Making sure your law firm is easily found online should be one of your biggest areas of focus for your marketing efforts. But that’s certainly easier said than done. While most lawyers and firms inch their way up Google’s results’ pages through paid advertising, there’s only so much budget you’re willing to spend on ads.

Factoring in that legal terms are among the most expensive keywords to bid on, you can see why so many lawyers look for other marketing strategies to complement paid ads.

Enter search engine optimization (SEO).

By implementing a highly-targeted SEO strategy for your law firm, you can rank high on Google’s results pages for searches related to the services you offer. This, in turn, will increase organic traffic to the pages of your site that web surfers are most interested in reading.

Here are three strategies our SEO agency uses to get better leads for lawyers; you can use them too.

1. Create Dedicated Pages for Each of Your Services

When you’re trying to rank high on Google, the goal isn’t necessarily to make your entire site rank high. The goal is to make each of your pages rank high for specific keywords. You can achieve this through dedicated service pages.

Take, for example, a personal injury lawyer. The average personal injury lawyer likely sees a variety of clients and cases including:

• Car accident victims
• Worker’s comp cases
• Slip and fall cases
• Dog bite cases

And so on. A common approach we’ve seen lawyers use when building their website is to have one main PRACTICE AREA page that highlights each of these specific areas of focus.

But that’s just the first step. You’ll never rank for terms like “Dog Bite Lawyer” if you don’t have a page dedicated just to that area of focus. So, while you should still have the main PRACTICE AREA page (that highlights what you do), that page should provide links to dedicated pages for each of your individual services. Check out this example:

Users who land on this main page can choose which type of personal injury pertains to them. And not only will the user then land on a page that relates to their search, but that page will have an easier time ranking for key terms.

You can do this for each of your practice areas, meaning, in the end, you could end up with dozens of pages. That’s a good thing; each of those pages has a chance of ranking for their targeted keywords.

2. Backlink Your Way to the Top

Google wants to give its readers good content. One of the ways it deems a site as “good for its users” is by the number of quality backlinks pointing at the site.

The key here is quality (and not quantity).

If for example, a reputable publication or influential, well-known legal mind, links back to a page on your website, Google will interpret that as that web page clearly has something worthy to offer, and will reward you with a higher ranking.

So, how do you get folks and sites to link back to your site?

One clever way is to use statistics and quotes–in your content–from folks you want to have link to you.

For example, let’s say you write a blog post about what to do in the minutes following a car accident (in the hopes of attracting potential car accident victim clients). Within that blog post, you could add a relevant quote or statistic from a reputable source (Consumer Reports, Kelly Blue Book, your local police department, etc.). You could then let that cited source know of your blog post through social media advertising in the hopes that they’ll not only promote that post on their own platforms but will add a link to it from their own website.

3. Everyone Talks About Legal Issues. Get Involved in the Conversation!

The internet is all about current news, which is why Google ranks trending topics high.

Take advantage of this through your website’s blog. Find out what legal topics are trending (Facebook, Twitter, and Google Trends are all great resources for this) and add your voice to the conversation. Not only will this increase your website traffic, but it’ll also help you come across as an expert in your field.

Let’s say, for example, someone is searching worker’s compensation-related terms. While they may come across your service page that focuses on this topic, they might also find a recent blog post you wrote about a newsworthy topic related to workers comp.

This blog post might be more attractive to them – depending on where they are in their buyer’s journey – and could be the reason they land on your site. If the blog post is designed properly (with a call to action) then it could convert that reader into a qualified lead.

SEO is Still a Great Tool to Reach Prospects

While there are many intricacies involved in SEO, one thing to remember is this: if you give your readers good, quality content that’s related to their search, Google will find a way to reward you.

Test out the strategies outlined before to improve your overall SEO strategy and get more qualified leads landing on your site.