When you’re a new attorney fresh out of law school, you have to pick a niche to specialize in. I’ve met, spoken with, and worked alongside hundreds of attorneys in this industry, none of the successful ones try to do it all. They partner with other attorneys if they want to create a law firm that does everything, but they never do everything themselves. Your practice is much more valuable to your clients if you’ve honed your skills to focus on a few areas. Knowing what these areas are, is the key to finding the right keywords and improving the SEO of your law firm.

Whether you decide to focus on personal injury law or divorce, you should have an idea of what your keywords should be. Then it comes time to research.

Picking your keyword may feel obvious once you decide on your niche or your practice areas. If you practice personal injury law, you might think that you just need to focus on the keywords, “personal injury,” and synonyms of the phrase.

This would be a huge mistake. There’s always more than the name of your practice area and a few synonyms that you want to target. Always. You just have to do some keyword research.

What’s Keyword Research?

Keyword research is identifying terms and queries relevant to your audience. This includes finding phrases, topics, and subsections of your practice area to turn into keywords. For example, a divorce attorney should be researching all the major subsects people search for in divorce law. Your research should tell you whether or not it’s worth pursuing keywords like “child support,” “spousal support,” or “annulments.”

One of the worst things you can do is assume you’ll get clicks from search engines by only focusing on the name of your practice area. The next worst thing would be to target every possible phrase that might get you clicks. If “gray divorce” or “high-asset divorce” aren’t being widely searched in your area, don’t focus on those to better the SEO for your law firm.

Using the right keywords can streamline your law firm’s SEO efforts and propel you to Google’s coveted first page. This is how you see what all law firms want to see, higher brand recognition and increased profits.

How to Research Keywords

But, even if you take the time, you may not find any good keywords if you don’t know how to look. It can be frustrating beyond belief to be stuck trying to unlock doors to empty rooms. To avoid this possibility, let’s explore a few tips on how you can choose the right keywords to increase the SEO of your law firm.

1. Establish SEO Goals For Your Law Firm

There’s no point in starting a journey if you have no idea where you want to go. When it comes to effective keyword research, you have to at least consider your long-term goals right out the gate.

Do you want to attract more leads? Are you looking to increase engagement on your site? Are you trying to increase brand awareness? It’s important to have a clear picture of what you’re trying to accomplish with your law firm’s SEO.

Once you figure out your end goal, you can determine how your online presence factors into it. This will make it easier to isolate keywords that directly impact your ranking.

2. Create a List

Next, you want to add some structure to your research. You want to do more than copy down random names. To do this:

  • Start with an outline of what people may search for about your firm. You don’t need to go into a lot of detail, but try to highlight a few broad areas.
  • Use online keyword generators to discover some keywords and topic ideas to start with.
  • Compile all the keywords into a law firm SEO master list so that you can analyze and sort them as required.

While weighing the keywords you have to start and what you’re looking for, consider the following:

  • Their search engine volume, or how many searches they get in an average time period.
  • The level of competition for each search term. Remember, choosing highly competitive keywords may make it harder for you to rank. Just because they get a lot of searches, doesn’t mean they’re automatically worth going after.
  • Your current law firm SEO ranking for any of the keywords you see.

Then with this master list, continue adding to it.

3. Evaluate Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs)

While automated tools can easily fuel your keyword research, you’ll still need to do some old-fashioned digging to validate the search phrases you encounter. This is where Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) come in.

SERPs analysis allows you to check if your keywords are relevant to your brand. Plus, you can also see if there’s any possibility for you to outshine your competitors. Who wouldn’t want to do that?

To start a SERPs analysis:

  • Enter your top-performing keywords on search engines for lawyers.
  • Examine the law firm SEO results that come up.
  • Check where the organic and paid listings are located.
  • Measure the density of the results.

In case the search outcomes don’t measure up to your expectations, you may have to rethink your keywords.

4. Check Out Your Law Firm’s (SEO) Competition

The people who can help you improve the most, are usually the people doing the same thing you’re trying to do. Don’t be afraid to check out how your competitors are doing. There are several sites that let you do that. Here at ENX2 Marketing, one of the tools we use is SemRush to compare and contrast clients and their competitors.

When you’re looking at your competitor’s rankings, take note of what terms and phrases they used frequently to create a keyword pool for yourself. Be sure to review their title and metatags, page topics, and the areas they have a strong search position in.

5. Assess Keyword Intent

Ask any SEO expert from a reputable marketing agency, and they’ll tell you how important intent is in keyword selection. I went and talked to ENX2 Marketing’s SEO experts to learn that there are generally three categories that they like to divide keywords into:

  • Navigational: Directs users to another web page.
  • Informational: Offers valuable information on a topic.
  • Transactional: Suggests a transactional objective.

People searching for ‘personal injury law firms near me’ aren’t looking to read up on ‘how to file a personal injury lawsuit’. Instead, they want to land on an appropriate service page. That’s what keyword intent is all about.

This means that each of your keywords should serve a different purpose. To choose the right ones, you will need to put yourself in your clients’ shoes. Understanding keyword intent can help you satisfy your clients’ needs better. Once you deeply understand how to leverage keyword intent, you can create a more organized content strategy.

6. Get a Hold of Long-Tail Keywords

Long-tail keywords can have a significant impact on your law firm’s SEO. A recent study found that the long-tail SEO technique outranks generic one-word searches by 3-6%. There’s a good reason why SEO agencies use long-tail keywords to optimize websites. Because long-tail SEO keywords tend to match specific inquiries, they bring highly qualified leads. Another term for qualified leads would be people who are looking for the exact services you offer. This then leads to better conversion rates.

In addition, long-tail keywords:

  • Are easier to rank, thanks to lower competition;
  • Improve your content’s visibility;
  • Have a lower cost per click (CPC).

Rather than settling for standard short-tail search terms like ‘personal injury attorney’ that have lots of competition, consider optimizing your website for long-tail keywords. An example for the same category would be ‘best personal injury lawyers in New York’.

Consult an SEO Marketing Agency for Law Firms

Raising the SEO for your law firm is no walk in the park, and figuring out what keywords to base your site around is more than a hassle. Sure, you can do some of the research yourself, but it takes a lot of time, skill, and industry expertise to get things right.

It would be far easier for you to turn to an experienced and reliable SEO marketing agency for law firms. Focus on honing your practice while a marketing agency handles the rest. In this niche, there’s no one better than ENX2 Marketing. We’re a team of experts who know how to handle SEO specifically for law firms.

More than that, ENX2 can handle content creation, link building, and website development all so you don’t have to. Don’t worry about choosing the right keywords, instead, contact us today!