As a solicitor who runs a business, you’re already aware of the importance of clarity and good communication in situations with a lot of rules and variables.
But when it comes to applying the rules of SEO to your marketing plan, are you falling victim to bad habits, missteps, and oversights?
SEO for solicitors doesn’t just lead to more traffic – it leads to the right kind of traffic that attract new clients, increases enquiries, and creates longer-lasting business relationships. But before you can implement a strong SEO plan, you’ll have to look into whether poor SEO has limited what your business can achieve.
Are you keyword stuffing?
At one point in time, it may have been true that if you simply put as many keywords in your content as possible, you’ll get ranked on the search engine results page. However, as website crawlers and search engine rankings have evolved, so has the necessity for well-placed keywords that flow naturally as part of insightful and useful content.
In fact, keyword stuffing is now associated with poor quality and spam-like content that won’t rank well or reach the eyes of motivated clients. Try to aim for a limit of around 5 uses of any keyword as an absolute maximum, and spread them over several different paragraphs through your content.
Poor quality content
This is probably the most common reason for poor SEO, especially in law, where there’s pressure to deliver for clients, remain diligent, and keep up with your competitors at the same time. And when that pressure trickles into your content, it can lead to things like poorly written content that serves no purpose to the reader, badly constructed sentences that wedge in keywords unnaturally, and duplicate content.
Despite the depths of the legal industry, and the vast areas a business can explore when creating content, there’s pressure to post blogs that are along the same lines as your competitors. But by doing so, you do your potential future clients a disservice by not focusing on their needs. And when you neglect the customer needs, search engines will neglect you.
Poor quality backlinks
Having good quality backlinks is one of the most important elements of solicitor SEO, as it can sometimes help to boost your rankings while improving the reader’s experience when done correctly.
Unfortunately, many backlinks are unsuitable for a solicitor’s content strategy, and this oversight can be extremely detrimental to your business. For example, getting backlinks from poor-quality websites that aren’t trustworthy will severely affect your Google rankings. Not only this but your business will be associated with these less than reputable websites.
Making good SEO a priority
Learning from a poor SEO plan is the first step in turning it into your most valued marketing tool instead. If you can use proven-to-be popular keywords to create content that serves a purpose, and add a few high-quality links that add more value and depth, you’ll have mastered some of SEO’s most important fundamentals.
As a solicitor, SEO can drive the right kind of traffic to your website, help you form better relationships with your clients, and set you on a clear path to a future full of satisfaction, success, and higher search engine rankings.
