
SEO for Real Estate Lawyers: Fundamentals & Best Practices
For real estate lawyers, there’s arguably no better digital marketing strategy than search engine optimization, or SEO. Digital marketing, of course, is increasingly important in a world where people looking for real estate lawyers usually begin their search online. If you want to grow your real estate law practice, digital marketing is now a practical necessity. Law firm SEO, when executed properly, can increase your rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs), ultimately increasing the visibility of your real estate law practice, generating more organic traffic, and ultimately resulting in more converted leads. But how exactly do you practice SEO as a real estate lawyer? And why is it so valuable? Real Estate Lawyers and SEO: What’s the Point? Let’s start by addressing the high-level consideration: why should real estate lawyers practice SEO? The benefits of law firm SEO can be incredibly powerful for your legal practice. Ranking highly in searches relevant to real estate law means more people will see your practice, more people will visit your website, and more people will ultimately work with you. If you can dominate the competition in SERPs, you’ll earn the majority of real estate law clients in your area. SEO is also loved by real estate lawyers because of its inexpensiveness and accessibility, especially when compared to other digital marketing strategies. As you’ll see, the foundational elements of SEO are neither prohibitively complicated nor ridiculously expensive; simply creating content, building links, and occasionally auditing and tweaking things can be enough to help you rank higher in search engines. That said, it is important to have a solid high-level strategy in place. Some real estate lawyers also love SEO because of its long-term nature. It does take several months to get going, but once you have that momentum, it can continue paying off for years or even decades. Every asset you create for your SEO strategy will be functionally permanent, and as long as you keep executing a law firm SEO strategy, you can continue reaping the benefits. The Core Elements of SEO for Real Estate Lawyers The basic elements of SEO for real estate lawyers include: The SEO vision. First, you need a vision for the SEO strategy you’re going to build. Who are your top competitors? Who are your target demographics? What types of keywords and phrases are your real estate law clients searching for? Of those keywords and phrases, which are the most important and which are merely secondary considerations? Once you have the blueprints in place, executing your SEO strategy becomes much easier. Onsite technical SEO. You’ll also need to practice onsite technical SEO. Essentially, this means adjusting the code and presentation of your website so it’s more favorable to your brand in the eyes of Google and other search engines. Your website needs to function quickly and efficiently, and it should be organized and presented in a way that makes it easy for both search engine crawlers and users to understand. Onsite content writing. If you know anything about law firm SEO, you probably know that content is an important constituent element of it. That’s largely because onsite content serves a few different purposes simultaneously. It allows you to optimize for specific keywords. It allows you to build your authority and credibility. It even gives you anchors on which you can build inbound links. Link building and offsite content development. It’s technically possible to rank in search engines without aggressively building backlinks, but at the very least, backlinks should be a consideration in your SEO strategy. That’s because the more links you have pointed to your website, and the more authoritative those links are, the more authoritative your website will be seen to be. And of course, websites are ranked in large part based on authoritativeness. Metrics and analysis. Finally, you’ll need to routinely monitor your metrics and analyze your performance. This way, you can figure out which tactics are working, which ones need to be abandoned, and which future strategies are going to help you succeed the most. To be fair, law firm SEO is a somewhat complicated strategy, so consider this list merely an introductory guide. How Real Estate Lawyers Get Started With SEO (Keyword Research and Beyond) How are you supposed to get started with SEO services for your real estate law firm? There are literally hundreds of search engine ranking factors to consider and hundreds of little tweaks you can make to improve your website. On top of that, to preserve and continue building your SEO strategy, you’ll need to make an ongoing commitment to develop content and build new links. But everything starts with an initial analysis. For most real estate lawyers, that means an exhaustive audit of your existing law firm’s website, detailing potential SEO problems so you can correct them one by one. This also includes a competitive analysis, so you know who the top real estate lawyers and law firms in your area are. Beyond that, you’ll heavily focus on keyword research, specifically tailored to real estate law firms. Your law firm SEO strategy will be guided by a list of strategically valuable keywords and phrases; you’ll optimize your website and content for these keywords and phrases so you can rank for them when people issue them as search queries. The best keyword targets are ones that are highly relevant to real estate law, high in search volume, and relatively low in competition. These are some example keywords and phrases law firms can target to help you start brainstorming: Residential and Commercial Transactions Landlord-Tenant Disputes Zoning and Land Use Property Development Eminent Domain The Technical Side of SEO Services for Real Estate Lawyers After you’re done with keyword research and selection, you can turn your attention to technical onsite SEO services. As you might imagine, there are hundreds, if