Getting free organic traffic from Google is the holy grail of marketing. I mean, who doesn’t want to get a steady stream of visitors from the world’s most popular search engine?
Of course, everyone with a website wants free Google traffic. But with such fierce competition, how do you rank your website on the first page of Google?
The answer is simple: You must outsmart your competition.
Luckily for you, many of your competitors believe you have to be a computer expert or analytics whiz to achieve high search rankings. In reality, you just need to know a few key search engine optimization (SEO) tips.
We want to help, so check out these eight easy tips to get on the Google front page and receive free leads every day.
1. Use Keywords Your Leads Are Searching For
Perhaps the most important component of your SEO strategy is to target the right keywords. Specifically, you need to know the exact words and phrases your potential clients are entering in search queries.
The keywords your leads use need to be sprinkled through your website to improve your rankings for those terms. Take caution not to spam your content by repeating the same keywords over and over. But by inserting the right keywords in a natural manner, you are sending signals that tell Google what your site is about.
You can use free keyword tools like Google Keyword Planner and Keyword Tool to discover the best words and phrases your law firm should be targeting.
2. Create Specific Pages for Each Keyword
Now that you know which keywords you should aim for, it’s time to build pages and blog posts focusing around them.
Here’s a little SEO secret you may not know. Long tail keywords — phrases with four or more words — can be a potential gold mine. That’s because the user is looking for something very specific, like “low-cost divorce attorney in Denver.”
And while long tail keywords usually have lower traffic counts, they can bring highly targeted leads to your website; leads which may become your next clients.
3. Improve Your Website’s Speed
One of the more important ranking factors on the Google search engine is “page loading time.” That is the time it takes for the pages on your site to load in someone’s web browser.
You see, Google is all about user experience, and a slow loading time suggests a poor experience even before someone sees your content.
Also, Google measures something called a bounce rate. How many people click on your site from the search engine, and then bounce right back to Google or move on to another site. If you have a high bounce rate, that tells Google, people are not finding what they are looking for on your website.
For reference, 47 percent of visitors expect a site to load in 2 seconds or less. If the page load is longer than three seconds, 40 percent of visitors will leave your website.
Enter your site’s URL at Pingdom to discover your site’s page loading speed. The tool will tell you if anything is slowing your site down. Address the problem areas yourself or hire an SEO professional to get your site speed to 2 seconds or less.
4. Create a Visitor-Friendly Website
As we mentioned in the last point, Google wants to see your site’s visitors are engaging with your site. It’s proof that users find your site valuable. The longer someone stays on your site, also known as “dwell time,” the higher your site will rank in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
With that in mind, create website pages with your visitors in mind. What’s in it for them? How can you get them to enjoy your site more?
Start by making your pages easy to skim. Keep your paragraphs to three sentences or less. Remember, many people are reading your site on their phones or devices and long blocks of text will have them running for the “Back” button.
Include lots of pictures in your content and encourage your visitors to click on relevant articles. Design your site so it’s easy to navigate and users are only a click or two away from any information they need.
A great way to engage with your visitors is by offering a chat tool on the top of every page. Find out more here to see it in action.
5. Secure Your Google My Business Listing
Signing up for Google My Business is a quick way to get local exposure to potential clients. It’s more than an old-school phone book listing. This profile contains valuable information about your business to anyone searching on Google Search or Maps.
Your profile contains lots of important information so it pays to take your time filling out all the information. Make sure it is accurate and detailed and strategically insert your main keywords.
Your profile contains all the necessary information, such as your address, contact information and hours of operation. But it also includes reviews from Google, Facebook, Avvo, and Yelp as social proof.
You can also post updates and pictures to give clients a more personal view of your team and what your firm is about.
6. Get Quality Backlinks
Google rewards authorities with higher rankings. The more people who trust your word, the higher your site will appear in the SERPs.
Google determines how much authority you have by looking at your backlinks, which are links from other sites to yours. Each backlink is like a vote for your site. And when links are from other legal authorities and prominent sites, your site’s search ranking can rise exponentially.
To that end, work to get quality backlinks from leading legal sites. Get the ball rolling by submitting your site to popular legal directories such as Avvo and Justia.
Contact other professionals in your network and see if they would be willing to link to your site. You might offer to write a guest post on their site, in which you link to your site in your author bio or contextually within the article. You’ll gain a quality backlink and may even get some traffic directly through the link.
7. Create Pages for Each of Your Areas of Practice
Don’t make the mistake of creating one long page describing all the services your firm offers. Instead, create specific pages dedicated to each service you provide. For example, a divorce attorney could create one page for child support, another page for alimony, and a third page for custody.
Remember, every page is a doorway to your site on Google. You want the giant search engine to see as many doorways as possible. That way you can get very targeted search traffic that is looking for the exact services you provide.
In our opinion, the best way to create these pages is by answering the most commonly asked questions. What questions do you hear most? What problems do you see your clients facing the most?
Gain trust by giving detailed answers to these questions in a Q and A format.
8. Create Helpful YouTube Videos
By uploading quality content on YouTube, your firm will have exposure on the two most popular internet sites. Not only can you attract people on YouTube, but Google search results now give prominent positions to YouTube videos. Talk about killing two birds with one stone.
On top of that, you can insert these videos into related pages on your site to improve the user experience on your page. And nothing improves dwell time quite like a visitor watching a video for several minutes.
You can even include your videos on your Google My Business listing to really make your profile stand out and attract more local leads to your business.
Getting on Google Front Page: The Bottom Line
So now you know how to get on the Google front page. What are you going to do with all your new visitors to your website?
We can’t overemphasize how important it is to create strong calls-to-action (CTAs) on your site. Now that you’re getting qualified leads to your site, make it simple and easy to contact you.
Create a contact page with a question or comment form for users to initiate a conversation with you. You can also include a contact box on the side column of every page. Display your phone number prominently at the top of the page and invite users to call you for a free consultation.
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