Last month, we were running the numbers on our newer Law Firm SEO clients and found out that 7 of our 8 newest lawyers doubled their website traffic and SEO leads in under 90 days as a result of the SEO work we’re doing for them.
Since almost every attorney I’ve ever talked to thinks that SEO is this 9-12 month smoke & mirrors game, I wanted to show you what is possible in 90 days or less, if you follow the right strategy for your Law Firm’s internet marketing and SEO.
Bottom line, it is possible to double your website traffic in 90 days or less, if you stop focusing on blind SEO tasks and start operating with intention.
What is Law Firm SEO?
Before I dive in, I want to explain what I mean by Law Firm SEO.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.
Essentially, if your law firm’s website has good SEO rankings, your website will be showing up high on Google’s search engine for the right keywords that a prospective client types in, while they are searching for a specific type of attorney located in your immediate area.
Keep in mind, the highest value keywords are going to be practice area specific and location-specific. For example, the keyword “Motorcycle Accident Lawyer Chicago” or “High-Asset Divorce Lawyer Houston” will be more valuable than the keyword “Lawyer near Chicago.”
SEO is not to be confused with PPC which stands for Pay-Per-Click and involves buying ads on Google so you can show up above Google Maps and the Organic section of Google.
For the purposes of this video, we will only be talking about SEO (not buying ads on Google) and what specific actions you can take today to double your law firm’s website traffic and leads in 90 days or less.
How To Double Your Website Traffic with SEO in 90 Days or Less
Tip #1: Google Maps Optimization
First things first, in over 95% of circumstances, it is going to be much easier for you to rank your law firm’s website higher on Google Maps, than it is on the organic section of Google beneath Google Maps.
This is especially true if you are looking to accomplish this goal in under 90 days.
To rank your law firm higher on Google Maps is much easier because it is less dependent on Domain Authority, which can take 9+ months to register with your website.
On Google Maps, you can almost immediately improve your rankings and, therefore, your website traffic by focusing on a 3 key items:
1. Fully fill out your Google My Business profile, including all niche practice areas you cover.
2. Ensure your law firm is properly categorized on Google My Business with the main practice area you market to.
3. Understand and Implement review signals on your profile.
Google actually doesn’t 100% care about strictly the number of reviews your business has, it cares about 3 things:
– Review Quantity
– Review Velocity
– Review Diversity.
So, make sure all of your 100 reviews didn’t come in over the course of 1 week and then you got 0 more reviews over the following 6 months. Encourage your clients to leave unique reviews, not cookie cutter, 1 sentence reviews that Google may identify as not as valuable.
Tip #2: Make On-Site Technical Fixes
Another quick fix you can make to immediately make your law firm’s website rankings on the search engines is making sure that your website is being properly indexed and read by Google. We call this process, making On-Site Technical Fixes. In other words, if you make the following 5 foundational changes to your website, Google will almost immediately improve your rankings accordingly:
- Make absolutely sure your website is secured with a HTTPs certificate. If this is not done, please stop what you’re doing and call us or have a friend fix this immediately. This is a BIG deal.
2. Optimize your website for Mobile Load Speed. Most times if your website loads fast on mobile, it will be good on Desktop. To see how fast your website is loading in Google’s eyes, you can use the Page Speed Insights tool and type in your URL. This will also provide the exact actions you need to take to optimize your site.
3. Go through your Meta Data (Title Tags, Page Descriptions, etc…) on each page of your website and make sure your core practice area keywords and main town names are clearly spelled out.
4. Go through your page content and add more internal links to other relevant pages on your law firm’s website to increase indexability and the amount of time people spend on your website.
Tip #3: Make On-Site Technical Fixes
I know this isn’t rocket science, but actually making sure that the content on your website is valuable to your prospective clients is becoming more and more important.
On pages on your website that have high-value content, you will notice 3 things that Google views favorably:
- Increased Time on Page
- Increased Time on Site
- Lower Bounce Rates
When it comes to content, strategy is everything. Make sure you are including the higher-value practice area keywords in your blogs. Make sure you are not doing random blog posts with generalized keywords that mean nothing to you or your firm. Be precise and it will pay off.
If you’re running a PPC campaign, you can look up the highest converting keywords and implement them into your blogging strategy since you know those keywords generate immediate calls.
Also – keep in mind that visuals dominate now over text content. Do you have valuable photos in your blog posts that help explain the information you’re conveying? Or, is your website just heaps of overwhelming text without clear sections so people can scroll through and efficiently find the information they need?
Finally – make the content about YOUR CLIENT, not about your awards and accolades. Speak to what they’re going through and bite your tounge as much as you can when it comes to talking yourself up. Personalization is actually a Google SEO ranking factor now and accounts for about 6% of your website’s rankings.
Tip #4: 30+ Domain Authority Backlinking
Now, I am going to tell you this, but I hope you listen. All most law firm websites need now-a-days regarding Backlinks is 1-2 high Domain Authority backlinks per-month.
What is a backlink? A backlink is essentially another website mentioning your law firm online and linking back (hence backlink) linking back to your website from the piece of content that they mentioned you within.
Please listen to what I’m saying… 100 crappy backlinks are WAY LESS valuable than 1-2 high-quality backlinks from website that have credibility.
The legal niche, is what’s called a high-domain authority niche. On the first page of Google, you are competing against the FindLaws, and AVVOs of the world. These websites get millions of visitors a year and have very high Domain Authority scores. So, the only way to outrank them is to have websites almost as credible as them, mentioning your website online.
How do you do that? Well you spend years trying hard to find the managing editors of websites that have high domain authorities and convince them to link to you by offering them free content. OR you can just buy backlinks from a company like us or a few other legal marketing companies in the US that actually specialize in attorney backlinks.