How to Do SEO for Lawyers Keyword Research 

Are you looking to expand your firm’s reach online? Do you want to be able to connect to more of your prospective clients? Then, obviously, you want to improve your SEO, as SEO for lawyers is one of the most effective ways to grow your online presence. One of the first steps of that is keyword research. But, it can also be one of the most confounding, as it can be difficult to figure out exactly where to start. 

Before you create your content, launch an SEO strategy and so many other important steps, you want to be sure that you’re targeting the right keywords. You probably know some keywords (or some variation of them) off of the top of your head. “Your Area of Expertise + Your Location” is always a good place to start. “Personal injury attorney in Atwater Village,” “Bankruptcy Lawyer in Pasadena,” and so forth. However, that’s just the beginning. Ranking for the best keywords can be a detailed process. 

Straight from Prospective Clients 

To find the best keywords for your firm, you want to hear from prospective clients. That doesn’t mean that you have to talk to them physically, rather, go online and see what they’re saying. For example, you can go to Avvo (or a similar site) and read the questions that people ask there in the Q and A Forum. Avvo is just one example – there are plenty of sites where you can find real questions people ask about the law. 

If you spend any time doing this, you’ll soon begin to notice patterns. Words that prospective clients use more than others, words that come up time and time again. Those maybe your best keywords, they may not. You’ll want to make note of all of these keywords. They’ll come in handy very soon. 

The Right Tools for the Job 

You’re not done just because you have a bunch of possible keywords. It’s natural to want to go off and create a bunch of content from this. But, the next step is to test them. That way, you can find out which of the many, many keywords you collected from the prior step are right for you. The last thing you want is to go for a keyword that you won’t be able to rank for (without spending an absurd amount of money) nor do you want to rank for something that won’t help. 

Omitting the testing phase of keyword research can ruin the whole endeavor and make it like you never did any research at all. So, you want to test them properly. First up, for so many, is Google. Specifically, Google Trends. It’s free (for one) and can show you what consumer trends are. So, you can see if a keyword is being used more or less often. 

Google actually has multiple tools to help you to test potential keywords. “Keyword Planner” is accurately named. There, you’ll be able to see straight info: how many times a keyword has been planned on, the number of impressions, the average cost per click, the cost in general, and much more. 

Sticking with Google, Google Analytics, as well as Google Search Console, can give you some information about keywords. But, there are other effective tools in addition to Google when it comes to testing keywords. For example, if you’re willing to pay, SEMRush and Ahrefs can help you to figure out which keywords might be right for your company. 

Keywords and Intent 

When it comes to finding the right keywords for your law firm, you want to rank for both different keywords as well as different kinds of keywords. For example, some keywords are “informational” in nature. Those are people (or their loved ones) who may be in a particular situation and looking for more information. “What to do if I’m in a car accident,” “when do I file for bankruptcy,” are some kinds of keywords that can educate. 

On the other hand, there are keywords that are transactional in nature, for those that are looking for a lawyer right now. “Personal injury lawyer near me,” “bankruptcy lawyer near me,” and so forth – those folks aren’t necessarily looking to learn more, rather, they’re looking to hire an attorney. To get the most out of your SEO for lawyers, you want to rank for both kinds of keywords. 

SEO for Lawyers Experts 

It’s one thing to do the work mentioned above, it’s something else to do it right. Keyword research can be challenging, with so much info to take in, it’s absolutely the kind of task that lawyers often leave to digital marketing professionals. 

Moreover, even once you’ve done the research, the next step is to create an SEO strategy, to build content (in multiple forms) that’s focused on these keywords. Here at Website Depot, we’ve helped our lawyer clients with all of that and so much more. Our full-service, omnichannel digital marketing agency actually has specific packages for law firms, each of which can be customized to your needs. 

For a free consultation with our SEO for lawyers to see how we can help you rank for the keywords you want, call (888) 477-9540.