When potential clients search the web for ‘bankruptcy attorneys,’ they do so secretly. This secrecy is understandable, as most prospective clients prefer to keep their financial struggles as private as possible. As a result, they are not asking for referrals for bankruptcy lawyers. Instead, choosing to conduct a general internet search to find a great attorney.
If you can’t rely on referrals and word of mouth, the question is, how can you ensure that your website is one of the results they stumble across? The answer is search engine optimization services. Search engine optimization for bankruptcy lawyers is the key to connecting with new clients, increasing your law firm’s visibility on the internet, and fueling business growth. This bankruptcy lawyer SEO guide will:
- Explain how to get more clients with bankruptcy SEO
- Give top tips for SEO-optimizing your bankruptcy law firm’s website
- Explore how SEO and PPC work together for the success of your bankruptcy law firm
- Tell you how to access professional bankruptcy attorney marketing
How Search Engine Optimization Brings Clients to Bankruptcy Law Firms
SEO involves optimizing website content and structure to rank higher in search engine results, driving more organic traffic to the firm’s website. Here are some of the key benefits of bankruptcy law firm SEO:
- Increased visibility: Techniques such as keyword optimization and link building can help bankruptcy attorneys become more visible in search engine results.
- Improved brand awareness: SEO helps bankruptcy law firms establish themselves as authorities in their field and build trust among their target audiences.
- Targeted content: It helps bankruptcy law firms create relevant and valuable content for their target audiences, thus increasing the chances of converting visitors into customers.
- Cost-effective advertising: SEO offers a more cost-effective way to advertise than traditional and other digital methods.
Top 11 Tips for DIY SEO for Bankruptcy Lawyers
Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s discuss some tips for optimizing your bankruptcy law firm’s website. Top search engines like Bing, Google, and other search engines have advanced algorithms that rank your website based on many factors. If you want to move closer to the top of search engine rankings, we recommend that you:
— Start with Local SEO for Bankruptcy Lawyers
As a bankruptcy lawyer, you should know that improving your rankings and getting more visibility in your local area is as important a part of marketing as general search. After all, most of your clients will be within your area, so keeping this in mind increases your chances of getting bankruptcy clients near you. There are various ways to improve your rankings.
- Create a Google My Business profile for your law firm and optimize it by adding your firm’s information and quality images. Don’t forget to add relevant keywords!
- Make sure your website is optimized for local search results. This means including city and state in title tags, meta descriptions, and headers. You should also create local website pages for your city or state.
- Focus on creating high-quality content relevant to your local area. This can include blog posts, articles, infographics, and even videos.
- Use other channels to reach a local audience, like legal directories and review sites.
To effectively target clients and boost your firm’s local visibility, delve into our comprehensive Local SEO guide for lawyers, where you’ll uncover proven strategies and techniques to dominate local search results in your practice area.
— Set Up Google My Business
Potential customers search for services related to bankruptcy law and find GMB profiles. Make sure to create a law firm account with GMB and fill in all the information about your business, including name, address, phone number, hours of operation, website URL, and more. Add keywords to your description to make it easier for potential clients to find you. Upload high-quality photos of your office, staff members, and services. This will make your profile more visually engaging and create a good first impression.
Furthermore, create posts to reach potential clients to promote your legal bankruptcy firm and share helpful content related to bankruptcy law. You must include links to your website in these posts to draw attention and drive traffic.
Most importantly, ask for customer reviews to get feedback on your services and build trust with potential clients. Make sure you respond to them accordingly and promptly. Leverage the Google Q&A section on your GMB to answer the frequently asked questions.
— Collect Reviews from Satisfied Clients
Reviews provide an important source of information for potential customers, as they can read about the experiences of other people who have used your services. Here are some ways to get reviews from clients:
- Ask for Google lawyer reviews at the end of each successful case. Make sure to remind your clients that reviews help other people make informed decisions about their legal representation.
- Request reviews on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. People are often more likely to write reviews if they can do it quickly and easily on a platform they already use.
- Send out automated emails to past clients asking them to submit a review. Use personalized language and give them clear instructions on how to leave a review.
- Include a link to leave a review on your website. Make it easy for clients to find and access the review page.
- Create a survey or questionnaire that clients can fill out after resolving their cases. This will give you valuable insights into what you did right or wrong and what areas need improvement.
— Sign Up for Legal Directories and Citations
By creating profiles on legal directories, lawyers can get more exposure to potential clients who are searching for legal services; however, choosing the best legal directory for your law firm can be a difficult decision. That’s why, when choosing a legal directory, consider the following:
- Prioritize directories with high domain authority and a good reputation, confirmed through online reviews, lawyer recommendations, and research.
- Assess the directory’s coverage and relevance to your practice area and jurisdiction, as some specialize while others have a broader scope.
- Evaluate advertising options and their effectiveness, such as paid listings or sponsored content, which can enhance visibility.
- Consider the cost of listing, comparing it against potential benefits to make an informed decision.
Citations, mentions of your business on other websites, offer social proof and enhance bankruptcy law firm SEO. List your firm on local directories like Yelp, Yellowpages, Apple Maps, Bing Places, and Google My Business for online visibility.
Engage with potential clients on forums, request mentions from local media outlets, and seek backlinks from local businesses.
Explore professional associations like the American Bankruptcy Institute or the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys for networking opportunities.
— Produce E-A-T Bankruptcy Legal Content
Google uses E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) as a criterion to assess website content quality. To demonstrate high E-A-T, it’s essential to provide good, quality legal content that explains processes and addresses questions.
For E-A-T bankruptcy legal content, rely on reputable sources like government websites, reliable news outlets, and academic journals. Ensure accuracy and currency, as outdated information discourages readers. Write in a clear, concise, and easily understandable style since readers seek simple information, not legal jargon.
To learn more about how your law firm can benefit from a strategic content marketing approach, check out our in-depth guide to content marketing for law firms, which provides practical insights and examples to help you get started!
— Perform Keyword Research
To build your bankruptcy law firm’s content around bankruptcy topics and relevant keywords, there are many important things to keep in mind:
- Identify the possible questions that might worry your bankruptcy clients by surveying Google’s snippets or forums
- Create a list of all the keywords you’ve collected.
- Check the volume and difficulty of each term using tools like Ahrefs or Semrush.
- Make sure you choose keywords that are easy to rank for. Consider choosing keywords with lower difficulty if your website is fairly new and has a low domain authority.
— Execute On-Page Optimization
On-page SEO, sometimes called onsite search engine optimization, is everything you do on your law firm website to optimize your website’s placement on Google search results pages. More than half of online searches are non-branded (for example, Houston bankruptcy lawyer), so your content must be relevant to attract potential clients. Elements of on-page law firm SEO include:
- Website structure, titles tags, page headings, and meta descriptions
- Website speed
- Website navigation
- Internal link (quality and count)
- Image optimization
- URL structure
- SSL security certificate (Google prefers this for all websites, but it is essential if you accept payments)
- Website and SEO maintenance, such as fixing crawl errors
- Mobile optimization
While your SEO marketing for bankruptcy lawyers targets search engines, you cannot forget the user experience (UX) element. Once your potential clients have found you, your website should provide an impactful and meaningful experience that will make website visitors want to take the next step and contact you.
— Incorporate Off-Page SEO
Off-site Search engine optimization involves improving search engine ranking through activities outside your website, like:
- Claiming or creating your firm’s free listings on legal directories like Martindale-Hubbell, Avvo, and Justia.
- Using attorney social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn for marketing your services, engaging with future clients, and building relationships with referral sources.
- Earning more reviews on your website or your law firm’s Google Business Profile.
— Implement Technical SEO
Technical SEO is optimizing your website for search engines’ discoverability and indexation of your content. The content gathered during the crawling process is stored and organized during indexing. A page has a chance of being shown as a response to relevant search queries after it is indexed.
By improving your technical SEO, you can ensure that more potential clients see your website and that your content ranks highly in search engine results pages. There are a number of tech Search Engine Optimization factors that you should consider for your bankruptcy law firm website, including site structure, page speed, SSL certificates, and more.
— Come Up with Bankruptcy Lawyer Content Ideas
One of the best ways to start is by researching relevant topics to create informative and helpful content for existing clients and new ones that will come across your content. It’s important to ensure that your content is well-written, accurate, and up-to-date with current bankruptcy laws. Some of the content you can produce are:
- AMAs feature interviews with a top lawyer of the firm, the CEO of the firm, or another lawyer in the field.
- Blog posts that include informative articles or news updates.
- Educative videos on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and other platforms.
- Podcasts where you tell the audience about ‘inside bankruptcy law,’ answer FAQs, interview a guest, and have an audience call in to ask questions.
Bankruptcy firm practice pages should also provide potential clients with an overview of the bankruptcy process, information about attorneys specializing in each area, details about services offered, experience in bankruptcy law, contact information, external resources, frequently asked questions, and additional resources to aid understanding of the process.
If you’re looking for tips on how to create compelling website content for your law firm, be sure to check out our article where we provide a detailed guide to law firm website content, including best practices and examples to help you stand out online.
— Find Backlinks for Your Bankruptcy Lawyer Website
Backlinks boost website visibility and rankings by providing additional information from reputable sources. Ensure backlinks are from reputable sources and link to high-quality content.
Include them by citing sources or linking to relevant articles, court documents, etc., offering diverse perspectives and more research options for readers.
There are a variety of ways to build backlinks to a bankruptcy attorney website, such as:
- Guest blogging is one of the most popular methods for building backlinks since it allows you to showcase your expertise while providing valuable content to other websites.
- Influencer marketing is another way to build backlinks for your site. By connecting with influencers in the legal industry, you can leverage their reach and get more people talking about your bankruptcy services and linking back to your website.
- Broken link building is a great way to find opportunities for new links on other websites while also helping them improve their user experience by fixing broken links
- Social media sharing allows you to drive more traffic to your website while creating quality backlinks through social media posts.
You can also build backlinks to your bankruptcy lawyer website, such as directory submissions, press releases, and blog commenting.
— Monitoring Your ROI From Bankruptcy Lawyer SEO
If you’re paying for bankruptcy attorney SEO services, you want to make sure you’re getting your money’s worth- a positive return on your investment. There are a few ways to track your ROI, but the most effective method is to use Google Analytics to track your conversions.
- Start with Google Analytics. This platform allows you to track website visitors, their activity on your site, and traffic sources. It can provide you with valuable insights into which keywords are bringing in the most bankruptcy leads for attorneys and the performance of each page on your website. This data can be used to determine which keywords are working best for you and should be targeted more heavily in the future. It also provides detailed data on organic search engine rankings so that you can measure the effectiveness of specific keywords and phrases.
- Once you have identified the traffic source, you can track conversions by setting up goals in Google Analytics. For example, measuring conversions for bankruptcy inquiries can show which keywords and phrases drive those bankruptcy lawyer lead generation. Make sure you have goals set up in Google Analytics so that you can track how many leads each keyword brings in and how much revenue those bankruptcy leads for attorneys generate. This will allow you to make more informed decisions about where to invest in SEO.
- Always keep track of your backlink profile growth. We have mentioned backlinks above, but since it is a key factor in SEO success, it is essential to keep track of these. When you’re building links to your website, it’s important to monitor the number and quality of links you’re getting. You can use a tool like Majestic or Ahrefs to monitor your backlink profile growth over time. This will help you identify any issues with bad links or links from low-quality websites. Additionally, you can use this data to develop an effective link-building strategy that will boost your rankings and ROI.
— Create a Client-Oriented Bankruptcy Law Firm Website
The end game of SEO for bankruptcy lawyers is to drive traffic to your website. But what good is it to generate organic traffic if you send prospective clients to an underwhelming website? Suppose your leads are greeted by a website that does not look professional and authoritative. In that case, they will likely bounce and select the next law firm listed on the SERP.
This is why you need to make sure you:
- Use clear and concise language related to bankruptcy law on every page.
- Use simple and easy-to-understand navigation.
- Include clear and helpful CTAs (calls to action) on every page.
- Use engaging and visually appealing visuals.
- Include relevant and up-to-date content.
- Have a clear and concise description of your firm’s bankruptcy law services.
- Incorporate Schema Markup
- Employ a user-friendly and mobile-responsive design.
- Add contact information that is easy to find and click.
- Create a legal blog with informative articles about bankruptcy law.
- Include client testimonials.
— Mobile Optimization and UX for Bankruptcy Website
When designing a bankruptcy law firm website, prioritize mobile optimization and UX. Many users access websites through their phones, so providing a good mobile user experience is crucial.
Start with responsive design to ensure the website displays correctly on any device, regardless of size or operating system. This facilitates easy navigation, quick information retrieval, and contacting the firm.
Simplify navigation menus for small screens, avoiding extensive drop-down menus and multiple layers. Prioritize important elements and ensure all menus are easily accessible from the home page.
Thoroughly test the website on various mobile devices to ensure proper functionality. Optimize search engine visibility by employing mobile-friendly SEO techniques, such as adding specific meta tags and titles for mobile devices.
Access Professional Services: SEO for Bankruptcy Lawyers
There is no question that a lot goes into SEO for bankruptcy law firms. If you want to master SEO for bankruptcy lawyers, you will need to conduct thorough keyword research, post quality blog content, acquire quality backlinks, monitor your online reputation, and much more. Oh, and you will need to use local SEO tactics as well.
Naturally, learning all these skills while trying to manage your bankruptcy law firm’s day-to-day operations can seem impossible. The good news is that you do not have to tackle this challenge alone. Instead, you can partner with a law firm marketing agency that provides local SEO services for law firms, like Grow Law Firm.
Grow Law Firm, named a top SEO Agency in Chicago by UpCity, is a digital marketing agency that also assists businesses in finding trustworthy and reputable service providers.
As a premier digital marketing agency for law firms, Grow Law Firm provides a comprehensive suite of brand-building services to help firms grow their revenue. We can assist with everything from attorney SEO services to managing your PPC marketing campaign and building your law firm website design. To learn more, contact our team today.