Are you struggling to get your law firm noticed online in your local market? You’re not alone.
Many law firms spend thousands on marketing but fail to establish a strong local online presence.
This comprehensive guide on local SEO for law firms will walk you through the exact steps to make your law firm more visible to potential clients in your area, helping you attract more qualified leads and turn them into cases.
How to Implement Local SEO for Your Law Firm
Local SEO is crucial for law firms because most clients search for legal services within their immediate geographic area. When potential clients need legal help, they typically search for attorneys nearby who can handle their specific legal issues.
Claim and Optimize Your Google Business Profile
Your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is the cornerstone of your local SEO strategy. This free listing appears in Google Maps and local search results.
Start by claiming your profile if you haven’t already. Visit business.google.com and follow the verification process, which typically involves receiving a postcard with a verification code at your office address.
Once verified, optimize your profile with complete and accurate information:
Fill out every section of your profile with detailed information about your law firm. Include your firm name, address, phone number, website URL, business hours, and the types of law you practice.
Add high-quality photos of your office interior and exterior, your team, and any awards or recognitions. Businesses with photos receive 42% more requests for directions and 35% more clicks to their websites.
Create a compelling business description that includes your primary practice areas and what sets your firm apart from competitors. Keep it under 750 characters and include relevant keywords naturally.
Select the most appropriate primary and secondary categories for your business. For example, “Law Firm” as your primary category and specific practice areas like “Personal Injury Attorney” or “Family Law Attorney” as secondary categories.
Add your services list, detailing each practice area with descriptions. This helps Google understand exactly what legal services you offer and improves your chances of appearing in relevant searches.
Develop a Consistent NAPW Strategy
NAPW stands for Name, Address, Phone number and Website. Consistency in your NAPW information across all online platforms is critical for local SEO success.
Ensure your firm’s name, address, and phone number are identical on your website, Google Business Profile, legal directories, social media profiles, and any other online listings. Even minor differences like “Street” vs. “St.” can impact your local search rankings.
Create a dedicated “Contact Us” page on your website that clearly displays your NAPW information in text format (not just in an image). Include an embedded Google Map showing your office location.
Consider adding structured data markup (Schema.org) to your contact information. This helps search engines understand and display your business information correctly.
Build Citations on Legal Directories and Local Sites
Citations are mentions of your law firm’s NAP information on other websites, particularly directories. For law firms, citations on legal-specific directories are especially valuable.
Create profiles on major legal directories such as Avvo, FindLaw, Justia, and Martindale-Hubbell. These sites have high domain authority and can help improve your local search visibility.
Ensure your firm is listed in general business directories like Yellow Pages, Yelp, and BBB. Also target local chambers of commerce, bar associations, and community organization directories.
When building citations, maintain consistent NAP information and complete as much of each profile as possible. Add photos, service descriptions, business hours, and payment methods where applicable.
Monitor your citations regularly to ensure the information remains accurate and up-to-date. If your firm moves or changes phone numbers, update all citations promptly.
Create Location-Specific Practice Area Pages
If your law firm serves multiple locations or neighborhoods, create dedicated pages for each location you target.
Develop unique, valuable content for each location page. Avoid simply changing the city name while keeping the rest of the content identical. Include location-specific information such as local court details, area-specific laws or regulations, and community involvement.
Incorporate location keywords naturally throughout the content, URL, title tags, headings, and meta descriptions. For example: “Personal Injury Attorney in [City Name]” or “[City Name] Family Law Services.”
Include location-specific testimonials from clients in that area to build trust and relevance for local searches.
Add location schema markup to these pages to help search engines understand the geographic relevance of your content.
Create internal links between your location pages and related practice area pages to distribute link equity and help users navigate your site.
Implement Technical SEO Best Practices
Technical SEO provides the foundation for all your other SEO efforts, ensuring search engines can crawl, index, and rank your site effectively.
Ensure your website loads quickly on both desktop and mobile devices. Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights to identify and fix speed issues. A one-second delay in page load time can reduce conversions by 7%.
Make your website mobile-friendly with responsive design. Google predominantly uses mobile-first indexing, meaning it primarily uses the mobile version of your site for ranking and indexing.
Secure your website with HTTPS. This is now a ranking factor, and users are more likely to trust secure sites, especially when sharing sensitive information.
Create a logical site structure with clear navigation. Group related content under main categories (practice areas) and ensure no page is more than three clicks from the homepage.
Use descriptive, keyword-rich URLs that include relevant practice areas and locations when appropriate. For example: yourlawfirm.com/personal-injury-city-name/ is better than yourlawfirm.com/page123.
Implement schema markup specific to legal services. LocalBusiness and Attorney schema can help search engines understand the nature of your business and display rich results in search.
Create Valuable, Location-Specific Content
Content remains one of the most powerful ways to improve your local SEO and establish your firm as an authority in your practice areas.
Start a blog and regularly publish articles addressing common legal questions and concerns relevant to your local audience. For example, “How [City Name] Courts Handle Child Custody Cases” or “[State] Personal Injury Compensation Laws.”
Create detailed FAQ pages addressing location-specific legal questions. This can help capture featured snippets and voice search queries, which often come in question format.
Develop location-specific case studies or success stories (with client permission) that demonstrate your expertise in handling local legal matters.
Create content about local events, community initiatives, or changes in local laws that affect your practice areas. This demonstrates your connection to and knowledge of the community.
Include location-specific keywords naturally throughout your content, but prioritize providing genuine value to readers over keyword density.
Build Local Backlinks
Backlinks from reputable local websites signal to search engines that your law firm is trusted and relevant in your community.
Partner with local community organizations, charities, or non-profits that align with your firm’s values. Sponsor events or provide pro bono services in exchange for recognition and links on their websites.
Write guest articles for local news sites, business journals, or community blogs on legal topics relevant to the local audience.
Get involved with your local chamber of commerce, bar association, and other professional organizations that list their members online.
Create newsworthy content or events that local media might cover, resulting in natural backlinks to your website.
Engage with local business partners, such as real estate agencies, accountants, or financial advisors, and explore opportunities for reciprocal referrals and links.
Manage and Generate Reviews
Online reviews are critical for law firms, serving as both a ranking factor for local SEO and a major influence on potential clients’ decision-making.
Create a systematic approach to requesting reviews from satisfied clients. The best time to ask is immediately after a successful case resolution when client satisfaction is highest.
Make the review process as simple as possible by providing direct links to your Google Business Profile and other important review platforms in follow-up emails.
Respond to all reviews—both positive and negative—in a professional manner. For negative reviews, address concerns empathetically and offer to resolve issues offline.
Showcase positive reviews on your website, ideally as a live feed from Google or another review platform. Include the client’s name (with permission), location, and practice area to add credibility and location relevance.
Never purchase fake reviews or use questionable tactics to generate reviews, as this violates Google’s guidelines and can result in penalties.
Track and Measure Your Local SEO Performance
To improve your local SEO strategy over time, you need to track key metrics and make data-driven decisions.
Set up Google Analytics and Google Search Console to monitor your website traffic, user behavior, and search performance. Pay particular attention to traffic from different geographic areas.
Track your rankings for important local keywords using rank tracking tools. Focus on position changes for keywords that drive conversions rather than vanity metrics.
Monitor your Google Business Profile insights to understand how people find your listing, what actions they take, and which photos attract the most attention.
Set up conversion tracking to measure not just traffic but actual leads generated from your local SEO efforts. This could include form submissions, phone calls, or chat interactions.
Conduct regular local SEO audits to identify new opportunities and areas for improvement. Technology and search algorithms change frequently, so your strategy should evolve accordingly.
Additional Local SEO Factors for Law Firms
Optimize for Voice Search
As voice assistants become more prevalent, optimizing for voice search is increasingly important for local businesses, including law firms.
Focus on conversational, long-tail keywords that match how people speak. Voice searches are typically longer and more question-based than typed searches.
Create FAQ content that directly answers common legal questions people might ask voice assistants. Structure your answers in a concise, direct manner that voice assistants can easily extract.
Ensure your local business information is accurate and complete, as voice assistants often pull from this data when answering local queries like “find a divorce attorney near me.”
Use Local Keywords in Your Video Content
Video content can significantly improve engagement and help your law firm rank for local searches when properly optimized.
Create videos addressing common legal questions or explaining processes relevant to your practice areas. Include location-specific information where appropriate.
Optimize video titles, descriptions, and tags with local keywords. For example, “What to Do After a Car Accident in [City Name]” or “[City Name] Divorce Lawyer Explains Child Custody Laws.”
Host videos on your website as well as YouTube, which is the second largest search engine. Create a complete YouTube channel with location information in the about section.
Include transcripts of your videos on your website to make the content accessible to search engines and users who prefer reading.
Get Expert Help With Local SEO For Your Law Firm
Implementing a robust local SEO strategy can transform your law firm’s online presence and significantly increase the number of qualified leads.
By optimizing your Google Business Profile, maintaining consistent NAPW information, building quality citations and backlinks, creating location-specific content, and actively managing your online reputation, you can make your firm more visible to potential clients in your area.
As an attorney SEO agency, we at Dominate Marketing understand the unique challenges of legal marketing and have helped numerous law firms increase their monthly client intake by 10-30 new cases per month. We can implement these local SEO strategies for your firm, tailored to your specific practice areas and target locations.
If you’re ready to get more high-quality cases from your local area, contact our team today by filling out the form below.