SEO for Family Lawyers

Why Do Divorce Lawyers Need SEO?

When people need family law services, they go to search engines. Search engine optimization (SEO) improves the visibility of your family law website in the front of your prospective clients. It can help divorce lawyers like you gain more qualified leads.

Here’s how the performance of a family law firm, The Bright Family Law Center, looked like after an year of using SEO services:

But effective implementation of family law SEO goes beyond improvements in backlink profile, referring domains, organic traffic, and organic search keywords—it directly affects a firm’s bottom line.

In case of The Bright Family Law Center, their organic SEO has improved their form submissions by over 138 percent.

Mind you, their local SEO efforts to improve their firm’s presence on Google Maps are separate. That has further helped them with a 108 percent increase in business contacts in a year.

As you can see, doing SEO for your law firm can result in more cases and revenue for your family law practice.

9 Tips for Effective SEO for Divorce Lawyers

Ready to scale your family law firm’s online presence?

Here are nine family law SEO strategies to get you more family law clients:

1. Optimize Your Google Business Profile

A Google Business Profile (GBP) is a free page for your company on Google Search and Maps. It shows your location and contact info. Improving it helps your company rank higher in local SEO, attracting more visitors. Keeping it updated shows you’re reliable, drawing in more customers.

The Vasquez de Lara Law Group’s profile looks great and has complete information about the firm, including its practice area, phone number, business hours, and website.

Here are some best practices when creating your GBP:

• Check your profile for accuracy
  • Make sure your business name, address, phone number, and website (NAP+W) are consistent with your other listings online.
  • Choose the correct business category.
  • Incorporate keywords like “divorce lawyer,” and “divorce attorney” in your business description.
• Get more customer reviews
  • Encourage past clients to leave a review on your website, social media, or Google.
  • Share the review link to your Google Business Profile or Avvo page to make it easier for clients.
  • Use law practice management software to automate review requests.
• Build local citations
  • List your firm in general directories like Yelp, Better Business Bureau (BBB), and Yellow Pages
  • List your firm in attorney-specific directories like Avvo, FindLaw, and Lawyers.com
  • Ensure your NAP+W info is consistent for all listings to improve search engine rankings

2. Online Reputation Management is Imperative to Local SEO Success

Online reviews and ratings play a crucial role in Google’s local search algorithm, influencing the ranking of businesses. Divorce lawyers who have good reviews and high ratings are more likely to be at the top of local search results. This makes them more visible to potential customers.

You can improve your online reputation by:

• Responding to all reviews. It is important to reply to all kinds of reviews, even the negative ones. This demonstrates to potential customers that you are receptive to feedback and committed to making improvements, just like what the Krasner Law firm does on their Google Reviews page:

• Staying professional online. It is essential to uphold a professional demeanor when representing your company, whether it be through social media, face-to-face interactions, or during interviews.
• Providing exceptional customer service. Nurturing a strong and positive rapport with every client is crucial for enhancing your firm’s reputation both online and offline.

3. Design an Elegant Website With a Positive User Experience

In divorce law, a professional lawyer website is key. It builds trust and shows expertise, guiding clients in tough times.

The website for The Bright Family Law Center combines professional design and sincere messaging to catch its audience’s attention.

You can build an attractive and engaging website with these steps:

• Lead with a unique value proposition. In plain language, highlight what makes your firm different. This includes pointing out specific areas of expertise, unique ways of serving clients, or a strong history of success.
• Make your contact information easy to find. Having contact details on a law firm’s website makes it reliable and helps people get in touch with you.
• Create location-specific landing pages. If you own a practice in multiple cities, make a page for each city to rank higher on local search terms such as “divorce attorney near me.”
• Ensure site speed is fast. Use tools like GTMetrix and Google PageSpeed Insights to analyze your website’s speed. A fast website ensures a positive user experience and improved search engine results pages (SERPs) ranking.

4. Conduct Keyword Research

Knowing which keywords to target with your divorce lawyer SEO is important and can make or break the success of your strategy.

Here are some ways to start keyword research and find relevant keywords for your family law firm.

Use the right tools. You’ll need to use a few tools to get accurate data for researching keywords. These tools can include:

• Google Keyword Planner – This is a free tool that shows the search volume of keywords.
• Ahrefs – This is a powerful SEO tool that helps you find the best keywords for your niche. It also enables you to conduct a site audit, analyze your competitors, and get more backlinks for your site.
• SEMRush – This is a versatile tool that offers features for keyword research and SEO, but also includes social media management, content marketing, and pay-per-click (PPC).

Use low-competition keywords. Focus on keywords that have less competition, but still describe your practice. This includes:

• Long-tail keywords – These keywords contains three to five words and are more specific. An example would be “divorce attorney in Florida” or “hire divorce lawyer in Austin”. They’re considered easier to rank for because they usually have lower search volumes than more general keywords like “divorce lawyers” or “divorce attorney”.
• Practice area keywords – These keywords contain the specific practice of a legal service, such as:
  • Family lawyer
  • Family law attorneys
  • Child custody lawyer
  • Spousal support lawyer
  • Divorce lawyer
  • Adoption lawyer
• Local keywords – Local keywords include the location of the business that’s being searched. For divorce lawyers, these can be:
  • Best divorce lawyer in Miami
  • Cheap divorce lawyers near me
  • How to file for divorce in Atlanta
  • Trusted divorce lawyers in Brooklyn
• Related keywords – These keywords can be suggested keywords that are similar to your seed keyword. You’ll get these keywords from tools like Ahrefs, such as the example below:

Understand keyword intent. Keyword intent is the intention behind someone’s search terms. For divorce law firms, keywords with keyword intent mean that the user is looking for a divorce lawyer online and wants to call or hire someone as soon as possible.

Some examples of keywords with strong intent are:

• Hire divorce lawyer
• Divorce lawyer pricing
• Best divorce lawyer near me
• Free consultation divorce lawyer

Focusing on high-intent keywords aligns your SEO campaign with people who are likely to turn into customers.

5. Build Site’s Authority With Link Building

In the highly competitive legal industry, backlinks serve as endorsements and indicate to search engines that a lawyer’s website is a reliable source. This can result in an increase in organic traffic to their site, ultimately leading to an influx of potential client inquiries.

You can get backlinks to your site with these link building tactics:

Guest blog for industry publications

Writing for legal blogs and news channels online not only increases your visibility but allows you to build your credibility. Many websites that welcome guest bloggers permit a link to their site, making it an excellent method for gaining backlinks to your law firm’s website.

Become a source for journalists

Being interviewed as an expert in your field is another excellent way of building your authority, online and offline. You can get media exposure from consistently being an expert in your field, or proactively building a relationship with journalists and reaching out to them to offer your opinion on relevant issues they might be covering.

Launch a digital PR campaign

In addition to being featured in the media, you can start a digital press release campaign by:

• Talking about your firm’s achievements and accomplishments on your website and social media channels

• Sharing a winning case or an inspiring story of a former client
• Engage with your followers on social media to build a strong online community

6. Expand Your Reach Offline

While many tasks can be accomplished online, there are times when a physical presence is necessary to promote your brand to others in the real world.

Google’s algorithms are designed to look for signals that people are searching for a popular brand or business. These can include how often people search for the brand or business name online and how often it’s mentioned online.

Here are some ways to promote your divorce law firm practice offline.

• Sponsor events – Choose events that people in your target audience are likely to attend. These can be:
  • School events that focus on family and community
  • Charities that focus on families and children
  • Events hosted by organizations that support single parents or help prevent domestic violence
  • Events that promote financial literacy
• Participate in community outreach – You can show your commitment to your practice by serving your community. You can do this by:
  • Offering free or discounted legal assistance to families with limited means
  • Host workshops about divorce, child support, and domestic violence
  • Handing out brochures or online resources for those facing divorce
  • Becoming a board member for nonprofit organizations serving the community

7. Create Engaging Content

Great content helps visitors stay longer on your site. This is a great indicator (that Google recognizes) that your website provides value, which can improve your search rankings and domain authority.

Starting a blog

To start creating content that your audience will find useful and engaging, you need to have a blog on your website.

On your blog, you need to regularly publish posts that address your audience’s pain points of going through a divorce. Chances are you already are familiar with these from working with past clients.

Don’t forget to incorporate your target keywords for all of your content!

Run an informative YouTube channel

In addition to a blog, you can also start a YouTube channel where you answer frequently asked questions about divorce. Video content allows you to show the “face behind the brand” and make a deeper connection with your audience.

Galbraith Family Law’s YouTube channel is a great example of an attractive and informative channel.

8. Grow Your Audience With Social Media

A good social media presence can help your SEO because it can bring more people to your site. This can happen through links you share on your page or being mentioned by other users.

Some ideas to get started with your social media content include:

• Create educational videos – Post short-form videos on YouTube about common issues that people going through a divorce might be facing. This may include child custody, division of assets, or alimony.
• Introduce your legal team – Show your audience what your firm does and what your team does on Instagram or TikTok.
• Share client testimonials – Ask permission from past clients to let you film them for a testimonial for your firm and post it on YouTube.

9. Measure and Track Your SEO Performance

Tracking your SEO performance helps you identify strategies that are driving traffic and leads. It also gives you the informed decision to modify or change your strategy.

Here are the main SEO metrics to look out for:

• Organic traffic – This refers to website visits from unpaid search engine results. This means the user typed a search term into the search engine and clicked a link from the search results pages that wasn’t an ad.
• Leads – These are potential customers that have shown interest in your business by either:
  • Filling out a form on the website
  • Downloading a free resource
  • Signing up for a free consultation
  • Inquiring about the product or service
• Revenue – In the context of SEO, revenue refers to the actual financial gain that resulted from the SEO campaign. It’s how much money the firm made from the website’s organic search traffic.

You can use these tools to track and measure your SEO performance:

• Google Analytics – This provides organic traffic data, user behavior (how long visitors stay on your site), and search query data (when connected with Google Search Console).
• TrackRight – This tool tracks your business’s local search results, including keyword ranking, traffic, and leads. It also provides Google Business Profile management features.
• Ahrefs – This tool is great for analyzing backlink data and keyword ranking positions for your site.

Grow Your Divorce Practice With Proven SEO Experts!

Investing your time in SEO is well worth it – when you get the desired results. But what if it doesn’t work? Then it’s time to stop wasting time and money on SEO strategies that don’t work and start hiring people who can.

At On The Map Marketing, we’re all about helping divorce lawyers (just like you) get the best rankings on search engines and bring in more family law clients. We have years of experience and know the legal industry inside and out, so we know how to run successful SEO campaigns that work. That way, you can do what you do best: serving your clients.

Contact us today to get started with crafting a winning digital strategy for your firm.