SEO for attorneys and law firms is an important online marketing strategy that helps make your law firm more visible to prospective clients. Since most law firms serve clients in their geographic areas, local SEO is important as well. Even if you have multiple offices in various locations throughout your city, the state, or even the nation, each office should have its own local SEO campaigns.

Absolutely, law firm SEO is exceptionally effective. When individuals need legal assistance, their first instinct is typically an online search. By optimizing your website through law firm internet marketing, your firm can achieve higher rankings for relevant queries like “personal injury attorney [city].” This enhanced visibility drives organic traffic directly to the site, connecting your firm to potential clients actively seeking legal services. This process establishes a critical pipeline for new business by ensuring your firm is found precisely when needed.

Effective SEO for lawyers builds authority and trust, establishing your firm as a leading resource in its niche and geographic area, ultimately leading to more client inquiries and case acquisitions, making law firm SEO services a powerful investment.

You have more choices than ever in SEO service providers, from a single consultant to a large digital marketing agency. They each can, to some degree, help put your law firm on the digital map, but just how much they can help grow your client base varies greatly. When you vet law firm SEO providers, do your due diligence as you would with any outside marketing partner: Ask for case studies and references from past and present SEO clients and make sure you won’t be locked into long-term contracts. Also ask to see a sample of the types of reports you’ll receive so you’ll know just how your budget is being spent each month.

Local SEO shares many of the same benefits as organic SEO with the addition of targeting the geographical area of your law firm. With local SEO for law firms, search engines use an algorithm to rank your company so it appears higher in the consumer’s search results. The algorithm rewards companies that have accurate business information, well-written content with relevant keywords, and authoritative links from third-party sites that are directed back to your law firm’s page. Local SEO for law firms makes it easier for consumers within the same vicinity of your business to find your firm.

Local SEO is paramount for law firms because legal services are fundamentally location-specific. When someone searches for an attorney, they are almost always looking for one nearby. Local SEO optimizes a firm’s online presence to appear prominently in local search results and map packs. This involves optimizing your law firm’s Google Business Profiles, obtaining local citations, securing localized reviews, and strategically working in target keywords that are actively being searched by people in the local area who are looking for legal services, all crucial components of effective law firm internet marketing.

For an attorney in a specific city, appearing at the top of local searches for “attorney near me” or “criminal defense lawyer [city name]” directly translates to more direct inquiries and new client consultations.

Early results from an SEO for lawyers campaign will depend on the quality of your site. If your website requires many updates to fully optimize it, then it can take several months for your law firm to gain some traction over your competitors. If your law firm’s online presence was already well ranked, you must continue to update it with new and relevant content and add authoritative third-party links to keep the positive results coming in. Well-ranked sites should see positive results a lot sooner than law firm’s with sites that needed more attention. 

For law firm PPC, positive results can be seen relatively quickly. Unlike SEO, which is a long-term strategy that begins with establishing a solid foundation both on- and off-site and is sustained over time with content creation, paid search is fast and direct. Ads are placed and landing pages are created, then as performance is monitored, adjustments are made to increase conversion rates.

Our month-to-month reporting will be presented to you in a clear and informative way to ensure your campaign is performing. We communicate with you to make sure you not only understand what we are doing but why we are doing it. Each month, you can expect to see the following services:

• Keyword research to help understand who is looking for an attorney in your area. 
• SEO optimization to ensure your law firm is well ranked amongst search engines. 
• A well-thought-out link-building strategy to ensure authoritative sites are linking back to your business. 
• Content development that appeals to your target audience and improves your search rankings. This content can include material like blog posts, additional web pages, how-to guides, and checklists.

At DAGMAR, we specialize in local SEO for law firms. Unlike many other agencies, we know exactly what to include in your strategy specific to law marketing and ensure you get the best return on your investment. Below is what our local SEO for law clients can expect to receive: 

• A strategy that is customized for your firm, and that will be continuously monitored and updated with today’s constantly-changing marketplace.
• Detailed and easy-to-understand reporting that highlights your campaign’s performance and shows exactly how your budget is being spent.
• A reliable project manager to help with day-to-day inquiries and communication. 
• Content that is both high-quality and will build an authoritative online presence for your law firm.
• Better-qualified leads to help your business reach its goals.

When you utilize tactics that exist naturally within the SEO ecosystem, such as creating authoritative content and increasing the speed of your website, these tactics are “white hat” SEO at work. White hat tactics are sustainable and require long-term maintenance for a well-ranked site.

Tactics like link-building schemes, machine-generated content, and fake authority signals that trick the search engines’ algorithms, are known as “black hat” SEO. These strategies will result in a quick spike in results but aren’t effective for long-term quality performance.

At DAGMAR, we focus solely on white hat tactics to help our clients reach their long-term goals.

To put it simply, Google and other search engines reward high-quality and relevant content. For both local and organic SEO law strategies, these search engines look for well-written content that provides value to the reader. If your content isn’t up to par, it will be low (if at all) in the consumer’s search results. Similar to link building, this is why content development takes up a significant amount of your SEO budget.

At DAGMAR, we are constantly producing high-quality, long-form content such as blog posts, how-to guides, checklists, and web pages centered around relevant topics and information to law firms and their audiences. Not only does this help attract prospective local clients, but it also positions you as an authority in your industry.

Link building is very important for well-executed SEO for law firm. In order to have a well-ranked site, you need authoritative links from relevant third parties directing back to your pages. Search engines look for these reputable links and rank your site according to the links that are affiliated with your firm. Though time-consuming, a solid link-building strategy will greatly benefit your law firm’s SEO campaign performance. Many law firms spend a fair portion of their monthly budgets on link-building strategies.

Law firm SEO costs can vary widely, typically ranging from $2,000 to over $10,000 per month. This broad spectrum depends on factors such as market competition, the specific locations targeted, the array of services being promoted, and the firm’s overall marketing goals.

Be cautious of extremely low-budget campaigns; these might indicate services are being outsourced to agencies with questionable standards or the use of “black hat” SEO tactics. While such techniques might yield quick, temporary results, they are highly susceptible to being penalized by search engines, ultimately costing the client more in the long run through lost visibility and reputation damage, underscoring the value of reputable law firm SEO services.

A professionally built, custom website is a significant investment for a law firm’s internet marketing presence. Designed to last up to a decade, it truly reflects the integrity of their business. When individuals seek legal counsel, a high-quality website instills confidence and showcases the firm’s professionalism. Expect to pay in the range of $10,000 to $30,000 for such a site.

The site must be optimized for speed and user-friendliness, seamlessly integrating the best practices when it comes to SEO for lawyers, and without excessive design that could hinder performance. Beware of proprietary builder sites where you don’t own the work; this can effectively hold your website hostage and limit the flexibility of future law firm SEO that can be done on the site.