When a criminal defense lawyer is setting up a website for their law firm, one of the best strategies to make it successful is to employee various marketing strategies. One of the best ways to make it shine is to look into search engine optimization (SEO). This method of marketing is relatively new, but that newness does not diminish how impactful it is for law firm websites at all. But what does SEO entail? And how can technical search engine optimization be best used to maximize its potential for your website?
7 Top Technical SEO Tips For Criminal Defense Lawyers
Hire Quality Writers
This is the first step to take when trying to do SEO right. In the grand scheme of things, SEO is not rocket science, but it is not a simple thing either. There is an art to it, one that you have to figure out through trial and error that writers experienced with SEO have picked up. Besides knowing the ins and outs of SEO, they also are able to create well-written and well-researched articles, both of which are a true necessity for a good website. It also pays to ensure that the SEO writer you hire understands the legal world and has an excellent grasp of English or the desired language of the required content.
Don't Keyword Stuff
Keywords are a vital part of the SEO process, as if your keywords are not properly optimized, you run the risk of not being able to place highly on the Google search engine. But the mistake people make with SEO is that they go too far with the keywords. While keywords are important, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Not only will readers be able to discern how unnaturally it reads with the same keyword stuffed so much through the article, but Google will pick up on the unnatural aspects of the article. This is the last thing you want to have happen, as Google may deindex the website for trying to game the system. This is not a permanent process, but you will have to put in a lot of time and effort to get it back on Google.
Find The Keyword That Is Just Right
Finding the right keyword will do a ton to help your webpage rank highly in the Google search engine, but how does that work? Well, basically, you want to ensure that you can compete in relevant searches. For instance, "criminal defense lawyer" is probably too general a search for you, as you would be competing with much bigger law firms. However, you also do not want to be too specific, as you run the risk of not reaching anyone at all.
Feature Interesting Content
No matter how much of your articles are designed to drive traffic to your website, you should still try to make compelling content that people want to read. If the content is trash, it will not take a discerning eye to figure out. And frankly? People have no interest in working with a company that used rubbish content to get them to come to your website. Content is king and quality is key for website SEO success.
Content should be varied, and you should make sure that you do not make too many of the same kinds of articles. Of course, make sure that the content is relevant, but in an industry like law, especially criminal law, there is more potential content than you could shake a stick at. You could talk about crime rates, you could talk about crime prevention measures, you could even talk about the reason why crime manifests in certain places and circumstances — complete with peer-reviewed studies cited to boot. Not only will having a variety of interesting, quality content help you get people to stay on your website, but it also gives your website a reputation for that quality content.
Optimize Your Website
This is certainly a good thing to do in general, but it actually does a world of good for your SEO strategy as well. Let's say that your SEO strategy caused a potential customer to click on an article from Google. Great! But unfortunately, your website has long load times, or it is clunky to use, or there are too many images, or too few images, or any number of other issues. Regardless of what problem your website has, readers are not exactly patient. If you cannot engage them in the most efficient way, they will just go back to Google and look for a different website to solve their problems. Google takes note of this "pogo sticking" action away from your site to a competitors website and adjusts their search engine ranking accordingly.
Choose A Neutral Design
Website design is an important part of SEO, as there are certain expectations of what a law firm, criminal defense law firm or not, should look. A video game website can afford to have bright, striking colors, but for a law firm? You should avoid going with anything too garish. It may give the wrong impression to the people you want to sell your services to, and that is the last thing you want to do. You do not want to be too boring with your website design though, just try to pick what will offend your viewers least. The best way to do this is below in the next and final technical SEO tip.
Consider Other Website Designs (Without Forgetting Your Identity)
Keep an open mind and consider other website designs than your current webpage. You may even want to look outside of the law industry for SEO friendly web design inspiration. But overall, using other successful law firm websites' designs as a concept for your own site is a good idea. Not only does it help you get an idea of what color scheme works best, but it also helps you figure out a good layout for your website. However, one of the biggest risks with this strategy is that you may utilize these designs to too great an extent. Using what works well is an important thing, but if you are just going to do a copy and paste job of another website, then there simply is no identity involved in that. You need to make sure that for all the things you take, that you ensure that your website has aspects to the design that makes you stand out from the rest. If you cannot do that much, it may not bode well for your criminal defense law firm's online prospects. The best way to do this is to get SEO for criminal defense attorneys services, who will help you do all of these tips, and successfully.
