SEO for Lawyers: Optimization, Example, and Strategies

The SEO for lawyers could be said to be the optimization of a lawyer's web project for search engines. Working on these specific sector SEO strategies will increase the site's visibility and traffic.

Previously, lawyers obtained clients through word of mouth or other traditional methods. Now, law firms have gone digital and have increasingly optimized websites in terms of SEO; since their direct competition also has them.

Internet users search for different legal services; from lawyers specializing in medical negligence, labor law, traffic accidents, divorces, evictions, criminal offenses... among other legal aspects. Therefore, a different SEO strategy will need to be applied in each case.

Is your firm not appearing on Google? By reading this article, you will learn about specific SEO strategies that help lawyers improve their online presence and attract clients effectively.

Let’s go!

SEO for lawyers

The importance of working on SEO for lawyers can be explained with this example: a few years ago, it was said: "if you are not on the Internet, you do not exist" ... now it is "if you do not work on SEO and Linkbuilding, you do not exist".

SEO Audit for lawyers

When a lawyer hires the positioning of their business, conducting a SEO audit of the project would be ideal, if the budget allows. Since it will report a analysis of the situation from which we start, with possible errors to improve:

Crawling and indexing, WPO, architecture, usability, interlinking, duplicate content, broken internal links....

This way, you can discover what has been done previously regarding SEO, or conversely, if they have never worked on positioning.

That is, with this study, everything that affects the organic positioning of your website is collected to optimize it.

User Research: Think about how your ideal client would search for you

To start on a good foundation, it is ideal to analyze how your potential clients search for you. 

People who have divorced do not search for the same things as those who have had a car accident or are dealing with an inheritance... etc.

To explain this with an example, we have the recommendations from our colleague Julen Oruesagasti SEO Consultant, who is a great professional working with clients in the legal sector.

Quote:

You must be very clear about the nomenclature of your sector and specialization. For example, if the lawyer specializes in divorces, you must consider that the entity "Lawyer specializing in divorces" is a specialty within "family lawyers" and these belong to the base law of "Family Law/Family Lawyer" which belongs to "Civil Law/Civil Lawyer".

It may sound like a puzzle, but in my opinion, this scheme is important for the following aspects of SEO:

– Understand which entities should be worked on both in an informational and transactional way. (informational and transactional keywords).

– Helps to understand the different search intents between specialties.

– Helps define what new verticals to create depending on the types of cases that the law firm handles.

– It also helps you focus the entire inbound strategy. Here is a peculiarity, and that is that in other sectors, they do not know what specialist they need, but they do know they need a doctor. In the case of lawyers, they already know they want to hire a lawyer specializing in divorces, but they do not know that it belongs to a vertical of Civil Lawyers, so if you are not positioned by the specialties, it is complicated for that potential client to find you.

Now we can start working on the entire SEO strategy for lawyers. Each client's need must have its own optimized page for that search intent.

This research will allow you to design an optimal user experience. Following the same example: "lawyer specializing in divorces," when the user performs a search, useful results will appear among which your positioned landing page will be.

Competitor Analysis

You can start analyzing your competition by typing in search engines like Google, your market niche, for example: "lawyers specializing in divorces." Those first results that appear are your competition. 

With different AI tools for SEO, we can gather information about the SEO strategy they are following: the keywords that are bringing them the most traffic, content ideas, link building opportunities and referring domains they have...

And use all this information to surpass the competition and thus improve positioning. 

Keywords for lawyers 

A keyword study or keyword research aims to define which keywords are the most relevant for "lawyers specializing in divorces" and use them in the website architecture, content strategy, image SEO...

Keep in mind that if the website contains those keywords, organized optimally and strategically, it is very likely to be found by search engines and shown to the right audience.

The ideal is to target informational keywords (valuable information for the user) in blog content and transactional keywords (focused on getting the user to make a purchase) on service pages or landing pages.

Blog Content for lawyer websites

The importance of a blog on a lawyer's website lies in the fact that the content itself can act as a call to action to attract clients.

In legal matters especially, they help resolve doubts in a very simple way. Through the writing of content; the lawyer as a specialist adds value to a specific topic.

This is where the factor of SEO EEAT (we will see this in the next point) comes into play.

The articles provide useful information and within them, it is ideal to include a link to the services page or directly a phone number for booking an appointment.

It is important to ensure that the content, while being specific, does not include too many technical terms, so that the reader can understand it well.

Website Structure

Following what our colleague Julen mentioned, if your services are: "lawyer specializing in divorces," the entire strategy must be aligned with those keywords.

Starting with purchasing the domain of the lawyer's site (if starting from scratch), URLs, titles, and meta descriptions, images...

This will help Google better understand what your website is about and help the user navigate easily through the page.

Content

Quality content that adds value and resolves the user's search intent, if the language is clear and has no spelling mistakes, ..is exactly what we are looking for to optimize this part of SEO.

Use h2, h3 headings …to structure the content well so that both Google and the user better understand the topic.

Add semantic terms that enrich the quality of the content and related keywords, not repeated keywords over and over. 

For example, if the keyword is “lawyers specializing in divorces,” related keywords include: “law firm for divorces” “lawyers specializing in divorces Granada or X city”...

And semantic content to add to the text includes: Separations, lawsuits, shared custody, annulment, complaints, abuse, alimony…

SEO in images

Correctly naming images using the Alt tag will allow search bots to read the content.

And the user will better understand what you, as a lawyer, are explaining. In legal matters, it can sometimes be difficult to understand concepts and laws, which is why adding images and videos can bring clarity to the user.

A good image in a post has a positive impact on SEO.

Interlinking

Internal linking or Interlinking consists of linking the pages of the same website to each other. In addition to improving indexing, it distributes authority among the pages and helps search engines better understand the site.

Adding relevant internal links will provide valuable information to the user. And for Google, interlinking translates to a good rating for your law website.

EEAT to generate trust

EEAT in SEO is defined as a set of Google criteria that determine the quality of content in its search results. The criteria are experience, knowledge or expertise, authority, and reliability or trustworthiness (Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustness).

To help you understand better, EEAT is like the signals (content, links, reviews, mentions...) of credibility, authority, and trust that the client perceives about the business, in this case, the law firm.

So that if a lawyer is good, the client sees and differentiates that they are a "good lawyer"!

And how does the client detect that experience, knowledge…?

One way to demonstrate a lawyer's knowledge is through blog posts, as we have seen in the previous section.

For example: Imagine that your marital situation is going down the drain and you are considering how divorce works and the legal aspects of child custody. You need information from a lawyer who has knowledge and experience in the matter.

Keep in mind that the content will generate trust, if it is truthful and relevant to the client. 

In addition to publishing articles, if the lawyer includes a biography and links it to their LinkedIn profile or another professional profile, they are enhancing the EEAT authorship, which also boosts their influence (validity) as a professional in the judicial sector.

Therefore, EEAT is important for SEO as it helps position a website and makes Google rate it as "trustworthy".

Include reviews on the lawyer's website

Another way to demonstrate trust is by including Google reviews on the lawyer's website. Testimonials (social proof) are considered decisive for the client to hire the legal service.

This also boosts sales.

Backlinks from trusted sites

If the lawyer's website has links from trusted and authoritative sites of the same theme, Google will see our website as reliable.

Therefore, the search engine will better value our positioning than if the links were from low-reputation websites.

Local SEO

In local businesses, Local SEO is important as it is evident that clients in the area need these legal services at some point. Therefore, being positioned locally will increase the visibility, reputation, and authority of the law firm.

And of course, the trust we talked about in the EEAT for local businesses.

To work on Local SEO, we have the Google business profile, among others that we will explain to you.

Google business profile

The online reputation of any business is key, especially in the legal sector; those who hire a lawyer do so for a serious matter, so the client always seeks information about the lawyer before deciding to hire them.

Having the Google listing correctly configured and complete (NAP, hours, photos, links to the website, reviews...) is fundamental for your Local SEO strategy.

Use relevant local keywords in the content you publish, as they will provide useful information to the user.

Reviews

Reviews are the ratings that users leave on the Google business profile. They are essential in the SEO strategy for lawyers, as they influence positively or negatively in the decision to hire the service.

If you want your business to have an impact in your area, you must have a good local online presence. Don't forget to ask your satisfied clients for a testimonial as Google also takes them into account, as they are a key indicator of service quality.

They generate visibility, credibility, and transparency which influences visibility, reputation, and SEO positioning.

Geolocalized link building

When you have a business in an area, it is preferable to include in your link building strategy links to relevant and authoritative local websites. This will increase the legal domain's authority for a geolocalized keyword.

For example: "Lawyers specializing in divorces Granada." The SEO consultant or agency for lawyers that will carry out the strategy should include links in local media with this anchor text (keyword).

For this purpose, you have our Match tool where through a filter, you will find relevant local media on the topic in question, to purchase the ideal link.

It's very easy: sign up on Unancor as an advertiser and include your project, and you will find media by topic and location (autonomous community, province, or city). 

This will improve the SEO of your firm, by publishing your link in the most suitable digital medium in your area.

Additionally, we remind you that we are continuously adding newspapers and local media and increasing our catalog, which will allow you to reach more audiences.

Registration in local directories

There is life beyond the Google business profile for geolocalized searches. Through local directories that provide coverage on the local data of a business.

For example, Yelp, Foursquare, QDQ, Axesor, Elinfoma, BeeDIGITAL (Yellow Pages), and numerous apps that exist for this purpose...

They offer real-time information on data such as name, address, phone, location, hours, user experience, website...

Link building

A link building strategy or link construction for lawyer websites is the way to get other sites of the same theme to link to yours.

This SEO positioning factor is one of the most important, and as we mentioned before, from Unancor we can help you by publishing articles in digital media.

We have the ideal quality media and blogs related to the lawyer sector such as newspapers, sector portals, etc.

So if you don’t fully understand this link thing and don’t know which ones to buy, don’t waste any more time.. and schedule a meeting with our link building professionals.

Real case of link building for lawyers

Example of personalized consulting:

+423 leads in 3 months for a local law firm

Local business in the legal sector in one of the main cities in Spain.

We developed a link building strategy, focusing on two factors: Gaining brand authority and sending the right signals to Google to understand what the business is about (lawyer client).

The strategy with local journalistic media and with themed media:

• The journalistic media help us improve both the positioning of the brand and make local services known to the end client.
• And the themed media allow us to gain authority and send a clear signal to the search engine about the services provided.

Additionally, we set a very high minimum quality that the chosen media had to meet, as one of the bases we wanted to enhance was EEAT, fundamental in SEO for lawyers.

To this day, we continue working with this client.

Technical SEO

The more technical aspects are also an important part of the visibility and organic traffic of the lawyer's website.

Aspects such as loading speed, SSL certification, and optimization of indexing are aspects that will allow a website to present certain competitive advantages over the competition.

Social Media

You can support the SEO strategy for lawyers on the most professional social networks. By sharing content and services, you will achieve dissemination, gain visibility, and generate links to the website.

Social media does not directly contribute to SEO positions, but the links you share do. And they increase the recognition and reputation of your brand (services or personal brand of the lawyer, in this case).

Measure results

Knowing the basic metrics is the first step to evaluate an SEO strategy.

Regularly monitor the organic traffic, the ranked keywords, click-through rate and impressions, backlinks, CTR, page speed...

This will allow you to know if the work has been effective.

How much does an SEO for lawyers charge?

Depending on the project and whether they decide to hire the SEO audit initially, the prices of an SEO consultant for lawyers can range from 500€/month to 3000€/month.

Something approximate that it could include would be: competitor analysis, keyword analysis, SEO optimization of content, and even local SEO and link building.

Conclusions

With these SEO strategies for lawyers, you will make your website more visible and of better quality, improve its online reputation and authority. And therefore, you will attract more visits that will convert into new clients for your law firm.

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