The legal industry is among the most competitive, with the top spots in the search rankings being highly sought-after real estate. According to research, the top five organic results for a given search term account for nearly 70% of all clicks. So, performing well in searches is crucial if you want to get more workers compensation leads for attorneys.
Google is by far the largest search engine in the world, accounting for nearly 93% of all search traffic. So, when it comes to generating more workers compensation leads for attorneys, it is important to understand how Google ranks websites.
Ranking Factors and SEO Tips
According to experts, Google’s algorithm relies on over 200 ranking factors. These factors are not weighted equally. The following are some of the most important for ranking well on Google.
Acquire Backlinks
Backlinks are one of the top-ranking factors. Backlinks are essentially links from other websites back to a page on your website. Google’s crawlers use backlinks to find your website and index it. They also indicate to Google that your website is authoritative or trustworthy. Thus, it is crucial to have a solid strategy in place for getting backlinks to generate more workers compensation leads for attorneys.
Not all backlinks are created equal, however. There are some points that you should keep in mind when developing your backlink strategy:
- Anchor text. Anchor text is the term or phrase that links back to your website. Be sure to use the term that you are trying to rank for. For example, if your search term is “best workers compensation law firms,” that text should be highlighted on the third party site and include the link to the relevant page on your website.
- Authority. The higher the domain authority is for the domain linking back to your website, the better. In other words, a backlink from an authoritative domain such as Reuters is worth far more than a backlink from some random blog page.
- Diversity. Aim for a mix of backlinks from a variety of sources. Having too many links coming from a single source (i.e., in blog comments) may be considered to be a sign of spam and have a negative impact.
- Contextual links. Contextual links are those that are embedded inside of a page’s content. They are considered to be more powerful than other link types.
There are many ways to get backlinks, such as guest blog posts, posting links in forums, or paying influencers to post links to your website. The key is to develop a plan for consistently acquiring backlinks from quality sources. Be sure to spread the backlinks around to each term and relevant page that you are trying to rank for. According to experts, some 55% of web pages do not have a single backlink. A solid backlink strategy can help you to outrank your competitors and get more legal leads.
Writing Good Content
The best way to boost your firm’s performance in the search rankings is to consistently write informative and engaging content. There are many reasons why the quality of content plays such an important role. First, good content produces higher click-through rates (CTR). This means that more users are clicking on your links, which indicates to Google that your content is relevant to the search term.
Second, good content reduces your bounce rate. Bounce rate refers to the number of users that click on your link, visit the page, and then click the “back” button. Quality content will result in users spending more time on your website and visiting other pages. Third, other websites are more likely to link to content that they deem to be authoritative. The more backlinks a web page has, the higher it will rank.
Matching Search Intent
Search intent refers to the user’s primary goal when searching. As one expert describes it, all search terms fall into 4 different intent categories:
- Informational. “How much is my workers compensation claim worth?”
- Navigational. “Facebook login.”
- Transactional. “Workers compensation lawyer near me.”
- Commercial. “Best large screen televisions.”
The key is to match user intent to the content that you are linking to. For legal leads, informational and transactional keywords are going to play a large role. For example, suppose you want to acquire more workers compensation leads for attorneys. You will likely want to create two types of content. Informational content, such as “how to file a workers comp claim,” will appeal to those users that are at the awareness stage and not quite ready to consult with or hire a lawyer. This content will increase user awareness of your services and help establish your firm as an authority.
The second type of content will target those legal leads for attorneys that are further along in the funnel. These pages will include call-to-actions that make it easy for prospective clients to get in touch and schedule a consultation. Google places a huge emphasis on search intent. Even if you do everything else right from an SEO perspective if the search intent is off you will not rank.
Improving Page Speed
In May of 2020, Google announced new metrics for measuring the user experience: interactivity, loading, and visual stability, collectively referred to as Core Web Vitals. All three metrics are a way to measure page speed. You can check the performance of your website using Google PageSpeed Insights. The tool is free and will give you a detailed breakdown regarding the site’s performance, as well as recommendations for improvements.
While page speed is not the most important ranking factor, it can make a significant difference. If two web pages have similar content and backlinks, then performance metrics can determine which is ranked higher. A website that performs poorly also contributes to high bounce rates and will not only negatively impact search performance, but it will reduce the number of workers compensation leads for attorneys that you receive.
Ranking well on Google will help your firm to generate more workers compensation leads for attorneys. But sorting through Google’s continuously evolving algorithms and ranking factors can prove challenging. Start small by focusing on the ranking factors discussed above. Once you have mastered these components, gradually expand your efforts to account for other ranking factors. Your consistency and incremental improvements will be rewarded with more legal leads.