How to Develop an Online Presence (2021 Law Firm Edition)

How to Develop an Online Presence (2021 Law Firm Edition) - Site Social SEO

These are the digital marketing tips a law firm needs to know to boost online traffic and client conversions.

Start with a Well-Designed Website

Before you begin trying to convince someone to hire you, you first have to get them to stay on your website. This is achieved with a well-designed website. It is important that your website appears professional, loads quickly, and looks good on all devices.

Professional Appearance

Having a well-designed website is an integral part of your brand. It’s what attracts customers to the service that you’re selling. When it comes to law firm marketing, people are looking for a professional appearance, to mimic the professionalism they would want their attorney to have. A poorly designed website or a website that doesn’t come off as a professional may cause someone to click away. It’s important to remember that your website is a reflection of both your brand and the services you offer.

Quick-Loading Pages

When online, people don’t want to wait for things to slowly load so they can get the information they need. We use the internet because it’s fast and responsive. If two friends are having an argument about a topic, the answer will usually be googled and found in only a few seconds. Inherently, people are impatient when it comes to the internet. If your pages are slow, they’ll find a better website with quicker loading times.

Mobile Responsiveness

In 2020, 274.7 million people accessed the internet through any kind of mobile device at least once. The prevalence of the internet on mobile devices is only going up, and that means that you need to ensure that your website is not only desktop friendly but mobile-friendly. It’s easy to design a perfect mobile site and then forget to also optimize it for mobile use. However, a marketing strategy that emphasizes a responsive, well-designed mobile site can be the reason someone chooses your services over the services of another law firm.

Mobile Responsive Design Image - How to Develop an Online Presence (2021 Law Firm Edition) - Site Social SEO
Law firm websites should be responsive, meaning they can adjust seamlessly to all screen sizes.

Make Your Firm’s Services Clear and Organized

As a lawyer, you know that there are lots of different types of lawyers that practice a whole mix of different areas of law. Because of this, you need to make sure that your practice areas are clearly stated, organized by importance, and structured in a way that audiences and search engines can understand.

Share Your Practice Areas Clearly with Audiences

Your practice areas should always be clear to potential clients. You do not want them guessing if you handle workers’ compensation cases or if you handle DUI arrests. Your site’s header menu is the most common place users will look for answers about what areas of law you practice.

Be sure that the practice areas in your sub-header menu (the part that drops down when you hover or click) are under a clear “parent” button, like Services or Practice Areas.

You should also be sure to have your firm’s practice areas clearly laid out on the homepage using header tags, like h2 or h3. This will help with ranking by showing search engines like Google that your service areas are important.

Organize Practice Areas by Importance and by Location

With law firms, the most important cases that they handle are the ones that they get the most of, and therefore are more common. You’ll want to list these higher up in your practice area menu. These are usually car accident cases and slip and fall accidents. The types of cases that you’re equipped to handle should still be listed, but you don’t need to put them on the front page.

Location is also incredibly important when building a law website as you want to attract people that are near where you’re located. You should write content using different cities near you as location markers. For example, if you’re located in Orlando, Florida you may want to write an Orlando Car Accident page as well as an Altamonte Springs page or a  Casselberry page. You should write content for the cities you have actual offices in, as well as the smaller ones in surrounding areas that will have less keyword competition.

Create Relevant Content that Meets Keyword Requirements

Blogging to Include Keywords that Attract Potential Clients

Blogging is a great way to drive potential clients to your website. You’ll want to post content that uses keywords that your potential clients would use if they were searching for something. For example, your keyword could be “car accident attorneys”. You’d want to use that keyword to attract clients looking for a car accident attorney. These can be more specific, including a location, such as “car accident attorneys in Orlando” or “car accident attorneys near me”.

Write Content that is Actually Useful for Your Audience

While one of the main points of posting content is to drive more traffic to your website by expanding your use of SEO strategies, you also want to make sure that that content is meaningful and useful to your clients. You can write content answering commonly asked questions, walking through what the process of a lawsuit is like, or statistics about accidents in the area. There are many different content ideas you can write about, but you want to make sure that they’re both interesting and informative.

content that is useful will rank better - tips for attorneys to rank better on Google - Site Social SEO
Content that is useful will rank better. After all, Google’s entire aim is to rank content that adds value and that people want to read.

Continual Maintenance of Website for Practice or Office Expansion

Continual maintenance of your website is incredibly important. You need to maintain a content calendar so that you’re posting frequently and consistently. Find out what works best for you, and stick to that schedule. You should also always look for places to improve and expand. Go back to your old content and add new information, update links, and add new information to your site as much as you can to make sure it’s always showing the correct information about your firm.

Establish a Consistent Social Media Presence

Your target audience is literally moving around right in front of you every day on social media. Nearly 3 out of 4 adults in the US have some type of social media account. If you are not using social media to grow your firm and reach new clients, you are missing a big opportunity. Likewise, platforms that you may not consider to be “social media”, like Google My Business, or platforms that you may think are less popular, like LinkedIn, can still be extremely beneficial to helping your law firm marketing program to develop a better online presence.

Facebook

In the US, 247 million people have a social media profile. And of those people, 223 million have a Facebook. Its popularity is unquestionable. Facebook allows you to share lots of different types of content, such as videos, links to articles, updates, and more. You can also interact with your clients by responding to reviews and even responding to messages.

Google My Business

Google My Business is an important tool for every business, not just law firms. When you search for the name of a business, if they’re using Google My Business, a box to the side of the search results will show up with minimal information about that business. This can show your website, phone number, office hours, location, and more. This is a quick and easy way for people to find you, and it also helps build brand trustworthiness.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is not only a good place to network but a good place to share informative content that you have written for your blog. While your network with other companies, you may reach someone who’s in need of a car accident attorney. You can post articles, updates, and more on LinkedIn, but it’s best for sharing articles. Articles that you’ve written that are more interesting, should always go on LinkedIn, as it can have a strong reach if the topic is particularly eye-catching.

Why Hire a Legal Marketing and SEO Firm?

Maintaining a law firm and handling your own marketing and SEO can be a difficult task. For attorneys without an adequate website, your first step is to build one, either on your own or by hiring a designer. To take the stress off of you a legal marketing and SEO firm can help ensure that your website grows, not only getting you more clients but giving you more time to work with those clients.


What To Expect When You Contact Site Social SEO

Site Social SEO is a privately-owned small business operated out of Orlando, Florida. We have a small team of 6 people who are each managed by our two owners/lead strategists. We do not require contracts, make wild guarantees, or imply SEO is magic. It’s not; I can explain to you how everything we do will help your website and business. Contact us below for a free website evaluation or to learn more about our services. We look forward to helping you to grow your business so you can focus on the things that are important to you.