Crafting your lawyer website with the proper content begins with keyword research. You are going to target keywords your target audience uses to search for attorneys and law firms in the practice area s/he needs for their legal trouble. More importantly, the content must be designed to satisfy your prospective clients’ search criteria AND the search engine algorithms.

Keyword research is established by understanding:

• What are prospective legal clients searching for?
• How many people are searching for attorney services?
• In what format do they want that information to appear?

With the understanding of how your target audience is searching for your attorney content comes the strategic side of search engine optimization.

First, understand who your prospective clients and what they hope to accomplish by hiring your law firm.

You know you want to rank higher than your competitors, but you should also want to supply your prospective clients with the resources they need to convert them to real cases.

Ask yourself, and your attorneys, questions like:

• What practice areas are our clients searching for?
• Who is searching for these terms?
• When is our target audience searching these terms?
• Are there seasonal trends that occur certain times of the year?
• How are prospective clients searching for lawyers?
• What words do they use?
• What questions do they ask?
• Why are they searching for an attorney?
• Where are our potential clients located? Locally? Nationally? Internationally?
• Last, but never least: How can your law firm help provide the best content to fulfill the needs prospective clients are searching for?

Second: Discover what keywords your target audience is searching for when they need an attorney.

As attorneys, your law firm wants to rank for its core services, so people who type in “This type of lawyer in Los Angeles” see your website ranked first. So, why not choose those? The competition for all types of attorneys in Los Angeles (and everywhere else) is substantial. In fact, all attorney marketing keywords are! That’s why your firm must stand apart, and without the proper keyword research, your firm may be missing a niche area that can produce real cases.

Enter the keywords you know you want to rank for into a keyword research tool to learn the average monthly search volume associated with those terms. The tool will also deliver similar keywords and their volume for your review.

This is important because discovering alternate keywords, common questions, and topics for your content may emerge, including less competitive keywords that may be highly effective to your ranking.

Both high- and low-competition keywords can help your law firm prioritize keywords and pick the ones that will give your website the biggest strategic advantage.

How Do Search Engines Work Google Webmaster Guidelines Keyword Research for Lawyers Content Creation for Lawyers Technical SEO for Lawyers Link Building for Lawyers