The Secret To SEO For Lawyers

I have a few attorney clients. One of which I’ve had since 2008 (Wow! Time flies!).

I’ve noticed over the years that there’s a certain type of digital marketing agency that specializes in law firm SEO / attorney SEO. Some charge a pretty penny for their service. I think in a lot of cases, SEO for lawyers doesn’t need to be retainer-based, pedal-to-the-metal SEO and it doesn’t have to be expensive. Also, the schedule-of-work routine typically used for lawyer SEO might be a bad idea. Let’s get into why.

First, Think About This: What Kind Of SEO Looks Organic To Google?

I don’t think many people think about this.

Search engines spend a lot of time combating webspam. This is why you’re not really allowed to buy links and auto-generate tons of content to attract traffic. Sites that engage in this behavior get kicked out of Google.

But also routine SEO “work” can look inorganic. It can look like a pattern. It can look like someone is trying to game the system.

Google doesn’t want you trying to force your way up to the top of the rankings. Anything that can appear as manipulation is something they do not want. What they want are the best possible results for a given query. Google wants to please its users.

How Do You Do Organic SEO?

A good chunk of this goes back to good old webmastering. So let’s start there.

There are usually a lot of things to work on that help SEO that are UX-related:

Font size: Is your site difficult to read on mobile devices?
How’s the mobile layout anyway? Is there endless scrolling? Can I even find the footer or pagination?
What about site speed? Is the site loading quickly? Can we reduce some image file sizes?

Someone should spend time working on these issues and continually improve the site. These tasks can be done in between other SEO activities like article creation and local SEO work.

The next thing to do is to improve page content and build new pages. Expanding the site out is a natural activity and usually happens randomly throughout the years. So after a month or two of UX work, move on to releasing some new pages.

After that, move on to page improvements. Do old pages need to be refreshed? Can links be added? What about an image that’s helpful like a small infographic? There’s the next thing to work on!

There’s a ton of stuff to do to keep a site fresh, SEO-ed, and improved. Just mix up the work.

How Does This Keep Costs Down?

As you can see, you can improve a site in a way that helps the SEO without doing anything too routine. Also, the costs don’t have to be high every month. Why not just get charged for what’s done that month? If a few items were knocked out, then why not only pay for that work? I know everyone wants to get attorneys on a retainer, but is that always necessary?

Wait! What About Link Building?

I’ve never done active link building in all my years of doing SEO. I feel it’s a fool’s errand. No one wants to put your link on their site just because you asked them to. Now, if you build great content that they want to link to – now that’s another story. That’s what you should be doing. And I know how to create that sort of content ;).

Finally, Google is slowly reducing the impact that backlinks have in their search engine. I feel like a bunch of similar links, whether they are on high-quality websites or not, begins to look spammy. So why bother?

So What’s The Secret To Attorney Search Engine Optimization?

SEO works better when it’s done randomly because it’s ORGANIC. When it doesn’t look routine. When it doesn’t look forced. Just do good webmastering, polish and improve the site over time and create content other sites will link to naturally. This is the secret.