Search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns are both challenging to perform and incredibly important to your law firm’s marketing efforts. Without a proper SEO content strategy to drive organic traffic, your law firm is easily lost in a sea of information. Worse yet your potential clients can be lost to competitors who uitlize more effective methods.

While it is a feat to be one of the first results for a global search result, it is much more effective to market to your surrounding community. That is the purpose of a local SEO campaign: optimizing your search engine results to target nearby clients who will find and employ your services more easily. It’s the equivalent of molding word-of-mouth marketing to build your reputation among your community.

White Hat v. Black Hat

The first step in creating an effective SEO marketing strategy is to know the difference between white hat strategies and black hat tactics. In short, the difference between approaches is a matter of ethics: black hat tactics are based on manipulating algorithms through deceptive means while white hat strategies are by-the-book and follow guidelines set by search engines.

Black hat tactics can be anything from keyword stuffing to hiding white text on a white background. It’s a focus on low-quality, duplicated content only meant for visitors to see a webpage. These methods can absolutely boost your search results for a time. However, search engines such as Google despise these tactics and, as soon as they realize what you’ve done, they will push your results further down the search results. Additionally, they will penalize you by deranking your site, negatively affecting results, sales, and reputation.

This is why many law firms employ white hat SEO techniques. A focus on quality content, organically implementing highly searched keywords, and adhering to webmaster guidelines are all avenues to generate site traffic without penalties. Beyond these implementations, it’s important to create a positive user experience when potential clients visit your website. A clean, easy-to-use webpage will give a positive and professional first impression to any visitors, increasing interactions and seeing more traffic as a result.

Local SEO Techniques

The best techniques for local SEO campaigns are numerous and varied, each dealing with a different aspect of search optimization. What you need to keep in mind is this is a long-term investment with long-term rewards. What can take months or years to achieve can also provide sustainable results without spending anything on seach advertising (pay-per-click).

Quality Content was briefly mentioned earlier as a white hat strategy. Search engines such as Google favor high-quality web content with regular updates and constant activity. Blogs are what a majority of law firms produce for their SEO campaigns. These can be easily produced to cover current litigations or legal developments and readily updated for any changes at a moment’s notice. Referencing credited sources in site links with high Expertise, Authority, and Trust (E.A.T.) scores can additionally boost your search rankings by association. These scores are how search engines, specifically Google, determine a website is trustworthy, pushing their results to more people in more results.

Social Media Platforms are essential for building and engaging with an audience. Even if this doesn’t improve your search rankings directly, a social media presence can increase awareness about your firm and bring in more clients for attorneys. Posts covering blog publications, events, or cases are all ways to naturally create a social media presence to attract potential clients.

Reviews are an often overlooked part of SEO campaigns. Clients or customers posting reviews about your law firm is welcome engagement, signaling the algorithm to boost your search rankings and push your firm to more people. More importantly, positive reviews can boost your reputation and increase visibility in local searches. These reviews can be collected from other platforms such as Facebook or Glassdoor and compiled on your firm’s website. They can also be linked to their original source, further adding site links and reputation to your law firm.

User Experience is the cornerstone of SEO campaigns but not many realize it. Essentially, the user experience is how someone navigates your website and if they had difficulty doing so. As mentioned in white hat SEO techniques, a streamlined user-friendly website portrays your firm as professional and ultimately leads to more interactions. The easier your site is to use, the longer a patron will engage with it and therefore increase your search rankings. If it’s cumbersome to explore or uninteresting to look at, you’ve frustrated both present and future clients.

Focus Keywords fuel search algorithms and are one of the reasons people find law firms. Analyzing popular search terms with high volume in your field and applying them in relation to your content can generate a lot of traffic just by having potential clients look those terms up. This targeting will bring in more people around your area searching for your specific legal expertise.

Visual Appeal is both a method of attracting clients and a way to create an established brand. A similar stylistic approach to your website, billboards, or other marketing materials builds a confidence in the consumer who will employ your firm as a result. A consistent design aesthetic that can earn the confidence of potential clients is valuable to see a constant flow of claimants and establish yourself in the industry.

Why a Local SEO is Important

What makes an SEO campaign so important is the impact it has on your success as an attorney and as a law firm. When people look for legal counseling, they don’t look for an attorney in another state–they search for someone less than an hour from their location. A local SEO campaign creates continuous traffic through community search algorithms.

Optimizing your firm’s search engine marketing strategies to better represent your firm and garner a strong reputation, both in your community and the algorithm, is a worthwhile investment of time and resources. Establishing your firm and having it appear first in search rankings brings with it a routine flow of clients, a strong market position, and a better understanding of legal marketing as a whole.

Broughton Partners & You

If you want a guaranteed way of getting clients in your firm with SEO experts, Broughton Partners can help provide an excellent service for your team. Our technology-first approach lets us both optimize our SEO campaigns and deliver pre-qualified claimants to your law firm. Our in-house 24/7 call center and tailor-made criteria gives us the power to generate qualified retainers through our various advertising channels and connect them with partnered law firms.

This system provides attorneys with new clients and gets claimants the justice they deserve. If you would like to know more, call us at (800) 949-8904 or complete our online contact form today.