Website Optimization For Law Firms
Creating an exciting law firm marketing strategy can be a lot of fun, especially when you get to plan creative video content and explore new social media trends. These forms of visual content are great for attracting people to your firm from social media platforms. However, a strong marketing plan requires a lot more depth. You also need to optimize your website so visitors get what they need from you and decide to become a client. Here are some tips to help you out.
Creating Content That Ranks on SERPs
The first step in getting people to your website is to get Google to notice it first. You want your website and its relevant services pages to rank highly in organic results. The further up the first page you are, the more likely it is that someone will click on you. They aren’t going to the second page unless they’re searching for something specific and can’t find it. The best way to make it to the front page is to create pages and blog posts with high-quality text and all the right keywords. The best keywords relate to common search terms, so research what prospective clients are asking about and write with that in mind. You can also take advantage of local SEO keywords to target people in your local area.
From there, you can also hire an expert SEO team to help you further optimize posts with meta tags, titles, and descriptions. These small pieces of text can make a big difference by showing Google exactly what the page is all about. A well-written description can also end up as a Google Snippet, propelling your site to the top of the search engine results page. These features are more complex and part of a broader plan.
Building Engaging Websites
It isn’t just Google and other search engines that need to be impressed with the content on your website. Your clients need to like it, too. They also need to be engaged enough with your website to follow through and become clients. It all starts with the quality of the landing page. Less is more, although too many law firms fail to realize this. The knee-jerk reaction here is to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. They’ll put lots of pictures of the team, a full list of services, all their accreditations, video content, and anything else they have. Once you include the pop-ups for email subscriptions and virtual assistants, it all gets too overwhelming. You can create a clean and professional introduction to your company with an idea of what you do. A couple of images and some strong branding will help. Then, you can direct them to the pages of interest.
This is where strong navigational tools are also essential. Visitors need to be able to find what they need as quickly as possible. Ideally, they will come to your site’s service pages directly from a well-crafted social media post or ad. If not, they need a user-friendly drop-down menu to find what they need. You can also include links on the homepage, as long as they aren’t overused. Also, don’t forget to make it easy to find all the contact information and forms for inquiries. There should be calls to action on your service pages to make it easier to convert visitors into clients.
Improving Website Performance
Finally, you can’t improve your website SEO without looking at its performance. This and other factors mentioned here are made easier when you follow this law firm marketing guide. Websites that don’t perform to the high standards set by users won’t achieve the same results. The problem is that standards are incredibly high. You’ll know yourself from any time spent online shopping or researching companies that you don’t want to wait around. If the site doesn’t load within seconds, you’ll click the X and get out of there. In fact, Google estimates that as much as 53% of website visitors will leave a site and not show any patience. This behavior contributes to a negative bounce rate. So, you need a landing page that is fast, smooth, and looks professional. This is when they’ll take advantage of all those great navigation tools and extra pages of content.
From there, you can think about your mobile optimization. This is something many companies will include automatically these days, especially those in the retail sector with a strong social media presence. Online browsing on mobile devices is more common than ever. If we want to look something up at work, on a break, or on a commute, we get out our phones and ask Google. This means that all websites need to look their best when they load on a vertical mobile screen. Anything that fails to align or has text that’s cut off is too much of a pain to try and read.
Optimize, Review, And Repeat
The final step in improving performance is to conduct regular audits. The work you put in here to improve your website will go a long way. You’ll notice the difference as more clients find your firm and see you as a professional and reputable option. However, you can’t rely on one massive overhaul of the system. Nor can you assume that every change will pay off. It would be best if you took the time to go over the analytics for your website and track its performance, traffic, and conversions. This is much easier if you hire an SEO team to handle this work rather than doing it in-house. They can make recommendations on how to improve your SEO further and help you compete with your rivals in the years ahead.
So, whatever you need to do to improve your website, take the time to hire a skilled team to do it right. This overhaul of your website might seem harsh at first, but it can make you more visible and appealing in the long run. This will help you make those valuable connections and compete with rival firms.