Top 10 Law Firm SEO Tips for a New Web Site

So you have a brand new web site for your new law firm. Congrats!”  Now you want to rank high for “Boston Criminal Lawyer” or “Los Angeles Injury Attorney.””  To be blunt, get in line, so does every other lawyer.

SEO is a long term process for major cities for most new law firms. Your new site is competing with sites that have been online for 10 years, have hundreds of pages of content, and thousands of links. Those sites have larger authority and more relevance than your new site.

Ranking high immediately for any heavily sought-after, law firm SEO term will be tough, if not impossible. However, don’t worry; you can eventually achieve results long term if you follow a few basic tactics.

1. Have a Long-Term Outlook. Go into any competitive SEO program knowing that you may not be in the top three spots in 3 months, 6 months or perhaps even 1 year. We are not stating that you cannot rank high for some terms right out of the box for niche areas. In fact, you can!”  But the more competitive the term, the longer it will take to rank high.
2. Start Now. You need to start now to have a chance at some point in the future. Otherwise, you just keep falling behind on the top law firm SEO web sites and will never achieve the web presence you need.
3. Focus on Local Geographic Areas, and then expand. If you start off trying to obtain a top ranking for the most competitive terms, you may not make much of a dent for quite some time, except in some cases where competitors take the help of a seo company. You may languish on the bottom of page 1, page 2 or worse. A better tactic is focusing your initial law firm SEO campaign to focus on local geographic areas where you can obtain results quickly. For instance, most big cities are comprised of lots of smaller geographic areas. Those small areas in aggregate will bring in traffic and greatly help in marketing. In fact, if you rank in the top of search for a lot of smaller areas, you will get more traffic than ranking at the bottom for more competitive search terms. Focus on those smaller areas in the short term and then expand once your site has enough domain authority and relevant content.
4. Focus on Niche Practices, and then expand. Focus on niche practice areas that you ideally want to concentrate on. Same idea as geographic, but targeting very specific practice areas to rank high for those initially, and then expand to the larger groups.
5. Become a Real Resource. If you want to dominate in one area, you must be THE resource. Write daily on that topic, or at least weekly. Become the biggest, baddest, and best resource on that topic. Blog, create a directory, cover news, but become the expert in your area. Get involved in social networks that are related too.
6. Write. As you write content and build links for your web site, you are building your overall domain and page authority. Eventually you will have enough domain authority to compete directly with the large city terms.
7. Build Links. Get listed with all relevant directories.Build links with related web sites. Create killer content that people want to share. The more links you have, the higher you will rank.
8. Purchase a Good Domain. If you are starting anew, buy a domain that has keyword phrases contained within for your target keyword phrase. Google loves keyword phrase domains. If you have an old domain, keep that.
9. Have a Budget. The top law firms are spending anywhere from $10,000 to $100,000+ per year on their SEO and web presence, not including any pay-per-click advertising. The larger the market, the more they tend to spend. Of course, they almost always show a return on investment, so it is the best way to market. Those top firms are creating content weekly. They are building links. They are building multiple web sites and blogs. They are creating massive web presences. You need to do the same in order to compete.
10. Be Patient. Rankings will come when you write informative articles to build your web presence.