People who want to find out about products and services use search engines like Google or Bing. The placement of search results in the Google search plays an enormously important role. Your website should, therefore, be at least among the top 10 search results, so your potential clients will know about you. If your homepage can not be found there, you have a major disadvantage compared to your rival firms whose websites can be found on Google at first glance.
For this reason, SEO is a decisive step for lawyers and law firms, in order to noticeably increase the number of their new clients. SEO or Search Engine Optimization includes all optimization techniques for indexing a website and positioning web pages at the highest level in the search results.
In order for your website to be on the top of search results, search engines like Google & Co. must recognize that your homepage is a relevant and trustworthy site. Only then will many potential clients find your website and be convinced of your credibility or expertise as a lawyer.
Impressive proof of this is provided by the click-through rates for Google search results. The majority of searchers have the highest confidence in the top search results: positions 1-10 receive 99.1% of all clicks. Only 0.9% of Google users click on a search result on page 2. However, the first three search results get the most traffic. You get 83% of all clicks. Our goal is, therefore, to place your law firm homepage as prominently as possible on the search engines in order to get the most out of your firm’s online presence for you to get out.
There are some things you can do to increase your chances of being ranked higher on Google searches.
We have identified some of the best ways to improve your SEO rankings:
-
Improve the loading speed of your page
The loading time of your page is important for several reasons. First of all, if your loading speed is too slow, Google will recognize it and penalize your ranking. But a slow website also has an impact on how visitors to your website interact with your pages. As a result, these negative interactions will hurt your rankings.
Research shows that 40% of visitors will abandon websites if the page takes more than 3 seconds to load. What is even more shocking is that 80% of these visitors will not return to this site. It’s terrible for your SEO because it kills the traffic on your site. But on the other hand, if your page loads quickly, people will continue to come back. Google’s algorithm recognizes the popularity of your website and adjusts your rankings accordingly.
-
Produce high-quality content
How often do you update your website? If you have not touched it since the day you built it, you probably do not have a good SEO right now. To drive more traffic to your website and increase its popularity, you must give visitors a reason to keep coming back. Your content must be of high quality, recent and relevant. Another factor that influences your SEO rankings is the visit time. This concerns the time people spend on your website per visit. If your site contains cool, exciting or timely news, visitors will stay longer on your page and improve your visit time. Websites that provide highly informative content usually have long downtime.
-
Optimize your images
Images are essential to your website. But you have to make sure that they are optimized correctly if you want these images to improve your SEO ranking. I’m talking about factors such as the format and size of the file. Huge images can slow down the loading time of the page, which, as I mentioned, hurts your rankings. Resize or compress your images to optimize them. You can also use your images to sneak into the keywords by naming them accordingly. For example, say you have a website that sells toiletries or other bath products. Instead of naming an image as “shampoo1”, you can call it “best shampoo for long hair”. You can also strategically use keywords in the title of your image as well as the caption or description.
-
Start blogging
Blogging is great for your business. It is an exceptional tool for generating leads and helps you interact with visitors to your website. But what most people do not realize is that blogs also improve SEO rankings.
But why?
As I mentioned earlier, fresh, up-to-date and relevant content production can draw people to your website and give them a reason to stay on your pages for a while. Well, blogs are the ideal channel for you to accomplish that. If you can establish a large number of loyal readers, you can get a lot of traffic to your site on a daily basis. In addition, you can incorporate other things that I’ve talked about so far in your posts, such as images and header tags. Other elements, such as links, increased readability, and keywords, can also be incorporated into these publications. I’ll talk about it soon. All this has a positive impact on your ranking in the search engines.
-
Make sure your site is readable
Keep your audience in mind when writing content on your website. If you want people to visit your site and spend time there, speak in terms they can understand. Do not try to look like a doctor or a lawyer (even if you are one). Your content should be written in a way that most people can understand.
-
Correct broken links
If you use authority websites for your hyperlinks, you should not have to worry about breaking links. But it can always happen. Broken links can crush your SEO rankings. Plus, it does not look good when a link you provide to your visitors leads them to an invalid website.
-
Optimize your site for mobile devices
As you know, the use of mobile devices is increasing. It goes up so fast that it is actually outdated computers and laptops. In fact, over 60% of Google searches come from mobile devices. Obviously, Google recognizes this and ranks the sites accordingly. Your website needs to be optimized for mobile users. There is no way around that. If your site is not optimized, it will hurt the user experience, which will hurt your rankings.
-
Use keywords
Keywords play a major role in search engine optimization. You want to include words that people will search for throughout your content. But do it in moderation. If you bomb your site with keywords too quickly, Google will realize this, and this will have a negative effect on your rankings. The keywords must fit naturally in the sentences. Include them in your header tags and even in image captions. You should also use long-tail keywords, which are three or four-word phrases that could be found in a search.
For example, someone will probably not just look for the word “phone” when looking for something. But they can type the phrase “best phone to send SMS” as an alternative. If your keywords match their search, your website will have a greater chance of being ranked higher.
-
Have consumer opinions
Google pays close attention to consumer reviews. This is proof that your company has a business and provides quality service. And since Google wants to put the best addresses, the more positive your comments are, the more your local SEO will be boosted. However, do not panic if there are some negative reviews in the lot. It’s inevitable and it can even serve you to build your credibility. In this case, answer calmly, show that it concerns you and seek to fix things.
-
Work on global SEO and social media strategy
It has already been said: your global SEO efforts and social media are important because they reinforce your local SEO. Yes, let’s not forget the basics, the job of Google is to trace the most interesting sites for users. Your site must, therefore, contain valuable content for your users. Then identify the topics that might interest your users and create content on them. Then post them on social media, and strive to unite a community around your brand. If Google will reward you, it will first be your customers themselves who will thank you.
-
Provide appropriate contact information
Speaking of seeming untrustworthy, have you ever had trouble finding a company’s contact information on a website? For my part, it’s a yes. This should never happen. All your contact information must be clear and visible to viewers. The worst thing that can happen is that people start reporting your website simply because you forgot to include your phone number, email address, and location. This crushes your SEO.
To conclude, search engine optimization is not just a fad that will disappear soon. This is something your website needs to focus on now and in the future. Click here to learn more about law firm SEO.