What Every Law Firm Website Needs

 

Your law firms website is your online digital property where people visit to learn about you and your firm. The main reasons for your firms website is for people to find you online, and for them to learn more about you and your practice. If you want more leads and conversions from your Attorney website, make sure you have these “must haves” added to your website.

 

1. Mobile-Friendly

Potential clients are almost certainly searching for your services on a phone. More often than not, searches with local intent (e.g. area local lawyer) are performed on a mobile device. This shift in mobile preference makes it even more important to ensure that your website is mobile-friendly. It can make it more difficult for them to process the information and see on the site if a user visits your website and it isn’t optimized for mobile. But more importantly, you immediately come across as unsophisticated.

In early 2015, Google announced that it would be using “mobile-friendliness” as a ranking signal for mobile searches. What does this mean for your law firm? Beyond the importance of a mobile website for user experience, if you don’t have a mobile or responsive website yet, you may find your ranking dropping in mobile search results. Try out Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to ensure that your website is optimized.

 

2. Easy to Contact

This may seem obvious, but you ‘d be surprised how many websites don’t have contact information easily accessible. Here are some tips to consider for increasing lead conversions:
– Add a phone number in the header of your website so it appears on every page;

– Make phone numbers on your website click-to-call links to streamline the process for mobile users

– Include a link to a contact page in your primary navigation. Your contact page should include a general inquiry form

– Include email addresses or a phone number for individual attorneys on their profile pages.

 

3. Attorney Profiles

Did you know that attorney profiles are often the most visited pages on a firm’s website? As many as 56 percent of visitors to a law firm’s website will visit the attorney profiles. To capitalize on this interest, make sure each attorney profile has:

– Practice areas
– Professional head shot images
– Unique differentiator
– Newsworthy, relevant legal issues
– Experience and education

Qualifications and education are important to prospective clients, but it is also important that they like you! Consider adding a level of personalization to build a connection with clients.

4. Practice Areas

It is important that prospective clients know what you can do for them. Have a page on your website that lists your top practice areas, which can link to individual pages for sub-practice areas or further information. Consider linking to profiles of attorneys who specialize in each practice area to aid in the hiring process.

In addition to helping visitors find the information they need, practice area pages can provide a search engine optimization (SEO) benefit for your website. Many website visitors that find your website through a search engine, like Google, will be searching for practice area + location (e.g., real estate law firm + Chicago). Having practice area pages can help you get found by search engines.

5. Testimonials/Reviews

Recommendations from third parties are often more trusted than from the source itself. Build trust and credibility by adding client testimonials, recognition’s and awards to your website. You can even embed or link to reviews on third party sites (e.g., Yelp or Google) as an additional source.

6. Blog

Having a blog on your website is a great way to position you or your firm as a subject matter expert on legal issues, and increase your lead conversion. Above simply adding credibility, law firm website blogging has huge SEO benefits and helps prospective clients find your website through search engines, big and small.

Tip: maintain a blog frequency of six or more blogs per month, because blogs that are infrequently updated actually hurt credibility.

Do you have practice area pages on your website (as I mentioned earlier)? Consider adding a feed of blogs relevant to that practice area on each of those pages to further demonstrate expertise, or aid visitors on their quest for information.

Having a website for your law firm is a must, but merely throwing something together will get you nowhere. It needs to be good. Ensure that you incorporate these six features that every law firm website should have.

In addition to your website, Legal Services Link provides another important tool for establishing an effective online presence. Your professional Legal Services Link profile can link to directly to your firms website, delivering higher search authority, resulting in more referral traffic. It is always a good idea to post an article to your Legal Services Link profile to demonstrate your expertise in your field of practice.

Here is a good article about Law Practice Optimization, if you want more information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_practice_optimization.