Optimizing your local SEO means more website traffic, leads, and conversions since the strategy is more relevant to your base of local customers. Think of this focused strategy as a way to help you compete more effectively against larger national law firms that have unlimited resources to spend. By focusing on specific local-SEO to-dos, you can neutralize the advantage of bigger brands that routinely optimize for broader keywords and rely on brand recognition, instead of value propositions, to bring in traffic.
Further, 43% of all search traffic is local according to an estimate in a 2019 ReviewTrackers’ study. Without local SEO, your business could be losing out on a significant amount of traffic.
People are increasingly searching online for businesses that are relatively near or ‘local’ to them. It is for this exact reason that the term “local SEO” came into being.
Local SEO can be considered a sub-set of SEO which focuses on optimizing your website to appear in the search engine results page for a search term that has a local intent or audience, such as “Atlanta lawyer SEO.”
Whenever a potentional client performs a search that has a local intent, in addition to the regular organic results, the search engine will usually display a map listing that consists of three or four businesses that are in relatively close proximity to the user’s location.
It is for this exact reason that our company, DIGIMEA, has created a service offering that is dedicated specifically to helping your law firm get the great benefits of local SEO.
7 Tactics for your local seo law firm:
Optimizing your Google listing (aka your Business Profile) is perhaps the most effective way to rank higher on Google Maps as well as gain visibility in Google Search local results. In order to get access to your Business Profile to make these optimizations, however, you need a Google My Business account associated with that profile. Once you provide all of the requested information in your Google My Business account dashboard, all of that information will be added to your Business Profile, which appears in Google Search local results, the Google Search Knowledge Panel, and Google Maps.
To optimize your law firm Business Profile on Google, ensure that you:
- Create a Google My Business account and verify ownership of the business
- Provide accurate and up-to-date information
- Include your logo, hours of operation, acceptable payment methods, the product or service you sell, and plenty of images
- Encourage your customers to review your business online
- Respond sincerely to customer reviews
- Publish posts (announcing products, events, and special offers) to your Business Profile using the Google My Business dashboard.
Getting your customers to write glowing reviews for your business doesn’t just optimize your localpresence; it also encourages more local customers to buy from you.
BrightLocal’s 2019 Local Consumer Review Survey reveals that 83% of customers believe online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
Voice search will grow rapidly in the coming years. Therefore, in local SEO, it’s vital to optimize for how people ask questions when they speak into devices, as opposed to how they type out their searches. The searches may be: “attorney near me”, “car accident law firm NY” etc…
Essentially, your customers use more long-tail keywords when doing voice searches compared with regular search. Because of this, you’ll also have to adjust the SEO of your content to fit the more conversational tone of someone speaking. For example, you’ll want to account for the traditional question starters (who, what, when, where, why and how).
There’s nothing quite like authoring content that speaks or relates directly to a local law issues to grab your local customers’ attention.
Some strategies include:
- Writing blog posts around local news stories, activities, or events
- Creating videos about local charities or causes that your business supports
- Setting up location-specific webpages on your website with high-quality local content if you serve different parts of a region
Your keywords should be relevant to local customers. It only makes sense, doesn’t it?
Google’s own Keyword Planner lets you filter keyword searches based on location so you get an idea of the popular search terms for a given region or city. This lets you create a list of locally relevant keywords to target. Once you have them, they should make appearances in your site’s meta content, copy, and URLs.
Location pages are a must if your business has more than one location in an area. These pages need to provide the following, at a minimum:
- Store hours
- Name, address, and phone number
- Individualized descriptions
- Testimonials
- Promotions
- Parking availability
- Google Maps attached to each location page
Take care when you have multiple locations, because you need to create unique content for each page.
According to Moz’s 2017 Local Search Ranking Factors study, link signals are the first- and second-most important factors for local pack (or snack pack) results and for localized organic results, respectively. Link signals are backlinks pointing to your site.
It’s vital to get links to boost your local SEO, but their quality is important.
SEO changes quite rapidly. You never know when Google will introduce new features on its SERPs for local searches, but you can count on these changes are coming. That’s why it’s essential to always stay on top of attorney local SEO. By implementing these 7 actionable items, you will ensure that your local law firm doesn’t just take advantage of lucrative local searches but also has a solid foundation when new SEO features are introduced.
Why Should you Pay Attention to Your Law Practice’s Local SEO?
- Relevance: Google is looking to see how closely a local listing matches what a particular searcher is seeking. For example, if someone is looking for a Jacksonville automobile accident attorney, and that’s a service you provide, there is relevancy.
- Distance: Google checks to see how geographically close a business is to the searcher.
- Prominence: This can mean online visibility or how well a brand is established.
As noted in Google’s explanation, their algorithm uses a blend of these three factors to make ranking decisions.
So, what does that mean for the local search campaign for your law firm?
You’lll need to determine your overall strategy, one that dovetails with Google’s algorithm, as well as deciding upon more granular tactics. After you implement your strategy and employ your tactics, monitor results and adjust as needed.
What Does Our Local SEO for Attorneys involve?
A quality local SEO campaign should contain the following components:
- Google My Business (GMB) optimization
- on-site optimization, especially in connection with NAP consistency (name, address and phone number)
- inbound link and citation strategies and cleanup
- generating Google reviews
- location pages creation
- keyword research for your targeted area
- strategies that will help your local SEO campaign dovetail with your other online marketing efforts
If you’re busy helping clients and are looking for a partner to assist with your digital marketing, DIGIMEA is your partner.
Local SEO tactics can be a mystery, but we believe in transparency, showing you what we do and how well we’re doing it for you. As you can see in this case study, our customized SEO strategy for the featured company resulted in a 103% increase in the local traffic, along with a 123% boost in their conversion rate.
If you’re ready to talk about how we can help your law firm achieve its local search goals contact us at digimea@digimea.com