Webinar Recap: How to Show Up on the First Page of Google for Law Firms
Your next clients are online right now searching for answers to their life-legal problems. Whether they're researching specific questions related to their issue, or looking for the right lawyer to handle their situation, most of these searches will involve Google.
In this webinar Lawmatics founder and CEO Matt Spiegel welcomed Gyi Tsakalakis, president and cofounder of digital legal marketing agency AttorneySync.
Time stamps of key takeaways
0:00 — Introductions
How do people find lawyers? More and more, the answer is search engines like Google. Matt and Gyi introduce themselves and why search engine optimization is an essential building block for a law firm’s marketing strategy.
18:40 — How google works
Before getting into the mechanics of how Google chooses which results to show, it’s first important to understand how Google presents its results. Gyi breaks down the anatomy of a Google search results page, including how Google prioritizes and presents ads, organic traffic, and a local pack of relevant and prominent results for an inquiry.
23:54 — How to rank in Google’s traditional organic results
Traditional organic results on Google contain four key elements. Along with the result’s URL and title, Google shows meta descriptions and structured data. Meta descriptions are brief blurbs summarizing the content of the result. Structured data contains additional information related to the result, like a drop-down list of frequently asked questions. In this section, Gyi discusses how these components work together to create a relevant search result.
27:00 — How to earn links
The more people link to your website, the more prominent your website will be in search results. Here, Gyi gives some tips on how to earn more links to increase your site’s prominence.
38:10 — How to rank in Google’s local pack
In addition to prominence, local search results are determined by relevance and dominance. Relevance is how Google knows not to show results for plumbers when you search for electricians. Calculated distance considers how far a potential search result is from the location term used in a search. Gyi shares some thoughts on how these factors are weighted in local and organic searches.
50:24 — Other search features
Explicit searches are only one slice of the Google pie. Along with searching terms like “Michigan personal injury firm,” users search for law firm reviews and general legal questions. This section comes with thoughts on moderating reviews and including them in your structured data, and the role of blogs and thought leadership content in addressing general questions.
57:24 — A process for earning organic traffic
You won’t optimize your firm’s search results on Day One. That’s not only okay, it’s expected. Search engine optimization is a continuous process. Here are some things to keep in mind as you embark on this journey, along with some suggested priorities.
Webinar slide deck