How Can Attorneys and Law Firms Benefit from SEO?

Rid the world of its laws, and you’ll realise what true chaos is. Alternatively, you can talk to a lawyer.

Now that we’ve got the swanky opening line out of the way, it’s time to address the cut-throat competition that dictates a typical day in the legal world.

Law has always been a highly competitive field. But, ever since the emergence of the internet, the legal world has become even more of a madhouse.

After all, finding legal representation is just a matter of a few clicks these days.

A consumer survey by Google states that 96% of people leverage a search engine when they’re on the lookout for legal advice.

Therefore, an entity that provides any kind of legal services needs to inculcate search engine optimisation into its marketing strategy.

But, we’re not telling you to take us at our word, and realign your marketing practices just because we said so.

Instead, we’ll list two prominent reasons why law firms can benefit by investing in effective SEO practices.

So, here goes:

SEO blows traditional marketing practices out of the water

Back in the day, traditional marketing practices like cold-calling, print ads, televisions ads, billboard promos, direct mail etc. were the top-tier tools at a marketer’s disposal.

However, the internet has changed that for the better.

In fact, the shift from traditional to digital is arguably the most pivotal change that the advertising world has undergone in this decade.

SEO is a big part of digital marketing and its results speak for itself. Well, they literally do!

Unlike traditional marketing practices, SEO offers concrete avenues for the quantification of its efficacy.

Moreover, with Big Data and Analytics becoming bigger and bigger with each passing day, the quantification avenues inherent to SEO are only expected to improve in the future.

Yet another aspect in which SEO is superior to traditional marketing is in terms of its cost-effectiveness.

If you have the requisite understanding of SEO principles and the adaptability to optimise for rapidly changing trends, you can reap the rewards of SEO without spending even a single penny.

After all, the only real cost linked with SEO is that of hiring a competent agency or an analyst.

On the contrary, when you advertise your legal services using traditional marketing channels, you can’t even hope to see any results without spending a sizeable portion of your marketing budget.

However, the biggest advantage that SEO has over traditional marketing endeavours is that of the tenure of its impact.

It is true that classic advertising tools yield somewhat instant results. But, it is also true that these immediate results are short-lived.

Conversely, SEO efforts take a longer commitment to generate success. But, once they do, the accumulated success tends to have a long lifespan.

SEO makes clients reach you on their own

In today’s day-and-age, consumers from all sorts of different verticals exercise the power that they have.

They look for information to guide their decisions.

Thanks to the virtually boundless wish-granting factory that the internet has become, consumers often find what they are looking for.

Legal consumers are no different in this regard. According to a study, 74% of consumers visit a law firm’s website to take action.

This means that if you can make your law firm’s website as enticing to legal consumers as possible, they’ll contact you on their own.

Furthermore, search engine traffic is highly relevant traffic. Only those people who have searched for keywords that relate to the content on your website will end up opening it.

But, the caveat here is that they’ll never even find your website if its SEO is not on point.

So, it is important for your law firm’s website to rank as high as possible if you want to stumble upon clients that are looking for your services.

Here are some of the things that you can do to make that happen:-

• Analyse your competition and take cues from their successful SEO practices. If you are not familiar with who your competitors are, simply search a keyword that you plan to target, and go through the SERPs.
• Make sure that you pay enough attention to local SEO. A survey by FindLaw U.S. states that 78% of those looking for legal services prefer to have a local attorney. Properly setting up a Google My Business for your firm is a crucial step here.
• To optimize for local SEO even further, target local keywords and try to generate backlinks from influential local websites.
• Lastly, get as many online reviews for your firm as you can. Client reviews have a huge impact on Google’s perception of your website.

The Take-Away

Given the internet-driven digital skeleton of the world that we currently live in, it is impossible to succeed in any people-faced venture without leveraging the power of digital marketing.

As stated before, SEO is among the most powerful digital marketing channels out there.

So, if you want to out-shark the rest of the legal sharks that you’re competing with, nailing the SEO strategy for your website isn’t an option, it is a necessity!