These tips come from the office of fellow entrepreneur and busy Philadelphia bankruptcy lawyer David Offen.

SEO Tip #1: Optimize for Mobile

This is the first tip for a reason. You can perform all of the SEO possible on your site, rank well, and get clicks, but viewers will quickly click away and to your competitor’s site if your site does not load quickly and is not optimized for the device they are using.

Mobile devices are used for half of the web searches worldwide. If you do not optimize for mobile, you are losing half of your viewers and perhaps half of your business.

Besides the site’s structure and load time, the site should be easily navigable. Drop-down menus with short page titles of one or two words work best. Make your contact button or order now button prominent.

Be sure that the font size and type are easily readable on a mobile device. You’ve seen sites where the text is too small to read on your phone or tablet and know how annoying it is. Don’t annoy your potential customers.

SEO Tip #2: Create Location Pages

Google provides a map, locations, and a list of providers near you when you search. Go ahead and search for “[your product or service] near me.” Just below the paid ads and before the #1 ranked site there is a map and a list of local providers. You want your page to appear in that list for every location you serve.

Create a separate page for each town, county, or region you wish to target. Be sure to write unique content for each page and link internally to your service or product pages from those pages using the anchor text you want to rank for. 

Google will recognize that you serve the areas targeted by your location pages and will provide your company’s site as an option when people in that area search for your product or service.

SEO Tip #3: Use Your Blog to Help You Rank

You don’t have a blog? Create one on your company’s site. Blogging is the easiest way to get fresh content on your site, which Google likes, and to attract and convert viewers.

Don’t worry about having to figure out what to blog about – your potential customers are already telling you what they are interested in, and you can discover that using Google’s AutoSuggest and People Also Ask features.

AutoSuggest 

When you begin to type in the search field, you may notice Google trying to complete your query or offering several queries for you to choose from in a drop-down box. These queries are commonly searched-for, and you can base a blog post on a query related to your product or service. 

Include the exact language of the query, word-for-word, as the title or H2, so that Google identifies your post as answering that query.

People Also Ask

When you search for something, Google will offer you a “People also ask” field just below the #1 result. These are also commonly searched-for queries that can be used as a basis for a blog post. Be sure to include the query itself, preferably as an H1 or H2 tag.

Aim to write and publish a blog post that is relevant to your potential clients or customers once a week. Be sure to link to other blog posts and your product or service pages using the anchor text you want to rank for. Include a “call to action” at the beginning and the end of each post, directing the reader to contact you or purchase your product.

SEO Tip #4: Link Internally  

The pages on your company’s site should link to one another using the anchor text you want to rank for. This not only helps with rank, but the Google bot (and your viewers!) will navigate your site more easily. Your blog posts should link to one another and to one or more service or product pages. 

SEO Tip #5: Feature Reviews 

Solicit client or customer reviews using any one of the many inexpensive software programs that automate this process. Typically, your clients or customers will receive an email after the conclusion of their transaction, asking them if they were satisfied with your product or service. Those answering in the affirmative will be taken to a review-submission site where they can log their positive review. 

The software will then either post the review to Google or post it to your site. Be sure to feature a “Read What Our Satisfied Clients/Customers Have to Say” page on your site.

Implementing these five simple tips will increase rank, increase clicks, engage viewers, and help convert viewers to clients.

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What does your website look like? Does it create a strong incentive to contact you for help, or is it outdated, slow-loading, and difficult to navigate? Does the site’s content address common search terms related to your practice? Does it answer questions that your potential clients ask Google?

This article explains how you can supercharge your firm’s virtual presence to capture viewers’ attention, incentivize them to become your clients and improve your Google ranking. 

Now is the Time to Update Your Website

Open a new window in your browser, right now, and go to your firm’s website. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Does my firm’s website load quickly?
• Is there an obvious way for viewers to contact us?
• Are our practice areas apparent?
• Do we post our firm’s settlement and judgment results?
• Are our attorney and staff bios current?
• Are photographs of attorneys and staff recent?
• Do we have location pages for each of the geographical areas we serve?
• Do we have a blog? If so, do we post to it?
• Have we posted client reviews?

Now visit your firm’s website on a mobile device. Is your website optimized for mobile?

If the answer to any of these questions is no, you are losing business and Google rank unnecessarily. Read on for solutions.

Your firm’s website must load quickly

If it does not, potential clients will feel impatient and simply move on to the next law firm’s website. 

Not only will you lose that potential business, but the click rate tells Google how viewers feel about your site. If they click away within seconds, Google thinks they have had a poor experience and your ranking will suffer as a result.

A website can load slowly for a number of reasons, including photographs and images that are too large. These can and must be optimized to load more quickly. If you’re using WordPress, you can install a plugin like WPSmush that will automatically reduce the size of the images.

Before uploading new images, you might first run them through a tool called Tiny PNG to reduce the file size without sacrificing quality.

If your site is more than a few years old and has not been updated, chances are that there are some add-ons and plug-ins that are causing delays in loading. These can be removed using a tool like Google Pagespeed Insights.

If you have had several different developers work on your site, chances are that the code is a mess. If your site is based on WordPress, you can use Better WordPress Minify to minimize your code. 

Viewers must be able to contact you with one click

Of course, your phone number should be in the header, but since the viewer found you online, don’t you think an email option would be used more?

For this reason, you must have a “contact us” button. Clicking on it should take the viewer to a contact form on your site, or open their mail application and autofill your email address. It’s all about making it easy for the viewer to contact you, and therefore more likely they will do so.

Your practice areas must be evident to a viewer

This section addresses your blog and your location pages as well.

A viewer probably found you by using search terms related to your practice areas, but if they can’t immediately find the answer to their question they will move on to the next site.

If they search “divorce lawyer to help me with child custody,” that query had better land them on your blog post describing how child custody works in their jurisdiction, with a link to your practice page and a call to action promising them help if they contact you. 

If they search “workers’ compensation lawyer near me,” that query had better land them on your location page for their city, town, or county.

If you don’t post to your blog, start now. You can find topics to write about by using Google. Two ways to do this are by using Autosuggest and People Also Ask.

Google Autosuggest

Autosuggest is a powerful tool for finding frequently-searched queries. If you are a personal injury lawyer, you might start typing in “how much is a settlement after a…” and Google might supply “car crash” to complete the query. You can then write a blog post addressing the factors that affect insurance settlements and judgments in your jurisdiction, with links to your results/settlements/judgments page and your practice page, and any other blog posts that address auto accidents.

Google “People Also Ask”

“People Also Ask” is a box Google provides when you type in a query. Including the exact same language as the People Also Ask queries and answering the query in a blog post will help you rank and attract viewers whose problems you can solve for them.

Post settlement and judgment results if possible, as well as client reviews

If your practice area does not lend itself to posting settlement and judgment results – for example, if you are a bankruptcy attorney – you must get creative. In the case of a bankruptcy attorney, you can advertise that you have “over 20 years’ experience,” you have helped clients discharge “over $3.5 Million in debt,” or you have helped “over 1200 clients get a fresh start.”

Client reviews are a must. Viewers look for online peer assessments for everything, from restaurants to babysitters to piano teachers. They want reassurance that you do the job you say you do, and that real people have used your services successfully. 

Gathering client reviews can be automated using software like MailChimp or Constant Contact. This is well worth the investment.

Update your photographs and bios every year

No potential client wants to see an attorney photo that is obviously 5, 10, or more years old from the hair or beard style or the clothing. Take new photos every year to show your current appearances, reflecting current hairstyles and clothing.

Update the content of every bio with accolades, honors, education, and other recent achievements, and if an attorney doesn’t have any, you can list how many clients they have helped “as of [this year]” then encourage that attorney to go out and make some new news.

Every aspect of your website should reflect the current year. Blog posts can be updated with developments in the law and retitled “[this year] Update.” Settlements and judgments should be up-to-date. Client reviews should be listed most-recent to last-recent.

Reviewing your website and taking these steps to revamp it will pay off in more business and better Google ranking for the services you provide. Good luck!

The post A Persuasive Website is Essential to Law Firm Marketing Today – Learn How to Fix Yours appeared first on SiteProNews.

Lawyers and other highly educated professionals know that when you need to get something done well, you need a special set of skills. SEO is no different. 

This typically leaves you with two options: hire someone with that special set of skills required for effective SEO, or take six months and learn it yourself. This post is going to shine a light on aspects of SEO you may not be aware of, dispel some myths you have heard, and help you to ensure your SEO efforts are most effective whether you hire an SEO or learn to do SEO yourself.

1. The Search Term You Think Will Get You the Most Business Likely Won’t

Every law firm SEO deals with an attorney client who demands to rank for “XYZ City Divorce Attorney”. That attorney thinks that when people are considering divorce in their city, that’s what they search for. While this may often be the case, in many instances potential clients do not begin the process of hiring a divorce attorney with a search for “XYZ City Divorce Attorney”.

And, “XYZ City Divorce Attorney” is likely very competitive to rank for in that market,

For these reasons, while ranking for “XYZ City Divorce Attorney” will drive business to you, the considerable money and effort it would take might be better spent optimizing for other relevant long tail keywords that are also highly searched-for.

 “XYZ City Divorce Attorney” is likely a head term with many valuable sub-terms that are less competitive to rank for. A good SEO won’t stop with the head term but will research what sub-terms are easier to rank for AND searched for often. These subterms will be the questions people type into Google, such as “What is legal separation in XYZ City” or “I live in ABC town but have a child custody problem in XYZ city, what do I do?”

Also, rather than relying on ranking for “XYZ City Divorce Attorney” to capture local traffic, an attorney must have a website with effective location pages that rank well in the “divorce lawyer near me”  and “divorce attorney near me” searches – searches which the attorney SEO will make sure actually do occur in a volume that makes sense for the investment. 

Attorney, you are paying your SEO to identify the relevant long-tail keywords with a high number of searches, determine which of them it is possible to rank for in your market and within your SEO budget, and create content that not only gets impressions and ranks well, but that gets clicks and converts those clicks into clients for you. This means that your online content has to be authoritative, thorough, optimized for search, and start the searcher on his or her buyer’s journey.

For this reason…

2. Let Your Law Firm SEO Write Your Online Content so it is Optimized

Attorney, you CAN write your own web content if you take the time to learn how. But if you don’t have that time there’s a good chance you’ll be better served by letting your SEO write your web page content and your blog and guests posts for you. 

Your SEO will have identified the relevant keywords that are frequently searched for that you can rank for, and will research topics, write content on those topics, and place those keywords and related words strategically in the content. The content’s structure will also be optimized for Google ranking and for reader engagement on both desktop and mobile devices.

Why is an attorney often not the best person to write his or her web content? First, it does not make business sense – an attorney’s valuable time is better spent practicing law and running the law firm, not trying to figure out how to write web content.  Second, attorneys are trained to write from a legal perspective, and the person who lands on your website will almost always be a lay person.

What is missing from an attorney’s writing for the web?

• Lack of understanding of what people are actually searching for;
• Legal style, often using long sentences and paragraphs, is inappropriate for mobile devices – big blocks of text are off-putting and thwart reader engagement;
• Lack of knowledge and use of effective copywriting methods that increase reader engagement.

Attorney Review of Content  is Necessary Prior to Publishing

While many SEO firms do not insist on this, to comply with ethical rules in your jurisdiction you must review the drafts your SEO sends you prior to publication.

• Check the substantive content for legal accuracy.  As an attorney, you are required to put out correct legal information.

• Web pages and blog posts should in most cases carry a disclaimer that this is not legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship.

• If using case and client examples, a disclaimer such as the following should be used: “while we were successful in this case, we cannot guarantee the same or similar result in any other matter.”

• Check your jurisdiction’s ethical rules on attorney advertising and be sure everything you put online complies.

3. There is Such a Thing as Over-Optimization

Every law firm SEO company has that attorney client that insists on writing his or her own content, and randomly peppers that content with variations on “XYZ City Divorce Attorney”, “Divorce Attorney in XYZ City”, Divorce Lawyer in XYC City,” etc. Little does this attorney know that Google recognizes over-optimization and penalizes sites that indulge in this.

So, if you insist on writing your own content, listen up – sure, you are a good writer, and you might be writing high-quality legal material, but you won’t be able to optimize that material for the searches that are actually happening because you have not done any keyword research, and, you may get your site penalized by Google for doing what you *think* is search engine optimization. And, even if the topic you chose to write about is something that people who might hire you search for, your SEO has to go in after you and optimize what you wrote, both language and structure. 

In other words, you are wasting your time and money writing your own content.  Trust your law firm SEO professional.  If you review and edit his or her work for legal accuracy and ethical compliance, you get the best of both worlds.

4. Sometimes Grammar Suffers if Long-Tail Keywords Are Targeted

So, attorney, you’ve relented and allowed your SEO to write your content for you. But you are reviewing a draft blog post and thinking, no one writes or speaks like this! 

You’re right. It is almost as if a new dialect is being created by the necessities of SEO. Some of the grammar will feel awkward and it is in those moments that you know your SEO found a long-tail keyword that must be reproduced exactly as searched for, with no variation.

An example: A header on a blog post about bankruptcy might be, “Are You Thinking, I Need a Lawyer to Help Me Get a Fresh Start?” Yes, awkward.  But your SEO has done the research and discovered that the long-tail keyword “lawyer to help me get a fresh start” is searched often in your market, so, that’s the way your SEO had to work it in, word-for-word. 

That’s the result you want. You should be worried if there aren’t any awkward moments like that in your content.

5. In Order to Rank Well, You Need Backlinks

This topic is somewhat controversial in the SEO world, however, in my experience the number of backlinks correlates with the rank of the post, most of the time. 

What is a backlink?

It is when another site links to a page on your website using anchor text that you want to rank for.  

What?  Okay, backing it up…

Anchor text is the term for the word or phrase that forms the hyperlink to your site, that the reader clicks on to get to your site.

The anchor text should be a word or phrase (most often phrase) that you want to rank for. Your SEO will know what anchor text should be used, having done the keyword research.

So, a backlink is a link to a page on your site that appears on another site. The hyperlink is a phrase that people search for and that your SEO thinks you can rank for.

Think about it… if someone is reading an article online, say, on the website of their local newspaper and there is a hyperlink to your site in that article, don’t you think that creates a feeling in the reader that you are an authority in [anchor text]? Yes, Google thinks so too. More authority = higher rank.

How do you get backlinks?

The most “white hat” (legitimate) way to get backlinks is to write guest posts for other sites. How does one identify guest post opportunities? Your SEO has software that combs the web, searching for suitable sites to host your content. When a site agrees to host your content, you (meaning your SEO) write a guest post suitable for the host site and containing that all-important link to a page on your site, using anchor text that your SEO thinks you can rank for.

Hope this helps both lawyer SEOs and their lawyer clients!

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