8 Small Business SEO Tips For Lawyers

With 80 percent of internet users ignoring paid advertisements, pay per click ads are no longer the best option for attorneys in small firms. You need small business SEO that can bring in new clients through organic search results. While local business SEO is both cheaper and more likely to pay off in the long run than pay per click ads, most law firms are not effectively using it. Here, you'll learn the tips that professional small business SEO services use when designing optimized websites.

Small Business SEO Tip 1: Monitor Your Speed

One of the biggest tricks that small business SEO services can use to improve your website's conversion rate is improving its speed. But you may not know that today, local business SEO actually depends in part on your speed. Google now tracks speed when trying to determine which search results to deliver first.

Because speed is important, you'll want to make sure that your small business SEO website is hosted by a good hosting provider (don't use cheap hosting like GoDaddy for your local business SEO—it may seem inexpensive in the near term, but could end up being significantly more expensive in the long run). If you're having speed issues and can't figure out why, small business SEO services may be able to pinpoint the cause, whether it's a bad piece of code in your website or a problem with your hosting provider.

Small Business SEO Tip 2: Write a Blog

On average, companies that blog have over 400 percent more indexed pages than those that don't. Keeping a blog increases the effectiveness of your local business SEO substantially. What's more, the kind of services that law firms supply lend themselves very well to blogging.

While small business SEO services can actually write your blog content for you, it's probably better for your local business SEO efforts if you write your content yourself. You'll know more about the topics being covered in your blog, which will mean your small business SEO blog will get linked by more bloggers and show up sooner in search results.

Small Business SEO Tip 3: Let Your Personality Shine Through

Part of the reason you should work on your local business SEO blog yourself, instead of letting small business SEO services handle it, is that you can use your blog to highlight your personality as an attorney. Not only will this be more likely to bring in inbound links, which will help your small business SEO immensely, it'll also convert more clients.

This is why you should never have a blog that's authored anonymously or authored by your firm as an entity. Your local business SEO won't work nearly as well this way, because people won't be able to get a feel for who you are. Make sure that any small business SEO services you're using understand what your blog's objectives are, and monitor any content they develop for your blog closely if they write any posts.

Small Business SEO Tip 4: Think Local

Small business SEO services today are pointing to local business SEO as the wave of the future. Small business SEO used to be much more difficult than it is today, because the largest companies could easily occupy the first page of search results, leaving no room for their smaller competitors. Local business SEO makes it easier for you to get those first page SERPs with quality content.

Today, small business SEO means that you'll need a Google+ Local page and to fill out all of your information with services like Yelp and Avvo. This kind of local business SEO will ensure that your website gets better page ranks, and if you're not sure how to make these profiles, small business SEO services can help you set up a profile inexpensively.

Small Business SEO Tip 5: Think Mobile

Today's traffic for local business SEO sites is very likely to come from a mobile phone. If your website isn't smartphone ready, you may want small business SEO services to help you optimize it. This kind of traffic may actually be responsible for more local business SEO clicks than traditional desktop computer web traffic within 12 to 24 months.

Small Business SEO Tip 6: Keep Your Audience In Mind

When you're working on your local business SEO site, think about the way that your potential clients will see the website. Think of how ordinary people talk and process information, and your small business SEO will work much better. Lawyers are often prone to speaking in jargon or technical terms, which can make their text unlikely to draw in new business. Small business SEO services can help you to de-mystify your website if it may be driving people away.

Small Business SEO Tip 7: Use Latent Semantic Indexing

A new way of using keywords is becoming increasingly common in local business SEO. Many small business SEO services now use latent semantic indexing, or LSI, to improve SERPs. Using LSI for your small business SEO means that you use, instead of one keyword phrase over and over, six or seven different keyword phrases that are closely related. Each phrase is used only two or three times at most.

Small Business SEO Tip 8: Choose Your Social Media Wisely

Unless you've got a big budget for small business SEO services, you probably don't have the time or the money to use all of the major social media and social bookmarking websites out there. You need to decide based on your audience and your competition which social media sites to use.

Twitter is a very fast way to see your search engine results get much better in a hurry. When deciding between LinkedIn and Facebook, choose LinkedIn if your practice is mostly B2B, Facebook if it's mostly B2C. If you already use a social bookmarking site like StumbleUpon or Reddit, use that same website for more inbound links—you'll already know the etiquette and how to have a great post.