Local SEO (search engine optimisation) is a term used to describe the influencing factors and processes involved for ranking a business higher in search engines for searches relevant to a firm’s location. For example, a law firm based in London would probably want to be found when people Googled ‘solicitors in London‘ or they might want to be even more specific and optimise their local SEO to include a borough or town within London such as ‘solicitors in Edgware‘.
Local SEO is essential for your law firm’s marketing strategies if you wish to target searches related to the locations of your firm’s offices. Whilst the term ‘local SEO’ is used for this process this is not separate from your law firm’s SEO as a whole. So enhancing your firm’s local SEO will also help your firms overall SEO efforts as well.
How to enhance a law firm’s local SEO
The process for enhancing your law firm’s local SEO begins with citations. Citations are details about your law firm that are listed on other websites. These websites will mainly include legal directories which naturally list law firms as part of their directory listings. These listings will also include your firm’s address and contact information which helps to enhance your local SEO as search engines such as Google can check the details about your firm’s offices across multiple directories which helps them to determine if a firm is genuine.
If your firm is listed across multiple legal directories with consistent and accurate details then search engines can evaluate this information and so this can increase the trust that search engines have related to your firm’s offices, which can then result in better Google rankings for your law firm.
How to get your law firm listed in legal directories
The easiest way to get your law firm listed across multiple legal directories is with a LawFirms.co.uk membership as this includes 11 legal directories. The listings are also automatically synced across the directories so you only need to add the information about your firm once. This information is then synced across all of the directories so that you do not have to enter your address and contact information on multiple websites.
You should also ensure that the details about your law firm are accurate on the SRA website and on the Law Society website too.
We have also created a dedicated article about legal directories which will help to explain why your law firm needs to be listed in legal directories in more detail.
Update your law firm’s Google listings
Even if you have not created a Google account for your law firm and added your firm’s details, you will probably find a listing about your firm in Google. If you do a Google search for your firm’s name then you should see this if it exists.
It is important to claim any listings Google has about your business so that you can then add them to your own Google account. This will also allow you to update the details about your law firm should you need to change the address or contact details in the future.
These listings are very important for your law firm’s local SEO, so it is worth spending the extra time needed to complete all of the information such as office hours, adding images, etc.
If you are not sure where you need to go to add or edit your law firm’s listings with Google you can use this link: Google business listings.
Only use genuine offices
It is important to only use genuine office locations for your law firm. You should not use any postal addresses where you do not actually provide a service from. In other words, if you are not able to meet clients at these locations then you should not add them as this is against Google’s guidelines.
It is fine to have a postal address but these should not be used for local SEO purposes. Only list your actual offices not your mail forwarding offices if you have any of these.
Legal directories such as LawFirms.co.uk will also not accept any office locations that are not listed with the SRA, so trying to use a mailing address to enhance your law firm’s local SEO is unlikely to be very successful.
Positive reviews for your law firm will help with local SEO
It is important to get online reviews for your law firm as these are not only important for impressing potential clients but reviews also help enhance your firm’s SEO too. If search engines such as Google are able to find lots of positive reviews for your law firm, then your firm is more likely to do better in local searches for legal services in your area.
If you have not yet already started to gather reviews for you law firm, then this article will help you to understand why your law firm needs reviews.
If you have already started to gather reviews then this article provides useful information about how you can get more reviews for your law firm.
Ensure your address can be read by Google
Some law firms make the mistake of not allowing their address and contact information to be easily indexed by Google on their website. For example, if you have put your firm’s address or telephone number inside of an image or it is hidden from view with javascript coding, then this usually results in Google not be able to easily read this information.
If Google is not able to read the address and contact information on your firm’s website then this will negatively impact your law firm’s local SEO efforts.
Your address and contact information should be added directly on your firm’s contact page in HTML which is something all search engines can read. If your contact details are hidden in a popup window then there is a good chance that Google and other search engines are not able to read this information.
You should also list your firm’s company details in the footer of your website so that it is shown on every page of your website.
Conclusion of local SEO for your law firm
From the above we have covered what local SEO is and how you can enhance this for your law firm. The steps included:
- Listing your law firm in legal directories
- Updating your Google business listings
- Getting reviews for your law firm
- Ensuring only genuine offices are used for local SEO
- Ensuring that search engines can read your firm’s address and contact information on your firm’s website
Following the above steps should help your law firm to achieve better local SEO results which is very important if you wish to generate more enquires for your law firm.