How to stand out in the legal industry using SEO
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Are you a law firm that’s struggling to stand out in the legal industry? If so, investing in online marketing efforts can help you get ahead of the competition in a competitive market.
At Embryo, we understand the importance of being visible and easily accessible online, and through digital channels like SEO and PPC you can be confident that they’ll make a difference to your online presence.
If you want to be noticed in the legal industry and stand out from the competition, get in touch with the extremely talented team at Embryo to help support you on your journey.
Factors that make the law industry difficult to get noticed
Being noticed in the law industry is incredibly difficult; there are a range of factors that can impact how often you are seen, such as the level of competition, lack of marketing focus, complexity of legal work, and reputation.
Take a look at these factors in more detail below:
Intense competition
One of the first factors is the level of intense competition within the legal industry. There are many different types of law firms that operate locally, nationally, and internationally, and due to the nature of the work, the services on offer are all very similar and follow legal best practices, making it very difficult to differentiate yourself from the competition.
Lack of marketing focus
Similar to other industries, marketing efforts are likely to be seen as a secondary thought for many law firms. Whether that’s brand-building or investing in marketing channels, a lot of the time, business is made through networking and connections. Because of this, many law firms are likely ignoring a great opportunity to expand and reach an entirely new audience.
Complexity of legal work
As mentioned above, due to the complexity of legal work, it is very difficult for law firms to showcase their value to clients and customers, as there’s very little to differentiate themselves from the same services offered at other law firms, especially due to legal regulations and restrictions.
Reliance on reputation
Due to the nature of the legal industry, reputation plays a huge role in the amount of business and referrals your law firm receives. Unfortunately, this takes a very long time to earn and build, making it very difficult for new or smaller law firms to compete.
Traditional culture
A lot of law firms typically operate using an old-school approach and haven’t fully adopted new and innovative ways to stand out in the industry. This traditional culture makes it extremely difficult to set trends in the industry and embrace change.
How to use SEO in the legal industry
We can see that there are many factors that make it difficult for a law firm to stand out from competitors in the legal industry. However, with marketing and online advertising being a secondary thought for many law firms, this presents a great opportunity for those wanting to get ahead of their competition by investing in a range of digital channels, such as SEO.
Here are a few ways SEO can help your law firm stand out amongst others in the legal industry.
Legal jargon content
Our first recommendation on how to stand out in the legal industry using SEO is to know when’s the best time to use technical legal jargon. This will depend on the type of content you produce and your intended audience.
However, it’s important to understand that the vast majority of your audience is not likely to fully understand a lot of the legal jargon involved, so it’s important to simplify things in the content so it’s easier for them to understand, similar to how you would if you were speaking to a customer or client in person.
Not only will this make your content more digestible for your readers, but it could also increase the chances of gaining new leads if the reader is more engaged with the information.
Refresh outdated content
As domains in the legal industry are classed as a “Your Money or Your Life” site, Google will hold your domain to a higher standard than websites in other industries, essentially because the information you serve can significantly impact the life of the user reading your content.
Therefore, it’s very important to ensure that all the information you provide is fully up to date and follows any recent changes to various laws and regulations.
Not only will serving outdated content impact your Organic rankings & performance, but providing outdated information to users & clients can negatively impact the reputation of your law firm.
We’d recommend consistently running content audits to ensure all content stays fresh and never becomes outdated or irrelevant.
Build your trust signals
Image source: Irwin Mitchell Trustpilot reviews
Building trust and authority is key for any business looking to stand out from competitors, especially in the legal industry.
There are a range of ways to improve your trust signals & enhance E-E-A-T metrics on your website, such as reviews, client testimonials, employee profiles, industry awards, and case studies.
Building out your trust signals is a great way to win customers/clients and increase the number of leads through the site if you are seen as an authority in the industry.
Create a resource hub
Creating a resource hub will have many benefits to a law firm, from an SEO perspective you could create regular blog content & guides that rank for a range of keywords users are searching for to help drive more traffic to your site, this is a great way to gain more online visibility in the SERPs and attract potential clients and customers you weren’t originally being seen by.
As well as this, creating this type of informational content will position your law firm as a thought leader in the industry. This can help to educate potential clients, build credibility, showcase expertise, and naturally generate backlinks or unlinked mentions to your site.
Image source: Irwin Mitchell News & Insights page
Create industry tools
Having dedicated landing pages that house online tools can be a great way to provide extra value to users, improve website engagement, and potentially attract more backlinks.
Tools such as online calculators could encourage users to interact and then get in touch for more information.
Utilise local SEO
If you’re a small law firm, you might find it easier to compete and stand out by targeting location-specific keywords in your SEO efforts.
Ranking well locally will allow you to be visible in the areas that are most relevant to you and ultimately, drive more qualified traffic to the site that’s likely to convert.
There are many ways to utilise local SEO in the legal industry, such as optimising your Google Business Profile, targeting location-specific keywords, building local citations, and ensuring consistency of NAP (Name, Address & Phone Number) information across the web.
Image source: Poole Alcock Solicitors – Congleton
Visual content
Taking advantage of visual content could be a great way to stand out in the legal industry. Rather than uploading constant lines of text to your website, why not accompany that with an infographic to help visually display data and statistics, or simply include Instagram embeds throughout your text.
Adding visual content to your website can significantly improve your engagement metrics and user experience, contributing to a better Organic performance.
Websites in the legal industry tend to naturally have authoritative backlink profiles and high domain strength. However, don’t let that be the reason to abandon your off-page SEO efforts. Running industry events, sponsoring other companies, or simply sharing unique data/statistics can be a great way to passively build your backlink profile with new referring domains.
Not only will this help to increase your domain strength, it’ll allow you to target and rank for more competitive keyword terms that will further improve your online presence, allowing you to stand out from the competition.
Creating a logical navigation menu is a great way to create a seamless user experience for your customers and clients. Also, having a well-structured website navigation menu will support search engines in understanding your website’s hierarchical structure, further contributing to improved Organic performance.
As a law firm, it’s important to clearly communicate and showcase your service offering so customers can easily navigate the website and potentially get in touch with you. A top navigation menu for a law firm could include sections such as:
- Homepage
- About us
- Practice areas
- Location
- Sector
- Case studies
- Blog
- Contact us
Below is an example of a top navigation menu from the international law firm, Slaughter and May.
Image source: Slaughter and May navigation menu
Analyse data insights
Using third party tools such as Google Analytics 4 (GA4), Google Search Console (GSC) and a range of SEO tools can monitor the performance of your website from an Organic perspective.
GA4 will help you to understand how users are interacting with your website by providing data on areas such as engagement, retention, acquisition and much more. By analysing this data you will have a better insight on the behaviour of your customers.
GSC will allow you to gain insights into traffic & ranking data by analysing metrics such as clicks, impressions, CTR and average position. As well as this, you will be able to monitor the indexing of your website and identify any issues flagged in the tool that could be hindering your Organic performance.
Third party SEO tools, such as Ahrefs are great at providing top level performance metrics for your website to help you make informed decisions for your SEO strategy. Also, third party SEO tools allow you to monitor and review how your competition is performing, this is great for gaining a competitive advantage and staying ahead of the curve.
Add schema markup
Schema markup is a type of structured data that helps search engines to understand the content on your website. This will increase your website’s chances of appearing in rich snippets allowing you to cover more SERP real estate and potentially improve the CTR to your website from the Organic listings.
This will help your law firm to stand out from the competition, especially if they aren’t utilising schema markup on their websites.
Here are a few schema markup examples a law firm could use:
- LegalService Schema – Used to provide detailed information on the legal services offered by the law firm.
- Organisation Schema – Used to provide general information about the law firm (name, website, social profiles)
- LocalBusiness Schema – Used to provide information about a local law firm (name, phone number, opening hours)
- Review schema – Used to highlight the reviews and ratings for a law firm.
- FAQ schema – Used to highlight the information on a questions and answers webpage.
- Person schema – Used to describe specific information about an individual at the law firm (name, job title, contact information).
Utilise SEO at your law firm
Hopefully, after reading this article, you understand the difficulties of being noticed in the legal industry and how SEO is a great online marketing channel to build your visibility and attract new audiences.
Therefore, if you find our tips on how to utilise SEO in your law firm useful and want to dig deeper into this, then our expert Organic team will be happy to help you.
