to more organic views.

Do lawyers need SEO?

Lawyer SEO remains one of the most effective ways for law firms to attract quality clients. Consider this legal statistic: 96% of people looking for legal advice use a search engine. 74% of consumers visit a law firm’s website to take action.

How SEO Helps Law Firms? Lawyer search engine optimization (SEO) refers to strategies used to improve the quality of your law firm’s website in order to improve search engine rankings. A law firm’s higher-quality site will rank higher in search results when potential clients perform a relevant search.

Why do lawyers need SEO?

For lawyers, SEO means that by increasing your rankings, more people in need of legal help will see you online, click on your links, and if your website and its content can provide the information they are looking for, they will likely come to you. and consider using your services.

Does Google ads work for lawyers?

Google Ads works well for most businesses, including law firms. But it’s complicated for beginners and can get very expensive, very quickly. Although you only pay for clicks, those clicks can cost over $50 in some cases. “Lawyer” is one of the most expensive keywords.

What is the best form of advertisement for a lawyer?

TV advertising for lawyers TV advertising is the fastest way to name your law firm. Many lawyers use it to create a law firm or lawyer persona.

Do lawyers need SEO?

If you are a law firm looking to grow your business, organic search traffic is an important marketing channel that is often overlooked. However, research provides good reason to recommend paying more attention to improving law firm SEO.