What is Technical SEO for Lawyers?
Technical SEO is the process of ensuring a website meets the technical requirements of modern search engines with the goal of improved organic rankings. Important elements of technical SEO include crawling, indexing, rendering, and website architecture. For most attorneys using WordPress, most of these things are relatively straightforward and easy to manage.
While many attorneys are familiar with basic on-page SEO strategies such as optimizing metadata and content, these technical elements are an equally important, albeit often overlooked, aspect of search engine optimization that can significantly impact your law firm's online presence.
Why is Technical SEO for Law Firms Important?
Technical optimization ensures that search engines can effectively crawl, index, and rank your law firm's website. From improving site speed and mobile-friendliness to ensuring secure, accessible URLs, these optimizations play a pivotal role in enhancing the user experience and boosting your site's visibility on search engines.
Whether you're a solo practitioner looking to gain a foothold in your local market or a multi-location law firm aiming for national recognition, understanding and implementing Technical SEO best practices is essential for achieving your online marketing goals.
Is Your Law Firm's Website on Google?
Google Search has three core phases that enable it to find, store, and return results in a ranked priority to give users what they're looking for when searching the web.
1. Crawling
Crawling is the discovery phase where Google uses "bots" or "spiders" to scour the internet for new and updated content. These bots navigate the web by following links from one page to another, collecting data on every webpage they visit.
For your law firm's website to be discovered during this phase, your site must be well-linked from other sites and have a strong internal linking structure.
2. Indexing
Once your law firm's website has been crawled, the next stage is indexing. In this phase, Google analyzes the content of each page, trying to understand what it is about — whether it's about personal injury law, family law, real estate law, or another legal service. It then stores this information in a massive database known as the index.
To improve your website’s indexing, each page should have clear, concise, and relevant content, use appropriate keyword research and terms, and be free from technical issues that could prevent Google from understanding and storing your site’s information.
3. Serving Results for Search Queries
The final stage is serving results, where Google uses its algorithms to determine the relevance and authority of web pages in its index to a user's search query. The pages deemed most relevant are then ranked and displayed in the search results. Several factors influence this ranking, including the site's relevance to the search query, its authority on the subject matter, user experience signals, and many others.
To rank highly in search results, your law firm's website not only needs to be rich in relevant and authoritative content but also needs to offer an excellent user experience, be mobile-friendly, and load quickly.
Make it Easy for Google to Crawl Your Law Firm’s Content
Create URLs Optimized for Search & Users
Google needs unique URLs to crawl and index your pages. URLs are composed of the following components:
- Protocol: The SSL layer that protects visitors
- Hostname: Your domain
- Path: Often a subdirectory on your website
- Filename: The page
- Query Strings: Common on ecommerce websites
- Text Fragments: Commonly used for jumplinks
URL Schema
Here’s an example:
Example with URL Schema
PROTOCOL
The protocol is a set of rules that determine how data is transmitted over the internet. It specifies how your computer communicates with the server hosting the website.
The protocol is the starting part of a URL. Examples of protocols include <span class="inline-code">http://</span> and <span class="inline-code">https://</span> .
Google recommends all websites follow the <span class="inline-code">https://</span> protocol as it provides an extra layer of security by encrypting the data transmitted between the user’s browser and the website’s server.
HOSTNAME
The hostname is the unique name that identifies a specific website or server on the internet. It is usually a combination of words separated by dots (e.g., <span class="inline-code">www.example.com</span>).
The hostname helps your computer find the correct server where the website is hosted.
PATH
The path is the specific location or directory on the web server where a particular webpage or resource is located. The path helps identify the file or folder structure on the server.
For example, if you want to access a specific webpage like <span class="inline-code">example.com/products</span>, <span class="inline-code">products</span> would be the path.
FILENAME
The filename is the name of the specific file you are trying to access within the path. It could be an HTML file, an image file, or any other type of file hosted on the server.
For example, if you are accessing an image named <span class="inline-code">picture.jpg</span> within the “images” folder of a website, <span class="inline-code">picture.jpg</span> would be the filename.
QUERY STRING
The query string is an optional part of a URL that contains additional information or parameters. It follows a question mark symbol (<span class="inline-code">?</span> ) and consists of key-value pairs separated by ampersands (<span class="inline-code">&</span> ).
For example, in this URL:
the query string is:
It is commonly used to pass data to the server for processing or to modify the behavior of a webpage. You can see if you look at the URL next time you’re on a website like Amazon and change the color, size, or any other attribute of a product you’re looking at.
You’ll also see them frequently when clicking on links from social media or affiliate websites. Marketers often use them to pass attribution data to their analytics and CRM platforms.
If you’re already working with an SEO agency, they should have added query parameters to your Google Business Profile so you can distinguish which clicks to your website come from organic results vs your GBP listing.
Query Strings Example of Query Strings in a Google Business Profile URL
FRAGMENT
The fragment, also known as a URL fragment identifier or anchor, is an optional part of a URL that specifies a specific section within a webpage.
It is preceded by a hash symbol (<span class="inline-code">#</span>). Fragments are commonly used to link to a specific section of a longer webpage.
When you access a URL with a fragment, the browser will automatically scroll to the section identified by the fragment.
For example, in a URL like <span class="inline-code">example.com/page#section1</span>, the fragment is <span class="inline-code">#section1</span>.
Use a Robust Internal Linking Strategy
Internal linking is a key part of law firm SEO strategy and helps search engine crawlers navigate through your website. Internal links also provide opportunities to help potential clients navigate to the content that will be most helpful to them throughout their user journey. Finally, internal links help distribute page authority throughout your site, enhancing the SEO performance of individual pages.
Strategic Link Placement
Ensure that high-value pages, such as those outlining your law firm’s services or key practice areas, are linked from your homepage or main navigation menu. This makes them more accessible to both users and search engine crawlers.
Contextual Linking
Within your website's content, incorporate links to other relevant pages on your site. For example, a blog post on "Understanding Personal Injury Claims" could link to your service page on Personal Injury Law. This not only helps with SEO but also improves the user experience by providing additional, valuable information.
Link with Descriptive Anchor Texts
Using descriptive and relevant anchor text for links gives search engines more context about the linked page, helping improve its relevance for specific search queries.
Use Sitemaps
Sitemaps act as a roadmap of your website, listing all crucial pages in a format that’s easily digestible by search engine crawlers. This tool is particularly useful for ensuring that all your content, especially newly added pages, is discovered by search engines.
The Sitemap Index in GSCOptimizing the Use of Sitemaps
Keep your sitemap updated with all new pages added to your website. This way, new content is quickly discovered and indexed by search engines.
After updating your sitemap, don’t wait for search engines to find it naturally. Submit it directly through Google Search Console for quicker indexing.
If your law firm’s website is large, consider creating multiple sitemaps organized by page type. For example, having separate sitemaps for blog posts, practice areas, and lawyer profiles can make it easier for search engines to crawl related content efficiently.
Monitoring for Crawl Errors
GSC showing crawl errors in redRegular monitoring of your website through Google Search Console works like a routine wellness checkup for identifying and fixing crawl errors. These errors can prevent search engines from accessing certain parts of your site, impacting your SEO performance.
- Regular Checks: Make monitoring for crawl errors a regular part of your site’s maintenance routine. Addressing these promptly helps avoid significant impacts on your site’s performance.
- Analyze the Error Reports: Google Search Console provides detailed reports on crawl errors, categorizing them into server errors, URL errors, and more. Use these reports to understand the nature and source of the errors.
- Correct Errors Efficiently: For URL-specific errors, ensure that the correct redirect is in place if a page has been moved. For server errors, liaise with your web hosting provider to resolve any issues affecting site accessibility.
How to Determine if Your Site is Indexed by Google
Once your website is crawlable, the next step is ensuring it's indexable. Indexability is the search engine’s ability to analyze and add a website's pages to its index—a vast database of discovered pages. If your website is not indexable, it won't appear in search results, regardless of its content quality.
You can use what's known as the site search operator to see if your website is in Google's index. Here's how:
- Visiting google.com
- Typing site: yourdomain.com into the search bar.
- Tap enter on your device.
If you see your law firm's website in the organic search results, then you’re in Google’s index.
Note: The site: search operator won’t always return every URL on your website. You can learn more about the site: search operator here.
Can't Find Your Website on Google?
There are a few reasons why your site might not appear when using the site: operator:
- Your site isn't being linked to enough from other websites for Google to discover it naturally.
- Your site is brand new and is still in the crawl queue.
- Google isn't able to crawl your site due to the design or underlying code.
- Your server or other intermediary sent Google an error when it tried to crawl it.
- You have policies in place that prevent Google from crawling your site.
How to Get Your Law Firm's Website on Google
You can submit your website to Google manually, or you can let it discover it organically.
Don’t wait for Google to discover your website organically. Learn how to submit your site to Google manually using Search Console.
You can add your site to Google Search Console using multiple verification methodsIf Search Console indicates that Google has crawled your website but hasn’t indexed it, ask yourself the following:
- Are there any technical SEO issues blocking Google from accessing my website? For example, robots.txt directives block Google, server issues returning error codes, and non-indexable content on the page (e.g., content rendered using methods Google can’t replicate).
- Have I violated any of Google’s spam policies like spammy, automatically-generated content?
- Have I created helpful, reliable, people-first content, or have I created content solely to rank higher on Google?
How to Create Optimized URLs
Your goal should be to create simple URLs that people could look at and get a good idea what the page is going to be about.
Here’s a simple process to follow:
- Take your target topic
- Replace all spaces with hyphens
- Remove all special characters
- Make it lowercase
For example, if your topic was “car accident insurance claim time limit” then your URL slug would be <span class="inline-code">/car-accident-insurance-claim-time-limit</span>.
Make Your Site Easy to Navigate
Navigation is important for search engines because it helps them understand and organize the content of websites.
When search engines crawl websites, they rely on the navigation structure to discover and index different pages.
Navigation menus and links guide search engine bots through the site, allowing them to access and analyze the information on each page. This process helps search engines determine the relevance and value of the content, making it easier for them to deliver accurate and helpful search results to users.
Essentially, navigation acts as a roadmap for search engines, enabling them to effectively navigate and make sense of the vast amount of information available on the web.
<div class="callout callout-info"><p>Why Does Google Care?</p><p>Google’s job is to help people get answers to their questions quickly. If your website is easy to navigate, then it’ll be easy for users to find what they’re looking for.</p><p>If it’s difficult to navigate, you’ll frustrate users. If Google ranks your site, and it frustrates users, they’ll get frustrated with Google as well.</p></div>
How to Plan Your Site Navigation
Start with your home page (called the root), when planning how you’ll organize your website. Consider who your target audience is and how they would traverse your website if they started from the home page.
In general, your home page will cover the broadest topic and as you organize folders and files (pages) under it, things will get more specific. Use a logical hierarchy by categorizing and grouping related content together.
Your primary goal should be making it easier for users to get from general pages to more specific pages.
Navigation Menus
Website navigation refers to the system or structure of links and menus that enable users to browse and explore different sections and content of a website, enhancing their ability to locate information and interact with the site efficiently.
There are a variety of navigation elements, including:
- Global navigation (navigation elements present on every page).
- Local navigation
- Utility navigation
- Breadcrumbs
- Filters
- Facets
- Related links
- Footers
- Fat footers
Learn more about website architecture and navigation best practices for law firms.
Optimizing Indexability
Optimizing your content isn't just part of good lawyer SEO. When your pages contain high-quality, relevant, keyword-rich content, it makes it easier for search engines to understand and index your pages in the correct context.
Use Meta Tags Wisely
Meta tags, particularly the "noindex" tag, can control whether a page is indexed. Be cautious with these tags to avoid accidentally telling search engines not to index important pages.
Avoiding Duplicate Content with Canonical Tags
Duplicate content on your site is another common problem that can harm your search rankings.
When Google sees two pages that are nearly identical, it can have trouble deciding which one to rank for a given query. Setting up a canonical tag on one page is a solution that tells Google to prefer one page over another.
Ahrefs Site Audit and Google Analytics can help you find duplicate content as well as potential issues with existing canonical tags. Here's how:
Improve Page Load Speed
Pages that load quickly are more likely to be fully indexed. Slow-loading content, especially large images or complicated scripts, might not be indexed completely.
Using Structured Data Like Legal Service Schema
Structured data helps search engines understand the content of a law firm's website more efficiently, thereby enhancing visibility and improving how information is displayed in search engine results pages. For law firms, this can include details about legal services offered, attorney profiles, law firm contact information, and more.
Legal service schema, specifically, is a type of structured data that explicitly communicates to search engines the services a law firm provides, such as family law, personal injury, or corporate law services.
Increased Click-Through Rates (CTR)
Websites that utilize structured data tend to have more detailed and visually appealing search results (e.g., star ratings, FAQs). This increased presence can lead to higher CTRs, as users are more likely to click on listings that stand out.
<div class="callout callout-info"><p class="p_margin-small"><strong>Tip:</strong> You can insert “free consultation” into the <span class="inline-code">priceRange</span> field rather than fees. See below.</p></div>
Example Structured Data Used by Morgan & Morgan
Once you've generated the schema markup, embed it within the HTML of the relevant pages on your website. This step often requires access to your site's backend or content management system (CMS).
After implementing the schema markup, use tools like Google's Structured Data Testing Tool or the Rich Results Test in Google Search Console to ensure that it's correctly formatted and recognized by search engines. This validation process can help you identify and rectify any issues before they impact your listings.
Page Speed & Load Times
As busy humans, we value efficiency. After all, if you're looking for a law firm, you want solutions and answers as quickly as possible. Research backs this up, showing that users are exponentially more likely to leave a website the longer it takes to load. A wait time of more than just 3 seconds is just too much for the modern web user, especially as more and more people have started browsing on mobile.
How to Check Your Website Speed
A fast-loading website not only provides a superior user experience but also contributes positively to search engine rankings. Google has repeatedly emphasized the importance of site speed, integrating it as a ranking factor for both desktop and mobile searches.
For lawyers, where the competition for visibility is fierce, ensuring your law firm's website loads swiftly is non-negotiable. There are several tools that can provide metrics about your website's load times and any potential data issues, but Google's PageSpeed Insights is perfectly sufficient for most cases.
Strategies to Enhance Page Load Speed
- Compress Images: Large image files can drastically slow down your website. Use tools to compress images without sacrificing quality, ensuring they load quickly and don’t hinder the overall page speed. Plugins like Smush can make it easier to make sure you're not bogging your site down with huge files.
- Minimize HTTP Requests: Each piece of your webpage (images, scripts, CSS files) requires an HTTP request to load. Reduce the number of elements on your page to minimize these requests, thereby speeding up the load time.
- Browser Caching: Browser caching allows elements of your website to be stored on a visitor’s local computer after the first visit. This means that the browser can load the page on subsequent visits without sending another HTTP request to the server for each element.
- Optimize CSS and JavaScript: Minify and combine CSS and JavaScript files. This reduces the size and number of files that need to be loaded, accelerating the overall loading process.
- Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN): A CDN stores copies of your site on multiple servers around the world. When someone visits your site, the content is delivered from the server nearest to them, reducing loading time.
- Evaluate Web Hosting: Many site speed issues are simply a matter of choosing a hosting package that suits your needs. Consider upgrading to a more robust hosting solution if your current provider is slowing you down.
Check for Issues Involving Broken Links and Broken Pages
Broken pages can be a huge frustration for visitors to your site. When users encounter pages that don't work, they leave. Google could interpret a high bounce rate as a sign that your content does not match search intent.
The result: your site begins to see a decline in organic traffic.
Finding broken pages is one of the easiest things in a technical audit. They're also easy to fix once you've found them. The walkthrough below will show you how you can use your site crawl to find pages with these errors.
On the same token, broken links to pages on your site can be a user experience nightmare that's simple to resolve. Here's how you can use Site Audit to find issues with links on your site:
This report reveals intriguing findings, extending beyond the realm of internal linking challenges. For instance, with Ahrefs, you can identify orphan pages on your website. These pages exist in isolation, devoid of internal links connecting them to other content on your site. By introducing a link to these neglected pages, what once was unseen becomes a valuable, readily available resource.
Ahrefs also offers insights into pages lacking outgoing links and provides assistance with canonical page issues. Employing the Site Audit feature is merely one strategy for discovering and mending broken links. While it serves as a robust tool for a technical audit, those seeking a comprehensive analysis may refer to our detailed guide on locating broken links. This resource is instrumental in rectifying common internal linking mishaps, evaluating your external links, and scrutinizing your backlink profile.
Addressing the issues of broken links and inaccessible pages significantly enhances your website's user experience. However, before concluding your technical audit, an additional element warrants your attention.
Security & Keeping Your Site and its Reputation Safe
You want your law firm's web page to reflect the same professionalism and experience you put into your practice. Unfortunately, even if your site looks great, ranks great, and offers a great experience to potential clients, it can still fall prey to security issues that could potentially tarnish your reputation as a company and your good standing with Google.
Websites that are compromised or that pose a security risk to visitors can be penalized in search rankings or flagged to users as dangerous, drastically reducing traffic and, ultimately, the effectiveness of the site as a marketing tool.
How to Secure Your Website From Threats
- Adopt an HTTPS Protocol: The most fundamental step in securing your website is to ensure it runs over HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure), which encrypts data between the user's browser and the website, protecting it from interception. This is accomplished by installing an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate. As if you didn't need more incentive to use a secure protocol, Google has confirmed HTTPS as an SEO ranking factor.
- Keep Software Updated: Regularly update your website’s platform and any plugins or themes you use. Outdated software is a common entry point for cyberattacks, as it may have vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit.
- Implement Strong Password Policies: Enforce the use of strong, unique passwords for all accounts accessing the website's backend. Password hardening (creating a private login window that's not the default "/login" page) can also safeguard against brute force attacks. Consider using a password manager and enabling two-factor authentication (2FA) for additional security.
- Backup Your Website Regularly: Regular backups ensure that, in the event of a breach or data loss, your website can be restored to an operational state with minimal downtime. Store backups in a secure, off-site location.
- Use a Web Application Firewall (WAF): A WAF protects your website by filtering and monitoring HTTP traffic between the website and the internet. It helps defend against code injections, cross-site scripting (XSS), and other common threats.
- Conduct Regular Security Audits: Regular security audits can identify vulnerabilities in your website's security before they can be exploited. Consider engaging a cybersecurity professional to perform these audits and recommend improvements.
Ultimately, maintaining robust security practices is an ongoing task that demands consistent attention and adaptation to new threats. Consider doing your own research about the best practices for your specific website platform and infrastructure. Stay informed about the latest security vulnerabilities and updates within the legal industry and broader web community.
Investing in the security of your law firm's website is not just about protecting data—it's about safeguarding your firm's reputation, building trust with your clients, and ensuring your website remains an effective tool for reaching and serving those in need of legal assistance. So, keep this one on your SEO checklist and perform regular audits as necessary.
Final Thoughts
Technical SEO is fundamental to success. And while it can be a bit complicated, most WordPress websites these days handle most of the heavy lifting for you. Keep an eye on things and do regular checks to resolve issues early instead of letting them pile up. The issues you uncover and fix can have a major impact on your site.
If you don't have the time to run your own technical SEO audit or don't feel that you have the skills to resolve the issues, consider working with a trusted agency that provides dedicated law firm SEO services. Feel free to reach out to our team at Rankings.io if you want a third party to assess your website's health.
