SEO

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Posted On: By Postali

As attorneys in the modern age, you want to improve your site’s visibility to get more cases. Even if you have a basic understanding of Search Engine Optimization and how the fundamentals affect your site’s rankings in search algorithms, you might have questions about strategies.

Lawyers work in a saturated market, and you need to ensure your business can stand out from the crowd. It isn’t enough to be a talented attorney: you need to make sure your site follows the best SEO practices to stay up-to-date and relevant to your clients.

“Your Money or Your Life” Pages

You aren’t being mugged: Google’s algorithms weigh certain pages differently, depending on their products or services’ impact on the user’s life. Pages detailing things that can impact the reader’s health, happiness, and money are scrutinized for accuracy. Inaccurate pages will hurt a website’s authority and reputation.

Pages that offer medical advice, financial advice, information on current events, or legal advice are considered YMYL pages.

Search engines use quality guidelines to improve user experience. Pages flagged with misinformation or misleading information are “penalized” in search rankings. When the algorithm doesn’t consider you a reliable source of information, it will not rank you higher in search results.

EAT Up: Improving Your YMYL Page Authority

To evaluate your website’s authority, the search algorithm will look at your site’s Expertise-Authoritativeness-Trust (EAT) as part of its reliability guidelines. Search engines will examine a page to check if it’s valuable and should rank well for users, based on the EAT guidelines.

Reviewers will examine:

  • Expertise: Google will review a content creator’s area of focus. For instance, an attorney’s content should be about the law and how it affects everyone. Any unrelated content could damage the “expertise” score.
  • Authoritativeness: the authority of the content creator, the content in question, and the website as a whole. Is the website in question a well-known source of information? Does it provide clear information on the subject?
  • Trust: how much the reader can trust the site’s creator and content with the subject matter and purpose. A lawyer providing thorough legal information and positioning themselves as a thought leader will build trust. A lawyer with multiple lawsuits against them for false information will not perform well.

SEO’s Two Core Components

So what can you do to improve your site’s authority and build a strong YMYL website that will withstand extreme scrutiny? You can create robust content on the page and work to get support “off the page” using backlinks and referring domains.

Basically, you can boost your site’s E-A-T with quality content and by demonstrating your reliability and authority.

Creating Quality Content to Fit SEO Expectations

On-page content rubrics change the most regarding SEO and scoring with the algorithm. Keeping your website updated to get rewarded continually is essential for good SEO.

Among other factors, strong websites will use headers with keywords, have reliable navigation structure, and have trustworthy content.

The algorithm will review and rank your content compared to other websites in the same category.

Using Backlinks to Improve Your SEO

You can reinforce your page’s EAT with “off-page” optimizations or backlinking. These are links from one website directing readers to another. They are often called “inbound” or external links.

These backlinks act as “votes of confidence” for Google’s algorithms. The more links you have from trusted sites, the better your rank will reflect that.

Some strategies for getting these links include buying backlinks. However, getting penalized for buying backlinks is possible: Google may also weigh these “votes” differently for your site.

You could hope for “organic” links to your site. Other businesses may like your content and want to link to it for their readers. However, there’s the risk that their sites may not be trustworthy, or you might not get any takers. Preparing for those possibilities is vital when you design your SEO strategy.

As a marketing agency, we pride ourselves in the network we have built to establish backlinks. Finding quality sites to bolster your site’s EAT is crucial to your SEO. Our SEO team is adept at finding authoritative sites to help your firm.

Technical Optimizations to Support SEO

Technical optimizations include how accessible your website is for users, how well it runs for users, and what kind of user experience readers can have.

There are “unknowns” in SEO algorithms that affect site’s optimization, but we aren’t sure how to quantify their importance. Google hasn’t given these items a specific weight, but we know they matter.

How easy is it for readers to move around your site? Can people change the font or use a tool to read the text aloud? Google considers these features in your EAT, and focusing on them is essential.

We know some factors can improve a site’s EAT. For instance, if a page is marked as “noindex,” Google’s algorithm will ignore it and it will not perform well. A site’s speed will also impact its SEO.

Earning the Best EAT for your Website using SEO Building Blocks

You might be wondering if you can use your fundamental knowledge of search engine optimization and create a website on your own, one that will rank well with organic backlinks and strong usability for readers.

In reality, however, you probably won’t be able to juggle website maintenance, content creation, and legal practice simultaneously. As a marketing agency focused on law firm website performance, Postali is ready to fill that need for you.

We’re up-to-date on Google’s standards and practices, how to earn the best EAT for your site, and what kind of content and work you need to rank in your market.

Collaborate with Postali to build your website with the SEO fundamentals in heart to benefit your law firm fully.

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