Local SEO for Law Firms

Ethical SEO Consulting has been helping lawyers reach their potential in local search since 2010.

With so many companies fighting for the same three-pack rankings the competition has gotten stiff over the years.

At Ethical SEO Consulting we’re industry recognized local search experts and our founder, Casey Meraz is the author of the best selling book, How To Perform The Ultimate Local SEO Audit and Local Marketing For Personal Injury Lawyers [You can also find him speaking in 2021 at BEDLAM Legal Marketing Conference and the ABA TechShow]. He is also author of the popular article of Local SEO For Lawyers.

Ethical SEO Trust Signals

We can help fix complicated issues that are preventing your firm from ranking in the three pack or local finder as well as help your law firm reach your marketing goals.

The strategies for our local SEO campaigns are custom tailored to your marketing goals [which we probably know is to sign more high value cases].

How Can You Get More Business From Local Search?

If you’re not familiar with local SEO for lawyers, you may not know the potential you can unlock by having strong rankings in the 3 pack, local finder, or Google maps.

When your business ranks in the top positions in Google’s local results you can easily get clicks to your website, phone, calls, and direct messages where potential clients are looking for you.

Let’s say for example you are in charge of marketing a law firm in your home city. If someone searches “personal injury attorney” in Google you will probably find a local pack like the one below.

Local SEO

If your firm does not show up for important keyword searches you’re missing out on potential clients.

How We Can Help Improve Your Local SEO Presence

To win at local search it’s essential that you don’t cut corners or try and game the system. At Ethical SEO Consulting we can lay out a clear-cut plan on the tasks you need to complete to get your firm ranked in local search results.

Here are the ways we typically help clients achieve their goals in local search:

What Does A Local SEO Campaign Look Like?

One of the most common questions we get asked is, “what does a successful local SEO campaign look like”? While the answer will vary depending on your niche and competition it’s really about being the best you can online.

Google uses hundreds of different ranking factors that can affect local search rankings. Some of these are obvious, and others are not. Here are just a few of the important factors we look at when launching a new campaign.

Our checklist contains hundreds of different items we review for each client to be sure we’re offering the best advice for our clients.

Clients We Work With

We work with small business all the way up to enterprise level SEO clients. We have worked with some of the biggest brands including Intuit and Macco.

Local-SEOThe term “local SEO” simply means search engine optimization for local businesses. We define a local business as one whose services are only relevant to consumers within a certain distance of its location.

Here are some examples of local businesses:

For all of these businesses, location matters. Accordingly, their search engine optimization efforts must be locally targeted.

While there a variety of traffic channels that local SEO can help businesses tap into (ie. social media, internet yellow pages, blogging, etc.), one of the most profitable referral sources of any local SEO project come from Google’s local search results. Here is an example:

Google Local Search Results Example

Now that we understand what the term “local SEO” refers to, let’s dig a little deeper.

Jump to:

The factors that influence local search rankings

Google looks at 4 primary factors to determine how to rank local businesses in their search results:

1)On-site optimization;

2) Inbound links (backlinks);

3) Citations;

4) Reviews. Let’s have a look at what is involved with optimizing each of these factors:

    1. Website

      In order for Google to understand that your business should be shown in results for local search queries, it is important that your business website is optimized properly for local search.

      The optimization of a local business website is really no different from the optimization of any other website, except that most of the content on the local business site will be geared toward local search queries.

      Here are the most important website elements to be optimized for local search queries:

      • Page titles
      • Heading 1 tags
      • Body content
      • URL slugs
      • Internal link anchor text

      For a more in depth understanding of on-site optimization, check out the on site optimization section.

    2. Backlinks

      Backlinks are hyperlinks on pages of other websites which point to your website:

      backlink vs. external link

      Backlinks are a fundamental part of Google’s ranking algorithmn, both for traditional organic search results and for local search results. Google sees backlinks as a vote for the credibility of the site being linked to, which in turn causes that site to rank higher for relevant search queries.

      For a more in-depth understanding of backlinks, visit the link building section of the site.

    3. Citations

      In the context of local SEO, a citation refers to any online mention of a businesses name, address, and phone number (NAP).

      Here is an example of a structured citation:

      Structured Citation Yelp

      And here is an example of an unstructured citation:

      Untructured Citation Youtube

      In order for a business to rank highly in Google’s local search results, it is necessary for the businesses to have these citations. In order for those citations to be optimal, they must have the following traits:

      • Consistency: The business NAP must appear the exact same way in all citations.
      • Quantity: The business must be “cited” in a variety of online sources.
      • Quality: The business must be cited by websites that are looked upon by Google as both relevant and authoritative.

      For a more in-depth understanding of citations as they relate to local SEO, please browse the folling links:

  1. Reviews

    Business reviews are another way that Google attempts to understand how a given business should be ranked in their search results. Like citations, it is optimal for a business to have reviews on a variety of relevant and authoritative websites.

    Here are some examples of the types of sites on which most local businesses ought to gain reviews:

    • Google+ Local
    • Yelp
    • Foursquare
    • Facebook

    Google not only uses business reviews as an indicator that a business is relevant and popular, they also look at the type of language used in the reviews, which gives them an idea of the products and services the business provides, which makes it easier to rank the business for relevant search queries.

    For a more in-depth understanding of citations as they relate to local SEO, please browse the following links:

Learn how to do it yourself with these local SEO resources:

External Resources:

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