From adoption proceedings to divorce and custody battles, family lawyers are seeing an increase in demand. To ensure their services are reaching the clients they need, many family lawyers now turn to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for family law as one of their primary marketing strategies.
However, great SEO campaigns don’t happen without proper research, strategy, and a well-thought-out plan.
While many firms are taking full advantage of what SEO has to offer, many aren’t able to develop these strategies in-house. To make the most of their online SEO campaigns, attorneys and firms often invest in SEO agencies to navigate the nuances of effective SEO strategies and strike the right balance between tech strategies and content creation.
SEO marketing may seem like a daunting task, but with an experienced partner by your side, it can also prove to be an incredibly powerful tool for growth, especially in the competitive field of family law.
The benefits of search engine optimization for family law attorneys
SEO is a powerful tool that helps boost visibility online by improving a business’s ranking in search engine results. Through effective use of SEO tactics such as keyword research and robust content strategy, family lawyers can strategically target potential clients by putting themselves at the top of search engine result pages (SERPs) for popular search terms.
Having SEO for family law means that when someone types in keywords related to family law—such as “divorce lawyer” or “custody dispute”—ranking practices will appear as the first few results on a potential client’s screen.
A strong SEO strategy leads to increased visibility online through higher search engine rankings and increased organic traffic; they also offer firms and attorneys several other unique benefits as compared to other, traditional marketing strategies.
Using SEO for family law for marketing and supporting clients passively
The clients of family lawyers are often in vulnerable positions, eager to find a professional that can help them get the results they want, while also being a trusted consultant to turn to for guidance.
One of the benefits that SEO for family law firms that other paid marketing approaches don’t is the ability to build and share valuable client resources while still meeting your marketing goals. Targetted content creation like blog posts, infographics, and videos can help law firms rank higher on SERPs while providing clients with access to resources during their search.
It’s an easy way to establish domain authority and answer common client questions. Additionally, it shifts the focus of your website onto your clients and their needs, a recommended strategy for those looking to establish trust with potential clients.
Search engine optimization for family law attorneys boosts leads acquisition and conversion
Struggling to gain client referrals as a small to medium-sized firm is a common challenge many family lawyers face. Competing against large corporate firms with generous marketing budgets and expansive professional networks that come from years of established reputations may even feel impossible at times.
Search engine optimization for family law attorneys makes it possible for firms of all sizes to gain online visibility, no matter what a competing firm’s marketing strategy looks like. And no, it won’t require posing for a kitschy billboard.
By identifying key phrases that your clients are likely to search for as they look for representation and navigate different life situations, family lawyers can put themselves front and center in an organic and helpful way. It allows attorneys to be where their clients need them at the most opportune time possible.
In fact, SEO strategies that leverage content marketing to drive organic traffic are successful across industries. When compared to organic traffic generated from social media content, SEO content can drive 1,000% more traffic than its social media counterparts.
Sustainable results that last after deployment
Investing in a marketing campaign should offer returns long after it’s deployed. SEO strategies are simple to implement and easily maintained with the guidance of a dedicated team of SEO experts; all the while, the dividends continue to compound long after deployment.
Unlike pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, strong SEO strategies for law firms can help your website reach wider networks than you may have initially intended. SEO for family law firms is effective because it allows your firm to develop its own content to rank higher on SERPs, but another benefit is other sites backlinking to your content.
In fact, businesses that blog receive as much as 100% more links to their website than businesses that do not. Why does this matter? Because long after you’ve stopped generating content for a specific key term—either because you’ve gotten the results you are looking for or because you are targeting something else—your existing SEO content will continue to rank when they appear as a source elsewhere.
Backlinks continue to grow your organic traffic and assert you as a domain authority at no extra cost or effort.
What goes into developing SEO strategies for family law firms?
How to create specialized content for family and divorce lawyer SEO performance
Strong SEO performance is dependent on content that is designed for SEO performance. Creating customized content that effectively utilizes SEO tactics enables lawyers to stand out from the competition and boost website exposure through improved rankings in searches.
Creating a blog and asking different members of your firm to contribute on a topic of their choice may not cut it here. A pointed approach to content creation is ultimately what will get results, and that must begin with robust keyword research. Devoted SEO specialists can help you tailor your keyword phrases that are specific to practices of your choosing.
From here, specialists in SEO for family law will create a strategy that incorporates keywords with a range of keyword difficulty scores, which determine how challenging it would be to rank highly in SERPs for specific key terms. Choosing a broader selection not only allows firms to rank more widely across related terms.
With a framework in hand, it’s time for editors and content creators to start piecing together a complete editorial calendar. This will phase out the publication of your SEO content so that it’s consistent.
It’s also important that the content produced is reliable and accurate. The copywriting team you work with should be committed to a process backed by research and should strive to create content that follows some of these guidelines, provided by Google:
- Create high-quality, original, and reliable content free of spelling or stylistic errors.
- Content should be factually accurate and provide reliable links to sources supporting the provided information.
- Web content should “demonstrate aspects of experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness”, which Google refers to as E-E-A-T.
From short blogs focused on answering common questions to long-form series about extensive legal proceedings, expertly crafted SEO material can have a major impact online.
Using strategic tech performance to reach a wider market
Strong technical performance is a vital part of any SEO strategy for family law. Without a high-performance website, you risk compromising your firm’s reputation and negatively impacting your SEO performance. These tips can help family attorneys ensure their websites meet SEO standards.
Ensure your site is fast and responsive—a difference of two seconds in load time can increase bounce rates by as much as 32%. Employing effective web development tactics when it comes to image optimization or browser caching can help reduce page loading times. Website accessibility and usability are crucial, too.
Google prioritizes web content that is optimized for mobile devices. It’s vital for accommodating your potential clients, who are likely using a mobile device to conduct their searches anyway. Making sure fonts, menus, and buttons look natural on smaller displays goes a long way toward improved mobile SEO performance.
A technical strategy that’s broad in its approach should also go beyond the surface. The family law SEO experts you work with should help your firm utilize Structured Data Markup on the HTML source code of a page to help Google understand what information is contained within certain elements on your website.
This can help inform search engines that the content on your website includes phone numbers, addresses, ratings, or other important pieces of data related to legal services offered.
Want to make the most of SEO for family law firms? Work with a dedicated team of experts
Building, implementing, and maintaining an SEO strategy that performs can be made simple with the guidance of trusted experts. The process should always begin with a discussion of your firm’s goals, which should serve as the foundation of any of your technical strategies.
To find out more about how Ranq can help your firm increase its online presence, check out a detailed walkthrough of our process here.
Fill out a contact form to consult with Ranq on how our experts in SEO for family law can start developing an SEO strategy specially customized for your family law firm.