Halloween 2024 Google Search Ranking Update
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Read MoreDo you have a law firm website and it isn’t receiving the traffic it deserves? Are you interested in creating a law firm website to broaden your clientele? Creating and launching a law firm website requires a thorough plan. Your law firm website is a crucial business aspect and requires great attention to detail. Prior to building a website for your law firm, it is important to create a plan so you don’t walk into an important project without structure.
In order to reach your targeted audience, when creating, building, and maintaining a law firm website, you must strategize the right digital marketing methods. One digital marketing method that can significantly impact the performance of a law firm website is — search engine optimization (SEO.)
However, to enhance your law firm website SEO, we advise creating a website outline for law firm SEO. Why is this? Because to rank on search engines, web crawlers must be able to read and understand your website. With an effective website outline, web crawlers can do this, which leads to a high rank on search engines, and puts your law firm website in the eyes of your targeted audience.
Here is how to create a website outline for law firm SEO.
A law firm website outline is an outline, or map, and structure of the pages of your site. By separating the web pages on your law firm site, you are able to break down what is needed on your site so that search engines are able to find and understand your site.
A law firm website outline will consist of grouping content based on their topic. Topics allow search engines to easily crawl your site. Here is an example of a simple website law firm SEO outline.
There is no wrong way when it comes to choosing a template for your law firm website design. As long as the outline is focused on the website itself, it will provide search engines and web users with a sufficient website.
The structure of your law firm website can help your site rank on search engines. It is an important search engine optimization factor. The structure of your website and its content and design matter when it comes to search engine ranking. The more structured a website is, the easier it is for search engines to understand your content.
A structured law firm website is beneficial because of the following:
Search engines start with your homepage and move throughout the links it discovers within your homepage when they crawl your website. A good law firm website structure allows search engines to understand how the pages throughout the site relate to each other and determine which pages are most important. Law firm websites have a higher chance to rank organically when search engine crawlers determine page relevancy and discover important content.
Now that we know what a website outline for law firm SEO is and why it is so important, we can dive deeper into how to create an effective website outline for law firm SEO. Though we have reviewed an example of a website outline, it is a little more complicated than the image presented.
Continue to read this article to learn the 5 steps of creating a website outline for law firm SEO.
Defining the purpose of your law firm website will dictate how the organization of your website will be throughout its existence. Additionally, it will help you determine the categories of each webpage on your website. Though most law firm websites have the same purpose — generate leads and increase clientele — this may not be the case for all. Some examples of website purposes for law firms are:
Essentially, the purpose of your website should be directly related to your targeted audience.
When creating a website outline for law firm SEO it is important to consider both your prospective clients and the needs of your law firm business. Furthermore, you need to consider rules, regulations, and requirements as a legal professional.
Consider the following:
Determining the above-mentioned components will allow you to create an efficient website, establish a solid website framework, and set realistic limitations.
Categorize content and focus on the pages throughout your website. Create a list of everything you want to be included on your website. This should be everything you want your targeted audience to know: services, practice areas, disclaimers and agreements, biographies, resources, reviews, testimonials, case studies, blogs, FAQs, etc.
When creating your law firm website, the categories will be displayed on the menu, and the subcategories will fall under the relevant category.
Categorizing content will aid in the website creation process and allow you to meet the needs of your potential clients, and current clients.
Focus on the most important elements of your website that will enhance your legal business. Categorize your law firm business to make it easier for legal clients to find the services they are looking for.
Consider the following when creating categories for your law firm website:
The number of categories: The homepage of your law firm website, should allow users to swiftly navigate the site. Do not overcomplicate the site. Keep categories to a minimum and ensure web users can easily find what they are looking for. Here are a few category examples to include on your website for law firm SEO:
This is just a general idea of what can be included on your law firm website. Categories will vary depending on the goals and needs of your law firm business. Take a look at the example below.
Most websites will use the category and subcategory method. Browse different law firm websites to get a better understanding of categorizing content.
Categorizing and subcategorizing will lead your site right to its website structure, also known as website hierarchy. Essentially, website hierarchy is the arrangement of categories and all of their subcategories on a map.
This is important for search engine crawlers because it allows them to easily read your site and determine the important pages, site categories, and subcategories. An effective site hierarchy allows search engines to identify the pages and their relevancy.
Though planning out the sitemap or hierarchy may seem simple, it can affect the way in which crawlers interpret your law firm website.
Here are site hierarchy tips for when you are planning out the development of your law firm website:
For example, if you require masks within your law firm office and it is very important to you for clients to follow this rule, then it would be necessary to display it as a category. If this is a rule you implement but do not consider to be as important, you could mention your mask rule within the ‘location’ category.
Each page of your website will have a distinct URL. The URL is also something that is crawled and should also be SEO friendly. Search engine crawlers can better understand your law firm website with effective URLs and permalinks.
Please keep in mind URLs and permalinks are different. A URL is a link that may be typed in to navigate to a page, while the permalink is a more detailed version of a URL.
Here are a few examples of URLs:
The URLs are typically easier to remember. The category does not need to be included in every URL.
On the other hand, permalinks are more specific, with categories for search engines to crawl the site. Here are a few examples of permalinks:
A website outline for law firm SEO shouldn’t take up too much of your time and should make website creation less stressful. The website outline doesn’t need to be perfect. It should represent how you envision your law firm website while keeping law firm SEO in mind. Here is an example of a website outline for law firm SEO.
The purpose of a website outline for law firm SEO is to map out the important SEO elements of a legal website. The outline should aid the creation and building process of the law firm’s website.
Though it requires time-consuming considerations and careful thinking, it will help the website building and development process. The website outline will allow you to walk through the process of creating a law firm SEO-friendly and user-friendly website.
A search engine ranking is a rank that your website receives on search engines. Your law firm’s website will display on a certain page and certain positions within the pages of search results. This is your search engine ranking.
A web crawler is a bot that scans, or indexes, websites so they can appear on search engines. Essentially, it reads the website to see if it will be a good match to display as a search result. If your law firm’s website has relevant content, the bot will recognize it and feel confident enough to display it for web searchers.
Not all website visitors will browse through your website or take action to become a client. Some of them may click on your website, realize it is not what they were looking for, and click out. This is called bounce rate and is measured in percentages. The lower the bounce rate percentage, the better.