In the modern era of divorce law, it’s no longer just about how good you are, who you know, or what billboards your firm is on. It’s about your digital presence. More specifically, it’s about your search engine optimization or SEO. That’s where Civille can help with our 2023 SEO guide for divorce law firms. Learn the current state of SEO in your field and what you should be doing in 2023.
Best SEO Practices For Your Divorce Firm’s Website
There is a lot to SEO these days, and in truth, not all of it happens on your website. However, if your divorce firm’s website isn’t optimized first, you are going to have a hard time ranking for anything even if everything else is up to par. Let’s take a look at what your website should be doing.
Speed is of the Essence
Google has long held that site speed is a ranking factor and as the world shifts to mobile, this has only become more true. We’ve seen it firsthand. A site gets modified to include some flashy functionality or an un-optimized video, the site speed plummets, and shortly after the site ranking plummets too.
What you need is a site that is fast, loads functionality quickly, and is completely loaded in just a couple of seconds. Even with modern Internet speeds, that is a goal that is hard to accomplish. With the right tech though, it is possible. For example, even with all the complexity of the Amazon homepage, it still loads in about 3 seconds on mobile. A good law firm website should be even faster, and you don’t get there by making a bland and boring site. You get there by choosing the right website platform. You can test out your page speed for yourself using Google’s own PageSpeed Insights tool.
Mobile First Web Design
Mobile first web design is nothing new. You probably remember a time when sites still had a desktop version and a mobile version. That was all well and good several years ago. But if you have a site like that now, you need to make some changes. Originally, Google rewarded this practice. Now it penalizes any practice that serves users different content experiences depending on their device.
A solution to that was accelerated mobile pages, also known as AMP. This basically served mobile users a slightly stripped-down version of the site with all the content intact. This tech was actually developed by Google and it was everywhere for a while. AMP has since died off with some platforms no longer supporting it altogether. To future-proof your site, it’s better to rely on one singular version that is fast and shows well across all devices.
Use the Appropriate Schema on Your Website
Schema is a silent part of SEO. Any site can use schema. Without looking at the code, even a skilled SEO expert isn’t going to know which sites do utilize it and which sites don’t. You can think of schema like labels that you might use to organize a cabinet. Except these are labels that only search engines like Google can see and they label certain parts of your content..
There are schemas for a variety of things including small businesses or even page types like FAQs. Having these in place will signal to Google all the most important information and give that information context which in turn will help that information show up in search and can even lead to rich search results. Search results like this will surface more information to potential clients and take up more screen real estate in search.
Go Keyword Hunting
Are you getting outranked by some of your local competitors for divorce terms? If you know you have all your other ducks in a row with page speed and site design, then perhaps it’s time that you did some competitor SEO research. Find out what other terms they are ranking for and go after them. It has always been the case in SEO that most of the battle is just knowing what you are up against and finding a way to do it better.
There are many tools that can make this process faster and provide full maps of all the keywords that your competitors are ranking for. To start with just try local queries in Google and see what comes up. Do some further research on each page that’s beating you for the keywords that matter. What type of content does the page have? What keywords is it optimized for? Is there anything it is doing better than pages you already have on your site? Once you have that information, it will be much easier to craft a content marketing strategy that’s designed to get you ahead of those competitors.
Get Listed
An often overlooked part of SEO for divorce law firms is simply making sure you are listed in all the proper places. This includes legal directories like Avvo, Nolo, and FindLaw, but also your state bar associations website, and review websites like Yelp. Having a link to your website out there in these reputable places doesn’t just help people stumble across your site in more ways but it gives your site valuable links which lead to a stronger ranking signal. This will help everything rank.
If you know you are already listed in those places, then it’s still a good idea to routinely check up on them and make sure your URL and firm name are correct and any address or contact info doesn’t need to be updated.
The 20 Best Family Law Firm Websites of 2023
Differentiate Your Divorce Law Firm
There are a lot of lawyers out there, and many of them are divorce and family law attorneys. Recent statistics show that there are over 55,000 divorce attorneys currently practicing. If you want to succeed, especially with a solo or small practice, then you have to stand out from the crowd, and there are a few ways to do that.
Have a Unique Website
If people are looking for a divorce lawyer, they are often going to shop around. This means looking at multiple lawyers and multiple websites. You want a website that leaves an impression. If you are a solo firm or even a small firm with just a couple of attorneys, then it’s always a good move to put your face or faces out front. People are looking for someone that they can relate to as they go through this difficult time.
The problem with that is, almost everyone in divorce already has the same idea. Putting your face out there isn’t enough. You need a smart and sleek website design with easy navigation and a strong brand that is present throughout all your materials from your website and social media to the signage on your building. Search engine optimization isn’t just about getting your website to show on search, it is about generating clicks, leads, and clients too.
Specialize Your Firm and Your Keywords
If you want to differentiate yourself further, then think about what your specialties are. Would you prefer to build more uncontested divorce cases? Have you had success with child custody cases? Tune your SEO towards that and build pages, content marketing, and social media presence to emphasize any specialties that you may have. If the competition is too strong to get into a good search position for divorce in your area, then maybe you can rank for one of your specialties in the field.
Leverage Content Marketing for Big Gains
Having a good website with solid SEO and a smart URL structure is going to help you rank, but having a strong content marketing plan can put you over the top. Recurring content that speaks to your practice areas, helps people answer questions, or even just speaks to your local audience can give your traffic a significant boost along with your potential for leads.
Take a look at these results on this divorce firm’s website. Of their top three pages for organic traffic, two of them are blog pages and they are outranking the homepage. All of those users are people that would have likely never found that site without those blog pages.
Keep in mind that content marketing does take time to build traffic like this, but when it does, the work it does for organic ranking is huge. What’s even better, is each piece of content keeps working for you, earning traffic, long after you’ve paid for it.
Local Content For Local Clients
Some law firms can provide services nationwide, but divorce attorneys will always be looking for local clients and to get local clients you need a local edge. Something that more divorce lawyers should be tapping into is a content marketing strategy that includes local content.
Local content may not always have a legal focus. Instead, it connects with local customers when they are in need of local information. We are talking about things like 4th of July firework times and viewing areas, Halloween trick-or-treating times, and where to go to cut down a Christmas tree.
None of those topics are guaranteed to bring in people looking for a divorce, but they are guaranteed to bring in people in your local area who could become clients one day. It keeps your brand and firm top of mind. it can also boost your local rankings for other search terms as well.
Setup, Optimize, and Maintain Your Google Business Profile
In days long past, search engine optimization only happened on your site. The times have changed. Now you not only want your website to be search engine optimized, but you also want your Google Business Profile to be optimized as well.
If you don’t know what your Google Business Profile is, then you should change that as soon as possible. Your Google Business Profile (GBP), which used to be known as Google My Business (GMB), will show up in search and in map searches on Google. This could be the first impression your brand leaves on a potential client before they even get to your website, especially for searches on mobile.
Even if you’ve never set up a GBP yourself, you may already have one. Google often identifies businesses and creates profiles for any business it finds that is lacking a profile. You can claim that profile or create a new one if one doesn’t exist. You may have to verify your location. In years past, this usually meant Google would send a postcard, though now they may require photographic evidence of your location or even video verification.
Google Business Profile Guide for Lawyers
Appearing in the Three Pack of Search
Google is always changing how it surfaces search results to searchers. Over time, its map feature has only grown in prominence in search, especially searches with a local focus. This has led to the coveted 3-pack.
You’ve probably seen this before. Google will provide three organic search results—sometimes with a sponsored result above the three—accompanied by a map. Being in this three-pack is a powerful position with quick links to not just the website and directions, but your GBP will show if you click anywhere else on your business’s tile. Placement within the three-pack is powered in part by website SEO but mostly by GBP optimization.
Manage Reviews and Respond to Messages
Not only does Google allow users to leave reviews on your profile, but it allows you to respond to and even occasionally remove reviews. It’s good to respond to most if not all of your reviews, even the negative ones, and when you think a review is illegitimate, there are ways you can go about having those reviews removed.
Read More: Responding to and Removing Google Reviews for Lawyers
It’s also important that you solicit those reviews when you can. Just settled a divorce with a happy customer? Include a link to review your services in an email follow-up. Google is finding more ways to surface your review score and even individual reviews in search. Not only will having a high score help convince people to click through to your site, but it’s also a known ranking factor. If your score is low, you might find yourself stuck not ranking.
Currently, Google claims that responding to messages in a timely manner isn’t a ranking factor, but we do know that response time is something that Google is not only tracking but also surfacing to people using search. Having a fast response time will increase engagement and it could, in the future, impact your ranking as well.
The Civille Solution
This is all a lot. SEO is always a complex field that is ever-changing and unique to every industry and business. Just because a strategy worked for one divorce attorney doesn’t mean it will work for another.
This is where Civille comes in. We have a lightning fast mobile-first website platform, have real legal experts writing content marketing, and we can manage your Google Business Profile too. If you are interested in any of our digital services in legal reach out today!
