Divorce Lawyer SEO Guide for 2023

Table of Contents

Back in the day, divorce lawyers used traditional marketing strategies and word-of-mouth to promote their legal practice. Personal referrals were, and still are, a powerful tool for acquiring prospective clients, but they also used a mix of TV and radio ads, brochures, and similar techniques.

However, as the internet started developing, the way family law practices promoted their businesses changed significantly. Nowadays, people primarily rely on Google when searching for the best lawyers in their vicinity. For example, local SEO for divorce lawyers is now as important as word-of-mouth, helping clients find legal help with minimal effort.

In this article, we’ll talk about the importance of search engine optimization for your family law firm and what the process looks like in practice.

What do divorce lawyers SEO services entail?

Search engine optimization is a process during which a marketing expert improves your divorce law firm’s website so it ranks higher in the Google search. During their employment, these professionals tackle various technical aspects of the site while also improving your content marketing strategy and outreach.

An SEO campaign can be extremely complex and usually consists of the following:

Each process works in a vacuum but also in conjunction with other optimization tactics. The ultimate goal is to make websites more “acceptable” by search engines’ robots, helping them properly index and rank your pages. Google puts a lot of emphasis on user experience as well, ensuring that all website visitors enjoy the platform and its content.

In the later sections of the article, we’ll talk a bit more about each one of these, so make sure to stick with us!

Why is SEO for divorce lawyers better than other marketing approaches?

Saying that SEO is better or worse than other marketing strategies isn’t just. Each promotional method has pros and cons for divorce lawyers, so you might even consider combining them for much better results. The thing that is so attractive about search optimization is the fact that nothing can match the organic traffic you get from Google search results.

SEO vs. SMM

Unlike social media, which people commonly use to have fun, users rely on Google organic search when looking for answers to their problems. In many cases, they browse the web to purchase services from a divorce law firm, so by ranking at the top of search pages, you can attract highly qualified leads to your brand.

SEO vs. PPC

SEO also carries significant benefits compared to paid advertising. Unlike PPC or pay-per-click, search engine optimization works in perpetuity. Even when you stop the SEO campaign, you’ll enjoy the benefits for at least a while. That doesn’t happen with paid ads, as they’re immediately taken down when you stop paying.

SEO drawbacks

Then again, law firms also have their fair share of complaints regarding this marketing tactic. First and foremost, they don’t like the amount of time it takes to optimize a law firm’s website. This can be a major issue for a divorce lawyer who just started his practice, as it can significantly affect their cash flow.

Miromind perceives SEO as a brand-building effort, which takes time and knowledge to implement, but in the long run, trumps all other marketing strategies.

How does SEO work for brand awareness?

Family law attorneys should always put emphasis on brand awareness. In the end, whether it’s a child custody case or divorce, potential clients want to be sure they’re in the right hands.

That being said, the divorce lawyer SEO provides a few easy benefits to your awareness:

If your family law practice ranks at the top of Google, people will perceive it as a reputable company and a reliable source of information. These businesses have a much easier time building their brand as they start from the point of authority
During law firm SEO, marketing experts will connect with numerous legal experts. This is commonly done during the link-building process. Depending on how you nurture these connections, they can serve as a permanent source of links and social media mentions. If you play your hands right, you might use them to gain additional exposure via partnerships
The more you work on SEO, the more topics you’ll cover. Besides family law topics, you’ll probably transition to other legal fields, which will increase exposure to related fields. Ultimately, this can also help if you ever decide to spread your wings and start adding new services and professionals to your practice
Social media marketing usually goes hand-in-hand with any custom SEO strategy. You’ll likely use LinkedIn and Facebook for outreach purposes, which will inadvertently help build your professional account. Besides serving as a brand awareness vehicle, these social profiles might come in handy down the line for future marketing campaigns

SEO has a massive trickle-down effect for divorce attorneys. Every thing you do online, as insignificant as it might seem, will eventually boost your presence. It will help reach new segments of the audience, increase your reputation, and set you up for success.

4 Steps of the SEO process for divorce lawyers

Working with divorce law firms is similar to working with any other business entity. Although the focus is a bit different compared to other industries and niches, SEOs still use the same set of procedures.

Technical SEO

As the name implies, technical optimization is the backbone of any SEO process, but also your digital marketing. Whether you’re driving leads via Google, LinkedIn, or some other channel, you need a well-designed and properly functioning platform to close the deal.

Technical SEO puts emphasis on the following tasks:

Website speed
Mobile-friendliness
Site indexing
Site architecture
Easy-to-use design
Removing HTTP errors

The process is crucial for search engine crawlers and users alike. For example, a technical audit helps you detect any crawling problems that would prevent indexing of your pages which, among others, hinges on website architecture. The same architecture is important for users, as it allows them to go through your pages with easy.

During this step, you’re looking to provide the best possible experience for users, so they can stay on your platform for as long as possible. Google usually doesn’t evaluate these factors directly; instead, it analyzes how people interact with the site. So, things such as high bounce rates are commonly the best indication of poor site performance.

On-page SEO for divorce lawyers

On-page optimization is a term that refers to the creation and modification of your pages. Given how optimization works nowadays, this usually pertains to the creation content for core service pages and blog posts. The process entails the following practices:

Analyzing user intent
Researching keywords
Creating content
Optimizing content for relevant keywords
Adding metadata
Adding internal links

Before an SEO expert can start creating articles for a divorce lawyer, they should take a look at their audience and research relevant keywords. Ideally, marketing professionals should focus on phrases that have commercial intent but are easy to optimize for. Otherwise, they could create lots of pieces that provide no value to your practice.

After having a better understanding of the market, SEOs start planning and creating content. A common practice within this field is creating clusters, sets of articles that are closely related to each other. The approach can have a major impact on the optimization but can also serve as a sales and marketing funnel for your business.

Articles should be well-written, informative, and have a simple structure. Your visitors should be allowed to enhance their knowledge with minimal effort and in a minimal amount of time.

Off-page SEO

During this process, an SEO provider is looking to acquire high-quality contextual links and mentions for the business. Search engines consider these shares as a sign of quality and relevance. Still, not all links are made the same, and you’ll get a much bigger boost from those coming from related industry sites.

Off-page SEO includes the following tactics:

Organic outreach
HARO outreach
Guest posting
Broken link building
Infographics and other link-baiting content
Forum and social media posting

This is the touchiest aspect of an optimization campaign. In theory, you should get as many high quality niche relevant links as possible for your legal site. However, if you overdo it with the link process, this might raise a red flag with Google causing a site-wide penalty, which is hard to get rid of.

Local SEO

Local optimization is crucial for all local providers, including legal websites. Given that most of your clients come from the same city, placing on top of Google for relevant local keywords (such as “divorce lawyer in Chicago”) can go a long way in generating leads.

At the start of the process, an SEO firm will create and optimize a Google business profile for your legal practice. After adding your business to several directories, your should start acquiring online feedback. These reviews are vital for your placement in the search engine, and usually, you should focus on getting a high quantity of positive reviews.

Aside from that, local SEO also pertains to creating articles that revolve around previously-mentioned local phrases. Unlike other processes, the way you perform during local optimization hinges on a law firm as much as it depends on an SEO provider. In other words, you need to provide a good service for people to leave positive feedback on Google.

For more information, please read our Local SEO Guide.

How to find the right SEO provider for your divorce law firm?

Perhaps the trickiest thing about SEO is finding the right partner. The differences between the two companies can be palpable, with one boosting your traffic sky-high and the other causing site-wide penalties.

So, before you even start considering this marketing approach, the Miromind team suggests that you find the right partner. Here are a few things that a divorce lawyer should consider when vetting providers:

Comprehensive service

When optimizing your divorce law firm’s website, you need a provider that can do everything from scratch. The SEO company should have enormous experience with technical SEO, content marketing, keyword research, and has a safe link-building strategy in place.

Many SEO businesses advertise themselves as experts in one field or another. For example, they put emphasis on their content creation or link-building services, rarely mentioning other optimization processes.

The reason why this is a problem is that you need a provider that can manage all processes simultaneously. SEO is a segmented process that consists of numerous smaller tasks. There needs to be cohesion and coordination between the teams so everyone’s on the same page. This is the only way to ensure the best results for your law firm.

So, when looking for a partner, find someone who can tackle all aspects of the project.

Industry expertise

It’s also vital to find a provider who had many divorce law clients in the past. Having an industry expert simplifies the process, ensuring they deliver results much faster.

For example, SEO experts that worked for other websites have a solid understanding of the target audience and their requirements. They also know which phrases are the best to pursue. In fact, don’t be surprised if they have ready lists of relevant keywords and can start creating content as soon as they’re onboarded.

If an SEO professional worked with many law firms in the past, this would also make it easier to perform outreach. These marketing companies have working relationships with other law firms, making outreach a breeze. Depending on their industry expertise, they can jumpstart the campaign with several quality links and shoutouts that will boost your traffic overnight.

Online reviews

Online reviews are one the trickiest things to assess and could even be perceived as irrelevant depending on how much feedback a provider received in the past.

A divorce lawyer should always start by checking star reviews on Google. Unfortunately, unless we’re talking about a major (and expensive) provider, most marketing agencies will have a limited number of these specific reviews.

On the other hand, third-party reviews might be completely irrelevant as you don’t know whether they were sponsored by the SEO company. Nevertheless, all this online feedback should be used in conjunction to help you assess how a business is performing. Keep in mind that even if a provider has high scores, that doesn’t necessarily mean they do a good job for law firms.

Interpersonal behavior and communication

Even if everything else is on point, a service company might still exhibit some unfavorable behavioral traits. Nowadays, many law firms hire foreign SEO providers in an attempt to save money. Like with any type of outsourcing, this can lead to communication issues, which commonly lead to misaligned goals between two parties.

Lack of professionalism is even worse. Your firm needs an easily-reachable provider, so you can quickly modify the campaign if anything goes awry. They also need to be reasonable and ready to make adjustments when necessary.

Some of these character flaws might be hard to detect at first. Luckily, most brands provide a free consultation before closing in on an agreement. This would give you some insight into how an SEO professional will behave down the line and whether they’re fluent in English.