SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Essentially, SEO services help people find webpages when they use a search engine like Google, Yahoo, or Bing. When a potential client does a search for your practice area, your website content should appear on the first page of results. SEO has two components, on-site and off-site.

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On-Site SEO for Lawyers

On-site SEO for lawyers relates to the content on your law firm’s website. One of the most common issues we see on law firm websites is a lack of content. SEO best practices for attorneys is to have a bare minimum of 300 words on every single page of your website. Yes…even the contact page. Enlisting the help of a copywriter can be extremely beneficial for attorneys hoping to boost their on-site Search Engine Optimization. Most professional copywriters understand SEO and know how to write content for your website that will truly help potential clients find you and find your firm. Components of on-site SEO include:

• Page Title: This one is pretty straightforward. What is the title of your page? The title of each page should correspond to a singular person, service, or topic. When Google scans your website, the page title lets them know what a page is all about.

• Keyword: The keyword of a web page should be present in the page title and also used throughout the content. For example, the keyword of this page is “SEO Services for Lawyers.” SEO isn’t about cramming the keyword in as much as possible, rather, it’s about casually integrating the keyword in a way the audience will find most helpful.

• Meta Description: You know when you do a Google search and see the long list of results? Underneath each search result is a short description on what the page is about. This is called the meta description. Your SEO experts will help you craft meta descriptions that are enticing, and will drive visitors to your website.

• Headings: Just as you use headings when drafting a written document, you should also use them on your web pages. Headings help the SEO crawl bots understand the content on your page and help potential clients as they pursue your website. An SEO crawl bot is a piece of technology designed to surf every page of the internet and notice what content is new, relevant and garnering attention. The crawl bot will then index new content on the web.  Websites with new content are ranked higher on Google.

• Image Alt Tag: Every webpage on your site should have a unique image that’s optimized for Search Engine Optimization. These images are extremely important for engaging users. When posting images on social media sites, the featured image is typically the default graphic that appears on the website.

 

Off-Site SEO Services for Lawyers

Off-site SEO is where things get interesting (…or technical). Most lawyers will never have to worry about off-site SEO if they have a strong SEO team on their side. Our SEO experts are trained in the art of backlinking, mark up codes, and schema snippets, which is techie jargon for “important SEO things.” The gist of off-site Search Engine Optimization is that good things happen when other highly rated websites link to your website. For example, if your local newspaper runs a story about you and includes a link to your site on their online article, that’s great news for your SEO. By being highly rated on Google, your daily newspaper has what is called “authority,” so the more sites you can get to link to your website – that have high authority on Google – the more likely your firm will rank higher on Google.