It’s a safe assumption to have that every business has a presence online, one way or another. Whether it’s via Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms or a website, companies now rely mostly on the virtual world to advertise and promote their products/services. It’s not exactly surprising that this is the case, considering people spend most of their time online and it’s the perfect place to target your audience. Lawyers are one breed that might’ve caught on a bit late to the trend, but now, plenty of law firms understand the importance of online tools. And they’re investing a lot of money in search engine optimization to strengthen their position among the competition. It’s the social media front, though, that they still need to work on.
Here’s how lawyers can leverage social media to maximize their SEO efforts.
Work on your social media content
While SEO is concerned with your search engine ranking the most, it still is, extremely connected to your social media platforms, and how well you optimize your content will reflect on your social media reach and in turn your revenues. How exactly does that work? You need to work on your content so that it would be shareable and attractive to your social media demographics. The more you optimize your content and work on improving its quality, the more shares you’ll get and the bigger your reach will be. That’s not particularly easy for lawyers, but with a little research and some effort, you can create content that your followers would relate to. You have also regularly update your content, because one of the most essential SEO practices is keeping your content fresh and constantly updated because people get bored easily. So, you have to keep feeding them new material to engage with. You should understand that the most important thing about search engine optimization is having people link back to your site, which builds confidence in the eyes of consumers and more importantly Google –– which improves your search engine ranking, and in turn increases your lead conversion rate. And you won’t find a better way to link back to your website than social media platforms. People eat up good content on social media, and if you give them that, you could have hundreds of links referring back to your website. So, use every tool at your disposal to create videos, images, articles, and GIFs to lure people into sharing your content and in turn improve your SEO rankings. You might need a little expert help to tailor legal content that would cater to your target demographics, but it’s definitely not something you cannot do on your own.
Create a successful strategy
You’d be surprised at the amount of great content available online that gets little to no reach. You’re talking hours of hard work that culminate in creative outputs, but sadly that content doesn’t get the recognition it deserves. Why does that happen? Because you don’t have a solid social media strategy in place. Just because you’re a lawyer doesn’t mean you cannot use social media to your advantage. On the contrary, people now look for legal services online more than any place else. They no longer look for lawyers in TV ads or on billboards, and that’s why you need a strategy to target them online.
If you want to leverage social media to your advantage and for the sake of your SEO, you have to create a viable plan for your social media platforms. That plan has to be automatically applied to each new piece of content you post, which will accumulate over time to exponentially boost your SEO and improve your search engine ranking. The more detailed and elaborate your plan is, the better your reach will be. Social media strategies can make a lot of difference in how well your SEO is doing, and that is why you need to take your time creating them and making sure they’re consistent. It’s not just about having a good plan, but also about applying it to all your new content regularly. Consistency is key in the online world, and it makes the difference between a successful law firm and a mediocre one.
Work on your backlinking
Backlinking is one of the most successful search engine optimization strategies out there, and if you do it right, you can expand your reach in a lot of ways. You need to capitalize on that on social media as well. How can you do that as a lawyer? Cooperate with other online entities that can complement your services. In other words, find other pages and entities that have a strong presence on social media platforms, and work with them to link back to your business. It’s important that you find quality pages and entities, though, because dealing with shady ones might do more harm than good and could significantly damage your reputation as well as your credibility. If, for instance, you’re an injury lawyer, you can cooperate with clinics and auto repair shops to backlink to your firm on their social media platforms. That way you will have gained exposure to their audiences and let people know that you’re the person to reach out to if they had a car accident, and you’ll also have improved your SEO ranking because inbound links are something Google takes into consideration in the search engine ranking.
Work on your website
You might ask yourself, what does your website have to do with leveraging social media? Everything, that’s what. You can have thousands of people click on your website coming in from your Facebook page, but if your website isn’t optimized, then it’s all for nothing because they won’t come back and they won’t refer your services to friends and family. This is why search engine optimization puts a great deal of emphasis on optimizing websites. And if that step is important for any business, even more so for lawyers. People don’t want to log into a law firm’s website to be bombarded with legal jargon they know nothing of. It’s off-putting and they’ll just leave, and you will have lost a lead because your site isn’t SEO friendly. That is why it’s crucial that you have SEO experts optimize your website from the get go. That means working on the design and speed of the site, because who wants to waste minutes waiting for a page to load? It’s easier to just leave and look for another. It also means taking care of the navigability of the website and the overall user experience, because believe it or not, Google takes how happy your users are after leaving the page into consideration for the search engine ranking. If a person logs onto your website, spends a few minutes, and then closes it without doing anything or ever coming back due to poor user experience, rest assured your rankings will be affected.
The website needs to be optimized from all angles, but that doesn’t mean you should forget about the content itself. Yes, the user experience and technical aspects are important, but that also comes with the importance of maintaining high quality content that is regularly updated. Don’t also forget the placement of keywords, because those are how people will find your services online.
Optimize the Meta tags
Meta tags have always been crucial when it comes to distinguishing web pages, and that is why working on them has been a very important SEO practice since forever. The same needs to be applied to social media platforms, because Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and others do show your Meta tags when someone posts or shares a link of yours. That is why it’s important that your Meta title and description are optimized, because people get easily put off by legal terminologies and jargon they don’t understand. The characters should not be too long, usually under 65 for titles and 150 for descriptions. What you write in that very tiny window might just be your first contact with a potential lead, and what you put in there might be the difference in that person actually becoming a lead or them brushing your services off and moving on. You want to be short and concise, explaining your services and the purpose of the page as briefly as possible, not to mention why people should click on that link.
Improve positive mentions of your brand
Positive brand mentions is exactly what the name implies, how well people talk about your brand in the social media space. It’s crucial that you do that, and you can do it by making it irresistible for users to mention your brand in a positive context. For example, you can create an offer for those who will share a post explaining your legal services on Facebook. Everybody likes a giveaway, and you can rest assured you’ll get plenty of clicks and shares when you tell your audience that anybody who shares the post will get 50% off a legal consultation or even a free one. It’s this kind of thing that people talk about for a long time, and this is how you create a positive brand mention and encourage social media users to discuss your services. When that starts happening, your SEO ranking automatically improves because you’ll be getting a lot more shares and clicks courtesy of social media.
Create a blog
While blogging doesn’t play now the crucial part it played 10 years ago, it is still a very powerful tool to this very day. And a lot of people still read blogs, and that’s one angle you can’t afford to neglect. A lawyer’s website isn’t exactly the most amicable place for people with conversational nature. So, by creating a blog, you give those people a space to discuss all things related to your services, and it’s a new way for them to engage with your content in a different way. A constantly updated and fresh blog, which you regularly post from on social media, can get you a lot of likes and shares, which will reflect positively on your SEO ranking. The blog doesn’t need to be just about your services; it can also discuss things related to the community and things that are not directly related to the business. That way people get to engage with different content that not necessarily mentions your business, but still benefits it in a way.
Client reviews
It’s in our human nature to want feedback about something before we try it out ourselves. And legal services are no exception to that rule. So, it’s important that you create a section on your website for client reviews, because your leads will naturally feel much better about hiring you as a lawyer when they see the good things others had to say about you. It’s reassuring and handles their concerns when they find a review section full of good reviews. You should then regularly post on different social media platforms from that review section to lure people into hiring your services. That way you can get a lot of clicks through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and other platforms, which will improve your SEO standings and boost your position.
Engage your audience
One thing social media has done is it helped people engage with their favorite brands quite easily, and you as a lawyer are a brand. So, you need to interact with your followers as well. Answer whatever questions you can through the different social media platforms, and create engaging content that will help your audience come to admire your brand. If a person is asking something about your legal services on a post, answer them if it’s feasible. Do polls and ask your followers questions pertaining to your legal services, and they’ll trust and come to appreciate you with each passing day.
Search engine optimization is the backbone of any successful business that has any form of online presence, and social media is one tool in your arsenal that could make a lot of difference in how well your SEO rankings are, especially if you’re a lawyer looking to get more leads online.