Ask the Expert: Technical SEO for Law Firms

As a leading lawyer marketing agency, we spend a lot of time talking about SEO with legal professionals. Some SEO elements are easier to explain – for example, why good, comprehensive content is important to your website visitors and why it’s a key ranking factor for search engines. Some elements of SEO – like website and server optimizations – however, are more outlandish, but they are 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 addresses some of the most common questions we receive from lawyers about “technical SEO” and what you need to do to ensure your company’s website is optimized for success.

1. What is technical SEO?

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

All of the above, and technical SEO in general, require 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’m auditing a site’s technical SEO, the top 3 things I look for are the following:

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

The site structure must make sense on a website. For example, if you were looking at a law firm’s website, you would expect the home page to link to service pages for the area(s) of law they practice, and those service pages would link to specific case types. For example, a sensible URL structure for a child custody page might look like this:

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

However, if the site’s URL structure is disorganized and confusing, it will be significantly more difficult for Google to index and crawl the site. An example of a bad site structure for the same URL example above could be:

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

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

Google Search Console is a free tool for webmasters that tells you how Google’s crawlers interact with your site and how often your site appears for searches and is clicked on. It is a very valuable tool, but the most valuable feature it has is the coverage report. This tool will quickly let you know if any pages on your site contain errors that prevent pages from being indexed correctly. It will also let you know why the pages weren’t indexed so you can quickly fix the cause of the problem. This tool is vital to ensure that 100% of your site is found and indexed correctly in 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 your website on your own, however this requires a great deal of knowledge about how websites, servers and search engines work and interact with each other. We know these subjects are not taught in law school, and realistically it takes months or even years to acquire and put into practice effectively. And of course, like everything related to technology, technical SEO is always evolving. For this reason, we generally recommend attorneys seek professional help from a qualified SEO agency. The advantage of working with an SEO agency is that there is 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 for you.

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

Checking references is still the best way to determine if a digital marketing agency will be a good fit for you. Never be afraid to ask an agency to provide references from similar law firms they have worked for in the past that can attest to their work and communication style. Also, you should look at the agency’s website portfolio to make sure you like the work they’ve done.

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

There are many places that SEO professionals gather to talk and share information. One such place is Reddit communities such as 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 great SEO communities like BigSEO and Online Geniuses.

In addition, there are many great sites dedicated to sharing SEO news and educational content, such as Moz’s Whiteboard Fridays series, Search Engine Land, and SEO Roundtable. Lastly, there are several SEO training courses available online that are regularly updated with new material, such as SEMRush Academy, Yoast SEO Academy, Moz Academy (you may have noticed that SEO sites 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 going forward is Experience, Authority, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T). Google only wants to show searchers sites that clearly demonstrate that the person writing the content is an expert in their field. To that end, lawyers must do everything they can to demonstrate their knowledge and experience. This should be done by adding comprehensive biographies for all attorneys (and client-facing paralegals and paralegals), adding authorships to the end of blogs hosted on the company website and externally, adding educational materials to the website, guest posting on other websites, appearing on podcasts, making video content, etc. The time spent establishing your company’s professionals as thought leaders in your community will pay off in droves going forward.

What are the three main benefits to SEO?

Let’s look at 10 significant benefits of SEO for your business and how you can realize them.

• It increases your credibility. 🇧🇷
• It doesn’t have to cost anything. 🇧🇷
• Supports Content Marketing.

🇧🇷

Why do lawyers need SEO?

SEO for Lawyers means that as you increase your rankings, more people who need legal help will see you online, click on your links, and if your website and content can provide the information they are looking for, chances are it will come to you and consider using it. your services.

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

Why is SEO necessary?

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

Why is SEO important for law firms?

Speaking of advertising, law-related keywords can be very expensive in the legal niche. SEO lets you tap into its popularity without an ad budget. So basically, the reason why law firms, lawyers and lawyers need SEO is the same reason they need a website: because people are looking for legal services online.

How do law firms benefit from SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of driving 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 type something into Google, Bing or another search engine.

Does SEO work for law firms?

With the help of SEO, law firms achieve better organic (non-paid) search ranking positions and are more likely to receive more high-quality cases because of their higher visibility on search engines like Google, Bing, Youtube or smaller ones like Duck Duck Go.

What does SEO mean in law?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of driving 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 type something into Google, Bing or another search engine.

What is the golden rule of SEO?

Well-written content engages the reader, increases search engine rankings and traffic, and increases the likelihood of quality links from other sites.

What are the 3 C’s of SEO? Simply put, the fundamentals of SEO can be boiled down to the 3 Cs: Content, Code, and Credibility.

Does SEO even matter anymore?

Will SEO still be relevant in 2022? Yes sure. While some SEO tactics that were effective in the past have stopped working, SEO has continued to evolve. Constantly reinventing itself to try and better match user intent, cutting out spammy and ineffective tactics to become better.

Is SEO still relevant in 2022? If you’re questioning whether SEO is still relevant in 2022, our answer is yes, and there are good reasons why.

Is SEO worth it anymore?

SEO pays off if you have the right strategy in place and work with a partner that knows how to get results. About 93% of online experiences start with a search engine, and SEO’s lead closure rate is much higher than that of traditional marketing. Therefore, SEO offers an impressive return on investment (ROI).

What’s replacing SEO?

Answer Engine optimization to replace search engine optimization.

What is the next big thing in SEO?

User Behavior and Search Intent In addition to all the technicalities related to SEO, understanding user behavior and search intent will also be the next big thing in SEO.

How SEO will change in 2022?

In 2022, Core Web Vitals tops the list because not only has it been a ranking factor, but it continues to become a stronger factor each year. Core Web Vitals are a set of ranking factors that Google uses to look at a user’s overall experience on a specific website.

Will SEO exist in 10 years?

Speculation abounds, but it doesn’t always provide a reliable forecast of what’s to come. One thing is for sure, though: SEO will be around for a long time to come. As long as search engines exist and Internet users continue to use keywords and phrases to find what they are looking for, the search engine business will continue.

Will SEO be replaced by AI?

AI will completely change SEO as we know it. From optimization to link building, it will significantly affect every aspect of SEO. As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more sophisticated, search engine optimization will have to adapt.

Does SEO have a future?

SEO is only going to grow rapidly in the future. Just make sure you follow SEO best practices like creating useful content, having a faster website, and following Google’s guidelines for better rankings.

Does SEO work for law firms?

Why is SEO for Lawyers so Important? If you are a law firm looking to grow your business, organic search traffic is a significant marketing channel that is often overlooked. But the research gives good reason to suggest that more attention be paid to improving law firm SEO.