If your law firm is looking to break out in your city as a leading provider of legal advice, it can be tough to figure out where to begin.
With eyeballs focused more on computer screens, smartphones, and tablets instead of television sets, it’s far less likely that an individual will see a commercial for your firm and think to give you a call. That being said, the internet is actually a powerful tool for marketing your law firm if you’re doing it the right way. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is key if you want to succeed in the digital age. If you’re a complete neophyte when it comes to search engine optimization, here’s everything you need to know about SEO.
How exactly does SEO work?
Put in its simplest terms, search engine optimization involves making sure that your website ranks well when users search for queries that are relevant to your business. For example, if you own a local shoe store in Indianola, Mississippi, you would want your website to appear in the top results when a potential customer searches for “Indianola shoe store.” If your website doesn’t appear on the first or second page, it’s unlikely that you’ll be seen by most users. By completing a variety of tasks, you can boost your search engine ranking and thus get more traffic, or visits from online users.
How do I improve my SEO?
Improving your SEO is a complex task and relies on hundreds of different factors. To make matters more complicated, search engine giants like Google are constantly tweaking and adjusting their page ranking algorithm. Some basic aspects of SEO include claiming your Google My Business page, making sure that your company’s contact info and address is featured on your website, and having a website that functions properly. If your website is mobile optimized, it is more likely to be indexed higher by Google as well, since it means that more users are able to actually access your information from any device. Another way to improve your SEO is to have other websites with high domain authority link to your website. The more links you have pointing to yours, the higher you’re featured, as Google and other search engines see your website as more relevant for certain topics. Posting regularly on your own website and having internal links to other pages of your website also helps improve your SEO.
What hurts my SEO?
If your website isn’t accessible or has a bunch of spam links pointing to it, this may cause Google and other search engines to penalize your website. Your website can also be penalized if it takes too long for pages to load, or even if you have a high bounce rate in regards to the users who are visiting your site. If your meta tags aren’t properly configured or are too long, that could also be detrimental to your SEO. If you have a lot of duplicate content on your website, this could also hurt your search engine rankings.
If the answers to these questions have your head spinning, don’t worry. After all, people would likely have a glazed over look on their faces if you spent the length of an article discussing the finer points of a recent legal case. If you don’t have time to focus on improving your SEO as an individual, it can be worth talking to a third-party company to handle your organic SEO campaigns. Best Lawfirm SEO is one such company, offering expert knowledge in the areas of link building, mobile optimization, local SEO campaigns, and on-page content. If you feel like you don’t have the time or experience to handle SEO for your law firm, leave it up to the professionals.
