Local SEO is often much more helpful than SEO on a national (or broader) level.
Considering that attorneys typically cater to a local audience, lawyers need to ensure that the website they send out into cyberspace is set up to rank strong in their target locations AND serve the local market effectively.
While working to create a search engine optimized website, here are four aspects that lawyers should consider:
#1. Attorney Directories
Lawyers should ensure that their website makes its way to any and all relevant (and autoreactive) directories designed for lawyers. While there is typically a joining fee, it’s worth it, and there are several free groups to join as well. These types of directories are useful because people actually visit them when searching for an attorney. In addition, attorneys themselves can use them to find relevant links for their site.
#2. Local Links
Local links consist of links coming from local websites that lead browsers to a lawyer’s website. These local links obtain information relevant for the lawyer’s region such as banks, chambers of commerce, educational institutions and non-profits.
#3. Location Specific Landing Pages
Even attorneys with a single location can benefit from having a location-specific page that contains keywords relevant to the local market in order to increase page rank. To create a page like this, include relevant information in your page copy such as:
- Phone number(s)
- City name
- Address
- Other relevant information (geographic meta tags, for example)
#4. Attorney Schema
Schema deals with the HTML markup responsible for allowing search engines to translate text and content into machine-readable information. In addition to HTML-related schema, attorneys have their own schema which allows search engines to understand the legal industry and its relevant content.
