SEO for Lawyers: A Beginner’s Guide (With 50+ Examples)

Are you interested in getting your firm to the #1 position in Google’s search results?

Of course you are. Who isn’t?

SEO for lawyers remains one of the most effective ways for law firms to attract quality clients.

Consider these legal stats:

• 96% of people seeking legal advice use a search engine.
• 74% of consumers visit a law firm’s website to take action.
• 62% of legal searches are non-branded (i.e., generic: Phoenix divorce attorney).
• 72% of people seeking legal advice only contact one attorney.

You don’t have to be a digital marketing expert to implement a law firm SEO strategy. Our guide is carefully crafted for beginners, giving you the information you need to know to get to the top of Google (without the fluff).

Let’s begin.

Is there a law firm SEO tactic you think we missed? Have any tips of your own you’d like to share? What’s worked for your law firm’s website? Reach out and let us know.

Law firm SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process of improving the visibility of your law firm’s website on search engines like Google. A successful SEO campaign will see you ranking highly on Google, increasing the quality and quantity of traffic to your website.

As a marketing tactic, SEO for lawyers requires in-depth keyword research, onsite optimization, link building, citation building, Google Business Profile optimization, content marketing, and analytics configuration.

All of those items feed into one thing — making your law firm’s website the most relevant and high-quality resource for your practice area. The more boxes you check, the more likely you’ll meet Google’s criteria.

Here’s a quote from Google itself on the purpose of its search engine.

Search engines exist to help people find what they are looking for. To do that, search engines must provide a diverse set of helpful, high-quality search results presented in the most helpful order.

When done right, SEO outperforms other channels that prospective clients use to find a lawyer, including social media and word-of-mouth.

Our client, Trey Porter Law, experienced an 827% increase in website traffic with a well-optimized SEO campaign. He ranks highly for several competitive, local keywords that get him tons of monthly leads.

We tell all of our clients that SEO is a long-term investment. It’s the only channel that nets you compounding returns over time. It might start slow, but you’ll experience steady growth.

When we want to find a new service in our area, most people don’t think about things like YellowPages. They head straight to a search engine.

In fact, one study found that up to 96% of people looking for legal advice go to a search engine.

That won’t come as a surprise to most people. The majority of people use Google to answer questions and queries, research products and services, and even rely on it for legal and medical advice.

If the goal is to become more visible online and attract prospective clients to your website, you need to focus on SEO.

The potential for growth is like no other marketing channel. Google processes 8.5 billion searches a day.

And around 53.3% of all website traffic comes from organic search (and Google alone gets 89% of all desktop and mobile search traffic, respectively).

So, you know you want to be present on Google. But it’s not enough to sit on the second page.

Only 0.63% of Google searchers will click a link on the second page, while the #1 result in Google’s organic search has an average CTR of 27.6%.

Your placement on Google’s SERP (search engine result page) affects how many visitors you get to your law firm’s website. The more website visitors you get, the more paying clients you get.

And because most people only hire one lawyer, placing higher on the SERP is even more crucial for law firms

How high?

As high as you can go. Settling for the bottom of the first page won’t get you the results you expect. The #1 result in Google’s organic search is 10x more likely to get a click than the tenth result.

And the top 3 results get 54.4% of all clicks, with the majority going to the #1 spot.

Out of all the marketing channels out there, SEO for lawyers produces the highest return on investment. And it’s showing no signs of slowing down.

But it will only get more important as time goes on to rank highly on the SERP.

If your law firm’s website can’t be found on search engines, you’ll have to rely solely on referrals. While word-of-mouth is powerful, SEO is much more sustainable and is in your control.

Back to Top

For years, the basic principle of SEO marketing has remained the same:

Google wants to return the most accurate, credible, and authoritative information to its users.

Google fiercely defends its search results and updates its algorithms regularly for greater accuracy. They assess each website for a large variety of factors called the Google Ranking Factors (of which there are over 200).

At JurisPage, we believe the following factors most impact a website’s search engine rankings in Google’s search results.

That’s really the core of what law firm SEO is about. If you pay special attention to these ranking factors, you’ll inevitably rank higher for those valuable keywords and draw in more traffic.

We’ll dive into the ranking factors we think are worth understanding more in-depth below.

Content refers to any written or video content optimized and published on a firm’s website.

Writing original, informative content is the cornerstone of law firm digital marketing — and optimized content is a key ranking factor.

It must be topically relevant, optimized for keywords, informative, and easy to read and share.

In addition, all content is ranked on its:

We’ll go into more detail on these factors below.

But first, what type of content should you publish?

Content creation, be it articles, videos, or podcasts, is one of the most effective marketing techniques for a firm to invest in.

By consistently publishing valuable content, you create the perception of being a subject matter expert. It increases your website and social media traffic, ultimately contributing to more quality sales leads and prospects.

As we’ve mentioned, Google’s aim is to rank the highest quality content that exists. To do that, they evaluate content quality, uniqueness, and freshness.

Quality is self-explanatory.

The best content on a subject is:

At that point, your content should be the most comprehensive and well-structured piece on the internet. But is it unique?

It’s not enough to regurgitate all of the same information that your competitors are putting out there.

Your content needs to be different or better than what’s already ranking for the keyword you’re going after.

The above example showcases a blog with a table of contents, which is something that not all blogs include but goes wonders in improving usability.

Google also cares about freshness — that’s why new content generally gets an (albeit temporary) rankings boost.

The key here is to regularly update your content so that it’s up to date.

Most content needs to be updated at least once a year.

Many people fall into the trap of only writing for Google — that is, stuffing in keywords at the expense of user experience.

The truth is great content is written for people first, then optimized for search engines. High-quality content speaks to the reader first, then incorporates keywords and phrases naturally. (More on keyword research later.)

Just as important as keyword research is search intent. Make sure your content matches search intent — in other words, your content should answer the intention behind the search. What is the user’s goal when typing those keywords into Google?

There are four types of search intent:

If you know the user’s search intent, you can carefully craft your content so that it specifically answers their query.

For example, someone searching for “file for divorce” could be looking to find information on filing for divorce or explore their options.

If you look at what types of results Google is already showing for that keyword, you can better understand what exactly searchers want and craft your content to address that.

In this case, a searcher is likely looking to hire a divorce attorney in Austin.

Before we move on, we have to dive into YMYL and E-E-A-T.

YMYL (Your Money Your Life) is a name given (by Google) to types of content that…

“could significantly impact the health, financial stability, or safety of people, or the welfare or well-being of society.”

Legal topics fall under this category. Someone searching for an attorney — or just looking for answers to common legal questions — could be in dire need. The answers they land on could significantly impact their welfare.

Google goes the extra mile to ensure YMYL content is accurate and delivered in the best possible way.

To do that, Google puts a greater emphasis on E-E-A-T for all YMYL topics.

Google evaluates a website’s E-E-A-T when deciding where to rank its content — that is, Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness.

To sum it up, you can address YMYL and E-E-A-T by creating exceptional content answers and anticipates audience queries, builds valuable insights recognized by others, minimizes negative feedback, and draws on past experiences.

A backlink is formed when other websites link to your website. The more (and higher quality) backlinks you have to point to your website, the more trustworthy and authoritative Google will view your website.

What does this mean for you? Think about all of the content that’s out there. Now consider how Google determines which of the thousands of blog posts covering the same topic should be on the first page.

While the impact of backlinks and how their value is calculated has evolved since Google’s introduction, links continue to play a leading role in determining a website’s position in Google’s search results.

Today, quality, relevance, and quantity matter. But what do each of these areas mean?

Every authoritative link that points to your website is seen as a digital vote of confidence, but where do you get links?

Some other ways to evaluate link quality include:

We’ll touch on this in a bit more detail later on.

We could get really into the weeds when discussing technical SEO, but it wouldn’t do you any good.

Instead, we’ll simply give you some easy-to-implement pointers.

Page experience involves evaluating factors like:

Google announced previously that as of May 2021, certain factors related to page experience would be used in Google Search rankings.

This is what Google had to say:

“At Google Search, our mission is to help users find the most relevant and quality sites on the web. The goal with these updates is to highlight the best experiences and ensure that users can find the information they’re looking for.”

While content is king, page experience comes into play when evaluating multiple pages with similar content.

And Core Web Vitals is one important piece of the puzzle.

Here are the three main Core Web Vital factors to know about, plus a few extras.

It can get a bit technical, but the main takeaway is this: if you prioritize user experience (UX), you’ll score well on Core Web Vitals.

User experience is the way people engage with your website and its content.

A well-designed UX guides visitors effortlessly through the process of finding what they need. When they arrive at your site, they can quickly locate the information they seek.

By directly tackling any concerns or problems, you prevent users from becoming frustrated and leaving your site too soon.

The better your UX is, the longer visitors stay on your website and the more likely they’ll contact you. It naturally improves your dwell time and reduces your bounce rate, two easy-to-track parts of Page Experience.