Next to your website, search engine optimization (SEO) is the most important investment you can make for a continued and sustainable web presence. If you’ve invested in regularly updating your social media channels because you recognize that your firm needs to up its digital presence, but you are ignoring SEO, then you are missing a golden opportunity to reach potential clients.
Here’s the truth. Social media is for current clients, and possibly for prospects who are close to considering hiring your services. The latter will potentially check out your Facebook page to see what they can glean about who you are, while the former is getting regular updates if they are following or connected to your firm. Both are very important components to your overall digital presence and online reputation.
But if you’ve invested in a developing a website, then you should consider pairing that with a strategy focused on SEO for family law firms. Why? Because a solid family law SEO strategy engages prospects like no other tool in the digital toolkit. In fact, 46.5% of prospective clients use Google search when researching which law firm to choose. Search for family lawyers has been steadily on the rise for years and has surged recently. In fact, searches for divorce attorneys surpass searches for personal injury lawyers by a ratio of 3 to 1.
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Family law SEO, if done correctly, tells search engines such as Google and Bing what you’re about, and what your firm does, making internet searches relevant and accurate, which can result in better positioning in a search engine ranking page (SERP) and increased exposure for your firm.
What is a Search Engine?
Now, you obviously know what a search engine is. You probably used it to find this blog. But it may be useful to take a step back to understand search engines and how they work to understand why SEO is so important.
A search engine is simply a software program developed to search data (such as text or a database) for specific information on the World Wide Web. A SERP is the page you see after searching. Search engines do this by searching the information of a page and matching that with a searcher’s query.
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization is the process getting traffic from search results on search engines. All major search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo have primary search results, where web pages and other content such as videos or local listings are shown and ranked based on what the search engine considers most relevant to users. Google, Bing, and Yahoo develop very complex algorithms to generate these results.
How Does SEO work?
Search engines have three primary functions:
Crawl: Scour the Internet for content, looking over the code/text for each website they find.
Index: Store and organize the content found during the crawling process. Once a page is in the index, it’s in the running to appear on a search engine results page.
Rank: Provide the pieces of content that will best answer a searcher’s query, which means that results are ordered by most relevant to least relevant.
Why is SEO Important?
These algorithms have the ability to not just crawl, index and rank your site, but also monitor user activity. Data is being amassed on aggregate usage. For example, if enough users stay on your site and don’t “bounce” within a few seconds, and even click from one page to another, this indicates that they are finding information that is of value.
When your law firm SEO strategy works, your website rank improves, which, in turn, means more visitors can find your pages in search results. Additionally, with broader exposure and traffic to your high-value content, more sites will link to your pages, which increases your authority and credibility, and also leads to improved website rankings.
The sub text of this is that whether you are interested in SEO or not, search engines are crawling your site and developing ranking criteria for your online presence. If you are not actively optimizing the content on your family law firm website, then you are leaving it to third party algorithms to decide what your site is about and how your firm should be framed in searches
Increased Traffic
A solid family law firm SEO strategy helps bring “targeted” traffic to your website. It brings in people who are actively seeking to find information on your services!
If you provide valuable information and make it easy for search engines to find and organize it, you will be rewarded with higher rankings. This increased exposure, in turn, means more visitors to your pages.
When it comes to SEO, the goal of any business should be to rank as high as possible in SERPs. To achieve this, you need the help of keywords. Keywords are commonly used words found within internet searches.
Your competitors on the first page of results become the most likely candidates to obtain business from online users who are looking for family legal service.
Ranking higher on Google can also lead to more inbound calls. When people are searching for specific keywords such as “divorce lawyer near me,” it is because they have a high interest in those terms and are farther down the purchase funnel.
Local SEO for family law firms
Which brings us to local search and why SEO makes so much sense for a family lawyer. Search engines love local search and put a premium on it. Forty-six percent of all Google searches are looking for local information.
A strategy focused on local SEO for family law firms makes sense because clients want to work with law firms near them. The simple search term “divorce lawyer near me” generates 60,500 monthly searches. That’s a pretty big number for search.
So don’t just think in terms of law SEO, think in terms of a strategy focused on Local SEO.
Better Conversion Rates
Since search engines return results to users who are actively searching for a particular term or phrase, getting to the top of that search query indicates that you are providing information to the people who want it most.
Compare this to traditional advertising where you put up a billboard or run a radio spot. With SEO, you aren’t trying to put information about your firm in front of people who might not be interested in your services. Instead, you have an active audience. You don’t have to pay to get your message to them; they’ve come searching for your message.
By following SEO best practices, you create engaging, useful content that potential clients want (or need) right when they are looking for it. The more often this happens, the more likely it will be that search engines put you in front of that same kind of searcher.
Brand Credibility
Optimizing the content on your website, including linking to other authoritative websites (known as backlinking) also leads to higher rankings and increased trust from prospects.
Family law firms interested in building better brand trust should consider investing in SEO to help gain top rankings for the KEY terms related to their areas of specialization. In the modern digital economy, search engines play a significant role in enhancing your brand.
Final thoughts
SEO for family law firms is a long-term strategy. Dedicating time and resources are important in achieving and maintaining success.
Algorithms are constantly being updated based evolving search preferences as well as a better understanding by search engine operators of how to best serve their users. New SEO techniques are developing every day, and the competition continues to rise.
Search engine marketing needs to be a permanent fixture for your broader marketing plan. You need to provide high-value content for repeat visitors who will eventually reach out. Investing in SEO offers the best long-term value and results in terms of getting your website in front of potential clients.
Want to learn more? Download our Definitive SEO Guide for family Lawyers
Ready to get started? Law SEO Experts helps family law firms with their digital advertising and online marketing needs. Reach out today to speak to our team of qualified law firm marketing experts, so you can focus on what matters – winning cases and running your law firm!