Have you been trying to rank your law firm higher in your area but it just doesn’t seem to be working? Does it feel like you’re doing so much, in terms of creating content, updating your site, and so much more, yet the ROI just isn’t there? This, as much as anything else, is what lawyer clients complain about during our free initial consultation with them. There are some pointers that Danny Star, our CEO and Founder, always emphasizes when it comes to local SEO for lawyers.
What follows below aren’t all that you’ll need for your law to succeed with local SEO. But, these are very useful advice when it comes to content creation to grow your firm’s online reach.
Target the Right City
This may sound like too-obvious advice, but it’s not. As a law firm, a majority of your clients (if not all of your clients) are going to come from your geographic area. They’ll be local to you. Indeed, many larger law firms have clients across an entire state or an even larger area (such as our client Belal Hamideh Law) but just about all law firms can benefit from ranking higher for the keywords in their area.
As such, it’s important to focus on the keywords for your area, for your city. But, you want to be smart about this. The size of your law firm, at the time you’re creating this content, is important.
For example, if you’re in Los Angeles, then you only want to go for keywords such as “personal injury attorney in Los Angeles” if your firm is very large, very successful, and a has a lot of money to spend.
Why? Because that keyword and similar ones are incredibly competitive. The biggest, most established law firms are ranking for those. You essentially have to “beat them out,” so to speak, to be able to rank for those.
Can it be done? Sure. Can it be done without spending a lot of money and time? Absolutely not.
Does that mean you’re out of luck? Hardly.
Target Your Neighborhood
Maybe “personal injury attorney in Los Angeles” is a bit beyond your grasp right now. That’s fine. You can still be very successful, growing bigger than ever before. How? By targeting a smaller, more specific area.
For example, instead of going after “personal injury attorney in Los Angeles,” you could go after “personal injury attorney in Silver Lake,” “personal injury attorney in Glassell Park,” “personal injury attorney in Atwater Village,” or wherever your office happens to be.
Are those keywords competitive? Yes. But, they aren’t nearly as competitive as anything ending “in Los Angeles.”
Are those keywords lucrative? Yes! A thousand times yes! There are people looking for attorneys using those keywords right now.
Even if your ultimate goal is to, in time, rank for something comparable to “in Los Angeles,” you can build up your law firm by dominating the smaller keywords along the way.
Bottom line: if you just go after the biggest keywords, then you’re unlikely to get much of anywhere. But, if you go for the more attainable ones and grow, continuing to work hard, then you have all the chances in the world of getting to where you want to go.
Rule No. 1: Don’t Sound Weird
You may have read the above part and thought: “Great!” Then, you got right to work on plenty of blogs with titles like “What to Look for From a Personal Injury Attorney in Silver Lake,” or “Finding the Right Personal Injury Lawyer in Atwater Village,” and possibly something like “Lawyer in Glassell Park for You.”
Those are perhaps a bit better worded than I meant for this example, but, you’re going to want to amend those titles, too. See, you create enough blogs that have city titles in them, eventually, they’re going to sound inhuman. Specifically, they may sound inhuman in that way that too many AI-laden blogs do.
There’s a good reason for that: they aren’t written for a human being. No one writes a blog with a title like “Attorney Near Me: Reasons Why” for a person to read it. That’s solely, obviously, nakedly written for SEO. Here’s the thing: it doesn’t help.
Your Audience: People and Web Crawlers
Google knows that’s written for SEO and not to actually inform someone, to provide them with solutions. So, Google will view it accordingly. Google, rightly, only wants attorneys to rank for keywords that are able to help someone, that have demonstrated their authority, their expertise, that they can be trusted
How are you going to be able to demonstrate all of that if you haven’t demonstrated that you can write for a human being?
Now, that said, it doesn’t mean that you should never mention city names in your content. Far from it. Indeed, you do want to mention them – just not in the title. Mention them in the first paragraph. Then, link appropriately. You give yourself the best chance of success by doing so.
How can you test this? Simple: just read it out loud. Even better: read it out loud to a colleague, a family member, even a pet – whoever’s around. You’ll know then.
Better Local SEO for Lawyers and Non-Lawyers
As you may have realized throughout the course of reading this blog, everything I wrote above isn’t just for lawyers. Sure, they were my main example, but all of the above is true for so many local businesses. Rehab and treatment centers. HVAC companies. Roofers. Tree trimming companies. If you’re a local business, you want to dominate your local SEO.
That’s where we come in. I and the rest of my team can create this content for you, sure. On top of that, I’m a member of an incredible team of web designers, SEO strategists, videographers, editors, social media experts, and so many others. Together, we can take your law firm (or whatever your business may happen to be) to new heights.
To see how we can help, schedule a free consultation with us through our site here or call.