As a wills lawyer presumably you want your business to grow, and by that we mean that you are able to acquire new clients. There are many ways in which you could achieve that goal such as paid advertising, and one of the most tried and tested of them, personal recommendations. However, in this modern world you cannot ignore the influence the internet has on our lives, and so that must also be an avenue you use to find new clients.
We are going to make the assumption that you have a website, although if there are any wills lawyers reading this who do not, then we strongly advise you to get one. Why? Firstly, it is almost certain that all of your competitors have websites, and second, searching and researching online is how many people find a wills lawyer, especially when they are looking for one locally.
For those that do have websites, then the next question we must you is how well it ranks on Google? In other words, when someone uses a search term such as ‘wills lawyers near me’, does your website appear on the first page of results. If it doesn’t, then it is likely that the amount of traffic that search engines such as Google send you is minimal.
Consider this…the percentage of traffic that comes from the first page of Google from a single search is over 70%. in other words if 100 people key in the same search term, 70 of them will see the websites on page 1. The other 30 will be on pages 2 and so on. Even more eye opening is the fact that the websites in the top 3 positions on page 1 will accrue around 55% of all that traffic between them.
The point we are making here is that if your website does not appear in any of those top 3 positions, or at least on page one for any search, then it is missing out on a huge number of opportunities to acquire new clients. These prospects are clicking through to other wills lawyers‘ websites, and again we stress, that is likely to include your local competition.
Hopefully, we have convinced you of the importance of ranking highly on Google, so now let us turn our attention as to how it can be achieved. In most cases the means you improve the ranking of a website is with search engine optimisation, or SEO as it is more commonly called. SEO is series of actions you can implement that Google can identify, and if those actions show Google that your website should be ranking for appropriate keywords, then your rankings will improve.
To give you an indication of the sorts of SEO actions we are referring to, here are 5 of the most important.
#1 Comprehensive Keyword Research: To know which search terms will generate the most traffic you must do effective keyword research. This will identify those keywords with high competition and those which you can rank for fairly quickly and easily.
#2: High Quality Content: Knowing which keywords are applicable means you can now create content which is optimised for them. However, your content must be top quality and genuinely be useful for visitors to your website.
#3: 100% Website Functionality: Google places a lot of emphasis on user experience, and as it is a ranking factor, you must ensure that all functions work properly on your website. Errors and pages which load slowly will kill your rankings on Google.
#4: Creating Backlinks From Others Websites: Building a series of backlinks from other websites relative to your niche is another core SEO function. These act as kind of approval system which Google uses to determine which websites should be ranking highest.
#5: On Site Optimisation Of Metadata And Internal Linking: Slightly more technical but not especially difficult is to optimise the metadata within your website which helps Google identify what you are trying to rank for. Backlinks also help to pass the authority from your backlinks throughout your site.