Attorneys, lawyers, and law firms need calculated search engine optimization (SEO) to be able to rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs) and attract new clients. Here’s everything you need to know about SEO marketing for law firms.
What Is SEO for Attorneys?
SEO for lawyers and attorneys is search engine optimization techniques that can help your law firm’s website rank higher in organic search results. To improve the likelihood of ranking for queries related to legal services in your area, you can utilize various on-page and off-page SEO tactics that appeal to Google’s organic and local ranking factors. Strategies like these help search engines index your content, can lead to increased visibility on relevant SERPs, and help you to attract new clients while growing your base.
Why Is SEO for Law Firms Important?
The top two ways consumers find legal representation are through search engines (26.9%) and online reviews and directories (26.5%)—making SEO marketing for lawyers crucial to attracting new clients and staying competitive within the legal industry. When setting up or improving a website for attorneys, pay particular attention to effective local SEO and keyword-optimized page copy to help searchers find you online and reach for higher rankings or getting featured in Google’s local pack.
SEO Strategies for Lawyers
Because the legal industry is highly competitive—with more than 85% of law firms having their own website—attorneys need to implement a comprehensive local search engine optimization strategy for lawyers to stand out. Here’s a list of SEO strategies for law firms that can help you create an optimized online presence to beat out competitors and attract new clients.
Research & Apply Strategic Keywords
Conduct keyword research for your business—keeping different types of keywords in mind—to see what key phrases you should target on your website in order to show up in related SERPs; using the right keywords in your content is an important part of legal SEO. Molly Q., Hurrdat Marketing’s Senior SEO Strategist, takes this further:
“SEO for law firm websites requires a more specialized approach due the highly competitive landscape and the superior standards Google applies to websites offering legal advice or services.”
Geo-targeted keywords help with queries related to your location, making them an ideal keyword type for any small business—but especially for law firms looking to stand out in SERPs. For example, if you’re an attorney in Omaha, including location-based terms like “best lawyers in Omaha” in your website copy can help you appear in related search queries. You’ll also want to include keywords related to the services you offer, such as “child custody lawyer” or “divorce attorney.”
Molly said, “For long-term ranking success in the legal industry, focusing on in-depth keyword research to identify the most relevant phrases and questions users are searching is very important.” So, what does this mean for lawyers building a website?
- Target or create long-tail keywords for more specific phrases that aren’t searched quite as often—but can give you a higher chance of ranking.
- Combine the keywords you already have to create combination phrases like “affordable family law attorney in [CITY]” or “immigration lawyers near me.”
- Identify questions that people often ask about family law or custody and clearly answer them when relevant to increase your website’s visibility in SERPs during the stage when potential clients are looking for those answers.
Finally, tools such as KWFinder and Semrush can help you find the right keywords for your business and practice area(s). With these tools, you can also discover what keywords your competitors are ranking for to see if you can use them in a more strategic way.
Include Service Pages on Your Legal Website
Service pages are crucial to have on your law firm website because they explain the services you offer and what they mean. This is especially important for attorneys because most legal jargon is not in the average person’s vocabulary, and it requires some explanation. People will want to know why they may need your services and how they’ll benefit from them. Service pages also give you a place to utilize plenty of your keyword research.
It’s important to cater to your audience on your service pages—not just for search engine optimization, but to build trust and show people you care and understand aspects of their struggle. For instance, if you practice family law, structure your webpages around elements of your specialty (e.g., Adoption, Marriage, Custody, and more) and use wording on those pages that speak to couples, parents/guardians and their pain points. Your service pages are also a great place to include answers to frequently asked questions about specific services. Say you’re a personal injury law firm; you might want to add a service page about pedestrian accidents, what that means exactly, and the types of services you provide in these cases.
Incorporate Attorney Bios
Profiles are about the lawyers working in your business and should spotlight their presence in the field. This informs potential clients of staff qualifications, allows you to put accomplishments on a more focused platform, and demonstrates to search engines how your website qualifies for related search terms—in addition to evaluating the experience and expertise of your firm.
SEO-optimized bio pages often include a short biography about the attorney, a photo, their credentials, awards they’ve won, and any links to social media profiles they have for the business.
Whenever you mention these lawyers on written content—including blog posts they wrote—link to their bio page so clients can read more about them and see why they’re an authority on the subject.
Also, consider adding links to individual bios on your About Us page. Linking to About pages dedicated to the more “human” aspects of your team after your company’s mission statement, values, etc. can help make potential clients feel more comfortable and establish trust before they even meet your team.
As Aaron Mackel, Director of Strategy at Hurrdat Marketing, explains:
“With lawyers, trust signals are going to be a huge focus. Things like attorney bios, blog posts authored by attorneys, awards, and similar trust-building elements on a website are going to go a long way. These things are typically valuable in most industries, but are even more so when optimizing a site for attorneys.”
Strategize Legal Blog Posts
Writing a blog is one of the best SEO strategies for lawyers as it allows you to highlight vital information about your industry, business, services, and community and state law news. “Pairing in-depth keyword research with a comprehensive content strategy that provides clear and accurate answers is key to improving both rankings and engagement,” Molly said—meaning any content you publish should be high quality, helpful, and relevant to readers.
Timely and evergreen content will demonstrate you know the fundamentals of law while staying on top of changes, trends, and events that could affect your clients. To find law firm blog content ideas, look at what your competitors are publishing and see what you can do better. To get you started, here are a few topic ideas for lawyer blogs:
- List-style posts (e.g., “Common Misconceptions About the Probate Process” or “The Benefits of Local Legal Representation”)
- Guide-style posts (e.g., “How to Navigate Estate Planning”)
- Legal industry updates (e.g., “What to Know About Our New Disability Claims Laws in Wisconsin”)
- Interviews
- Case studies
If publishing information that could identify individual, be sure to seek consent or code personal information (like names and defining traits) before posting, and add a disclaimer communicating you made some changes to protect privacy.
Pay Attention to Technical SEO
Technical SEO is the development of a website’s technical aspects from behind the scenes to help search engines crawl and index its pages correctly. Ensuring you cater to Google’s Core Web Vitals and have an easily navigable site structure are a couple important elements for successful technical SEO for legal firms.
Evaluate other law firms’ websites and look through the lens of a customer who doesn’t know much about law; is the site easy to understand, is it easy for potential clients to find what they need, and is there a search box for quick navigation? Apply what you find to ensure your website is simple for clients to use.
Running an SEO audit can help you find any gaps you should fix. Here are a few things to prioritize when it comes to technical SEO:
- Use mobile-optimization strategies
- Check your site’s loading time with a tool like PageSpeed Insights
- Ensure your site is secure for users with an SSL Certificate
- Create optimized meta descriptions and title tags
- Optimize images for ADA compliance and Google crawl
- Remove duplicate content
Build Backlinks
Inbound links from other websites that link off to your website, backlinks are an essential SEO marketing tactic for attorneys. Earning high-quality referral links from another website shows yours is authoritative and trustworthy, and that you’re an expert in your field, which are three of the four aspects of Google’s E-E-A-T—guidelines the search engine uses to evaluate the quality of a website and how it ranks according to the search query. The more E-E-A-T signals your website displays, the better your site will appear compared to competitors.
Publishing helpful, user-friendly content can help you earn backlinks naturally. Create helpful infographics that other websites will want to link off to, covering topics that some may find complex (e.g., how to choose an immigration lawyer, the basics of the U.S. Justice System, etc.). Be sure to publish your infographics with a shareable code other sites can embed that lead back to your website.
Whichever strategies you choose, remember that buying backlinks is never a good idea as search engines may see this as violating their policies or spam content. Quality, authentic backlinks are always better.
Manage Your Google Business Profile
Another important local search ranking factor is your Google Business Profile (GBP), the local business listing run by Google. This profile is the best way of getting your business seen on Google because they get priority on the SERP.
Your business’ website will only appear in the local pack by keeping your Google Business Profile updated. Put as much about your business in your profile as possible, especially your business categories, practice areas and services, the main keywords you want to rank for, and high-quality photos of your business and lawyers. Once you’ve included all of the necessary info, claim and verify your business on the Google Business Profile site.
Update Your Local Listings
In addition to your Google Business Profile, a key part of local SEO for legal firms is getting added to other local directories for legal professionals. Find out what business directories there are for your area, then either create a page for your business there, or reach out and ask to be added by the site’s manager. Be sure to create and manage your listings on popular directories like Yelp and Better Business Bureau, as well as leading directories for legal services in the U.S., including Avvo, Justia, and Martindale. While updating your listings, be sure your NAP data, or your business’ name, address, and phone number, is consistent across all pages.
Gather Reviews & Testimonials
Positive client reviews and testimonials can maintain your reputation, encourage others to partner with you, and show Google that your law firm provides helpful services—which can help you rank. Collecting Google reviews is essential because those seeking legal services will likely check what others are saying about your business before they consider working with you.
According to Aaron Mackel, Director of Strategy at Hurrdat Marketing,
“Reviews on your Google Business Profile are going to be one of the largest factors in growing visibility and having clients choose your firm over competitors. Being active about requesting reviews is one of the most significant steps for lawyers to grow their organic visibility in search results.”
Encourage current clients to leave reviews as part of the off-boarding process. Reach past clients through email marketing or a newsletter, asking them to leave a message about their experience with you. Be sure to build trust with potential clients by responding appropriately to negative reviews as well.
Additionally, ask clients that had an exceptionally good experience to provide a testimonial about what it was like to work with you, what you did for them, and why they would recommend you to others—and feature this commentary on your website. Like positive reviews, testimonials are social proof that your business is trustworthy and has experience handling certain types of cases.
How to Measure Attorney SEO Success
Establish specific, measurable goals related to key performance indicators (KPIs) to see which SEO strategies are working and find areas that could use improvement. Some of the most important KPIs to track for SEO for legal firms include:
- Click-through rates
- Conversion rates
- Engagement
- Keyword rankings
- Organic search traffic
Free SEO services such as Google Analytics and paid tools like Ahrefs can help you evaluate these KPIs and gauge the overall effectiveness of your SEO measures. Use these insights to tailor your SEO strategies moving forward.
Cost of SEO for Law Firms
The price of SEO marketing and the price of local SEO can fluctuate depending on how much work is required, the size of your business, the marketing agency or freelance marketer you hire, and other factors. If you’re using automated tools to conduct your SEO efforts yourself, you’ll likely pay around $80 to $1,000 per year or $50 to $600 per month. If you decide to hire a professional marketing agency or freelancer, the average pricing is as follows:
Freelance SEO Expert:
- General SEO: $20 to $150 per hour, $100 to $750 per month, or $500 to $3,000 per project
- Local SEO: $100 to $250 per project or $50 to $150 per hour
SEO Agency:
- General SEO: $75 to $250 per hour, $500 to $2,000 per month, or $2,000 to $5,000 per project
- Local SEO: $300 to $5,000 per project or $300 to $2,000 per month
If you’re looking for high-quality SEO services for lawyers, Hurrdat Marketing offers affordable SEO services and local SEO services that can help you bring in more clients. Contact us today to learn more!
