SEO for Estate Planning Lawyers

Are you searching for new ways to increase website visitors for your estate planning law firm?

Perhaps you have found that the cost of PPC and other paid advertising methods is beginning to rise, or you are no longer seeing the return on investment you once were.

Luckily, there is a way for you to drive more traffic to your law firm’s website organically via search engine optimization.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most effective ways to ensure that your law firm receives as much traffic as possible from local people searching for estate planning attorneys.

However, while the results certainly are impressive, correctly setting up SEO strategy for your estate planning law firm requires a lot of expertise and is very labor intensive Ranking on the first search results page does not just happen, and all law firm websites will be competing for the same spot in the search engine ranking.

So, if you want to rank highly for local searches for estate planning lawyers on Google or other search engines, read the information below about how you can improve your digital marketing efforts.

The Benefits of an Effective Estate Planning Attorney SEO Strategy

Building an effective SEO strategy has several key benefits. Ensuring your estate planning law firm appears on the first page when people search relevant terms in your area is crucial for your firm’s survival and growth. A study from HubSpot showed that 75% of those who search online never go past the first page.

You cannot expect potential clients to put in the time and effort to find your website if you are not putting the same effort into creating content that ranks on the first search engine results page.

However, if you do put the time and effort in and devise a comprehensive SEO strategy as part of your law firm’s digital marketing plan, there are several benefits:

Increased organic traffic to your law firm’s website
More potential clients interacting with your law firm
Increased return on investment
Getting more clients than other local estate planning law firms.

The Main Elements of SEO for Estate Planning Lawyers

A law firm’s SEO success is intertwined with the performance of its website. Four main aspects make up a law firm’s SEO performance on its website, which includes:

Keyword Research: Keyword research includes searching for target keywords that relate to your estate planning audience, have a high volume of searches, and have low competition.
Website Optimization: Website optimization includes creating a constant stream of insightful, relevant content that your audience will find useful. This aspect will tie in closely with your keyword research. This also includes optimizing content and ensuring your law firm’s website is intuitive to navigate.
Local SEO: Local SEO efforts ensure that you rank highly with potential clients in your area, which is an essential aspect of an SEO marketing strategy for a law firm. You don’t want to focus on ranking well in Washington if your practice is in Ohio!
Backlinking: Backlinking involves accruing high-quality, authoritative backlinks from other websites, as it shows Google you are a reputable source of information on estate planning.

Keyword Research for Estate Planning Lawyers

First, let’s look at the importance of keyword research for your on-page SEO. Any estate planning firm should conduct keyword research to ensure they rank well for local search results relevant to their field of expertise.

Keyword tools usually aren’t free, so you must allocate some budget toward leveraging the right tools. However, when used well, they can help improve your search rankings and ensure more prospective clients see your law firm’s website.

Some of the best and most popular tools include:

The best keywords for your legal services must be relevant to your firm, offer good traffic levels, and not have too much competition.

Tips for your keyword research

Keyword research is not easy in any industry, regardless of your SEO knowledge. Unfortunately, it is even more challenging in the legal industry, which has quickly grown to become one of the most competitive industries for SEO.

As well as identifying keywords you want to chase down for your estate planning practice, you should also identify keywords your competition ranks for. This process will identify areas you should spend less time trying to rank for and opportunities where you can beat your opposition.

Estate Planning Law Firm Website Optimization

When discussing website optimization, it can be easy to get lost in technical jargon and confused by what needs to be done.

To keep things simple, your primary focus should be how responsive your website is. To do this, you must use the right imagery type and size and ensure videos are compressed, so they do not affect page loading times.

Once you have ensured that each page loads quickly, you can start looking at more advanced website optimization techniques.

How to structure your navigation bar

The next thing to look at is the navigation bar. How your website is structured and where certain aspects appear within the navigation bar can have significant effect on your SEO score.

Your estate planning law firm’s website navigation bar should be organized and logical, allowing visitors to move through each section seamlessly.

What’s the best navigation bar layout?

Well, think about it this way. When potential clients come to your practice’s website, you want them to find your services quickly and easily. Therefore, they should appear on the far left of your top navigation bar.

Some firms get tempted into putting their About Us section first, but for practicality and SEO purposes, it should be your services, as it sends Google more signs you are authoritative in this area.

Put user experience first

Think of your website like you think of your law firm. When you have a client, you always put their wants and needs first. You have to take that same mindset into building your website.

You should search for ways to offer the best user experience across your website. The easier your website is to navigate and use, the more comfortable a potential client will be exploring each page, making them more likely to retain your law firm’s services.

Not only that, but a top-quality user experience is starting to play a more prominent role in SEO rankings. As the Google ranking algorithm continues to advance and improve, more emphasis is being placed on user experience and how much they engage with your content.

That role will only increase as the algorithm continues to evolve, so focusing on good user experience now is also future-proofing your website.

The Importance of High-value Content for Estate Planning Law Firms

A blog packed with high-quality content is an essential component of your law firm’s overall SEO strategy. The more frequently you provide high-quality content, the more impact it will have on Google ranking for your law practice. Google rewards any website that often updates content if it is insightful and engaging.

When you continue to publish relevant and valuable content, you will develop a strong audience of readers, which will further improve your SEO ranking score.

The Importance of Page Speed

Page load speed has long been an essential part of any website’s Google SEO rank, and it shows no signs of reducing its impact any time soon.

Google likes to promote websites that offer a fast experience for users, as the quicker the page loads, the less likely a reader is to click away and go somewhere else. It doesn’t matter if your website is packed with fantastic and insightful content — if it takes ages to load, potential clients will quickly head to another website.

Today speed is everything. Our brains are wired to digest content as quickly as possible, and website loading speeds need to reflect those requirements.

Local SEO for Estate Planning Lawyers

For a successful local SEO plan, you must ensure your content, page details, and other aspects are optimized for your location.

To achieve this you will need content optimized for the geographical area where your firm is physically located. If you have several offices, you must create unique pages for each one, highlighting the location information, or you will miss out on ranking well for your local audiences.

Tips for successful local SEO

An accurate Google Business Profile Listing

The first thing you must do to have a successful local SEO ranking is to complete your Google Business Profile and ensure all your information is up to date. Google values this step, and estimates you are twice as likely to be deemed reputable when this information is in place.

As part of your Google Business Profile, ensure the information matches what is available on your website. That should include your estate planning law firm’s name, address, and other essential aspects. If the information doesn’t match, it can negatively impact your local SEO score.

Client Reviews

Reviews play an instrumental part in your overall SEO ranking, and gathering them is essential for Google to see you are a reputable source of estate planning law information.

Therefore, you should always ask happy clients for a review. Having no reviews will reflect poorly on your brand and could count against you.

While no reviews can undoubtedly harm your law firm’s performance on Google, writing fake reviews is even worse. You should never write fake positive reviews for your law firm or negative reviews for your competitors.

It might seem like a bright idea at the time, but your law firm’s credibility will be irreparably damaged if you get caught. Instead, focus on how you plan to respond to a negative review. If you get a bad review, don’t ignore it and hope it goes away. Equally, don’t take positive reviews for granted! Take time to thank them for their review. Not only does this increase engagement, but it also may lead to more referrals in the future.

Link Building

Finally, you must undertake link-building to tie your entire SEO plan together. SEO for lawyers will only work to a certain extent without also sourcing high-quality inbound links or backlinks.

These links are set on other reputable websites and point back to yours. Inbound links must come from various domains and must be relevant to your estate planning law firm. Otherwise, they will have no impact on your Google ranking.

Low-quality links could even hurt your ranking.

Finding the Right SEO Agency for Your Estate Planning Law Firm

Not every SEO marketing agency will offer you the same level of support. When you are trying to identify the perfect partner for high-quality SEO, you must do plenty of research beforehand.

Any trustworthy SEO agency will be more than happy to answer any questions you might have, so don’t be afraid to ask as many as you need!

Here are some questions you should ask before signing up with an SEO partner.

Do they have previous SEO success?

Does the SEO marketing agency have testimonials from previous clients you can view? No testimonials should be a warning sign that they might not be the most experienced agency in law SEO marketing.

At Gladiator Law Marketing, we pride ourselves on our client satisfaction rate. You can check out our range of testimonials from clients just like you.

How will they track success?

Before partnering with any company, you must establish how they plan on tracking your SEO performance.

Before you get started, understand what metrics your chosen agency will use for success and ensure they line up with your thoughts and expectations.

Is the marketing agency experienced in law marketing?

As you already know, the law industry is unique! What might work in other industries as an SEO strategy is not guaranteed to work in the estate planning law industry.

Fortunately, Gladiator Law Marketing works exclusively with law firms just like yours, so we are highly experienced and well-equipped to offer you the best possible support.

What specific SEO services do they offer?

While you might assume that an SEO marketing law firm will offer you every aspect of SEO support, that isn’t necessarily the case.

Some SEO marketing law firms may only provide content marketing support, whereas others may only focus on technical SEO.

At Gladiator Law Marketing, we know you want one SEO marketing team to handle all your SEO needs, which is why we have a team of experts covering every SEO aspect of estate planning law.

Hire Experts for Your Estate Planning Legal SEO Campaign

With many potential clients searching exclusively online for their next estate planning law firm, you must implement more than just keyword research to ensure your website outranks your competitors.

Get in touch with us today to ensure you have the best chance of beating other law firms for the top spot.

FAQs For Law Firm SEO

Why is SEO for estate planning lawyers important?

SEO is essential for estate planning lawyers, as it helps you rank higher than your competitors online, the primary way your potential clients search for your services.

Does my estate planning law firm’s website need a blog?

If your website does not have a blog, you miss out on the opportunity to rank higher on Google, generate more leads for your business, and increase your brand authority and reputation.

SEO for Estate Planning Lawyers

How to Rank Highly On Google