When people need legal services, whether it's for family matters, real estate transactions, business disputes, estate planning, personal injury cases, criminal defense, or anything in between, their first move is often to search Google for a lawyer who can help them right away.
In an industry as competitive as the legal services sector, appearing at the top of local search results can make all the difference between securing new clients or losing them to a competitor.
For law firms, local SEO (search engine optimization) is crucial to standing out in these crowded search results, ultimately driving more business by attracting clients in your area who are ready to take action.
In this guide to local SEO for law firms, we'll share actionable tips to help your legal services business improve its local search performance and dominate the law firm local SEO rankings online.
How To Improve Local SEO for Law Firms
1. Set Up and Optimize Your Google Business Profile
One of the first steps towards improving a law firm's local SEO is setting up and optimizing Google Business Profile (GBP). A fully optimized GBP is essential because it helps your firm appear in Google's local pack, which showcases local businesses at the top of search results.
Make sure to complete every section of your profile, including your business name, address, phone number, and hours of operation. Additionally, choose the most relevant business categories and add high-quality images of your office, logo, and team.
If you're setting up Google Business Profile for a large law firm that has lots of separate departments and practice areas, you may want to consider creating separate GBPs for each one to optimize them as part of a campus.
2. Target In-Demand Legal Services in Your Area
To improve your rankings for the legal services people are actively searching for, you'll need to do some keyword research. Keyword research tools can help you identify high-traffic search terms in your area, such as "real estate lawyer in Boston" or "criminal defense attorney in Miami."
Focus on targeting keywords with strong local intent and higher search volume to ensure you're targeting the services people most need.
Competitor research is equally important for helping you decide what services to target for the best results. Check what services top-ranking law firms in your area are optimizing for, and assess how your firm can fill any gaps.
For example, if your competitors are dominating the local search rankings for personal injury law, consider how you can differentiate your firm by focusing on family law, estate planning, or other legal services you offer that have high local demand, but are perhaps less competitive.
3. Implement a Localized Content Marketing Strategy
Content marketing is a powerful tool for improving local SEO rankings for your law firm's website. By publishing localized blog posts, legal guides, or case studies, you can build authority in your practice areas while targeting local search terms.
For example, you could write about "What To Do After a Car Accident in [Your City]" or "How to Navigate Divorce Laws in [Your State]." This type of localized content not only helps your website rank for location-based keywords, but also positions your law firm as a trusted resource for legal information in your community.
Also, consider creating FAQ pages or resource hubs to answer common legal questions specific to your area. This can boost organic traffic further and keep potential clients on your website longer, which positively impacts your SEO.
4. Optimize Your Website for Local SEO
Speaking of content optimization, there are other elements of website SEO that play a critical role in improving a law firm's organic local search rankings.
For starters, you should create individual service pages for each legal area your firm specializes in, such as criminal defense, estate planning, and real estate law. Each page should focus on a specific service and include targeted local keywords to improve search visibility.
Additionally, use location-based keywords in title tags, meta descriptions, and headers. Adding structured data markup (schema) to your site will also help search engines better understand your business and boost your chances of appearing in local searches.
Mobile-friendliness is another essential aspect of doing local SEO for law firm websites. Many potential clients are going to be searching for legal services on their phones in a time of need, so having a mobile-optimized website with fast load times is crucial for both user experience and search rankings.
5. List Your Law Firm on Industry-Relevant Directories
Beyond Google Business Profile, listing your firm on other high-traffic and legal industry-specific business directories can help improve your visibility and local rankings.
Websites like Avvo, FindLaw, Justia, and Super Lawyers are a few examples of trusted legal directories that can help you build local citations (online mentions of your business info) and provide authoritative backlinks to your website, which are both important when it comes to improving local SEO for law firms.
Make sure that your name, address, phone number (NAP), hours, and other pieces of business information are consistent across all directories, updating them across listings whenever anything changes to maintain consistency. Inconsistent information can confuse search engines and negatively impact your rankings.
6. Get More Client Reviews
Positive client reviews are a key factor in local SEO rankings, and they also help build trust with potential clients. Encourage satisfied clients to leave reviews on your Google Business Profile and other platforms. The more positive reviews you have, the more likely your firm is to appear in the local pack and stand out to searchers on other legal industry business listing platforms.
Responding to reviews, both positive and negative, is also important. Engaging with reviewers shows that your firm values feedback and is committed to client satisfaction, which can further boost your online reputation.
Engaging professionally with any bad feedback to resolve the client's issues can even potentially turn a bad review into a good one, improving your rankings along with customer perceptions of your business!
7. Consider Google Local Services Ads
Google Local Services Ads (LSAs) are a pay-per-lead advertising option specifically designed for local businesses, including law firms. LSAs appear at the top of Google search results, above organic listings, and provide a way for potential clients to contact your firm directly through the ad.
What makes LSAs particularly appealing for professional service providers, including lawyers, is the "Google Screened" badge, which indicates that your law firm has undergone a background check and is verified by Google. This trust signal can increase the likelihood that searchers will choose your firm over competitors, giving you an edge in local search.
While LSAs don't directly impact local SEO for law firms (i.e., they aren't a ranking factor), they provide an additional way to gain more visibility in local search results and generate more leads by reaching people who are actively looking for a legal services provider. They can also increase branded searches for your law firm, indirectly impacting your local SEO.
8. Track Rankings and More with Local Falcon
Doing all of the above to improve local SEO for legal firms is great, but it doesn't really mean anything if you aren't tracking local search rankings and other performance metrics to help you implement ongoing optimizations.
Whether you're working in-house or providing local SEO services for law firms, tracking local search performance at a hyperlocal level is crucial to outpacing competitors and driving more business.
Local Falcon offers a geo-grid rank tracking system that visually shows your law firm's search rankings across multiple, precise locations in a target service area. This allows you to see exactly where you rank in the local search results in different neighborhoods or cities, giving you insights into how well you're performing in specific areas.
Using this data, you can identify weak spots in your strategy and make adjustments to improve visibility where you're underperforming compared to competitors.
Additionally, Local Falcon helps you monitor your competitors' rankings, making it easier to perform in-depth competitor analysis when doing local SEO for law firms. You can see how your competitors are performing in specific areas, which keywords they're ranking for, and even which strategies they might be using to outrank you.
This granular level of insight enables you to fine-tune your law firm's local SEO approach and target high-opportunity areas your competitors may have overlooked.
Beyond rank tracking, Local Falcon even offers actionable AI-powered optimization recommendations and review analysis to further improve your local SEO.
For example, AI-driven review insights help you uncover patterns in client reviews, both yours and your competitors', which provide a clearer picture of customer sentiment. This can guide you in crafting strategies to boost positive reviews or address recurring issues.
Sentiment analysis also gives you an edge by helping you understand what clients value most in legal services, allowing you to refine your services and messaging and optimize your Google Business Profile and website for better rankings and engagement.
The bottom line here is that Local Falcon's AI-integrated geo-grid rank tracking technology not only helps you stay ahead of the competition, but also equips you with the data needed to continually optimize your local SEO efforts based on performance, client feedback, and competitor strategies!
Conclusion
In the ultra-competitive legal industry, implementing a strong local SEO strategy is essential for law firms looking to attract nearby clients by standing out in local search results.
Success in local SEO, for law firms or any other business, requires a blend of strategic optimization, careful local listing management, thoughtful content creation, and data-driven decision-making. With the right approach, your law firm can build a lasting local search presence that keeps the phone ringing and your firm growing!
