Search engine optimization presents a significant amount of challenges to any small business. There’s competition, time management, research and specialization to consider when delving into a custom SEO strategy. But for law firms, SEO poses a host of additional challenges that make it even more difficult to wrangle that prized spot on page 1 of Google.
Law firms offer a wide area of specialization, meaning there are a ton of topics to cover when you want to secure keyword dominance online. Creating an online presence that supports a brick and mortar style business along with building a strong online brand offer even more challenges. Typically, brick and mortar businesses benefit from local SEO, but law firms usually also strive to build a brand online that breaches the barriers of their local neighborhood. For these reasons, law firms often make several key mistakes that prevent their websites from getting to page 1 of Google.
Cleaning up these missteps will go a long way to capturing more of the targeted online traffic that is out there each and every day for law firms looking to get higher on the index.
1) Not Publishing Enough New Content: Content is king in online visibility and certainly with SEO management. One of the measurements for online authority Google evaluates when ranking websites is their “recency” value. In other words, how much a website’s content is updated (and how frequently) is a determining factor in its positioning in search results.
Law firms are among the businesses online today that publish the most new content frequently (primarily by way of blogs). When law firms want to compete with those who dominate pages 1 or 2, the first strategy they should consider is increasing the frequency with which they publish new content. If your competitor is publishing 3 posts per week, it’s safe to say you won’t get ahead of them publishing any less frequently. The fact is SEO is a race. If you want to beat the guy in front of you, you’ve got to run faster. It’s as simple as that.
2) Not Publishing Enough Focused Content: Because law firms often cover a wide array of practice areas, it’s necessary to ensure that the gamut of possible keywords be covered in any online blog posting. Oftentimes, firms don’t manage to publish more than one or two posts per week. And, of course, one or two posts per week won’t give you enough opportunity to cover the more granular areas of your practice. If you run a personal injury law firm and you post three times per week, broadly covering automobile accidents, medical malpractice and slip and falls, you have left yourself with huge holes in your keyword and content strategy.
And, publishing broad posts on auto accidents or medical malpractice simply won’t get you dominance in local searches for the more granular questions people search for answers to online, like how much a possible malpractice case is worth, or what happens if your hospital injury occurred when the doctor was out of the room or whom to sue if you have been injured in an auto accident by a delivery driver. Keep it granular and keep it frequent and you’ll get to the top of Google’s search results, where you want to be.
3) Not Using (and updating) Schema for Local SEO: Local SEO is a sub-genre of SEO management that helps local brick and mortar businesses stand out in their local areas online. Basically, if you employ solid local SEO practices on- and off-site, your business will get the priority in rankings in local area searches even when bigger, better optimized sites farther away exist. Google does this because it recognizes that location matters in online search. This helps restaurants, dry cleaners and other local businesses show up in local searches simply as a convenience. Law firms can take advantage of this element of SEO management also, and adding structured data (or Schema) will help Google algorithms understand just where your location is and what area of business your site covers.
Finding structured data generators online is easily accomplished for a Google search for that term. From there you just plug in your firm’s details and drop that into your website’s HTML.
If you would like help developing a strategic plan for your website’s SEO, don’t hesitate to call the experienced consultants at Proctor Digital at 312.600.5155. We love helping businesses gain a foothold on Google’s monolithic index and grow like mushrooms.
Want to learn the fundamentals of small business SEO management in an easy-to-follow, online course that offers one-on-one coaching and consulting that not only gets your website optimized, but also leaves you with the skills and knowledge to manage your own search engine optimization on an ongoing basis? Sign up for Proctor Digital’s 8-week DIY SEO Management Online Course. Participants enjoy lifetime access to lesson content, optional one-on-one coaching and step-by-step instruction to website optimization.