This free tool will give you an average monthly search volume for each keyword.

Log in with your Google Account, place the list of keywords you’ve just created, and click on “Get Ideas”. This will produce your keywords with associated monthly search volume, competition, and suggested bid.

Filter the Keyword column by typing your descriptive keyword into the search bar. If you’re a civil litigation attorney, type litigation if you’re a criminal defense attorney, type criminal defense, and so on. To show you, I will type “Car Accident”.

Since we want to choose the most relevant keywords, we also recommend filtering your data, for example, by “Smallest to Largest “. If not, the Planner will show more than 500 results.

To show you, we have re-created this part of the guide as a video-tutorial:

While most of these keywords are highly valuable to your firm, you need to identify the keyword that drives traffic and generates leads.

In the SEO World, We Split the Search Intent into Three Major Categories

• Navigational: The intent to reach a particular site.Example: Facebook, White Shark Media, and Twitter
• Informational: The intent is to acquire information assumed to be present on one or more web pages.Example: “Attorneys in New York”, “Personal Injury Attorneys”
• Transactional: The intent is to perform some web-mediated activity.Example: “Hire a Personal Injury Attorney”

The next step is to classify your new set of keywords. You need to add a new column called “intent” and tag each keyword with “info” or “transactional”.

Sort your list by monthly searches starting from high to low. The keyword with the highest volume is your targeted keyword.

Analyze Your Organic Traffic and Impressions

In order to make informed optimizations, you must always measure your progress. For that, we recommend the following tools:

• Google Analytics
• Google Search Console (A.K.A Google Webmaster Tools)

Analyze Your Organic Traffic

With Google Analytics, you will be able to generate reports based on your needs.

There are many reports to review and analyze, in this case, we recommend using the Mobile Report. To access it:

1) Select the Date (At least 6 months, if historical data is present)

2) Click on Audience > Mobile > Overview

3) Select the Organic Segment

This report will tell you the number of organic visits and the device visitors is using, the bounce rate, time on site, and goal completion rate.

If your organic traffic is not increasing, it means your SEO is not working.

To learn more about Google Analytics check out the following tutorial: Analytics Training and Support

Analyze Your Organic Impressions and Search Queries

Google Webmaster Tools help you verify if you are appearing for the right keywords.

To check the report from webmaster tools you will need to go to Search Traffic > Search Queries.

This report tells you what keywords you’re ranking for, how many clicks they’re getting, and the average position in the SERPs.

Analyze Your Competitors

Analyzing competitors is pretty simple: they are competitive as hell! It’s really hard to rank as an attorney because most law firms are investing in SEO.

The only way to outrank your competition is to be better. For this, we recommend the assistance of the MozBar and Site Analyzer. These SEO tools will help you analyze your site and your competitor’s web site.

What The MozBar Will Tell You

The MozBar overlays 2 important statistics in the SERPs:

• Page Authority (PA): How many websites are linking to the page. The higher the PA, the harder it will be to outrank.

• Domain Authority (DA): How many websites are linking to the root domain. The higher the DA, the harder it will be to outrank.

What the Site Analyzer Will Tell You

• Summary Tab: Summary of priorities to improve website functionality.
• SEO Tab: Insight of all the best SEO practices.
• Content Tab: Identify the keywords density and content relationship with the keyword.
• Design Tab: Insight about the coding method used to build the website.
• Performance Tab: Overall performance grade.
• Accessibility Tab: Test the website in different screen resolutions.
  
  

  Using the Mozbar With Your Competitors

  Now that you know about these tools, use the keywords you selected, and make a search. For example:

  1) Search for “personal injury attorney Miami” and look for the first organic result. In this example “www.injuryattorneyfla.com/” is the first result.
  

  2) Grab the URL, look for the DA and PA score with MozBar, and add it to a Google Sheet to keep track.

3) Repeat the procedure for all the keywords you would like to rank.

Using Site Analyzer With Your Competitors

Go to https://www.site-analyzer.com, create a free account, and enter your competitor’s site URL. In this case, our competitor will be: www.injuryattorneyfla.com

This tool will give you everything valid and critical to your competitor’s website. Make sure you check what’s valid for your site and what you are doing better than your competitor.

Encourage Engagement With a Comfortable Website Experience

When creating a website keep in mind that your design needs to be fresh, it needs to load fast and be user friendly. Whether you decide to build the site or hire someone to help you, keep in mind the following recommendations:

1) Always Design for Mobile First: More than 50% of active users are using smartphones every day to answer their questions through Google. Mobile-optimization is a must.

2) Choose the Right Color: Having the right combination of colors invites users to navigate through the site.

3) Use a Large Typography: When designing your website, limit your font usage to one or two families. Use one for titles and headings and the other for paragraphs or body text.

4) Use a Simple Menu Navigation: List them under a drop-down menu.

A user-friendly drop-down menu usually goes like this:

• Home
• Attorney Profile (About Us)
• Practice Areas  (Products or Services)
  • Personal Injury
  • Employment Law
• Testimonials
• Blog (optional)
• Contact Us

2) Choose the Right Color: Having the right combination of colors invites users to navigate through the site.

3) Use a Large Typography: When designing your website, limit your font usage to one or two families. Use one for titles and headings and the other for paragraphs or body text.

4) Use a Simple Menu Navigation: List them under a drop-down menu.

A user-friendly drop-down menu usually goes like this:

• Home
• Attorney Profile (About Us)
• Practice Areas  (Products or Services)
  • Personal Injury
  • Employment Law
• Testimonials
• Blog (optional)
• Contact Us5) Encourage Social Sharing: No content is effective without the mention of social media. Make sure to include links to your site on your social profiles.
  

  Create Content That Visitors Will Love

  Creating content with search engines in mind is all you need, because crawling and indexing is what matters in the end, right? Yes, it is important that search engines can read and crawl your text, but it is more important that your visitors feel engaged with your site.

  If you create content that attracts visitors, the search engine will notice that your content is trending, and therefore it will become more relevant.

  When creating content avoid the following:

  • Keyword stuffing: If your keyword is “Accident Attorney” you don’t have to type “Accident Attorney” in every sentence.
  • Don’t force the keywords: If you force the content, it might end up losing its value.

  Engage With Your Customers Using Social Profiles

  When someone needs a lawyer, they usually search on Google or ask a friend. This friend might be familiar with a page or ad on social media or local listings with the best attorneys based on their specialty and geo-location.

  Social media pages also show that there is a person behind your firm (you) and that you’re accessible, while local listings legitimize your online presence further.

  Common Local Listings For Lawyers

  Visit the following pages to help build your profile:

  • lawyers.findlaw.com
  • lawyers.com
  • yellowpages.com
  • superpages.com
  • lawyers.justia.com
  • youtube.com
  • nolo.com
  • avvo.com
  • hg.org
  • local.yahoo.com

  Other Important Online Presences You Should Start Creating

  • Google My Business (top priority)
  • Facebook
  • Yelp
  • Bing
  • Whitepages

  Becoming a Trustworthy Firm and Website Through Link Building

  When another business (website) acknowledges your business and your website by linking to it, you are link building.

  Link building is a difficult technique. Why? Because it needs to happen naturally. You could even be penalized for forcing someone or a website to link to you.

  How can you accomplish this? By the following everything, we covered in this guide. Once you perform your analysis, make a friendly user design, and create local listings. People will start trusting you and sharing your content, making your business relevant.