The longer I work in search engine optimization, the more I keep coming back to the human element that so often gets overlooked by law firms who want to improve their SEO.
But wait a minute. Isn’t SEO really technical? You’ve heard of metadata, permalinks, sitemaps, canonical URLs, schema markup, page speed, title tags… the list goes on.
Yes – all of these technical details make up an important but small part of the full SEO equation. You don’t want to ignore the technical aspects of SEO but you don’t have to obsess over them either, especially if you’re just getting started.
The foundation of SEO, the bulk of the equation, comes from the human element – i.e., good content that actually appeals to human eyeballs and brains. Without taking the human element into account, your SEO is bound to fail even if your meta tags are perfect.
This is especially true for lawyers. When creating SEO content for your law firm, you cannot make the mistake of overlooking the actual person you’re trying to reach behind the screen. In fact, you should focus your efforts primarily on appealing to that person – anticipating and addressing the needs of your ideal client. The rest can and often will follow.
Think of it this way: search engine algorithms are robots doing their best to understand and anticipate human behavior. Everything Google’s algorithm does keeps the search engine user first and foremost in mind. So as long as you keep that human element in mind, any good content you create will perform well no matter what changes Google makes to its algorithm.
And algorithm-proof content will deliver evergreen SEO results for many years to come.
Click here for the answers to the most frequently asked questions about legal content and SEO.
How Does the “Human Element” Translate Into SEO?
Whether you’re counting click-throughs or goal completions, most SEO metrics of success measure human behavior. Few SEO measurements are entirely technical. Something like a page’s load speed is about as purely technical as it gets, and even that is influenced by a user’s internet speed and best calibrated to match a user’s attention span.
Out of all the metrics assessed by search engines, the algorithm puts a lot of weight on certain user behaviors. The most important user measurements for SEO are:
- Average time on page – The longer somebody stays on a page, the more search engine algorithms figure there’s something worthwhile on that page. This is one of those metrics that cannot be faked and is purely based on the human element – i.e., how much time do people actually spend reading your content? The only way to ensure your visitors spend time on your page is to create good content that interests them.
- Bounce rate – If someone comes to your website through a keyword search and they leave shortly after without interacting with anything on your page, search engines are going to figure that they didn’t find what they were looking for. How do you keep visitors from bouncing? You engage them with good content from the moment they arrive and put relevant internal links on your pages to keep them on your site.
- Total pages viewed – Imagine if a visitor arrives on your website by searching for a keyword. Not only do they spend a long time on your page, but they continue to visit other pages on your website. The more pages they visit, the more search engines figure your website must have a lot of quality content that’s relevant for their search term. And the more likely you are to rank better for that keyword. How do you increase this metric? More quality content and more internal links between pages on your website.
What does this all mean when it comes to your law firm’s SEO strategy?
Technical SEO is important, yes – but the real “secret” is in the quality of your content. There’s enough competition out there for law firms on Google that simply slapping some lawyerly words on a page isn’t enough. You’ve got to actually connect with your visitors.
What Does This Mean for Your Law Firm’s SEO?
You understand the power of search engine optimization for law firm business development and lead generation. You’re ready to commit to your law firm’s SEO. You’ve got SEO companies left and right talking about terms like domain authority and backlinks. Where do you even start?
The human element will always be the best place to begin your SEO strategy.
- Imagine your ideal client in as great detail as possible. What motivates them? What are their worst fears and greatest dreams? What kind of work do they do? Where do they see themselves fitting into society? What kind of car do they drive?
- Find out where your clients like to hang out and spend time there. Not to pitch your services, but to listen. Maybe you’re a business lawyer and your local business association has an active Facebook group. Maybe you’re a divorce attorney who wants to target their services towards professionals most active on LinkedIn. What is your target market talking about? What kinds of questions come up the most frequently?
- Create a content strategy around the needs of your ideal clients. Cover the topics that are the most relevant to your target market. Answer the questions that they ask Google. If you have one practice area or type of case that’s particularly profitable, focus your attention on making multiple pages covering different angles of the issue. Make sure to link these pages together with internal links for visitors to follow.
- Speak directly to your ideal client. Stop with the “plaintiff and defendant” legal talk – all of that becomes jargon to non-lawyers. If you address your visitors directly with “you,” immediately your content gains a personal tone to better connect with your reader. If you’re targeting a specific industry, use the jargon they’re most familiar with.
- Stop writing like a lawyer. Any client-facing content you put up on the internet should be clear, concise, and easy to understand. One of the greatest mistakes I see law firms make is creating content that reads like a legal treatise. You know of what I speak – four-syllable words as far as the eye can read, great big walls of text that make any regular person’s head spin. You’ve got to write for the layperson. Sounding fancy doesn’t go far if you alienate your readers with unintelligible legalese. The best way to break down complex legal concepts is in plain, simple, effective language.
The human element is perhaps the most complex part of SEO because it deals with human nature. No amount of technical tweaking can make up for bad content. If your website doesn’t provide value to your visitors, that disinterest will translate to search engine results. It doesn’t matter how fast your page loads if no one is interested in the content once they see it.
If you want to improve your law firm’s SEO, your focus should be on the quality of your content above all else. The best investment you can make is to hire a legal content copywriter who can not only transform legalese into engaging web content but also project a unique voice for your law firm that sets you apart from your competitors. Once you’ve got your content down, you can tweak the technical details to refine your website for the best possible performance.