Port St Lucie Law Firm: 5 SEO Strategies For 2023

• A. Zeus
• 01-14-2023

Port St Lucie Law Firm: 5 SEO Strategies For 2023

Zeus Digital Agency is a boutique digital agency that serves Southeast Florida with professional web design, SEO auditing and speed optimization. This is a discussion on the Law market and how it relates to growth through SEO, Website Design and UX Optimization and using these channels to grow your business in spite of larger competitors.

Law is hard, there is schooling, clerking, being the new guy at the firm and then if you're lucky years later you may eventually start a firm and have your name on the door. Law Firms unlike The Field O Dreams are not only "Build it and they will come". You have to fight every day for leads and qualified cases. Furthermore ad spend is out of control, big firms are paying HUNDREDS for one click in PPC campaigns alongside billboards, radio jungles and TV spots. How does anyone without pockets you could repel down like Morgan and Morgan or Rubenstein genuinely compete? You have to find channels where total ad spend is not the deciding factor for ranking. Most decisions go like the following, Cheap, Easy, Good except you can only ever pick two. You learned induction and deduction logic in law school therefore you can see what's coming. If it doesn't cost more money and not many firms know about it? It's probably hard. These aren't necessarily hard, but they are "techie". You would be best to hand them over to a web developer, although they are certainly possible on their own. What we are looking at today is 5 underutilized tools for ranking your law firm on Google.

• #1 Optimize landing page for Rich Content (Schema)
• #2 Master the First Contentful Paint (Lighthouse Score)
• #3 Steal the SERP (Search Engine Results Page)
• #4 Lowering PPC (Pay Per Click, whoever spends less, can spend more overtime)
• #5 Semantic Content for NLP (Natural Language Processing)

Ok slow down before you sue me for defamation of brain power on account of excessive use of big words or whatever you would call it, I'll walk through each of them, their benefits and potential ROI.

#1 Optimize landing page for Rich Content (Schema) Google dominates the market of search so we will use them in examples, although other search engines shouldn't be ignored and these tips are platform agnostic. Schema.org is an independent organization headed up by a consortium of developers from multiple search engines (Yahoo, Bing, Google, etc.). With the intent of building better search results for all web users. Schema is what is called "Rich Content'' meaning it can give you answers directly within the SERP. Search engines place high value on websites that are optimized for this because they want happy searchers. Happy searchers are people that find what they are looking for. That being said, only around 1% of websites use Schema content. This is a non-ad opportunity to rank.

#2 Master the First contentful Paint (Lighthouse Score) Lawyers love jargon as much as I do? Well the first contentful paint is a significantly weighted score when it comes to Google Lighthouse, which is their internal program for ranking websites. Almost all websites suck (Besides the ones we've built, ha) no really. We have abundant data showing that websites need to load in under 3 seconds for a customer to convert. How many websites do that? Few. This website you're on ranks nearly perfect for SEO because we have paid close attention to the elements Google have shown us are important. The first contentful paint can be improved by delaying image loads, removing or deferring heavy scripts, minifying heavy assets and so on.

#3 Steal the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) So we've talked about the SERP. One thing to remember is that the SERP is not a democracy, it is only fair to a low-resolution level. What we can do is more preparation for success more than any one of our competitors. By examining the elements of the SERP we can orient our webpage to qualify for the highest number of searches. Let's look at the pieces

• GMB Local Pack
• Service Ads
• Top 3 ads vs Top 3 organic results
• Schema (FAQ's, Business Details)
• Map 3 Pack
• Video (Rich Content)
• How-To (Rich Content)

There should be perfect continuity between these in brand colors, logos, landing pages etc. You want to have a coherent representation of your company throughout search engines. This way they can begin to paint a consistent picture of your business, by doing so they can predict who should see you and when and why your targeting becomes more accurate and Cost-Per-Click decreases.

#4 Lowering PPC (Pay Per Click, whoever spends less, can spend more overtime) You probably hear this term 100 times a day as a law firm as it has become the standard expectation. If you want cases, spend more on Google. To the point where the most expensive cost-per-click in the country is "Personal Injury Lawyer (Insert Big City)". Therefore by optimizing website performance, content semantics, your keyword universe and search engine compliance you remove as many roadblocks as possible, therefore spending less on PPC. Which actually means you can spend more when it comes to lifetime clicks. This is a marathon not a sprint, do you want the most cases this year? Or the most cases for the past 10?

#5 Semantic Content for NLP (Natural Language Processing) Google has hide at least 6 major algorithm updates in the last 6 years

• RankBrain
• Fred
• Medic
• BERT
• Core Updates
• Page Experience Update

“Google releases updates all of the time, but releases a core update several times a year. Apart from core updates that include a number of small but impactful changes, Google will release specific updates that may change what we consider an SEO best practice.” – Jasmin Bretaña, SEO Coordinator

NLP for example is Google's effort to understand search intent. We can do our best to align with expectations by properly structuring our content (Semantically) , keeping our meta tags up to date (not overstuffed) and uploading frequently to the search console. Ok as we talked about these are very tech-oriented tips. They are somewhat difficult to implement but in 2023 we need "separation metrics" which actually moves the need. What got us here won't get us there. I hope you employ these responsibly and grow your firm as we use these to grow our agency.

#5 Semantic Content for NLP (Natural Language Processing) Now on the flip side of the concept of NLP that we spoke about, it allows for free keyword research. At digital agencies we have memberships to software that does this in-depth for thousands of words at a time. But one way to do basic keyword research is right in the search bar of Google. Predictive search will start populating what it thinks you need, by asking multiple questions you can start to copy what Google is used to "hearing". By including these queries in your content you have a much greater chance of showing up for the correct type of customer.

#7 Having the most well rounded "Keyword Universe" Ok so this sounds a little odd. A keyword universe is the nickname we have in marketing for the total cloud of words that exists within the pages of your website. Search engines use this universe at a broad level to discover a "theme". So as it recognizes commonalities across multiple pages it can group you into more specific categories so you come up for customers properly. HVAC may be a home service but it is not "Roof Repair" which is also a home service just like "Pool Cleaning", "Pressure Washing And "Landscaping". Although you don't want to show up for those causes that can waste ad dollars and have you taking calls for services you don't offer. These may seem overly complicated and for some tech nerd to do (like us, ha). But in reality I can't give you a strategy that everyone else already has, because that would waste my time and yours. To learn more about me and my team visit our homepage. Zeus Digital Agency