Google introduces as many as 600 changes to its search engine algorithm every year. As a result, new SEO trends emerge every few months. If you’re neglecting these SEO trends, your law firm SEO strategy might falter.
You could struggle to improve your organic rankings, impacting your ability to reach new client’s online.
Before your rankings drop, apply these six lawyer SEO trends to your existing strategy. Keeping up with the latest trends will help you rank ahead of competing firms. Read on to learn more!
1. IndexNow
An API is responsible for notifying search engines when a website’s content is either updated, created, or deleted. This functionality allows search engines to quickly crawl and index website content. Without it, search engines wouldn’t recognize the website changes you’re making.
In other words, you wouldn’t rank for new focus keywords, impacting your ability to broaden your reach and online visibility.
IndexNow is changing how SEO professionals strategize long-term. You’ll no longer have to worry about how search bots index your content.
Crawlers will begin to put a lighter load on systems, which can ensure new pages and posts quickly appear on search engine result pages (SERPs). This process is also helpful if your database updates a high number of URLs.
In addition to IndexNow, new machine learning and natural language processing will begin to impact your SEO strategy. Google has made changes in multi-modal searches. It’s focusing on search journeys instead of independent searches.
You can take advantage of this law firm SEO trend by gaining a better understanding of your clients’ online behaviors. Focus on natural language generation to scale your content creation strategy.
Keep an eye out for new machine-learning solutions to improve your content creation and categorization, too.
2. Search Intent
A search engine user’s intent can tell you what they expect to find during a search.
Intent is usually transactional, navigational, commercial, or informational. Google now has a better understanding of the intent behind the user’s search. Then, it searches for content that aligns with the user’s needs.
Before creating content for your blog, determine the user’s search intent. It’s easier to understand their intent if you’re targeting long-tail keywords.
For example, the term “lawyer” is broad. You could struggle to determine the user’s intent if you’re targeting this term. Meanwhile, “how to find a lawyer in Atlanta, GA” is more precise.
Keep up with your keyword research to better understand the user’s intent.
3. Quality Content
When creating blog content for your law firm’s website, focus on quality over quantity.
Provide your readers with helpful, actionable content they can’t find anywhere else. Communicate EAT within your content, too: Expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness.
EAT can help you stand out from competing law firms by communicating your credibility. Potential clients will feel more inclined to trust you, which could help you generate leads.
As you begin creating fresh blog content, make sure to consider the images you use for each post. More search engine users are using Google’s image search feature. You can optimize your images for these searches by adding the focus keyword to the image file name and alt text.
4. Website Development
Your website design and development can still impact our SEO rankings.
Make sure your website is fast, mobile-optimized, and user-friendly. Google’s Core Web Vitals indicate which user-centric ranking factors you’ll need to prioritize.
Work with a web design and development agency that understands SEO to update your site. Make sure you’re appealing to mobile users, too.
5. Localization
Locally-focused content can help you reach nearby clients. Make sure you’re targeting location-based keywords. You can add your city or state to a long-tail keyword to localize your content.
Make sure to claim and optimize your Google Business listing as well. Potential clients will have an easier time reaching your law firm and finding your site.
Don’t forget to ask your most recent legal clients to post their reviews on your listing. Positive reviews can boost your firm’s credibility.
6. Video and Voice
Video content is now the top form of media used for content marketing strategies. In fact, videos have recently overtaken both infographics and blog posts. Creating popular videos can help boost your rankings on the internet’s second-largest search engine: YouTube.
In fact, the more views, comments, shares, and likes a video has, the more likely you’ll gain higher YouTube rankings.
With a strong video marketing strategy, your video content could even appear on SERPs as featured snippets. Appearing as a featured snippet can help you generate more website traffic and video views.
To apply this trend to your 2023 lawyer SEO strategy, use your keyword research to create quality video posts. You can even recreate an old blog post as a video.
When you embed the video onto a unique page on your law firm’s website, add the target keyword to the page title. When uploading it to YouTube, feature the keyword in the title and video description. Add a video transcript to the page and YouTube description, too.
A transcript will help Google’s bots understand and index your video content.
Voice searches have become more popular as well. In fact, nearly 50% of consumers use voice searches for general queries. About 75% of voice search results rank in the top three for their queries.
Almost 41% of all voice search answers come from featured snippets, though. Learning how to rank for featured snippets with Schema Markup can help boost your rankings. You can start appearing for voice searches to reach even more potential clients.
Keep up with your keyword research. The typical voice search result is 29 words in length. Most queries are phrased as questions.
You can rank for voice searches by targeting keywords phrased as questions, then providing a brief answer at the start of a blog post.
Update Your Law Firm SEO Strategy With These Trends Today
Don’t neglect to update your law firm SEO strategy this year. Instead, take the time to apply these six essential SEO trends. Applying these trends can help improve your organic rankings.
Higher rankings will help you reach new clients with ease.
Need help updating your SEO strategy? We’re here for you.
Contact us to schedule a strategy call today.
