Today's complex legal marketing landscape includes a wide variety of strategies. From social media to pay-per-click, there's a lot to consider. When your marketing resources can only go so far, you may struggle to determine which strategies will work best for you.
Among the many options is a tried-and-tested solution: search engine optimization (SEO). SEO involves improving your website and making it as visible as possible within search engine results. The goal is to ensure clients find your site and learn about your law firm when they seek information on Google or other search engines.
Developing an effective SEO strategy takes a lot of time and effort, so it's understandable that some attorneys might be reluctant to dedicate limited resources to optimizing their websites. Or that many ask, "Is SEO worth it?"
Simply put, the answer is yes. Search engines are the primary tool potential clients use to learn about your law firm and the role it could play in resolving their most urgent or stressful concerns. If your website is not optimized for top search engines, clients will be more likely to discover and work with competing law firms that do have a robust online presence.
To illustrate the value of SEO for the modern law firm, we've highlighted a few of the main benefits it can provide in the legal industry and beyond.
Discoverability & Brand Awareness
Above all else, SEO makes it easier for clients to discover and learn about your practice. These days, it's the average consumer's knee-jerk response to turn to search engines for answers when they encounter just about any problem imaginable. This includes a variety of legal concerns, not to mention the need to find a legal professional who can help clients resolve these issues.
In general, high-ranking websites receive far more traffic than those that struggle to achieve desirable positions at the top of the search engine results page (SERP).
More traffic means more opportunities to appeal to potential clients. However, if your site isn't properly optimized, potential clients will be far more likely to find and move forward with the competing law firms they can find via online searching.
Creating a Perception of Authority
Clients want to feel confident their attorneys are authorities in their specific legal practice areas. While various strategies, such as reviews or testimonials, can boost this perception of authority, search engine results also play an important role.
Simply achieving a top spot on the SERP provides your firm and its website an air of authority; users assume that highly-ranked pages have earned their esteemed position for a reason. This makes them more inclined to click and improves their odds of engaging or converting.
Improving User Experience
There's a lot more to modern SEO than simply stuffing web pages with keywords. These days, SEO is determined, in part, by how much value websites provide visitors. Today's web pages must be easy to navigate and chock full of information users find relevant and engaging.
As such, any effort to improve SEO will also improve user experience. This ensures potential clients find your website — and that they stick around long enough to learn about your law firm and, hopefully, get in touch by email or phone.
Address Visitors' Questions & Concerns
As you craft a keyword strategy, you should gain a valuable framework to help you determine which types of content marketing to include on your website.
Typically, keywords will be centered around top questions potential clients hope will be answered on your site. By developing content that speaks to these keywords, you can meet visitors' expectations and encourage them to engage or even convert.
Score Visitors From Other Websites
Linking strategy plays an essential role in SEO, so there's a good chance that any efforts to improve rankings will eventually extend to achieving backlinks on other websites.
From social media to legal directories and even reviews or testimonials posted on other websites, a variety of resources can send would-be clients your way. Efforts to improve linking will ultimately boost not only traffic from those links but also traffic from search engines as your site gains a higher ranking on SERPs.
SEO Strategies Provide Long-Term Results
We've touched on many facets of modern SEO, but there's an overarching argument to make for improving organic results. Once you've put in the effort and built a quality website that ranks well on Google and other search engines, you will begin seeing impressive results.
While search engines frequently adjust their algorithms, the basis for these results largely remains stable over time. If your efforts have produced a top spot on the almighty SERP, you can feel confident you'll continue to attract leads from this crucial resource far into the future.
By comparison, many paid strategies produce limited returns on a long-term basis. Yes, these can immediately boost visibility, but you must continue channeling considerable resources toward these solutions; the moment you stop, they will no longer prove beneficial.
Complement Other Marketing Initiatives
SEO and paid marketing need not be either-or prospects. These solutions can be used to complement each other. Moreover, SEO complements many other standard digital marketing solutions, such as social media and email outreach.
As your approach evolves over time, you can always feel confident that SEO will be there to amplify results in every area of the modern legal marketing environment.
Make the Most of Law Firm SEO
By now, it should be abundantly clear that SEO is crucial to scoring the best clients for your law firm. Improving your web pages' SEO, however, can be difficult. Thankfully, you don't need to go it alone.
If you want to level up your SEO strategy, Scorpion can help. We can clue you in on the top SEO tools and techniques that will help clients find and learn about your practice. Get in touch today to learn more.
