25 Attorney SEO Facts for 2025

Your online authority – that is, your law firm’s SEO ranking — is largely based upon who is linking to your website and the content that appears on your site.

Here are 25 easy ways to boost your SEO results and get your website more links:

1. Social Media.  Get signed up, fill out your accounts and get easy links back to your website.
   • Twitter – http://www.Twitter.com
   • Facebook – https://www.FaceBook.com
   • LinkedIn – http://www.LinkedIn.com
2. Free Directories & Local Citations
   • Avvo – http://www.avvo.com
   • Google Places – http://www.google.com/places/
   • Bing Local – http://www.bing.com/
   • Yahoo Local – http://local.yahoo.com/
   • Manta – http://www.Manta.com
3. Paid Directories
   • Universal Business Listing – http://www.UBL.org
   • Cornell Legal Information Institute – http://lawyers.law.cornell.edu/
   • Yahoo! Directory – http://dir.yahoo.com
   • BOTW.org – https://botw.org/
   • HG.org – http://www.hg.org/
   • Findlaw.com – https://www.findlaw.com/
   • Lawyers.com & Martindale.com – http://www.lawyers.com
4. Press Release.  Write a press release and syndicate it on PRWeb.com and other websites.  It will be picked up by all search engines and social media. Make sure to include important law firm SEO keyword phrases in the press release (these are usually your key geographic term(s) + key practice area(s) + lawyer(s)/attorney(s)/law firm; for example, “Dallas DUI lawyer.”)
5. Start with Keyword Research. A simple research plan can take less than an hour and set your campaign off on the right foot.  A more detailed research plan will prove even more valuable.
6. The Architecture of  Your Site is Important.  Your site should be built well and include Title Tags, Alt Tags, and keyword rich anchor text. It should meet Google guidelines.  But as explained below, links are most important.
7. Current customers and vendors.  Contact all your current customers and vendors to see if they would link to your website.  Often they will.
8. Guest Blogging.  Write an informative article and offer it for free to trade websites, vendors and anyone willing to post.  Make sure to include biographical information with links to your website, using your law firm’s SEO keywords in your anchor text.
9. Research Competitors. Find the top 5 competitors in your field that rank highly for your desired law firm SEO keyword phrases.  Use http://www.OpenSiteExplorer.org to find your competitors links.  Create a spreadsheet and visit the websites to see where they are getting their links.
10. Link bait.  Write something informative. Use charts, graphs and pictures to help display your information.
11. Hold a Contest.  Create a contest on your website or social media pages.  Get links to your contest page and main website.
12. Become an Expert in your Area.  Not exactly easy, but the we find that the true experts in their area often get great inbound links from trade publication websites, newspapers and other media outlets.  They are featured at conferences, which link to their websites, are quoted in social media and more.  This is more of a long-term tactic, but it is important to understand that you should want to be an expert in your core practice.
13. File Types. Feel free to use php, htm, html, asp, jsp, cfm, and a ton of other web extensions.  Google, MSN, and Yahoo will index just about any file type these days without ANY difference in ranking.
14. Links. Obtain inbound links from other sites, but do it slowly.  Make sure that you do not join any link farms, link programs, or suspicious sites. Links to your site should remain static and not be moved around.
15. Quality Over Quantity, Though Numbers Matter. Google’s algorithm is based on who links to your site (and a lot of analysis on that link and website).  Generally speaking, the more links you get, the higher you rank.  It is more complicated than that, but it is important to understand the power of links.
16. Content. Every page should have keyword rich content. There is no hard rule for amount of content for each page, but try to make sure that your page has a minimum of 500 words. You should mention the primary keyword at least five times and secondary terms two to three times in the content on that page.  Finally, you should also mention each keyword phrase (exactly) in the content.
17. Graphics. Splash pages and all Flash sites are essentially a waste of time if you are trying to rank high in the search engines (although they certainly look pretty). Just keep in mind that any text that is created as a graphic cannot be seen.  If you have graphics that you want seen by the search engines should be removed and replaced with actual html text.
18. Page Names. Page names are a part of the algorithm.  It is better to title page names with keyword phrases in them.
19. Anchor Text. A great way to increase rankings of subpages is to have anchor text as either the main menu or footer menus.  These links should have absolute paths and title attributes that utilize relevant keywords.  These links should be simple text and html code, and will provide a more clearly designated path for the search engine spiders.
20.  Title Tag. This is the most important tag.  This should relate to your keyword phrase.  A good example is for law firm web design would be “Law Firm Web Design – PaperStreet – Lawyer Web Design”.
21. Meta Tags. Though meta tags aren’t as used any more, meta descriptions are still key for SEO. When your firm appears in search, your meta description is the summary that helps the potential client decide if your page is helpful.
22. Keyword Stuffing Does Not Work. You only have to mention the keyword three or so times on the page to achieve your results.  Stop stuffing your text.
23. External Files. Put all JavaScript client-side scripting into an external .js file and put all stylesheet and formatting information into an external .css file.
24. Don’t Expect AI Content to Rank. Search engines can detect AI-content and do not consider it valuable. Thus, don’t expect AI content to be indexed by search engines, let alone rank.
25. Stay Informed. Here are a few resources and reporting tools that can be used for law firm internet marketing and SEO:

• • Moz – Great resource on SEO. http://www.moz.com
  • The SEO Engine – A solid tool for analyzing your website. http://www.seoengine.com/
  • Nibbler – Free test for your website, by the same people as SiteBeam. http://nibbler.silktide.com/