2022 SEO for Lawyers Ranking Guide

Did you know that Google uses over 200 ranking factors to determine a website’s placement on search result pages? However, no one can tell exactly what all these ranking factors are except the search giant. As a result, many solicitors seek the best and most reliable SEO for lawyers ranking guide to boost their chances of securing a higher search ranking in 2022. 

As more and more people use the Internet to find quality legal services, law firms like yours must understand how Google ranks a website. This will help you identify the best approach for optimising your site for SEO. At Kinetic Traffic, we have put together a quick guide to help you understand several key Google ranking factors and develop the best SEO strategy. 

1. Core Web Vitals

Core web vitals are three crucial metrics that measure web page experience. They are: 

• Largest contentful paint (LCP) – how long it takes a page to load from a web user’s perspective.
• First input delay (FID) – the time it takes for a web visitor to interact with your site, such as filling out a field or clicking on a drop-down menu.
• Cumulative layout shift (CLS) – the webpage’s “visual stability” (if the page elements stay in place) as it loads.

To improve your search ranking, you’d want to provide web visitors with the best user experience possible by improving your site’s core web vitals. You can do this by: 

1. Implementing “lazy loading”, which allows web pages to load images as visitors scroll down. Besides keeping your LCP score high, it can also boost your site’s SEO and overall performance, reduce your bounce rate, and limit your bandwidth usage.
2. Optimising and compressing web images to improve your site’s loading speed and LCP score.
3. Setting the correct dimensions of images and embedded content to help web browsers allocate the proper amount of space as the page loads.
4. Improving your server response time.

2. Relevance

As the name implies, relevance refers to how well a search result matches what a user is looking for. To make your website more relevant, ensure that you provide your legal practice’s complete business information. This will help Google understand your law firm’s website better and match it to relevant searches 

To further boost your website’s relevance, consider these factors: 

• Geo-relevance – your proximity to your target audience.
• Content relevance – does your content provide users with the information they are looking for?
• Keyword relevance – ensure that your web pages have relevant search terms in their title, content, category, URLs, and meta description, amongst other crucial locations.

3. Domain Authority

Before, domain authority was all about links. The older your site is and the more websites link to yours, the more domain authority you have. True, Google still uses backlinks and your site’s age to gauge your domain authority. However, it also now measures your site’s expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (EAT) to determine its search ranking. 

a. Publish expertly written content

Google seeks to provide web users with the most accurate and valuable content. For this reason, it is encouraging site owners to publish content written by legitimate experts in their field. This means if you want to rank in 2022, ensure that your content is created by legal experts. 

b. Be transparent

With its updated Domain Authority guidelines, Google expects websites to provide information about the people responsible for them. Therefore, you should:

• Create an extensive “About” page.
• Ensure that your contact page is easy to find.
• Provide references and external links to your sources.
• Provide a privacy policy and terms of service.
• Ensure that every article or blog post has an author byline.

c. Manage your reputation

Having a stellar reputation is vital in any industry, even more so in the legal service sector. This is why we couldn’t emphasise more in this SEO for lawyers ranking guide how crucial it is to maintain a clear line of communications with potential and existing clients. Responding to reviews and addressing concerns as quickly as possible can go a long way towards earning your prospects’ trust and improving your reputation. 

4. Search Intent

Also known as “user intent”, search intent is a user’s goal when performing an online query. There are four major types of search intent: informational, commercial, navigational, and transactional. 

As you know, content is a crucial element of SEO. It allows you to demonstrate your legal expertise and fulfill the needs of your target audience. However, having high-ranking content is difficult—even impossible—if it doesn’t match search intent. 

Consider these pointers to optimise your web content for search intent: 

• Before writing a piece of content, identify the user intent behind your target keyword. Is it informational, navigational, or transactional?
• Come up with the best way to answer a particular search query. For instance, a how-to article with a step-by-step guide is an excellent fit for online queries with informational search intent.
• Plan your in-content call to action (CTA) and ensure they reflect what you want to achieve with your content (e.g. you want to convert readers into clients or followers). Your CTAs should be unique for each piece of web content to keep your audience engaged.

Is Your Law Firm’s Website Optimised for Google’s Ranking Signals?

With Google having the lion’s share of the search engine pie, you’d want your website optimised for most of its ranking signal. Not only will this help improve your online visibility, but it can also ensure the success of your legal practice. 

At Kinetic Traffic, our goal is to help law firms like yours make the most of the opportunities Google can provide. If you need help optimising your site for Google’s key ranking signals, our team of highly skilled and experienced law firm SEO specialists can provide you with the expert assistance you require. Get in touch with us today!