A Guide to Increasing Your Law Firm’s Website Leads and Ensuring Best Practices
Did you know that 96% of people seeking legal advice use a search engine to find legal information? When potential clients are doing their online research, you want to make sure your law firm’s website is set up for success and shows up as one of the top search results. Below are twelve important elements to include on your law firm’s website to improve search engine optimization (SEO), enhance your site visitors’ experience, increase leads, and ensure best-practices.
1. Dedicated Pages for Each Practice Area
If your law firm has multiple practice areas, give each practice area its own dedicated web page on your website. This will give you the opportunity to expand on the information for each practice area so you can position yourselves as experts. This will also help with search engine optimization (SEO), so more people can find your website when searching for those services online.
2. Law Firm Blog
Adding a blog to your law firm’s website can showcase your expertise and serve as a resource for current and potential clients who want to learn more about specific legal topics related to your practice areas. In addition to being a great resource for your site visitors, blogging is also another way to help your law firm website rank on search engine results pages (SERPs).
In fact, websites with a blog have 434% more search engine-indexed pages than those that don’t (source). Further, marketers that prioritize blogging see 13 times the Return on Investment (ROI) compared to businesses that don’t, according to a HubSpot report.
Blogs provide you with a platform to target keywords people search for by building relevant content and context around them. Blogging about your practice areas and addressing questions people search for related to your industry will allow you to naturally incorporate important keywords into your content and improve your chances of being found on Google’s SERPs.
One of the benefits of blogging is “fresh content.” Search engines want to provide users with timely, up-to-date content. Typically, search engines will present a law firm website with recent updates over a law firm website that has not been updated in months or longer.
Blog as often as possible on your law firm’s website. Hubspot.com found that the more blog posts companies published per month, the more traffic they saw on their website. As a best practice, your law firm’s blog posts should be at least 300 words in length in order to rank well in the search engines, but a blog that’s over 1,000 words is likely to do even better. Longer posts will rank more easily than short posts. Aiming for one 500-word blog every week or two is a great goal.
3. Mobile-Friendly Functionality
People are highly dependent on their mobile devices. So it should be no surprise that since April of 2015, Google has given search engine ranking priority to websites that display well on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. Websites that are not mobile-friendly will rank lower in search results, decreasing your website’s visibility to potential new clients. If you’re unsure if your current law firm website meets Google’s mobile standards, you can enter your website’s URL address into Google’s mobile-friendly test to find out.
4. A Call To Action on Every Page
Be sure to include a clear call-to-action (CTA) on every page of your law firm’s website. Without a clear CTA, your website visitors may not know the next steps to get in touch, sign up for your e-newsletter, share your article on social media, or download helpful information.
CTAs will often be in the form of a button, pop-up, side panel, or fillable form and will include action words like “contact,” “shop,” “try,” “sign up,” “learn more,” or “start.” You’ll want to be very specific about the action words you choose and the instructions that follow them. Many law firms will include a call-to-action for a “free phone consultation” to encourage potential new clients to contact them.
5. Contact Us Page
People need to know how to get in touch with your law firm, so you’ll want to be sure to include a “contact” page on your website with all of your necessary contact information, including your email address, phone number, and mailing address. You can also include a “contact us” form that people can use to email you directly from your website.
6. SSL Security
You may have noticed that some URLs (web addresses) start with "http://" and others start with "https://". The extra "s" in “https” means that your connection to that website is secure and encrypted and any data you enter on that website is shared safely.
The technology that powers that little "s" is called SSL, which stands for “Secure Sockets Layer.” An SSL certificate secures the connection to the website and prevents hackers from impersonating you or stealing your website visitors' information (such as when a visitor is entering details in a form on the website or making a purchase with a credit card).
It’s important that your website is SSL secure, because people want to see the “https” secure URL when visiting any website they are entrusting with their personal information. It’s also important because Google will rank websites lower in search engines that do not have an SSL secure website.
7. Law Firm Testimonials
You should strongly consider adding a testimonials page on your law firm’s website. According to research by BrightLocal, 76% of people trust online reviews as much as recommendations from family and friends. Moreover, positive reviews make 91% of consumers more likely to use a business.
Ask clients who are clearly pleased with your services and regularly refer business to you if they are willing to write a short testimonial for your website and marketing materials. You can also include positive reviews that have already been written on Yelp or other review sites. If you have 4 or 5 stars on Yelp, you may also want to include a link to your Yelp page.
8. Attorney Bios
For many law firm websites, the attorney biography page is the most visited page. So it's no surprise that a well-written, up-to-date bio can result in new leads. Each lawyer at your law firm should include a bio along with a professional photo. Your bio photo can be a headshot or a picture of you working.
When writing your attorney biography, it may be helpful to think about the following questions:
What makes me different from other lawyers?
How can I make my client’s lives easier?
What cases and awards am I proud of?
What benefits can clients expect if they work with me?
Try and be personable and show some of your personality. People are more likely to want to work with you if they feel like they know you a little better. Once you have a bio, be sure to update it at least once a year.
9. Law Firm Website Disclaimers
All law firm websites should have appropriate disclaimers, including a disclaimer at the bottom of each page (possibly in the footer), and a complete disclaimer on its own dedicated page. The disclaimer listed on every page should link to the complete disclaimer.
The types of disclaimers that should be included on your law firm’s website can depend on the jurisdiction(s) of the firm and the local Rules of Professional Conduct. Since your law firm’s website will contain information pertaining to your area(s) of practice, you’ll definitely want to add a disclaimer that explains that the information on your website is created for general purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice or legal opinion on any specific set of circumstances or facts. You may also want to further explain that visitors should consult an attorney for advice regarding their individual situations. This disclaimer should be visible or accessible from every page on your website.
If you’re going to include testimonials or past case studies on your law firm’s website, you may want to also add a disclaimer explaining that the testimonials or past results do not constitute a guarantee, warranty, or prediction regarding the outcome of the site visitor’s legal matter.
You’ll also want to remind website visitors that until an attorney-client relationship has been established, confidential information should not be submitted to the firm. If you have a contact form on your website, you may want to consider including this disclaimer within the form so there is no doubt that visitors have seen it before submitting their message and contact information.
10. Law Firm Website Privacy Policy
A privacy policy is a statement or a legal document (in privacy law) that discloses some or all of the ways a party gathers, uses, discloses, and manages a customer or client's data.
In the case of a business website, a privacy policy is often a statement that declares a party's policy on how its website collects, stores, and releases personal information it collects. It informs the client what specific information is collected, and whether it is kept confidential, shared with partners, or sold to other firms or enterprises.
The contents of a privacy policy will depend upon the applicable law and may need to address requirements across geographical boundaries and legal jurisdictions. California Business and Professions Code, Internet Privacy Requirements (CalOPPA) mandate that websites collecting Personally Identifiable Information (PII) from California residents must conspicuously post their privacy policy.
11. Cookies Consent Pop-up
Have you ever visited a website and seen a little pop-up box that asks for your permission to use “cookies?” The growing use of consent notices for cookies—pieces of data that are sent by websites and stored on the user’s computer by their Web browser—is most often attributed to the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, commonly known as the GDPR.
The European Union (EU) “Cookie Law,” also known as the ePrivacy Directive, states that you can’t track users without consent. Under the Cookie Law, you are obligated to publish a Cookie Policy on your website as well as a consent form and pop-up notification. You must also provide detailed information on the types of Cookies you are using as well as an option for users to decline or delete Cookies.
You are subject to complying with the Cookie Law if you’re a company in the EU, a company doing business in the EU, or a blog or company website receiving traffic from EU clients. However even if you don’t think the Cookie Law applies specifically to your U.S. law firm’s website, you should err on the side of caution. According to a 2019 article by Bloomberg Law, three in five of the top-50 U.S. law firms display pop-up cookie consent notices.
12. Website Accessibility Functionality
Website accessibility is the inclusive practice of ensuring there are no barriers that prevent interaction with, or access to, websites by people with physical disabilities, situational disabilities, and socio-economic restrictions on bandwidth and speed.
By implementing accessibility best practices, you are ensuring that all of your potential users, including people with disabilities, can engage with your website, have a decent user experience, and are able to easily access your information.
In the United States, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is being interpreted by the majority of federal courts to apply to websites of private entities (including small businesses, nonprofits, and corporations). If a website isn’t accessible, it can be viewed as discriminatory against persons with disabilities and therefore in violation of the ADA.
The best way to approach website accessibility is to follow the guidelines put forth by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) under their Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). You can learn more about web accessibility here.
If you’re looking for an accessibility widget to add to your website like the one we have on our site, we recommend UserWay*.
* This is an affiliate link to a product we recommend for website accessibility. We may receive a commission if you make a purchase after clicking the link.
Need a New Website for Your Law Firm?
If you’re looking for a website designer to help create a new website for your law firm, please visit Left Lane Digital’s Website Design page to see some of our recent website work, including a website for CaliforniaNonprofitLaw.com and a website for JusticeInSD.com
A Disclaimer About This Blog Post
Left Lane Digital is not a law firm and this blog post is not intended to serve as legal advice. By reviewing your state’s ethics guidelines and Rules of Professional Conduct you can obtain specific information on required disclaimers and website laws and take the appropriate steps to ensure that you’re carrying out your professional due diligence in all of your online marketing initiatives.