SEO Audit should always be the first step in creating any law firm SEO strategy. Without a detailed SEO Audit, you can forget about getting your website high ranked at search engines, as an oversight in fixing even simple technical SEO errors can exclude your website from search engine ranking results.
Too often law firms with a web site (even newly designed) are under the false assumption that their website is in the perfect working order. However just because your website looks fine while being viewed by browsers (i.e. Google Chrome, Opera, Edge, Firefox, Safari, etc.) does not mean that the 'all-important code' of the website is also SEO friendly or free of SEO errors.
Simply put, if your law firm's website is not ranked in top results - it is not designed or optimized in an ideal manner and/or does not have a proper SEO strategy in place.
Lawyer & Law Firm SEO Audit (Process)
SEO Audit:
A thorough and meticulous SEO Audit will help identify usability & technical errors that are critical for the success of your law firm SEO strategy. (In some ways 'SEO Audit' is not much different than 'Case Review' you as a law firm do, before starting on any case.)
Here is a short list of benefits of getting a SEO Audit for your Law Firm:
- Fact (backed by data) based understanding of your website currently stands when compared to your competitors.
- Penalty Checks for your website.
- Detailed understanding of your competing Law firm's SEO performance, their ranking, focused userbase & keywords.
- Your target audience's behavior.
- Identification of right keywords & key phrases that your potential clients actually use. (not just words, but questions too)
- Understand your website's strengths & weaknesses.
- Existing positive points affecting your site ranking.
- Any black (/gray) hat methods and/or Technical SEO error negatively affecting your website's ranking.
- Technical, UX & SEO Errors:
- Schema Markup
- SSL / HTTS Certification
- Website Speed
- Keyword Cannibalization
- Duplicate Content
- Broken Links
- Toxic Link Audit
- Google Search Console Errors & Remarks
- Internal Linking Structure
Above factors along with other details from your SEO Audit will help prioritize and streamline your law firm SEO strategy.
Google provided 'Quality Guidelines' information can be found at:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/topic/6001971
Technically speaking there are over 200 factors that affect your website ranking. Though some of these factors matter a lot more than others, the reality is, even small technical SEO error could make it impossible for your website to get ranked - regardless of how much money or effort you have spent on all other. Also, there is no exact benchmark for the usage of these factors, however still overuse or underuse of them will generally never produce desired results.
One can learn a good deal about the basics of 'Webmaster Guidelines' at
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769