Changes in search engine marketing have created ranking opportunities for law firms. Here are the trends that influence law firm SEO marketing and how you can improve your law firm’s SEO marking.

Trends that affect law firm SEO marketing:

1. 75% of searches are from mobile phones and tablets
Since the majority of search volume is from phones and tablets, it becomes imperative to cater to the device screen sizes. Your website should load quickly and clearly on all device sizes. Images, phone number, free consultation form and other offers should appear on the screen as you want them to. Once you’ve made the necessary changes, check Google Analytics to know if 75% of your responses come from mobile devices.

2. Local searches have doubled since the last one year
Make your law firm readily available online for local searches. You can do this by creating many local business listings, building a collection of online reviews, analyzing local ranking and adding ‘near me’ copy to your web pages. This will bring up your law firm website on Google results when people add ‘near me’, ‘nearby’, or ‘nearest’ in their queries.

3. Voice searches contribute to 40% of searches
Currently, the voice searches are using Google Home, Google Assistant, iPhone Siri, Microsoft Cortana, Amazon Echo/Alexa, and Android. As the number of such devices increases and the users of the current devices explode, voice search is bound to increase. Cater your website to your voice search audience.

4. Long-form content ranks on the first page of Google search results
The average first-page result on Google contains 1890 words. This proves that long-form content ranks better. In your long-form content, ensure quality backlinks, quick site load, page images and low bounce rate to rank on the first page.

How to improve your law firm’s SEO marketing?

Keywords
Keywords of your website content are the search terms used by your potential clients. The ‘web crawlers’ detect keywords that best describe your content. The relevance of keywords in your law firm’s web pages to the search terms used determines your website’s ranking. Therefore, using the right keywords on your website is of utmost importance.

1. Keywords for mobile users
Mobile users tend to use less number of keywords for their query on search engine when compared to desktop users. Research keywords used from mobile devices and include those on your keyword list.

2. Targeting voice searches
Voice search is usually performed using a sentence rather than using a few keywords. Since voice search is currently at 40% of all searches and is set to grow rapidly, it is imperative to cater to this segment of your audience.

3. Build a customer-centric keyword strategy
Potential clients of your law firm are ordinary people who are not familiar with legal terms. Hence they would use simple keywords for their search query on Google. Research the words your customers use to perform a search using tools.

4. Keyword research
When you make a list of the keywords to use in your web content, it would be based on the types of law services you provide/core areas. Your keywords should cater to a diverse audience – mobile, tablet, desktop, voice searches. So they have to be short key terms, long keywords and sentences used in voice searches. Be sure not to overdo the keywords. Utilize an expert law firm SEO agency who will formulate the right SEO strategy to suit all audiences.

Google ranking

Google frequently changes its algorithm for ranking to foster great user experience.

1. SSL for your website
“Secure Socket Layer” is a safety certificate for your law firm website. Google promotes a website that uses encryption for transmissions – HTTPS and SSL.

2. Organize your link building campaign
Use tools to record, aggregate, analyze and track your link building campaign. You can also use the same tools to analyze your competitors and improve/modify your link building strategy if required.

3. Win organic search
Use tools to record, aggregate, analyze and track your link building campaign. You can also use the same tools to analyze your competitors and improve/modify your link building strategy if required.

4. Optimized web content for Google news
Place news items that highlight the success of your law firm. This will attract potential clients and help you gain more visibility on the web.

On-page ranking factors

Google uses more than 200 different factors to calculate rankings. Some factors relate to on-page ranking and off-page signals. Some factors are assessed on a site-wide basis, while others are judged page by page. The largest category of these factors relates to your website.

1. Avoid duplicate content
When you are publishing content on different directories, you tend to copy the practice area content across all directories. Google marks this as a duplicate content. Instead of copying the content, you can re-write the content in different formats/ways for each platform.

2. Stay updated with Google updates
Google releases updates frequently. Stay updated with the current releases rolled out so you can make necessary changes to your SEO strategy.

3. Don’t overdo ads on your website
Advertisements on your law firm website distract your potential customers from the purpose they visit your website. It is a good idea to avoid advertising, but in case you decide to do it, keep a very low ad count on each page. Ensure to place ads that are relevant to the subject matter of the page.

4. Perform SEO audit frequently
Perform audit for your law firm’s website frequently. It will give you better insight into your website, individual pages and overall traffic. It is a great way to improve performance allowing you to rank better in the SERPs.

Ranking boosters

Search engine optimization is all about getting to the top of the search engine results page by boosting the rankings of each of the web pages on your site.

1. Drop links from disavowing files
Google ranking algorithm’s Penguin filter penalizes sites for having spammy backlinks. To ensure that the sites you link to do not break any of Google’s rules. Linking with such sites would affect your SEO ranking.

2. Write for accelerated mobile pages (AMP)
AMP is for mobile devices. When you write specifically for mobile pages, they will load faster. You can use Web page builder that produces mobile-compatible versions so your site’s rankings will boost.

3. Dominate Google’s first page
Formulate an effective SEO strategy to dominate Google’s first page. Use Google’s knowledge graph, Google reviews, Twitter feed, videos, images, social media profiles and rank for organic searches.

4. Social media boosts your law firm’s website rankings
Social media is a form of communication using which you can reach audiences that are not specifically looking for a law firm. Your site will get eyeballs and this will help you in brand building. You also get word-of-mouth recommendations. Social profiles also appear on the search engine results page, so your updates on social media would also come up while people search for relevant terms.

Last Line

Above-Highlighted trends influence your law firm’s SEO marketing. To formulate an effective SEO marketing strategy that will give you the best results, you can hire a law firm specialist SEO marketing agency.