A Step-By-Step Guide to DIY Local SEO for Lawyers

As a lawyer, if you are thinking of kickstarting your business you might have considered local SEO for lawyers already. If you have not, we want to tell you that you are missing 97% of the audience. Recent research by safari digital claims that 97% of the users intentionally look for local businesses only.

If you put yourself in the shoes of a customer, you will also notice that you would prefer a local business to any other option. The idea of finding a business in your vicinity highlights that as a customer you want something local and reliable. This offers you an opportunity to visit the place or ensure that the business is genuine.

Now, if you step into the shoes of a business owner, you will establish your presence based on your audience i.e. in the area of your customer. According to Google research, local SEO is one of the most qualified ways of growing your business. It becomes even more crucial for service-based businesses because you can move product around, and dispatch it but service has some limitations.  

To help you understand what you will be missing if you neglect local SEO for lawyers’ practice, here is a quick rundown of the situation for you:

• More than 46% of the customers’ online searches with local intent.
• More than 1.5 billion customers visit the business site after their initial Google search.
• Out of all the searches that happen, almost 78% of the local searches done via phone end with offline purchase
• In the year 2022, the searches for services and products with the suffix “near me” rose by 136%.
• 86% of the customers looking for business or products search the outlet on the map before they make a purchase.

All the above-mentioned statistics highlight that a successful business is a perfect mix of a strong online presence, a local search base, and a physical outlet. Since most people have a good online presence, thanks to social media, they miss building a strong local presence. Local presence will offer a sense of reliability, helping the users to make a deliberate purchase.

Now that you know why local SEO is important, let us get down to the basics of your law practice. Although, it is better to hire a good digital marketing firm that can assist you in local SEO for lawyers you also need to have a basic understanding.

Here is a step-by-step guide that can help take control of your local SEO for lawyers’ business:

1- Target the Location

Location targeting sits at the core of local SEO for lawyers. While choosing your location do not get on the broader scale, rather keep it more area centered. Look for keywords that will help you appear in searches but they add your location at the end.

For instance, if you want to work on local SEO for lawyers in the USA, you need the state-wise keywords and then get to the city and finally to the area within the city. This will help you appear in more searches and eventually, you will have a much stronger online presence.

2- Work On the Reviews

A business review will work as the backbone of your business. We have discussed the importance of reviews and testimonials for the business; you can check them out in detail.

As a business, reviews from your customers will help you appear as an authentic business. This will further help you build credibility. Businesses with five-star reviews end up getting more sales and better click-through rates. Better reviews mean that customers are satisfied so more potential clients will reach you.

3- Get On the Google Business Listing

Good business listing is very important if you are working on local SEO for lawyers. For getting your business listed, make sure everything is accurate and optimized based on the service you offer. As a criminal lawyer, business lawyer, corporate lawyer or family lawyer get into details without exceeding the word limit.

When writing a business description, stick to the 750-character limit and optimize everything you write. Once you open up the Google business listing you will be asked to update business details like business name, head attorney, experience, area of specialization, and location along with awards and rewards.

4- Work On the Visual Aid

Yes, the text is important, and getting a review will help but imagine not having any pictures. According to a recent Google report, more than 42% of customers look for photos so they can confirm the location. These numbers also highlight that pictures and visual aid bring more requests that are direct for location visits.

Moreover, businesses with good visual aid, pictures, videos, and posts have a 35% better click-through rate, helping the business with overall SEO and enhancing its presence. To boost the local SEO for lawyers posting regular pictures of your practice, office and any video will help.

5- Focus On a Local Schema

We have seen businesses focus on schemas to boost their ranking but for the local ranking, your focus should be on building local schema. For the local schemas, use Google structured data markup helper. This will help you tag your website and structure your data.

To use this, get on the structured data markup page, select local business, and get to the tagging. By the end of the tagging, you will get a small code that needs to be embedded in the website.

For legal work like local SEO for lawyers, you can look for third-party all-in-one schemas that are designed for the legal work specifically. No matter what process you choose, make sure you complete it, and ensure the data consistency and tag location.

FAQ’s

1-   Why Local SEO Is Important For Lawyers?

Local SEO is important to enhance the visibility of your business on Google Maps. Eventually, it helps you reach your target audience via Google Maps.

2-   Is Local SEO Actually Effective?

Yes, local SEO is much more effective and brings better and quicker results for your business compared to other SEO methods.

3-   What Are The Ranking Factors Of Local SEO?

There are multiple ranking factors including, NAP citation, location of the business, reviews, organic CTR, etc. 

Bottom Line

The above-mentioned SEO tips are perfect for the beginner who is struggling with local SEO for lawyers. However, for better results seek professional help. Experts at SEO WebMakers are perfect for this as they offer the best SEO services for lawyers regardless of the location and specialty.