SEO is important for every business hoping to succeed online, and things are no different for law firms. After all, you're trying to sell your services to as many people as you possibly can. However, not paying attention to lawyer SEO is likely to keep you from occupying a place on the first page of any search results. That could hurt you more than you might think. It means you are losing potential clients because to them, you don’t exist.

By spending time tweaking your website and finding a way to get it listed on search engines using your targeted keywords, you can enjoy a wide range of benefits. Let's find out what SEO can help law firms achieve.

You will be matching your competition

When your competition is optimizing their sites for specific keywords and you aren't, you're losing out on clients. If you've just joined the internet to find new cases you face massive competition. There are more than 179000 lawyers in the state of New York alone. To beat them you have to become more visible and the most efficient and cost-effective way is by making sure your website is search engine optimized. This gives you an edge over your competition and makes it possible for more clients to find you and your business fast.

You get in front of your potential clients

Using SEO can help your business move up the search engine results pages. This is of great importance considering almost all of your potential clients will be searching online for attorneys through search engines. Some law firms think they can survive on referrals from their previous clients. It certainly helps. But, relying on word-of-mouth is no longer the most productive way to establish a high-growth law firm. These days, it would be foolish to not take advantage of the most efficient way to attract new clients.

You can share quality legal content

One way to let your clients know that they have found an experienced firm is to share quality content with them. Many SEO companies can do this on your behalf. They develop and publish high-quality content for your website embedding the most relevant keywords into the content to make your site easily discoverable.

The quality of the content you share sends signals to the search engines that you are an authority site. You may even consider publishing case studies to inform your potential clients of the types of cases you deal in. This increases your credibility further and helps you win new clients in a cost-effective way.

Of course, you can try other options to promote your law firm, but they have been proven to be not as effective as SEO and not nearly as cost-effective as a properly conducted SEO campaign. You can try online marketing options, for instance, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) but they can work out expensive. Similarly, you will be spending a lot if you go for social media selling, email selling and or blogging all of which are time-consuming and labor-intensive.

SEO, on the other hand, even with a professional company will show a faster and more prolonged return on your investment. Even a do it yourself attempt at optimizing your site could gain results for greater exposure free of costs.

You end up improving your firm's credibility

Another benefit of using SEO for lawyers and law firms is that you will be able to raise the overall credibility of your firm in the public consciousness. One of many ways to gain higher visibility and increase your online presence is to gather reviews for your business. Reviews really help because they tell other potential clients that they are going to receive quality services when opting for your law firm.

It is also worth mentioning that asking previous clients to leave reviews in pretty standard for any company online. Google has built-in review systems and clients posting reviews adds to your rankings and online credibility. Even if you receive a negative review a quick response to resolve the issue becomes positive for you. You can try many tactics for acquiring good feedback and testimonies from your previous clients, but the good thing is that professional SEO firms can set this up for you so that clients feel encouraged to leave reviews.

You notice an increase in relevant traffic

For online businesses, it all comes down to the quality of traffic they witness on their websites. Steering more traffic to your legal website can help you immensely and can happen over a relatively short period of time if you know the right way to proceed. More people visiting your site means an increased chance of turning at least a few of them into clients.

You can try ways to boost your ranking organically because any increase in rankings will correlate directly with an increase in traffic to your website. However, you see the best results working with a professional SEO company because their focus will be on directing ‘relevant traffic’ – and they will be the people already looking for the services you’re offering.

You can get local business

It is always a good idea to focus more on attracting business from your local area, and that is exactly where local SEO will help you achieve. Your rankings in a local search can be a huge factor affecting your overall business and it depends heavily on phone number listings, reviews from local customers and your Google business page. You need to pay attention to these factors or let a professional SEO company do it for you to get the best possible results.

It all boils down to the fact that SEO for lawyers can go a long way towards improving your business and finding you more potential clients. You can certainly save money by optimizing your website yourself, but, letting experts do it for you will help you realize a better return on your investment. So, be sure to use your time wisely and know how to make SEO work for your law firm!