If you have a website for your law firm but you’re not receiving the traffic you need to grow your practice, you might be wondering what is causing this lack of visitors. The most common reason for low website traffic is that your site doesn’t have enough content. But you’re the proud owner of a website chock full of helpful articles and informative media for your prospects and clients. So what gives?

More than likely you have content that is not centered around SEO; without it, you can have an excellent site that is almost impossible to find. Below is a brief guide to law firm SEO that will help you create a great site that is easy to find.

The Basics – Keywords

The first part of your SEO you want to focus on is the basic keywords that you should be including in every part of your content. You’re a law firm, so words like law, legal help, lawyers, and so on should certainly be embedded in your content.

Also, in SEO as in real estate, it’s all about location, location, location. If you don’t have your location in several spots on your website, your site won’t show up in local search results, and local is where the action is for location-based services like law firms. Simply having your address in the footer and a contact page is not enough. You need to have “lawyers in Your City” as a keyword throughout your content.

Your Niche – Target Practice Areas

There are a lot of lawyers, so simply including keywords that dictate you’re a lawyer or a law firm is not going to be incredibly helpful. Law firm SEO dictates that you also include the type of law you practice. If you’re a workers compensation attorney, you should have keywords like workers comp, workers comp lawyer, employee representation, and other such keywords in your law firm SEO.

Social Media

Including links to your social media pages and profiles is no longer optional when it comes to website building and law firm SEO. No matter what business you’re in, you need to have links to all your social media profiles on your website and actively engage there with your prospects and clients. Why? Having social media involvement goes way beyond keeping up with a new trend.

Social media is now a given in marketing – so much so that social media is now included in the way Google and other sites rank your SEO. What does that mean for you? No social media, no (or very low) traffic. The thought process behind this algorithm setup is that good, quality businesses engage with their customers and get people talking. So give them something to talk about – and a place to do it.

Engagement

Another key component to law firm SEO is engagement. This is the opposite side to the social media coin. Where social media increases engagement off-site, you also need to find a way to engage with your prospect sand clients onsite. The reason is the same as it is for having social media links: SEO looks at engagement as an indicator of quality.

This doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, it can be as simple as having a YouTube video of a representative of your firm speaking about your services. Any time someone hits “play”, it’s engagement. Adding podcast episodes, interactive surveys, and anything else that requires people to click a button equals engagement for your site and higher SEO.

By following these simple SEO tips you can increase your law firm’s traffic and grow your practice without radically changing your site or content.

If you’d like to learn more about SEO best practices, you can download our FREE SEO eBook below.