Local SEO Services: Why It’s So Important for Lawyers

If you’ve noticed a steady decline in the number of clients walking through the doors of your law firm over the last couple of years, there’s an important piece of the puzzle you might be missing.

The reality of the world we live in today is that prospective clients begin their search for products and services online. This means that they research lawyers in their local area and look for online reviews to learn about what past clients had to say about them.

Once they’ve effectively narrowed down their list, they get in touch with the firms to consult on the legal issues they’re grappling with. Local SEO services work to help law firms connect with prospective clients in their locale.

This article explores the top reasons why local SEO for lawyers is important.

Local searches make it easier for people within a certain area to find the businesses providing the products they’re looking for. Search engines like Google and Bing link citation information like the NAP (name, address, and phone number) of a business, alongside a map with a location pin, opening hours, and customer reviews.

The whole idea behind local SEO is to help businesses become more visible within search engines. If your law firm appears among the top ranking sites displayed search engine results pages (SERPs) for local search terms, it inevitably drives more traffic to your website.

This, in turn, increases the number of phone call inquiries your firm gets during opening hours, and you know what that means… Phone call inquiries equal lead conversion opportunities!

Law firm SEO enables prospective clients to get important information about your firm right-off-the-bat without having to physically visit the premises.

For instance, if you’re a personal injury lawyer and a prospective client is looking for a divorce attorney, they can easily look up this information in their local search and tell right away if you’re the type of attorney they seek.

It also allows you to provide the information you want your prospective clients to know about you. This increases the conversion rate potential once they visit your website.

Some of the information that they might find useful include your educational background, any accolades you’ve been awarded, high profile clients you’ve represented in the past, the number of years of experience you have under your belt, etc.

Mention anything that you think a prospective local client would want to know about the nature of the legal services you offer and what makes you stand out from the other law firms in the area.

Local searches work a little differently from traditional organic SEO. One of the notable differences between the two is that having a website isn’t a requirement to benefit from local SEO services for lawyers.

Your firm can still stand out in local searches since potential leads can get in touch with you through the citation information available on the SERPs.

This is precisely why you have to make sure that all the contact information in local and regional directory websites, data aggregators, and even unstructured sites that may have contact information about your law firm are all accurate, consistent, and up-to-date.

This avoids sending confusing signals to search engines looking to verify your information. This could end up affecting your firm’s position on SERPs.

According to research by Forbes, 95% of smartphone users have done a local search for a business using their mobile device. Of these, 61% followed up the search with an inquiry phone call. Why is this important?

Well, if your legal business is optimized for local searches, and prospective clients take this action six out of 10 times on average, it essentially means that you’ll have a steady stream of qualified leads that you can convert.

The days when word-of-mouth referrals were enough to attract new clients are long gone. Lawyer SEO marketing represents a new dawn in lawyer advertising. You need to leverage the online space and optimize your legal practice and make it rank higher in local SERPs.

This may involve working with an SEO consultant who can help you:

• Optimize your website, citations, social media, and Google My Business profiles using the relevant high CPC keywords
• Ensure that your prospective clients get excellent mobile experiences when accessing your site via their smartphone
• Understand how to manage your online reputation as this could make or break your practice
• Build local backlinks from high domain authority websites
• Use tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to learn how much of your website traffic is local
• Learn which pages and keywords give your website the most impressions on SERPs

Local SEO influences people’s decisions in favor of your law firm. The more information they have about your legal practice, the more trustworthy they’ll perceive you to be. This, in itself, lays a solid foundation on which you can develop a strong mutually beneficial client-attorney relationship.

Here are a few ways to enhance your website to build trust among your target audiences:

• If you’ve featured in any media publications, the About Us page is a great place to highlight this fact
• Have a separate webpage that lists positive client reviews and testimonials
• Ensure that you embed Google Maps on your Contact Us page
• Publish a legal blog on your site discussing legal topics related to issues that may be of interest to your target audience

Law firm SEO is a continuous process. You need to frequently claim new listings and carry out regular audits of your citations to make sure they are all accurate. If you want to connect with new clients, you have to do whatever it takes to claim prime search-engine real-estate.

This means optimizing your legal practice for local SEO. The difference it’ll make to your bottom line makes the effort well worth it in the end.

Get in touch with an SEO consultant to see how they can help you dominate your local market.