If you’ve started to explore content marketing for your law firm websites to grow your prospective client base, then chances are that you’ve come across law firm SEO advice that seems foreign and obtuse. A well-optimized law firm website is, however, a critical part of any marketing strategy intended to increase your organic digital footprint.

To learn more about how you can expand your law firm business and gain access to prequalified leads through digital marketing, we encourage you to contact Walker Advertising to speak to a member of our team. One of our experts will help explain what the online marketing landscape looks like for law firms, and how you can maximize your resources to get better clients and cases.

Of course, if you’d like to learn more about law firm SEO first, then keep reading! We’ll cover some of the basics.

What is SEO?

SEO means Search Engine Optimization. It’s a means through which content creators (i.e., website owners) implement a variety of processes and tools — such as targeted, relevant keywords, descriptive URLs, updating old content, and supplementary visuals — to help search engines understand the category and purpose of a piece of content, and thereby make it easier for users to find through specialized SEO services. Ultimately, the SEO optimization of web content is meant to ensure that search engines will rank a given page higher in search engine rankings. This leads to more impressions and more conversions (i.e., inbound calls) for a law firm.

How does SEO Optimization affect the visibility of my law firm’s legal content online?

SEO optimization is fundamental to the visibility of your law firm’s web content. Without the proper implementation of SEO optimization practices, your legal content will flounder — and will not reach its intended audience — no matter how well-written, concise, and insightful it really is.

In essence, SEO-optimized content is that which fits within a discernable category (and various subcategories and sub-subcategories) when it comes to user search queries. It is then compared to various other pieces of content in its identifiable niche, and if the metrics are favorable as compared to the competition, the search engine will rank it high so that more impressions are fed to it. This leads to more daily page views, which can lead to more conversions — in the law firm context, your legal content pages ranking higher on search engine results pages can lead to more inbound calls (consultations) and prospective clients.

Worth noting: search engine results have advanced a great deal since the early days of the internet. Now, special SERP features (such as “People Also Ask”) allow users to access and preview content in unique ways, beyond just clicking through to a website immediately. Thus, targeting SERP features through SEO optimization is a key aspect of increasing the visibility of your legal content online.

Is SEO necessary for my social media posts to perform well?

Social media platforms identify and promote content to audiences quite differently than search engines.  As such, SEO optimization is not necessary for your social media posts to perform well.  That being said, some basic SEO optimization practices can — and will — help to boost your social media posts, so long as it does not interfere with the inherent clickability, readability, or watchability of the content.  SEO optimization for social media posts might involve the inclusion of trending keywords in your titles or the use of high-search-volume hashtags.

Again, to reiterate — don’t undermine your social media content’s inherent virality by focusing too much on SEO optimization.  For example, if a mysterious, short, and vague title (with no keywords) is likely to perform better with general audiences for a short video post that you’ve created, then do that.  Don’t extend the title with “optimized keywords” just because that would be beneficial for the post’s SEO.  In reality, you’d be putting the clamps on a significant view funnel (e.g. the platform’s recommendation algorithm) in order to maximize the SEO aspects.

What can I do to better optimize my online legal content?

SEO optimization practices include, but are not limited to:

• Conduct proper keyword research.  Identify which relevant keywords (including longtail keywords) have adequate search volume, while also being noncompetitive enough that there is an opportunity for you to rank high with your content.
• Analyze a law firm site for technical SEO improvements. This can lead to better site performance, user experience, and ranking potential. Conduct local keyword research tailored to the law firm site to attract relevant leads and improve visibility in search engine results.
• Optimize your titles and meta descriptions.  Clickthrough rate is a key factor for ranking high in various search results.  Whether your content is clickable depends on how clear the meta description is (regarding what content will be on the page when the user clicks), and how compelling and informative the title is.  Without a compelling title, for example, all your hard work creating good content could be wasted!
• Emphasize link building for improving local SEO and overall website rankings. Acquiring backlinks from reputable sites can enhance visibility and authority in search results, signaling to search engines the value and trustworthiness of your content.
• Include embedded visuals.  Photos and videos are important on-page supplementations that can improve user retention and therefore boost your search rankings.  That being said, there’s no need to go overboard — creating a video specifically for a content page is likely wasted resources.  If you already have video content you’re creating for social media, however, then consider embedding a relevant video into a written content page on your website.
• Focus on local SEO to enhance online visibility in specific geographical areas. Optimize Google Business Profiles, obtain backlinks, and tailor SEO strategies to outperform local competitors, helping achieve higher rankings in local search results.
• Showcase your legal services through testimonials and case studies to attract potential clients and establish authority.

Are there any new SEO trends that I should be aware of?

SEO optimization strategies are constantly changing with the times, as search engine algorithms (and social media promotional algorithms) are updated to better reflect user consumption patterns on those platforms. As such, it’s important to stay apprised of general trends in SEO optimization on a year-to-year basis to implement an effective SEO strategy.

Here are some SEO trends that are worth keeping in mind as you move forward with your content marketing implementation:

• Artificial Intelligence (AI) summaries/overviews of search results are going to have an enormous impact on content consumption patterns when it comes to queries. AI overviews appear above the normal organic search rankings and essentially answer the initially inputted query using generative AI to scan high-ranking content and pull the necessary information for the answer.
  • Because AI overviews answer the initial search query immediately, there is often no need for the user to click through to your website pages. This may lead to a lot more “zero-click” searches. As such, you cannot necessarily count on the contextual advantage of having the user look through your entire piece of written content before getting their answer.
  • The solution to the “zero-click” issue is to focus on a) clearly answering the questions that users are likely to search; b) improving your website’s technicals so that it’s easier for the search engine to crawl your site for information to include in its AI overviews; and c) optimize for brand authority and expertise.
• Forum discussions are increasingly important for search visibility. In 2024, Google implemented increased visibility for posts on popular discussion forums (like Reddit, Quora, and other sites), dedicating an entire section for such posts in the SERP results at the top of the search rankings for relevant queries. This change has resulted in a significant shift in user consumption patterns for search, with double-digit percentage increases in organic traffic to listed forum sites. Industry observers fully expect these SERP results to further skew user search behaviors going forward into 2025, and in fact, to siphon traffic away from the standard clickthrough pattern (i.e., user finds a high-ranking website search result and clicks into the site to explore their query in detail).
  • This prioritization of forum posts (in SERP results) is going to make it increasingly more important to rank “high” in search rankings to secure the necessary web traffic — in other words, SEO is about to become more competitive than it already is. That being said, we encourage law firms to lean into the importance of discussion forums in this new attention economy. Make organic forum posts of your own on discussion forums like Reddit and Quora. This will help you build a social media presence of your own and could funnel users to your services through alternative means!
• On-page video and YouTube SEO are going to become increasingly important for securing clicks through search. Embedded, on-page video has been important for a number of years now, but — increasingly — Google is disproportionately weighting its value when it comes to search rankings. Further, industry observers have noticed that there has been a push in YouTube video visibility in SERPs.
  • YouTube SEO is not the most critical aspect of maximizing a video’s visibility on the platform — the YouTube algorithm takes into account a number of user-behavior factors in determining whether to promote a video more widely. That being said, YouTube SEO optimization is still worth doing, as it can have an impact (albeit moderate). For example, writing a video title that includes certain “trending keywords” can help to expose it to user searches on Google. This may not result in millions of views, but it can lead to a trickle of daily search views that add up over time!
• Achieving SEO success involves staying updated with the latest trends and continuously optimizing your content to meet search engine algorithms. Conducting regular SEO audits can identify missed opportunities and outline necessary changes to improve your site’s visibility and ranking factors.

What are the technical issues associated with technical SEO?

SEO optimization is not just about keywords, photo/video embeds, brand authority, and backlinks.  Optimizing your law firm website’s SEO also means handling a variety of technical coding/design/administrative issues that can have a suppressive effect on your page search rankings.  Some common technical SEO problems include, but are not limited to:

• Page speed is not fast enough.  Page speed (i.e., how fast a page loads for the end-user) is the most important technical SEO issue to be aware of as you optimize your law firm’s content.  Pages that load “too slow” cause users to click away (oftentimes before the page even fully loads) and reduce conversion rates.
  • The user bounce rate signals to search engines that the page should not be given a high search result ranking, and can suppress otherwise great, optimized content from reaching its intended audience.  Page speed isn’t something that can be fully corrected by your content writers or content strategists.  This technical issue can only be properly resolved on the backend, so have a conversation with your webdevs about what can be done to improve page speeds.
• Duplicate content issues.  Duplicate content doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve been desperately copy-pasting your content from page to page.  A lot of duplicate content is created through otherwise legitimate means.  For example, if your site is designed for multiple languages (i.e., you have built out your content for both English speakers and Spanish speakers), then you might find that you accidentally have an excess of duplicate content.  Correcting these issues through proper URL targeting and code fixes and help to resolve the issue for search engines.
• Inadequate mobile design.  Optimizing your content for mobile users is a key technical issue to resolve to ensure that your pages can rank high.  The majority of web page visitors are in fact mobile visitors — as such, if your pages aren’t optimized to present content (and to aid navigation) for mobile devices, then you will be faced with high bounce rates, which could suppress the visibility of otherwise excellent content.  We don’t necessarily recommend that you create two sites — one for desktop, and one for mobile.  Instead, make one unified site that is “responsive.”  See, search engines prefer content that is “responsive,” which means that it dynamically adapts to whatever device it’s being viewed on.

Contact Walker Advertising for Helping Growing Your Firm’s Client Base

Whether you’re a solo lawyer or are part of a larger firm with plans for expansion, it’s important to grow your client base in order to hit your revenue and client growth goals.  Here at Walker Advertising, we can help.  We operate a number of popular attorney networks — including our Los Defensores and 1-800-THE-LAW2 brands — through which firms are able to access leads for various legal claims.

The leads we acquire through our various online marketing efforts — from social media marketing to targeted web ads — have been pre-qualified by our team so that you aren’t hassled by a flood of leads that are simply not relevant or actionable for your purposes.  By accessing these quality leads, you’ll be well-equipped to select the best ones to grow your firm business.

Best of all, you won’t have to spend your valuable time and effort on building out your online marketing efforts.  Don’t worry about SEO optimization, trend analysis, or any other complex marketing issues.  Instead, use us to access pre-qualified inbound leads, and focus your limited internal resources on providing quality representation to your existing (and new) client base.

Contact Walker Advertising today to connect to a member of our team who can explain how our legal networks can help your firm business thrive in this ever-changing digital marketing landscape.

We look forward to assisting you.